Author James Lee Nathan III Shares Their Story

The number 1 bestselling author of erotic crime dramas on leanpub.com;James Lee Nathan III grew up in Corona and East Elmhurst NYC and graduated from the HS of Art and Design in 1979. He entered the US Air Force shortly thereafter,serving 20 years and retired in 1999. He was stationed overseas for 18 of the 20 years and has been to 40 states and 10 different countries. He loves pugs, jazz, beer, and the company of an intelligent and pretty woman. James is single and resides in Severn, Maryland

About the Author
The number 1 bestselling author of erotic crime dramas on leanpub.com; James Lee Nathan III grew up in Corona and East Elmhurst NYC and graduated from the HS of Art and Design in 1979. He entered the US Air Force shortly thereafter,serving 20 years and retired in 1999. He was stationed overseas for 18 of the 20 years and has been to 40 states and 10 different countries. He loves pugs, jazz, beer, and the company of an intelligent and pretty woman. James is single and resides in Severn, Maryland

What inspires you to write romance books?
Romance is and can be anything; it does not necessarily mean sex, nor does exclude it. I have always viewed romance as an intimate experience. With all of that being said, the romance in my erotic crime dramas is complicated because i deal with complicated and confused characters, dealing with their own demons and those of their communities. Yet I have always viewed romance/erotica as being boundless. You can put it into certain timeframes –past and present; hell you can even make it between different species (paranormal romance and erotica).. so why not put it in the future and put a scifi spin on it? Thats my thought process in my erotic crime dramas, is to put the reader in the not too distant future…and say WHAT IF?

Tell us about how you write:
I am anything but the norm, haha… I use a variety of tools to capture my thoughts; anything from character profile worksheets, to scene by scene outlines; I also use Dragon to get my ideas about a specific scene down (as I am commuting in the DC traffic) this allows me to save and send myself an email; I take those notes (maybe 300 words or so) and create an entire chapter based on thoughts in traffic.
I also utilize a white board to track my day to day or weekly progress in the writing. It really helps me focus on what needs to be done or even what has not been done. For example, the last two days the priority on my whiteboard was “ONLINE PROMOTIONS” ….

Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
Oh my goodness, one of my characters is so like me that I typically close my eyes and think “what would I do here?” and that’s how I write it!

Most times this works, other times it doesn’t because there are situations where I just don’t see myself ever being in, so I just concentrate on my characters reactions. They should be logical and consistent to their personality.

I dont like reading or watching characters that have been behaving one way for the entire book/movie and then in the last chapter they do things totally out of character..ummm doesn’t make sense to me. I see it if you have written their dramatic change throughout wherein the pivotal moment is when the character actually changes (for good or bad) however not at the last minute cmon…

What advice would you give other writers?
think out of the box and if you re writing romance in the west, learn about the west!! It is so much easier to write about what you know then it is to write about what you don’t. Research research research!!
The clothes, the society, the politics, the lexicon all has to be spot on. Otherwise, ummmmm need I say it?

How did you decide how to publish your books?
Since I was very new to writing speculative fiction ( I have blogged for seven years on various platforms) I decided to build a world of fictional works to provide to literary agents and publishers. So self-publishing was the way to go. Many options presented themselves but once you pulled the covers back, not so much.

There are so many self-publishing traps and hazards out here, I wont call attention to them but I will say this; find a platform that provides you with ABSOLUTELY FREE OPEN SOURCE TOOLS to create, edit, and publish your manuscript; that allows you to make at least 90% royalties; and has the ability to push your published work to other ebook distributors. I have had the best experiences with Leanpub, Lulu, and Kobo.

Invest in some editing software, even if you have Microsoft word (which allows you to set the grammar and style) still invest in something like Pro Writing aid (trust me it helps a hell of a lot) Grammar Check me is good for sentence structure, but pro writing aid reviews strong word usage, dictation, and over used words.

have people proof your work after you have ran it through the editing rinse cycle; that way they re not spending most of their time looking over your syntax instead of getting into the story. Oh it should go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyways, these people should critique your work not kiss your ass!!

What do you think about the future of book publishing?
wow.. many of the publishing houses are moving into ebooks and by this I mean they are looking for writers that can write novellas. Novellas (because of their length) are not good in a printed format. They re cheaper and do not take up space on the shelves; space that costs the publisher the same whether they have a novella or novel in it. Publishers opt for novels that they can sell for 25-35 bucks every-time; but in t the digital world whats book-space?
Exactly, they have jumped knee deep into ebooks and specifically novellas because they can churn those out faster and novellas lend themselves to series and anthologies.

So tell your story, write good engaging characters and keep it to around 50-60k words and publishing houses may come calling for you…just an observation on my part; I’m still waiting on them to call me!

What genres do you write?
Speculative fiction, erotica, erotic crime dramas, erotic thriller, erotic suspense,

What formats are your books in?
eBook

Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link to Author Page on other site

Your Social Media Links
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6702941.James_Lee_Nathan_III
https://www.facebook.com/RiseoftheChulo
https://twitter.com/Nykingmd
http://www.pinterest.com/robertmanis

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