Judging fun

Somewhere along the way, I morphed into a person who has trouble saying no, which was how I found myself up to my eyeballs in extracurricular activity last year, along with the endless and hated revisions/line-edit/copy-edit/page proofs of Deep Cover. At Robert's urging, I've since given up some time-heavy jobs, but I find myself still agreeing to judge contests.

Some are more like obligations -- for example, if you enter the RITA and don't volunteer to judge and there aren't enough judges, you're at the top of the list to get booted out. And in RWI, the best writers' group in existence, judging both our published and unpublished contests are requirements of membership.

The current one, though, is fun. It's a contest for erotic romance, and some of what I've read . . . holy cow! And I thought *I* had a wicked imagination!

I've wanted to write erotica for a long time, and actually even tried to start a book once. But by the middle of the first chapter, it became pretty clear that what I was writing was closer to porn than erotica. But reading these books has inspired me to give it another try (when I find time -- the bane of my existence).

Hey, that would certainly add a new dimension to my new habit of saying no: "Sorry, I can't help out at the church -- I'm working on a wicked and steamy book involving a man, a woman, blindfolds, kinky sex, bondage, exhibitionism, mild SM, and maybe another man . . ."

Tsk, tsk. Better get my mind back on Selena and Tony! Rachel8:30 AM