Sunday Morning Chat: #Interview with @angiesargenti

John Satisfy:  Thanks again for stopping by Erotic Satisfiction.  Before I get onto the wonderful interview for the day, if you have a moment, could you please follow my blog and rate the interviews?  Any feedback or comments I get will help shape the future interviews and guests that I have.

Today, I’ve invited Angela Sargenti to Erotic Satisfiction.  She is a multitalented author who writes some hot spanking erotica, as well as some other interesting tales.  Angela, can you please tell me a little about yourself and what you write.

Angela Sargenti: I'm happily married and I have one son (and three cats).  I write what I call short attention span erotica, which means erotica you can read in one sitting.  I write longer stuff, too, but mostly short stories.  My work's been featured in over a dozen anthologies, with new stuff coming out all the time.  I also have five e-books, one of which, Start Me Up: A Collection of Erotic Love Stories, contains my erotic flash fiction. 

JS:  I take it that you have a short attention span then?  How long are your short attention span stories?

AS:  The flash fiction is only a few lines, and some of the others are up to 3,600 words long.  And yes, I definitely have a short attention span.  It's a real trial to me when I have to write something longer. 

JS:  So then how many stories are in Start Me Up?

AS:  There are fourteen stories in Start Me Up.  I alternate one regular story with one flash fiction story all the way to the end of the book.  They're mostly fun-spirited stories, like most of the stuff I write.  Even when I write BDSM, it's often very light-hearted.  "BDSM Lite", I guess you could call it.  Anyway, they're definitely short attention span erotica, especially the flash fiction.

My favorite one is called "Christmas Magic".  It's about a vampire named Marty who meets an office-party escapee and takes her home for the night.  He has lots of fun showing off his special vampire skills, and there's even a little surprise at the end.  It's just a really fun story.

JS:  I like how you alternate the two length of stories in you book.  The Vampire story sound especially interesting.  What are your favorite fetishes to write about and why?

AS:  I love to write about spanking.  I have no idea why, but it has always fascinated me.  I remember writing little stories when I was in 5th grade, about this one girl who got in trouble all the time.  My second favorite fetish is being tied up and teased.

JS:  That's funny that even back in 5th grade you thought about spanking stories.  Would you categorize yourself as a good girl or as a bad girl and why?

AS:  I'd say I'm good right now, but in my twenties, I was bad.  I felt I should do what I wanted, and I did.  Let's just say I have a lot of experience.  Sometimes I draw from these experiences when I write.  It helps a lot when I write from a male point of view, which I do about a third of the time.  However, I never use my past straight-up, exactly how they happened in real life.  Instead, I just use small elements for realism. 

JS:  How does that help you to write from a male point of view?

AS:  I guess I just picture it through the guy's eyes, instead of everything being from the female perspective.  I'm not sure if I can explain it.  Maybe I remember being a little aggressive at times, and I project those memories onto the guy.  It's a strange thing. 

JS:  I've noticed that the indie writer community is very supportive of each other.  Has someone surprised you by helping you out? 

AS:  I've met a lot of nice people on one of the Facebook groups, and bonded with a couple of them.  One helped me by looking over my manuscript and giving me some good suggestions, and another helped me promote one of my books on her blog.  They've all been very supportive, though. 

I especially enjoy reading the comments they leave on #SatSpanks every week. Everyone is really positive.  
Specifically, Joelle Casteel and Claire Colingsworth both helped me, and Cara Bristol gave me some useful suggestions for my blog.  She pointed out that I didn't have my name anywhere on it, just the blog title.  Funny how we miss those little details.  I'll blame it on my head injury…

Anyway, Joelle served as my beta reader and gave me a bunch.  Claire was kind enough to feature my story, "Chris Takes the Mound" on her blog.  It's just great to find people willing to take time out of their own busy lives to give you a hand.

JS:  You mentioned that you had a head injury, can I ask what happened?

AS:  I got into a golf cart accident, if you can believe that.  It split my head wide open in front.  I looked like Carrie at the prom with all the blood, but it only needed seven stitches.  I'm not all duh, but my short-term memory is crap and it definitely contributed to my ADD.  Hence, the short attention span.

JS:  Wow, I'm glad to hear you're ok and healing.  Besides writing short attention span literature, has it made it difficult to write in other ways?

AS:  Yeah, it really has.  If I get writer's block, it can last up to a month.  It's so frustrating.  I've tried all the tricks and none of them really work for me.  I just have to ride it out and keep trying every few days to see if anything will come to me.  Deadlines do seem to help kick me back into gear, though.

Luckily I have people counting on me, I don't think I could impose a deadline on myself and have it work, not during writer's block.  When it goes away and I'm in the zone, I can set all the deadlines I want.  That's the time I work as much as I can to sort of "store up" some ideas and stories.

JS:  Who sets the deadlines for you?

AS:  Mostly calls for submissions, but sometimes it's just that I know someone is expecting something from me, like when I did Lord Sir Beast for Sweetmeats Press.  That is my erotic fairy tale, along the same lines as Beauty and the Beast.  In my story, the heroine transforms the beast into a man and breaks the spell with sex.  It's very naughty, but not too raunchy.

JS:  That sounds like a fun play on the usual bedtime story.  Do you often use fairy tales as inspiration?

AS:  No, this is my first time.  I liked doing it, though, so I may look up a few more of them to see what I can do.  I think the reason I did Beauty and the beast is, I just got a new cat from my friend.  He's large and grey and his face looks just like the beast's in the old Jean Cocteau film.  I guess it had me thinking about the story, and how he turned into a prince--although my beast turns into a viscount.  I have been looking at one or two other fairy tales, but I'm not sure what to do with them yet.  I guess I'll kick them around awhile and see what happens.

JS:  What usually inspires you?

AS:  Sometimes reading will do it, but most times it just comes right out of the blue.  That's how my zombie blog, After Old Joe started.  We were stuck in heavy traffic and I made a joke and said, "It'll all be different after the zombie plague," and that's the first line of the whole thing. It was like I was taking dictation, and I had to write really fast so I didn't miss anything. 

JS:  That is always exciting, when a story takes shape so quickly.  How many blogs do you have?

AS:  I have wrapped up After Old Joe, but it's still out there, for now.  The only active one I have now is Friday I'm In Love, my erotica blog.  On it you'll find links to my books, my latest news, and a #SatSpanks excerpt every Saturday. 

JS:  Sounds like a few fun things to find there on your blog.  What are you working on right now?

AS:  I just found out yesterday I'm getting a book I wrote published by Blushing Books, so I imagine there will be edits and stuff.  You probably read some of the excerpts on #SatSpanks.  It's called, She's No Angel.  In the meantime, I'm trying to finish a sexy short story and I'm working on an old book manuscript I wrote to get it into shape to be published.

JS:  That is fantastic.  When do you think that will be released?

AS:  Maybe a month or so?

JS:  How do you like working with a publisher?

AS:  I've had positive experiences so far.  I've worked with three publishers on my own books, House of Erotica, Sweetmeats Press, and now Blushing.  I just started with Blushing and I don't know what the entire process will be like, but so far, I'm very satisfied.  They send an email to let you know they've received your submission, and they get to it pretty fast.  I'm really looking forward to working with them.  The other two, Sweetmeats and House of Erotica are pretty much the same, good turn-around time and good communication.  I've worked with other publishers when doing the anthologies and found them easy to work with, too, and their requests all make sense when they want you to rewrite something.  So far, so good.

JS:  That's really great to hear.  Do you also have self-published books, or has everything of yours been released through a publisher?

AS:  I have two self-published ones, but one of them I took off the market.  I found some mistakes, and I might rewrite it to make it better.  They're both very vanilla, hardly any sex in them at all.

JS:  I take it you're a bit of a perfectionist.  Do finding mistakes really annoy you?

AS:  Yes, I am a perfectionist to a certain extent.  It was my first novel-length book and I think I just got in a hurry and wanted it done.  I learned my lesson on that one. 

JS:  How do you define success?

AS:  I already feel successful because I'm getting published a lot, but of course, I'd really feel so if I made enough money to live off my writing. 

JS:  That's a great feeling.  If my readers want to keep up with your latest, where can they follow you on social media?

AS:  Well I’m all over the web.  I’ve got the Zombie Blog and the Erotica Blog of course.  But I’m also on Twitter, Pintrest, Facebook, Google +, stumbleupon, and Linked In.  Of course there is always my Amazon page if they want to check out my books.

JS:  There is certainly no excuse for someone not to follow you!  Well, thank you so much for you time, this has been a very enlightening conversation.  I hope your newest book is a fantastic one and that people check out your stuff on the net.

AS:  Thank you, John.  It was great talking to you.

This page contains affiliate links.