So I've been shopping around for e-publishers looking for contributions to anthologies, as I've heard this is a good way to meet the editors at e-pubs and give them a sample of your writing. Turns out, Total-E-Bound publishers is collecting submissions for (among other things) a "Men in Uniform" collection and is accepting M/M entries.
As far as these types of contests go, it's pretty much pure smut in a lot of cases - hot guys, hard bodies, military uniforms, and close quarters. But when theme "contests" or anthologies roll around, I like to be as creative and realistic as possible - I want to stand out from the other entrants and hopefully get published.
I've entered and won a few writing contests and lost a whole lot more, and the thing I learned from my losses was that trying to "fit in" with a genre by trying to write in the same style as the most popular authors there is the quickest way to failure. People can tell when you're phoning it in, and they're not pleased with that kind of writing. So I've given up that track, and now I'm just going to write in the style I'm most comfortable with. Perhaps this attitude will make me a pain in the ass to publishers, lol, but other methods just don't work for me.
It's amazingly difficult to think up an original porn story about men in uniform, though.
Better get to work.
