Last week my fellow Siren author, Laurie Roma, tagged me in her Next Big Thing, so now it's my turn to answer the questions.
What
is the title of your book?
My current release is Woman on Top, an MMF erotic romance set
at a posh resort in southeastern Utah.
I got the title, Woman on Top, from some NRA gun classes I was taking. The classes are actually called Women on Target but for some reason we kept making Freudian slips, going, “Are you attending that Women on Top class?”
How did you come by the idea?
I was watching that show Wild Justice, about the California state
game wardens who track down and bust those odious criminals who harm and kill
animals. I never realized the wardens
have all the skills and privileges of “regular” cops, and they are hunting down
drug smugglers, polluters, and poachers, too. Except
they’re in the middle of nowhere, the wilderness with no backup, just staking
out these lowbrow assholes in subfreezing temperatures. In fact, I got one of my hero’s lines from a
game warden: “Why do we always get stuck with these low-budget motherfuckers?”
It struck me that these guys would
make fantastic erotic romance heroes.
You’ve got your gorgeous natural scenery for a backdrop already, the
heroes are acting noble by saving animals, and wait, you’re in the middle of nowhere…
Which actors would you choose to play
your characters if it were a movie?
I always cast actors as my
heroes. It helps for me to be able to
envision them walking and talking if I can watch the actor in a film. I’ve had some pretty bizarre combinations,
believe you me. In Woman on Top I used the incomparable Damian Lewis (Homeland) as the black ops hero, Adrian
Kinsey. For the beta game warden hero,
Joe Manganiello came in extremely handy.
Part of my research involved watching him strip in Magic Mike. Let me tell you,
this job can be stressful. The research
is intense. We leave no stones unturned
in our relentless pursuit of excellence.
Right now I’m on a roll with Timothy V. Murphy. He’s the quintessential “Oh,
That Guy” badass actor who recently had long stints on Criminal Minds and Sons of
Anarchy. He’s so ridiculously
handsome it hurts. I almost collapsed
when he stripped and boxed with Jax Teller.
It’s nice to be able to write a hero a little bit older.
Will your book be self-published or
traditional?
It’s my twelfth book in two years
for Siren Publishing. They release the
books in print about two months after they release them in-house.
How long did it take you to write the
first draft of your manuscript?
I logged Chapter One on 10/10 and I logged the Epilogue on 11/05. We have to go very fast in this business
because the readers are so voracious.
Back in the day, you were doing OK if you put out four books per
year. Now, it seems like one a month and
you’re a sluggish laggard.
What
else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Well, I write Sextreme MMF with a
fair amount of explicit MM scenes. I’ve
heard from several reviewers that my MM scenes are hotter than the ones where
the female dares intrude. I like keeping
the F in there, though, even if she’s only chained up to a radiator being “forced”
to watch the men. I—and I think female
readers—want to identify with the female in the book. She is often torn between her love and lust
for two different men, and the men fight each other for her loyalty, resulting
in some homoerotic wrestling scenes, each man struggling to get the upper
hand. Hey, something good came of
reading Women in Love in high school.
My male characters are often at war
with each other, their animosity stoking their lust. One reviewer said she was surprised I wasn’t
a Mr., that I was a Ms., I was able to get into the men’s minds so
completely. That was probably the best
compliment I’ve ever received. I frankly
don’t know where this insight comes from, since I didn’t grow up with my
brothers. But my teen years were spent
mostly with boys, fellow students, boyfriends.
My formative years involved watching teenage boys smoke bongs, play
Frisbee and cribbage, hit each other over the head with pool cues, and strangle
each other, so that’s where I get a lot of my Three Stooges slapstick stuff
from. Men have an odd way of showing
affection and that’s one of my themes throughout all of my books.
