Book boyfriends…what happens when too many men live in your head

As a writer I sometimes feel a little schizophrenic. I generally have three or four storyline ideas going through my head at any one time so tend to find myself flipping through dialogue and character reactions, even if the stories are completely separate… crazy right?

Well I thought I was doing quite well keeping my lines of separation until I received an email from one of the readers who had kindly agreed to review an early ARC of my new novel, Tied to You. ‘Who is Taylor?’ she asked and, for a moment, I didn't understand what she meant. There is no Taylor in Tied to You, only Alex, and then it clicked… Taylor is the main character in my Thirty Days series and somehow he had crossed over. Cue some furious searching through the novel to find any other instances I may have mentioned him. Thank heavens it was an isolated incident but it did serve a purpose to remind me to be extra vigilant with characters when committing them to paper.

This post was originally published on http://alliwantandmorebooks.wordpress.com on 20 November 2014

Finding inspiration

Alex and Liv from Tied to You popped into my head one night I was falling asleep. I didn’t really have a story in mind but I had been re-watching my Twilight boxset (yeah, I am a sucker for Stephanie Meyer) and that bit where Jacob talks about imprinting (“It's like gravity. Your whole centre shifts. Suddenly, it's not the Earth holding you here. You would do anything, be anything she needs. A friend, a brother, a protector.”) kept going around my head and suddenly I was like ‘I want to explore that’.

At the same time I also had a couple of friends who had become part of the BDSM scene. Complete over-sharers who didn't seem to understand the concept of too much information. So with all this information swirling around my head and this idea of someone being prepared to be whoever the other person needed them to be, Alex slowly started to form in my head. But he needed someone to balance him out; I found myself listening to John Legends’ All of me and suddenly Olivia was there in my head.

Cause all of me
Loves all of you
Love your curves and all your edges
All your perfect imperfections
Give your all to me
I'll give my all to you
You're my end and my beginning
Even when I lose I'm winning
'Cause I give you all of me
And you give me all of you, ohoh

As I ran over the chorus again and again (until I am sure my hubby was ready to scream) I realised that I had found the complete premise to build Alex and Olivia’s relationship.

This post was originally published on http://galestanley.blogspot.com on 18 November 2014

Getting lost in translation… the hardest part of writing

There is always a nerve-wracking moment when I sit down at my laptop with blank document open waiting for me to type out the words that have been flitting through my head for days, weeks or even months. I kind of wish I could be one of those writers who sits down and plans it all out and has her characters mapped out before even sitting down but unfortunately it just doesn't seem to work for me.

Instead my stories and characters seem to evolve organically chapter by chapter and this means that sometimes what happens in my head doesn't actually translate onto my screen. A prime example of this was my character Alex in my latest novel, Tied to You. Originally I had planned his character to be quite harsh and domineering, but once I sat down and wrote the first couple of chapters I realised that I wouldn't be able to sustain the level of aggression I had originally planned in relation to Olivia and instead he took on a more chilled out, surfer-boy slash CEO, demeanour.

So while I try to have a rough plot outlined in my head, I find that anything more than that just doesn't work for me. Instead I try to plan scene by scene, thinking them through before committing them to paper, to see where the story takes me. Sometimes it works out just as planned and other times it takes me somewhere completely unexpected…and that is not always a bad thing.

This post was originally published on http://belindasbookshelf.com on 17 November 2014

Smut & the playground: owning up to who you are

My daughter recently started reception at a new school which has not only meant that is she making new friends, but so am I. So you can imagine my nervousness after the first few mornings when I finally got asked the question ‘So what do you do?’. Now don’t get me wrong, I am proud of my writing and my mum beta reads everything so it’s not like I am in the closet or anything. But these are the mums that I am going to see pretty much every morning for the next seven years and I don’t know anything about them. And I already know that I am probably seen as the crazy mum with the bright pink hair.

I briefly considered telling them I am in marketing, which is what my background is in, or that I am a stay-at-home mum, but then I thought, sod-it, if they can’t handle the truth then I guess they will just have to suck it up. So cautiously I told them I am a writer which immediately got them intrigued. ‘What do you write?’ was immediately the next question. When I told them I wrote saucy novels, thinking that is probably PC enough for them, I definitely got a few raised eyebrows. But even more so a few of those secret smiles from people who know exactly what you mean. A couple even went so far as to ask for my pseudonym and title of my new book, Tied to You.

A few weeks later I know a couple have definitely read a couple of my books; nothing has been said explicitly but I have had a couple of smiles and comments here and there so I am guessing  underneath the Joules jackets there are definitely a few kinky chicks out there.

This post was originally published on http://adrianakraft.com/blog on 14 November 2014

My Writing Journey

I think most people assume that if you are an aspiring writer you spend years creating that perfect manuscript. My journey on the other hand has been somewhat different…

Reading has always been a passion of mine; from the age of seven I would read anywhere between five and ten books a week. Once I graduated from university and started working in London I couldn't understand why people would tell me they hated commuting on the tube; for me this was valuable reading time where the only interruption was trying to make sure I got off at the right stop (and yes I did once miss it and only realised two stops later!).

My career in marketing was spent writing, anything from brochures, copy for websites, coming up with headlines and puns and so forth, so I am the first to admit that the last thing I felt like doing when I got home was to then sit down in the evening and try and type out the stories that seemed to rattle around in my head.

But then circumstance intervened and I found myself in a position where I couldn't work for six months; we had returned from Australia and were having live with my parents whilst we waited for our tenants to vacate our house. Writing became an outlet for me. My daughter who was three at the time was in childcare a couple of hours each day to keep her socialised so it gave me an excuse to lock myself away and dream about another reality.

In truth, writing has kept me sane during some very trying times and I am so glad to have found my passion. I am also incredibly lucky to have an amazing hubby who supports me in it completely, even when I get so wrapped up in the story that I barely speak for a couple of days.

This post was originally published on http://jensreadingobsession.blogspot.com/ on 13 November 2014

Napping…it’s not just for nanas

Where do you get your best ideas? In the bath? By going on a walk? Well for me they tend to come just when I am about the fall asleep so whenever I get stuck with my writing I tend to take a nap. I might not necessarily sleep, but for the hour that I lay there I let my brain roam free. Sometimes it is just a swirly mess of thoughts and images but other times it will settle on a dialogue, or a plot point.

As there is no typing involved you can imagine things in real-time and see where the plot goes. Sometimes it will flow in one direction and will get to a situation I don’t think is right and then I will back up a bit to see if I can explore a different direction. Other times the idea will just flow and I will be itching to get up and write down everything that has just gone through my head. The best part of my method for me is that because I have never typed my random thoughts down I don’t have that guilt over deleting chapters when they don’t work.

And I even get my own personal bedtime story which is fun when you are working through kinky scenes like the ones I wrote for my new novel Tied to You.

This post was originally published on http://kdgrace.co.uk on 12 November 2014

Location, location, location

One of the hardest things I find when writing is getting the balance between fact and fiction just right. Of course the characters and the storyline are always fictitious but I always find myself pulling locations and settings from my own life. When I was in the process of writing Tied to You, I decided I wanted to set part of the novel in Perth in Western Australia. I spent fourteen months living there and instantly fell in love with the place; I made so many friends and was fortunate to live a twenty minute drive to some of the most pristine beaches in the whole world with dazzling white sand and turquoise water.

For me, writing about the place was almost cathartic; I was feeling really homesick for the place so being able to remember my favourite places and put them in the story made me feel a little like I hadn't even left (even if the reality was that I was freezing my butt off during the British winter).

This post was originally published on http://houstonhavens.wordpress.com/ on 11 November 2014

Making your mother blush: Writing erotic romances

I never set out for my first book, Thirty Days Have September, to be an erotic romance. I read plenty of novels in that genre but I also love thrillers, supernatural, a good murder mystery and sappy love stories. But as I got to the point that I needed to write the first sex scene I got a little bit nervous. Of course there are so many ways of writing a sex scene from the completely discrete to no-holds-barred graphic descriptions and I just wasn’t sure where I sat on the spectrum. So one day I just sat down and wrote the kind of description that I would have enjoyed reading myself and, low and behold, I discovered I had a bit of a kinky side.

This has continued and been stretched even further with my latest novel, Tied to You, where I explore a BDSM relationship. Whilst not actively in the scene myself, I have a couple of friends who are and were happy to answer any questions I had. It took a long time to get the scenes and the relationship dynamics right but in the end when my harshest critic, my mother, praised them and told me she enjoyed them I realised that I had found my groove. And who knew my mum had a kinky side as well?

This post was originally published on http://inthepagesofagoodbook.com on 10 November 2014