Please welcome the very lovely and super-talented Emily Ryan-Davis to my blog today. Me being me and liking all of the inside information and the gossip, I've given her a grilling....
Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to write erotic romance.
Would you believe I don’t really remember what led me to erotic romance instead of “regular” romance? I’ve always enjoyed reading the physical intimacy between heroes and heroines. Even as a teenager (yes, I was romance-corrupted early) my favorite bits to re-read were the love scenes. When I started writing I found myself focusing in close with tunnel vision on the hero and heroine. I didn’t care what else was going on around them or what happened to their families or friends. I wanted to immerse myself in the intensity of the up-close-and-personal, whether it was naked relations or fully-clothed non-sex relations.
When erotic romance hit the market with Ellora’s Cave way back when, I was intrigued, but I was still looking for the story I wanted to tell. I spent a few years telling stories I liked, stories I thought I should want to tell, until I finally found The Story. It was first published in an anthology, later revised and published by another e-publisher. I’m still trying to get that story right, believe it or not, and I’ll be re-releasing a third revised/expanded edition later in April, with fingers crossed that my 34-year-old author self has the experience and perspective my 26-year-old author self hadn’t quite yet found.
Where do you live?
Half the year I live in an urban swamp. The other half, I live in a manic weatherman’s wet dream, never knowing from one day to the next whether I’ll need a sunhat or a snow shovel. You probably know this place as the North American Mid-Atlantic.
Do you have a favourite book or series that you’ve written?
I really like most of my books but my favorite is a coin toss between ALL HE WANTS, a contemporary erotic romance about a U.S. Marine and his best friend’s very pregnant sister, and MORE THAN A MAN, a fanciful futuristic erotic romance set in a society where women have access to “perfect man” technology and can build husbands to their specifications. ALL HE WANTS has sexy baby belly sex, MORE THAN A MAN has steamy licorice tentacle sex (just trust me on this one and go read it), and I’m honestly not sure I could choose one of them over the other.
Any authors that particularly inspire you?
Inspired my material, no--not that I can point specifically at anybody and say “I want to write because of this book or this style of writing”. Inspired my career path, yes. Back in 2006 (I think! Memory is faulty now that I’m a mom) Crystal Jordan sold novellas to New York. Novellas! Nobody ever went anywhere with novellas…except she did, so I kept writing those short books I loved to write, and now here I am writing for a living.
Being “here” and “writing for a living” is a situation additionally inspired by my friend and mentor Minx Malone, who was the first person I knew writing those short little books, just like me, and reaching real, live readers in real, big numbers, through indie publishing. Minx’s success inspired me to give a good hard look at my own future in indie publishing. She, just like Crystal at one point, proved that readers want short books, too.
Do stories/plots come to you in a sudden flash or do the play in your mind weaving themselves together over a series of weeks?
Sometimes a flash, sometimes a slow build. It took me two…er, four…uh, five years to write the serial novel my paranormal alter-ego E.R. Davis is currently releasing. The characters and their world and their relationship kept evolving and I couldn’t find an end to it. I finally embraced Dessa and Teijon as being a couple that aren’t ready to be happy-ever-after yet, acknowledged they have more story to tell, and now I’m letting them have at it in big chunks of story at a time.
On the flip side, I wrote ALL THE SECRETS IN PEARL, the third novella in my historical western erotic romance series (Ellora’s Cave), in 72 hours. I spent more than a year trying to find James Carver’s story and one summer morning lightning struck my creative brain, James informed me that he was a gay man and I should stop trying to find his heroine and find him a hero. Three days later (without showers, I admit it) I had that dirty little M/M, F/F, M/F/F/M novella down on paper.
In short, I have no reliable method. I wake up every morning, cross my fingers, and hope my brain agrees to work its magic that day.
Have you ever used a real person as inspiration for a character?
Yes. Physically, anyway. Teijon Reyes, the hero of my (well, E.R. Davis’s) serial novel CHALICE BLOOD, was inspired by an extremely tall, extremely gorgeous man who took private electric bass lessons at the place that used to be my day job. I stalked--er, I mean researched--him online when I found out he was a camera man for a local television station, found a photo of him in nothing but swim trunks, emerging from the bay after doing a mid-winter dive for charity, and fell totally in lust with his body. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when Teijon popped into my head wearing that electric bass player’s heavy dreadlocks and yummy eight-pack.
Do you have a calling to one type of storyline, ie BDSM/suspense and if so what is it that appeals to you?
I seem to be drawn to two different kinds of characters more than storylines. I am completely infatuated with the sensitive alpha Dominant hero, whether he is engaged in the BDSM lifestyle or not, and I seem to keep picking up these slightly difficult women who need a firm but tolerant/understanding hand. My heroines are typically a little more tortured and unstable than my heroes, while my heroes are often the rock-steady voices of (mouth-wateringly-sexy, Dominant but not oppressing) reason.
My inner psychoanalyst says I write my difficult self into my heroines while writing my sensitive-and-rock-steady husband into my heroes. Except my heroines have unrealistically small, tight asses and my heroes have unrealistically massive dicks of doom. (Really good doom.)
Do you have a favourite cover model
Of course I adore Jimmy Thomas. Who doesn’t? He’s the man behind the mouthwatering biceps on my stepcest novella, HOT FOR PEPPER (which includes a killer sex-in-a-closet scene - it will rev you up and leave your heart aching at the same time, and yes, I have completely abandoned all concept of modesty; it never was one of my stronger virtues, anyway).
Can you tell us a little about your family and how you manage to fit writing around them?
OMG, my family! Er, I mean, oh, my darling, precious family! I have a husband. He cooks professionally, which means he works the later shifts. Family dinners don’t really happen, but that’s OK, because I have a son. He is 15 months old and sometimes wants banana bread for dinner, sometimes only wants cheese for dinner. Makes it easy on me, right? All that time saved cooking, I get to channel into writing…in a perfect world.
In the real world I spend a great deal of time retrieving baby toothbrushes and baby spoons from the guinea pig cage (my baby-love likes to share with his piggy), hissing at my cat so she’ll stop hissing at my little guy, changing diapers, watching Pingu and Postman Pat, and saying “that’s mommy’s important document, please don’t mash your sweet baby hand on the delete key, thank you”. And did I mention the cat?
But I do manage somehow. I wrote TANGLED & BOUND with my son, then seven months old, napping in the crook of one arm while I hunched over him to reach my laptop with my free hand (much like I’m typing this paragraph right now, with him sleeping on my lap after his first wake-up of the night).
Earlier this year, while nursing myself, my husband, and my little man through a demonic string of winter plagues, I co-authored a holy-smokes-put-out-that-fire M/F/M (also M/M, the F isn’t always in the middle!) contemporary novella that will be available for the 2013 holiday season. It has a fabulous working title but the final title will depend on whether we sign it over to a publisher or self-publish. I wrote this novella with Elise Logan, who was my partner in MORE THAN A MAN and THIS FIRE.
So…I manage. I’m told it will get easier but I’m not convinced. Baby-love will be talking soon and I don’t know how many of my own words I’ll be able to squeeze in around his words. He might be more verbally prolific than I am textually prolific.
Can you choose six lines from your latest release to give us a taste of your heroes voice?
Sure! This is a teensy bit from CLAIMING LAUREN:
"I want to watch you squirm beneath a flogger," he whispered. "To whip your ass until it's striped red. But you came so hard, so perfectly, that I can't bear to punish you."
Her breath rasped, just on the edge of control. Master stroked her throat, her shoulder, released one of her nipples from the clamp and immediately opened his mouth over the swollen tip. When the first sharp needle of pain hit, he was there, sucking and soothing.
What can readers expect from Emily Ryan-Davis in 2013?
I’m busy-busy this year. March saw the launch of a BDSM erotic romance series, eXclave, with CLAIMING LAUREN. Book 2 will be DOMINATING AMY (April), which is a revised/expanded edition of my very first BDSM romance. Book 3, KEEPING SAVANNAH (June), is a story about two people in a marriage of convenience that becomes a steamy D/s love match. I have tentative plans to release a fourth book in the fall. All I know about that one is the heroine’s name is Juliet, the hero’s name is Tony, and Tony will be either TEACHING JULIET or TRAINING JULIET. I think there’s a beach involved. And possibly very dirty swimming lessons.
My paranormal half, E.R. Davis, is publishing a serial novel. CHALICE BLOOD will be released during May and June as five parts of interracial sexy-in-a-really-dark-and-uncomfortable-way vampire romance. I have plans for the story to run after the five parts but I’ll need a wee bit of time to write them, so they might not happen until late 2013 or early 2014.
And then there will be the collaboration project with Elise Logan. Interested parties should start looking for that M/M, M/F, M/F/M contemporary goodness in November or December. Or they could sign up to receive my newsletter and just wait for me to notify them directly of its availability! In a show of my appreciation, everybody who’s signed up to receive my newsletter by April 22 will receive a special freebie surprise. So don’t dawdle!
Oh, and I just registered to attend Lora Leigh’s Reader Appreciation Weekend in September. Folks who wants to meet The Author (moi) in person should plan on attending. I’m much less long-winded in live conversation. ;)
Thanks so much for stopping by, Emily. For anyone wanting more of Emily's raunchy romance here are the links...
LINKS:
Web site: http://www.emilyryandavis.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/emilyryandavis
Newsletter: http://www.emilyryandavis.com/newsletter/
Book links (Amazon)
LOVED this interview. So fun and I learned a lot about you Emily! :) Massive dicks of doom. That one's gonna stick (in my brain for years to come) :D
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for being my guest, Emily :-)
ReplyDelete