The Pleasures In Disguise Duet

About the Pleasures In Disguise Duet

A long, long time ago… At least two decades, I read about how erotic romance was blowing up the digital book world.

I was really frustrated with rejection and told a fellow unpublished author I was thinking of trying my hand. She said, “Et tu, Brute?”

That stung, but I gave it a go. I looked at how erotic romance was mashing up other genres and thought, I bet a tycoon would be fun here. Yeah, I was Fifty Shades Too Early, but I wrote about Dominic, who is the alter-ego of Jason. Arianne is in love with Jason, but hears he has a kinky side. She asks him to introduce her to Dominic for lessons on how to up her sexual game.

I sent it to a contest on the sly, which turned into a contract offer from Ellora’s Cave. I went so far as to park a website domain with my chosen nom de plume.

For a lot of reasons I wound up declining. One was that scold from my friend. Sure, the story contains wall-to-wall sex that gets kinky, but it is still very much a romance, one of which I’m proud and fond, but I feared being type-cast as an erotic romance author. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

Eventually other stuff happened. Dominic found a home as Mastering Her Role and I wrote the companion novel I had always planned, Playing Her Master, in which Ann is engaged to Porter. He barely looks at her, but when he sees her made over as ‘Violet’ at a sex club, he’s decidedly more intrigued.

When it came time to put a name on my erotic romances, I used the one that goes on all my books, which is my own name. These romances aren’t as hard-core as some erotic romance I’ve read, but they’re pretty graphic. They’re also romance–which is a super hard balance to write, for me at least. That’s why I haven’t written a ton in this genre.

But I reserve the right to betray the romance genre again, by writing sexually explicit love scenes, if I am so moved.