Good morning! Please welcome guest author Angela Claire. Though I will be away for part of the day, please feel free to leave comments for Angela and I will post them as soon as I return. Thank you!
~Kate
What is one of your favorite things about writing?
One of my absolutely favorite things about writing is the ability to lose myself in a situation I would very likely never find myself in during my real life. Okay, sure, it often involves sex with hot guys, but what can I say?
When you’re brainstorming for a new story, what usually comes first for you, the plot or the characters?
The characters. Hands down. Often they just show up and I can see them so clearly. I write around them and the things they pop up in my head saying.
Are you a plotter or a pantser?
Pantser definitely! I am trying to get better about plotting things out but I usually just go where the characters take me.
When you’re writing, who is more in control, you or your characters?
The characters. If I was more in control, I’d start each book by doing an outline. Never happens! I just write and reread and write again.
What do you like about writing series books?
Being able to have a character just show up in the first book and then become the hero or heroine in the next one. For example, in my book Undercover Surrender, the heroine’s big brother is kind of the anti-hero in the sense that she is vaguely complaining about him being too pushy and know-it-all and then the reader sees him having hot sex with his mercenary girlfriend right before he dumps her. But the reader also sees him worried about his little sister and defending her. So he’s a little bit of a hero even if his own sister doesn’t see it. You get just that glimpse. In fact, my editor at EC wrote a note in the margin saying that I had to give this guy his own book. And lo and behold, I did in Drilling Down Deep. And then in that one, you have another brother show up briefly and having a fling and then he gets his own book. (Actually, I’m still writing that one, but I’m almost done!) I come from a family of ten kids so I guess I find siblings very interesting and very familiar territory.
Would you tell us about your latest release?
My latest is a male/male, which I have never written before, but which just kind of seized me. After publishing 15 male/female romances, I was as surprised as anybody that I started writing a male/male novella, but it sort of goes back to what I said earlier about the characters being it for me. I just got seized with the idea of this about-to-be-CEO who is fired right on the verge of getting the job he’s worked his whole life for and he’s staring out at the ocean wondering where it all went so wrong. He’s bitter and he’s hot and—not that it has to do with anything other than the fact that I happen to write erotic romance—he’s gay. So Male Bonding was born.
What are you working on now?
Remember what I said about that other brother strolling into Drilling Down Deep and screwing the pants off the hero’s secretary—well, I guess I said he had a fling, but you know what an erotic romance writer means when she says that—that’s what I’m working on. Drilling Down Deep came out in April and I was so thrilled that almost immediately readers were asking me about “Evan and the secretary” and when that book was coming out. Sure, a smarter writer might have already started that one while DDD was in edits, but what the heck? I was still thrilled. And I immediately felt as if I was behind in my writing. So I got started on Evan and Andrea’s own book right away at that point and I’m, well, almost done. Not quite. Like hoping to be in the next month or so.
Do you have an excerpt from your latest release you would like to share?
Absolutely! Here goes:
By reading any further, you are stating that you are at least 18 years of age. If you are under the age of 18, please exit this site.
An Excerpt From: MALE BONDING
Copyright © ANGELA CLAIRE, 2013
All Rights Reserved, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.
Chapter One
Mark Ryan loosened his tie and looked out at the darkening beach. The waves had that peculiar purplish color that twilight sometimes gave them, none of the orange of the sunset on the tips.
Fuck the board. They wouldn’t know a long-term strategy if Adam Smith himself came and dropped it in their laps. If all they wanted was a suck-up, they were better off with Crable anyway. He’d give them their perks and their corporate airplanes and their fat retainers right up until they all danced their way to the bankruptcy court door.
It wasn’t his problem anymore.
He was pissed off anyway. Even the ridiculous severance package they foisted on him pissed him off. Three years. Who deserved three years of salary and a target bonus for being booted out the door?
Corporate America was so fucked.
Not that he wasn’t taking the money. He was. He’d need it until he found another job. Although maybe he’d forget about trying to be a CEO and hang out on the beach for three years.
Like that guy.
Mark had noticed the tall blond man the last time he’d been up here, which was quite a while ago given his lack of free time as he scrambled to bring that shit of a company into the information age. Just as the last time he’d seen him, the guy was ambling along the sand, wandering in and out of the waves here and there, a tri-color collie following close beside. He was dressed in a tee and shorts, his hands dug into his pockets, his head more often than not facing out to the sea instead of looking where he was going.
He must live around here somewhere.
Unexpectedly, the man turned toward him and waved.
For a second, Mark was tempted to look behind him over his shoulder before he realized how ridiculous that was. The guy was saying hi, being neighborly. Had he been immersed in cut-throat corporate politics so long that he didn’t even recognize a friendly gesture?
Chastened, he waved back, but unfortunately that prompted the other man to approach the deck, his enthusiastic collie bounding along with him.
“Hi there.”
Mark nodded. “Hi. Nice night.”
“Yeah, like every night around here.” He nodded his head toward Mark’s beach house behind them. “Is this your house? I was starting to think it’d been abandoned.”
“Yeah. I don’t get out here much.”
“It’s a beautiful place.”
Mark wondered how the hell this stranger knew that until a glance back reminded him that one wall of the house faced the ocean and was made almost entirely of glass. It had been a wildly impractical impulse by his architect, but Mark liked it. Liked the wide open view of the water. He just forgot sometimes that people could see in too.
“Thanks.”
The guy still lingered.
“You live around here?” Mark asked.
“About a half mile down the beach. A little shack compared to this, but the beach front is worth it.”
Mark nodded.
“This is Laddie, by the way.” He introduced his dog with a vigorous petting of the thing. “She’s a girl despite the name. I just thought Lassie would be too much.”
Mark had never had a dog. One of the many things for which he’d never had the time. He had nothing against them though. The dog’s tongue hung out of her mouth and she looked up at her master with adoration.
Maybe he should get one.
“Do you have a dog?”
Mark transferred his attention back to Laddie’s master, shaking his head no but disinclined to elaborate on the subject. This was what he got for being friendly. Forced to hang around making small talk with an empty-headed beach bum.
He didn’t question why he thought of the guy as a beach bum. Tanned and lean, with that sun-kissed shaggy hair, this beachstroller probably had some bikini-clad bimbo around to suck his cock whenever he felt like it. She’d probably glance adoringly up at him as well, same as the dog.
Mark didn’t even glance at the guy’s shorts to see if he could check out his package. In another context, maybe he would have. But this guy was straight. Mark could tell. And if there was one thing he lived by, had served him well during his twenty years more or less in the closet in corporate America, it was that straight guys didn’t want to find out you weren’t.
“I’m Jamie Wilkes, by the way.”
They shook hands. “Mark Ryan.”
Mark found absolutely nothing erotic about shaking hands. He had done it in the same perfunctory manner hundreds of times in his career. A brief clasp of the hands and a moment of eye contact. Sometimes a head nod at the same time for emphasis.
He’d never been caught freezing at the shake part and keeping the eye contact too long. But this guy had the bluest eyes. Bright with long dark lashes.
Mark dropped his hand abruptly.
“So you here just for the weekend?” Mr. Blue Eyes, er, Wilkes, asked.
“No. I’ll be around for good, for a while anyway.”
“Cool. Not many people are full time out here. So you want to get a beer or something? There’s a little bar farther down the beach.”
“No thanks.”
“You sure? You look like you could use a drink.”
The friendly chit-chat was annoying. Mark didn’t want to go pick up chicks with this guy or whatever he thought they’d be doing. All he wanted to do was take a long swim and then get seriously drunk. Alone.
But more came out of his mouth than he expected. “No offense, but I’ve had a shitty day. I’ve been stabbed in the back by a guy I thought was my friend and fired from a company I thought was my future and I’m not in the mood for any male bonding.”
Mark clamped his mouth shut after the admission. Talk about sharing too much. Great. Next thing he knew he’d be making a pass at this poor guy who just happened to wander by at “his darkest hour”. A perfect end to a perfect day. Getting blown off by some gorgeous, probably homophobic young guy.
After a minute, the guy said, “I wasn’t thinking about male bonding. More like mindless fucking.”
“Well, you’ll have to find a beach bunny without me.”
Those beautiful blue eyes zeroed in on him. “I didn’t mean fucking a beach bunny. I meant fucking you.”
Where can we visit you online?
I’m at:
www.ellorascave.com/author/angela-claire
www.booktrand.com/angela-claire
Hope you can stop by!
Thanks for having me, Kate!
Thank you for being here, Angela!
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