What do you like best about writing erotic romance?
I like reading books with a high heat level. I want to see how the romance develops but I also enjoy it when the bedroom door is left open. I seem to have a talent for writing love scenes and I enjoy taking my characters to the edge.
What do you like best about writing menage?
I don’t normally write them but I wanted to write about a minor character from my latest release Base, called Helen. In my dystopian world the soldier who finds a woman gets to keep her. In my story, Heat, two commandos find Helen and she’s fine with that because they worship her like a princess. It was one of the easiest stories I have written but technically the writer does have to know where all the arms and legs go. For me, the tricky bit to get right is the emotion. What is it like for two competitive males to share a woman?
What are your favorite genres to read and write?
I love reading paranormal. Unfortunately it’s difficult to keep publishing in at the moment. My editor at Harlequin Escape said that Dystopian worlds are over subscribed at the moment but she was open to a very sexy Dystopian world, so I wrote Base. I love watching the Walking Dead television series. It took me a while to get used to the level of gore, but once I recovered from sleepless nights and weird zombie-ridden nightmares, I created a world where the naval base was the one place that was fenced off in Sydney. It seemed to me that people in a Dystopian world were either survivors or dead. The skills of a survivor included street smarts and ability to fight, so my hero, Captain Jack Lang was a survivor. My heroine Ruth is a specialist doctor so her skills are needed but she is a bit of an uptight heroine who doesn’t know how to fight. On top of that, being compassionate, she initially treated the zombies as if they had a form of dementia. A lot of her kind doctor colleagues were the same. Naturally they got bitten and died. Having a high-level thinking heroine against an intelligent action hero immediately sparked conflict because Ruth wasn’t used to being ordered about.
When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?
I love to read but unfortunately that’s not good for my waistline, so I also walk every morning.
To you what makes a great romance hero?
Handsome, strong, reliable, intelligent, healthy and hardworking are my favorite hero qualities.
To you what makes a great romance heroine?
I often make my heroine more problematic than the hero. I’m more likely to reveal the heroine’s vulnerabilities before I reveal the hero. She does, however, have to be intelligent and know when to change, even if it takes her a while. Also my heroines don’t have to be good looking. Some of them have a weight problem.
Do you have any particular writing habits?
I always walk the dog and then write all day until dinner time. Seeing as I’m the cook I have to stop.
Where would you go on your dream vacation?
I did my dream vacation. I went ballooning Cappadocia in Turkey. It was like being in a fantasyland.
Where can we visit you online?
www.cathleenross.com or on my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/cathleen.ross.3
Links for Base
http://www.amazon.com/Base-Cathleen-Ross-ebook/dp/B015YWDZIM
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