The Perk of Being a Romance Writer

Popular erotic romance author Angela Claire has taken over my blog today to give you insight into the writing life and a look at her newest release Pleasuring the Professor.

Take it away, Angela!

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I love being a romance writer. Okay, I love being an erotic romance writer. Writing an elaborate, hot sex scene comes incredibly easily to me. It’s just something I never get tired of doing. Maybe it’s because real life never turns out like that.

For example, I work as a lawyer in an office…day after day after day. I try to dress nicely. I wear make-up. I curl my hair. And never once has a gorgeous billionaire shown up to invite me to his private island. I mean, I’m talking like, not once. There’s never been a hot-shot new VP who’s fought me for my cases and then taken me on the conference table while we’re working late. I’ve never attended a conference and had a dark, mysterious stranger lure me into a seductive dance and then confess he’s a vampire.

And that’s just work. At home, it’s even worse. The “pool boy” is a 250 pound, sixty year old man who nobody would ever want to see in a speedo.  When the handy-man comes over to fix the sink, he, er, fixes the sink and then charges me $200 for the pleasure. If I even had a hunky next door neighbor, I’m sure he’d only knock on my door to complain that my dog was in his flower bed, and not to murmur that he had the hots for me.

So anyway, you get the picture. There’s not much of the erotic romance in real life—not in mine anyway—which I hasten to say is just fine since I’m happily married and wouldn’t want any billionaires or hunky neighbors or mesmerizing vampires luring me away from my dear hubbie. (I’m saying that in case he’s reading this—just kidding!)

But a girl likes to think about it once and a while, doesn’t she? And for me, that means going right to the computer and dreaming up some sexy scenario where I’m—I mean the heroine—is on top of the hero on the deck of his one hundred foot yacht in the waters off of Aruba. Or the tortured, hot novelist in isolation is furiously taking me—I mean the heroine of course—up against the wall of his mountain cabin. Or the outlaw cowboy is riding—oh, what the hell—me under the stars, risking the wrath of the posse to take the time to do it. 

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t have any trouble dreaming up sex scenes and playing them out on paper. And that, my friend, is the perk of being an erotic romance writer.  

 

Blurb:

Liam Conner was once a literary darling, but now he’s trying to drink himself to death in the seclusion of his mountain cabin. He’s not much interested in sex after the personal tragedy that ended his career, but his libido kicks into full gear when a beautiful blonde shows up in the middle of a snow storm.

Grad student Clarie Lewis is out to nab an interview with the reclusive subject of her thesis. When Liam throws political correctness to the wind and offers to give her an interview if she’ll sleep with him, she’s not sure whether he’s trying to drive her back out into the snow or if he really is just horny. Both, probably.

Clarie doesn’t need to sleep with anyone for a grade. But suddenly she finds herself alone in a remote cabin with a man whose prose she’s been analyzing and appreciating for as long as she can remember. The fact that he’s gorgeous as sin in person doesn’t hurt either.

Suddenly, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Excerpt:

Shrugging out of his parka, he kicked his boots off and reached for the remote control that controlled the lights, switching them on. Rubbing his hands, he made his way to the thermometer as well, cranking up the heat.

Turning to his little visitor, he saw the harsh light seemed to have stunned her.

Or something.

“I can’t believe this,” she finally said. “It’s you!”

They stared at each other for a minute and he recognized the rapt expression on her pretty face, though he hadn’t seen it for quite a while. Admiration. Great. This was so not happening.

“Liam Conner!” She fumbled for a dog-eared paperback in her bag and held the back up to him, as if proving the fact of his identity with the photo thereon.

He looked at it blankly. “Yeah. So what?”

“You’re the reason why I’m here! I came out here to see you.”

That was troubling. “How the hell did you know I was here? How did you find me?”

“Well, I didn’t. I mean I was on my way to the university in town. Since that’s the last place you, ah…”

“Got fired from,” he muttered.

“I thought they might have an address for you. But I decided to drive through the mountains because there was construction on the freeway and before I could make it through, I got caught in this snow storm and wandered into the only shelter I could find. And it turns out you live here! That’s incredible!”

“Yeah. It’s kismet. So what do you want?”

His curtness, now that she knew who he was, seemed to unsettle her. She looked around as if something could help her out and then cut to the chase. “I’m a graduate student at NYU. I’m writing my thesis on you.”

Now that was funny. NYU even. “Really? So what are you, like, some literary groupie or something?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Too bad.” Leaning back against the counter in the small kitchen adjoining the main room of the cabin, he eyed her in the same way he had initially, but she didn’t seem to mind it now. She shook her head, smiling widely. With the lights on, he could get a really good look at her now. Big blue eyes, pink rosebud mouth, with the high-cut cheekbones he could make out even in the firelight. Her hair trailed down to her waist and since it was wet it was hard to tell the color. It looked blonde though.

And her skin. Dewy white. Soft. How sweet it would be just to touch that skin, to run his fingers along the underside of her sharp little chin and along that long neck. To soak up all that youth and promise. Just for a little while.

The fact that he was even thinking about it meant he obviously hadn’t had enough to drink today. In fact, he wasn’t even sure he’d had anything. He was falling down on the job.

“God, I absolutely love your work,” she gushed on. “So I thought I could interview you, maybe, if you wouldn’t mind. Add it as a postscript to my paper. You’d be doing me a huge favor. It would really help me clinch an A.”

“Why would I care about that?”

“You, ah, well you…I thought you’d want to help a student in your field.”

He had been considered a brilliant teacher at one time, until the accident, that is. But that was a long time ago. Apparently, she hadn’t gotten the memo.

“I don’t have any students these days.”

She stared back at him for a minute and his eyes dropped, checking out her long legs and the hint of a really nice rack, which didn’t help with the boner he still had.

“And if I did, you know the only thing I’d want if somebody looking like you came to me and asked for my help in getting an A?”

When she didn’t answer, he prompted, “Go on. Guess.”

“I’ve probably come at a bad time,” she offered instead.

“As good a time as any. But come on, Miss Grad Student, drop all the political correctness bullshit I’m sure you’ve got hammered into you and just take a guess at what a guy like me might really want when a hot little piece of ass—”

“That’s enough.”

He opened a cupboard and extracted a half-full bottle of whiskey. Slamming the cupboard door shut with vigor, he took a swig of the bottle, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“What? You object to me commenting that you look like a hot piece of ass? It’s the God’s truth. You think because a man’s in academia—not that I am anymore, of course—he wouldn’t think that? What are you, like twenty-two, twenty-three? Grow up. If a prof could ask you to sleep with him for an A these days, he would. But deans frown on that kind of thing now. So many rules.”

Like not showing up to class dead drunk. Like not lecturing a room full of spellbound students on the futility of human endeavors and how it would probably be better to all go out and drink the Kool-Aid.

“Fortunately, I’m not tenured anywhere anymore, so it’s not like they can kick me out or anything. So what do you say? You want me to spell it out?” He took another drink of the whiskey. “I’ll give you an interview if you give me a go at that sweet little body you got hiding under that sweater.”

More info: http://www.jasminejade.com/p-9971-pleasuring-the-professor.aspx

Author Website:  www.angelaclaireromance.com

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