15 Years of Going Where I Said I'd Never Go

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be releasing Worth the Wait, the 9th book of the Nature of Desire series. Since it’s been close to 15 years since I started this series, I’m waxing a little reminiscent in this post and wanted to share some thoughts about it you may not realize, even if you already love it and have read every one! (Thank you for that, by the way.)

RANDOM FACT ONE: Worth the Wait will be the FIRST Male Dominant/female submissive book in the series. I was surprised by that one myself. I thought, “No, wait, that can’t be right,” but when I went back and looked, there it was. Here’s what we have:

Book 1 - Holding the Cards – Domme/beta sub

Book 2 - Natural Law – Domme/alpha sub - Mac Nighthorse, boy howdy, serious alpha!

Books 3 & 4 – Ice Queen/Mirror of My Soul - Dom/Domme - yep, Marguerite and Tyler were both Dominants

Book 5 – Mistress of Redemption - Domme/bad guy sub - paranormal trip to hell with a bad guy as the “hero”

Book 6 – Rough Canvas - Male Dom/male sub - my first M/m book; definitely not my last

Book 7 – Branded Sanctuary - Vanilla female/male sub

Book 8 – Divine Solace - Domme/male sub/female sub - a threesome with F/f/m, not M/f/M, another first for me

Book 9 – Worth the Wait - Dom/female sub

What makes me so fond of the Nature of Desire series--beyond the fact I love all the characters in it—is this series not only launched my career, it has reminded me over and over again why I write, and what I want to write. Every book took me in a direction I didn’t expect to go, and quite often opposite from where the trends told me popular books were going. But readers don’t seem to care about trends and marketing. I’m a reader and I know I don’t! (lol) I want a good story and characters that matter and, as a writer, that’s what I craved to write. The Nature of Desire series proved to me readers will go into new territory if the story is worthwhile.

RANDOM FACT TWO: I never thought I’d write a story where the heroine was the dominant. When I wrote the first book, Holding the Cards, I was a traditional romance reader and writer. Whether BDSM or not, heroes were always alpha dominant. Female Dominants and male subs? No way I could get excited about that. Even in the young and growing erotic romance genre, there wasn’t a lot of interest in books with that set up. Yet when I tried to write Holding the Cards that way, with Josh as the Dominant, it fought me every page. Creative constipation of epic proportions, lol.

In writing, sometimes you knock yourself loose from a snag by randomly changing something for a few pages that you’ll later delete. So, on a complete whim and in frustration, I tried flipping the roles, making Lauren the Dominant and Josh the submissive. Whaddyaknow, all of a sudden I was rushing along whitewater rapids, the ideas were coming so fast. And I was LOVING it. So what was the big lesson for me? A love story is a love story is a love story. I also discovered male subs could be strong, heroic and sexy. And a woman exploring her sexual power could still be vulnerable and empathetic.

Natural Law, Book 2, was where I hit my groove. I coined the term “palace guard” sub, meaning a protective alpha male who nevertheless craved submission in the bedroom. Romance readers decided, after reading Mac Nighthorse, that they agreed with me. A male sub could be sexy. Who’d a thunk it? (lol).

RANDOM FACT THREE: The idea for Natural Law started in a book that wasn’t part of the series. While Natural Law is the book that gained traction for the overall series, the idea for it came from a book that’s not included in the series. If Wishes Were Horses was an erotic, non-BDSM book (even though there were of course a couple scenes with handcuffs!) about a female sheriff and the local Wiccan priest who runs an erotica boutique. At the end of the book, my heroine Sarah mentions she borrowed a state trooper outfit from a close friend of hers. Since it’s such a tight fit, the conversation goes kind of like this:

Justin lifted his head at last and gave her a thorough perusal. “You pulled in some pretty heavy favors for this. Remind me to give your friend generous gift certificates.”

“You better. You just tore the hell out of her uniform.” Sarah gazed ruefully down at the frayed shirt and trousers. “And I helped.”

“Good Lord, she must be a pixie.”

“Weighs a hundred pounds sopping wet, and is meaner than any trooper three times her size, so it better be a really good gift certificate, if you value your lover’s skin.”

“I do, very much.” He placed his lips on it and she closed her eyes, hummed a sigh. “Very well, then,” he said. “A lifetime supply of hopping penises.”

[Which on their first encounter, was the type of cheesy novelty item Sarah expected him to have in his erotica boutique!]

Violet of Natural Law was the friend Sarah mentioned. The story wasn’t a gleam in my eye at that point, but when I got around to writing Natural Law, she sprang into my head from that one reference as if she’d been waiting in the wings all along.

RANDOM FACT FOUR: All of the books were firsts for me in some way. As I noted above, Rough Canvas was my first Male/male. Divine Solace is a menage a trois story, with Mistress Lyda, Gen and Lyda’s sub Noah, but it was the first time I’d put a strong Female/female relationship at the center of the story, and it was the first time I’d done a threesome with two women and one man. Then there was Branded Sanctuary, where my hero was a dedicated male submissive and my heroine was a vanilla girl. Sexually adventurous but not oriented as a Domme. I think part of me was drawn to write this story because I’ve had so many readers contact me over the years to tell me they’re in relationships where one of them is submissive-oriented but the husband is not a Dom. This story explored how a vanilla/sub pairing could work.

Marguerite and Tyler’s story (Ice Queen/Mirror of My Soul) was another first because they were both Dominants. This was also where I learned there’s no “one way only” when it comes to Dominant and submissive orientations; they’re as unique as the people involved. Marguerite does switch with Tyler, but she remains a Domme with others, so there’s no “oh I only thought I was a Domme until I met the right Master” trope that makes so many of us cringe. I’ve met people in the lifestyle, both men and women, who have a undeniable orientation as a Dominant, but there’s a specific person for whom they desire to switch. Even if they can’t explain why that one person brings that out in them! It reminds me of the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves quote: “Because God loves wondrous variety.”

RANDOM FACT FIVE: The books did not start as a series. It wasn’t a series until Books 3 & 4, Ice Queen/Mirror of My Soul. I’d written Holding the Cards and Natural Law as standalones, and then my very savvy publisher realized all four books were exploring different aspects of Dominance and submission, and suggested we make them a series. Hence, the Nature of Desire series didn’t happen until those books. However, I believe by giving it that underlying theme of exploring all the different “natures of desire”, it gave me a lot of freedom to continue doing just that.

RANDOM FACT SIX: The seed for Marguerite and Tyler’s story was planted over 30 years ago. To close, I want to give you a cool story about how Marguerite and Tyler’s story came about. It was a news clipping I picked up when I was a teenage aspiring writer. I collected all sorts of snippets from the newspaper, magazines, writing down conversations, any source I thought would contribute to a story. I’d found a tiny little police report in the paper that simply stated a woman had jumped off a building with her two children. There seemed like there should be so much more to that story. I kept the clipping in a folder, but it was when I started thinking about Marguerite’s story, decades later, that it came back to me. What if one of those kids had survived? What would she be like? Why would the mother have jumped with them? The answers I imagined helped launch Marguerite and Tyler’s story.

Hope I haven’t bored you too much with my trip down memory lane, but it seemed time for some anniversary reflection. Thanks to so many of you for reading the books and taking those journeys with me, and I hope many others will discover these books and enjoy where they lead the imagination.

NEXT WEEK: Reader question – how do I go about making characters authentic, particularly those from different ethnic/geographic backgrounds?

Link to Nature of Desire series for blurbs, free excerpts and buy links.