askmeanything

I’ve got another Ask Me Anything for this week, and this question came from one of my lovely readers, Niki! Curious what the #AskMeAnything is? Check out the official AMA page on my site over here. I hope you find this interesting, because it’s all about how I get my stories down on paper.

Q: Do you plan how your books will play out or do you see what is happening in your head and just write it down? What is the oddest thing you saw/did that gave you inspiration for a scene (or whole book)? (submitted by Niki R.)

A: Hi Niki! Thanks so much for asking me this question. It’s one I hope others will be interested in, because it’s a different kind of topic from the first two that were much more intense! (Although I love those too.)

It’s even more of a fun topic because it’s one that my author friends and I talk about a lot. Writers usually bucket themselves in one of two categories: “pantser” or “plotter”.  A pantser is someone who ‘writes by the seat of their pants’ and a plotter, well, plots. I am completely and unequivocally a pantser. In fact, there was a story I was writing on Literotica called “The Wild Ones” (a story I do hope to work on again someday) but my Dom was asking me questions about it one day, poking some holes in the story, which is normally fine, except I didn’t have answers to his questions yet. After all, I’m a pantser and the story wasn’t there yet, so I didn’t know. Unfortunately, I let the questions into my head and decided I needed to answer them before I continued the story. I spent a whole weekend plotting out the story so that I could answer those questions – and you know what happened?

The characters went silent, and Zora and Zane and all of the other wicked ones have never come back. I’m still sad about it, but that’s what I get for trying to tell them what to do!

See, my books play like movies in my head. I can write wickedly fast (current high point is 26k words over a Saturday and Sunday) as long as the movie is playing. I’m usually typing feverishly to keep up with their banter in my head, or what they’re doing in the scene so I can capture it. Sometimes, they surprise me with some crazy action they take, or something they say, but as the movie plays out I see why it happened. My characters aren’t just fictional beings, they’re 3-dimensional, and sometimes very annoying, real people. Over the year I wrote the Thalia trilogy Marcus would never shut up. In fact, he still talks to me sometimes and I’m like, “Hey! Shoo! Your story is done and I’m busy!”. I guess it kind of makes me sound crazy, but it works, and it brings to life these worlds on paper which is all I ever wanted to do. Also, it makes my head a pretty hot place to be most of the time! Ha!

The coolest thing I’ve seen in my head that turned into an entire book is actually the opening scene of The Invitation (a BDSM/menage novella). I had this first-person perspective of a woman in black heels walking down a perfectly white hallway towards an elevator. I could hear her heels clicking on the tile, I could feel her nervous tension, and I just knew something dark and devious was waiting at the bottom of that elevator ride. I didn’t have a name for her yet, I had no idea what was going to happen with her, but I knew it was a story I had to tell. To this day, Cara and Saif are still two characters that people ask me to write more on, and I absolutely want to. They are delightful, and one day I’ll tell more about them and Ben and Aphrodisia Limited.

I do hope this was a good answer, and I’d be happy to answer follow up questions in the comments here or on FB! Also, don’t forget to send me some more ask me anythings with the link at the top of my blog. Special thanks to Niki, and thanks to all of you lovelies for supporting me.

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