Sometimes I get questions in my reader group on Facebook that draw out a big and long answer from me that I’d like to preserve in case someone else is interested – instead of letting my answer get lost in the scroll over time so here’s a re-post of a recent question I got.
Question:
What were the challenges you faced while writing about the taboo stuff? How did you play the part of balancing your work and not hurting anyone’s sentiments? I mean surely it would have been difficult to manage with the feminist emotions, how did you work that out?
My reply:
Okay – so this is prob gonna get long and may be a bit rambling but…. settle in with a cup of tea or something if you want my take. LOL. Funnily, my first book is my bestselling book of all and I had no feedback prior to publishing it. Not a soul read it first besides me. I had no audience and just told the story. I had zero alpha or beta readers. What you have is what I wrote with NO feedback and no attention to audience because when I wrote it, I didn’t have an audience. I just told the story. Yes, I toiled and wondered if I’d gone too far in some scenes. Did I worry about what people would think? I guess I felt somewhat safe behind my keyboard but I kept my writer life a secret for the first few years. Only my husband, kids, and one other person knew for a long time. And when I first started telling people, I told them I was an author but begged people to NOT read my work. LOL. I wasn’t sure people would get it. I worried about being judged for writing rough sex, kidnapping, the R-word, etc. As for the publishing without feedback first – the same thing happened with Nectar (book 1). I wrote a book that I’d want to read. I told the story the way it came to me without a thought for anyone but the characters. And I thought I’d get a whole lot more shocked feedback over the twist in Nectar but readers surprised me. That’s the whole reason this reader group exists – it started as a place to talk about spoilers from Nectar.I get all sorts of feedback, good and bad about my books but bottom line, I write the kind of story I’d want to read. The whole premise of that book was me wondering about vampires and how they’d react to menstrual blood and deciding to write a story to explore an addiction to it. LOL. I didn’t want my mother in law reading that! lol.With Tommy and Tia’s book, it’s a dark story with a leading man that not everyone will feel was redeemable. But something about their dynamic drove both of them to try to compromise . Him, being an alpha antihero, he’s going to compromise the least. He’s not letting her go. She’s his. End of. He has one brief moment where he says she can go but we know he doesn’t mean it – it’s another test. And she passes because YES – she does develop Stockholm Syndrome – especially when she faces bigger monsters than him. And over time, she does peel down through those layers that are Tommy and falls for him – in spite of and maybe because of his flaws. She sees the concessions he tries to make for her, and that means a lot to her, even if he’s still essentially an antihero. He knows how lucky he is and is immensely grateful that she loves him. That kind of helps his cause, I think. A common theme in some of my dark romances is that these women put up with a lot of crap with these flawed men who will do anything for them. Look at Alessandro and Holly – the whole thing was based on him trying to protect her from himself and his darkness and she just refused to back off and heed those warnings. She jumped from a smoky room into an inferno. But it’s all pretend…Would Tia be happy with Tommy if he wasn’t rich, powerful, sexy, and a God in bed? Not too freakin likely. LOL. But it’s fiction. Fiction with delicious friction. LOL. Hey….maybe I just found my new tagline. I’m going to make a banner that says that. Ha! Same with Tristan and Kyla – he was a chauvinistic, OTT alpha vamp who behaved like a drug addict with Kyla – locking her in his room and coming in to feed and f*ck. Should we, as women, live with a man who is an addict? Who tries to control everything? NOPE. That story – we made allowances for because of paranormal / fated mates elements. Their codependency was sick and romantic and we swooned despite the fact it would never work in real life. LOL. So yeah… I just tell the story the way it comes to me. For fun. An escape. I love the idea of a man so consumed with love that he will do anything to have me. err… her. lol 
I write to give myself and my readers an escape from reality. There have been times I’ve tried to put in an underlying message and it backfired with some who tried to rip me a new butthole in reviews. Sometimes people get you. Sometimes they don’t. I’d never want to hurt anyone with my stories. I write them hoping they’ll give the reader a racing pulse of excitement, some butterflies in their belly, and make them want to ravish their partner. I love it when people tell me my stories resonated. Or when someone dissects a story and shows me that they totally GET what I was trying to convey. (chills) Or that they made them laugh. Or cry. Or swoon. Or think. Sometimes the stories have more depth but not everyone will ‘get’ that or want to read the stories I write because of some of the darker elements. And that’s okay. I like all sorts of different stories and that’s why I write in several genres. There have been times I’ve let reader feedback cloud my usual process and I’ve had some regrets about that so overall, I do my best to listen to what people say (unless they’re just being dicks) but above all, I try to listen to my own instincts. Every book I write is a unique journey. But The Dominator (my #1 book ) and Nectar (my third most popular story) were both written with NO feedback and that says something, I think. Sometimes I joke with my author friend that I should go back to that bubble with nothing but me and the keyboard, and just write the story because those stories are the best sellers But… I’d miss my readers too much. The community is one of the perks of the job. While I would never want to hurt anyone with my stories, first and foremost, I write the kinds of books I like to read. If I don’t love the story, I won’t publish it. And they’re just pretend – a brief escape from reality. We don’t all like the same things but I say a bit of naughty fiction with friction and an unrealistic but fun storyline is absolutely fine as a source of entertainment. 