Monday's Scintillating Interview: Victoria Black

Hi Victoria! You're one of our blog gang and you're from Australia. So let's start with a boring question – how's the weather over there?

Hi! Your question is very relevant to me. It's hot, hot, hot. I want snow storms and ice. Blizzards sound nice.

Have you had any books published?

I have one published novella under my belt (Lies and Seduction, Cobblestone Press) and another, Heavenly Revenge, is to be published late February with Secret Cravings Publishing.

What made you want to become an author?

           

Like everyone else out there in writer land, I'm a reader. Have been since my Noddy days. I'm very new to romance, however, having always read Whodunits as an adult. But they eventually led me to the Stephanie Plum series, where I fell in love with Ranger. He was the one who led me to romance. A short step then to erotic romance, where lots of sexy, 'what-if' ideas started revolving in my head. Not too hard-core, mind – I need the romance and love.  And voila, after getting rightfully rejected a few times because of total ignorance of things like passive voice and point of view, I was an author!

Who or what inspired you to write your first book?

As well as those Whodunits, I've read Spike Milligan's war autobiographies about a thousand times. So my first erotic novella, Lies and Seduction, is set in World War Two London, just after the Blitz. I love the real-life heroism of that period.

And your second book?

Heavenly Revenge is an erotic fantasy. Not too weird, just a couple of angels and an alternate reality. I don't like my heroes too nice at first. I want to fall in love with them the way my heroines do – hate them at first, love them at the end. I'd just read a romance where the hero was far too nice, and there was no real conflict. Great for the couple if they were real, but boring to read. So I came up with a lovely, in my opinion at least, enemies-falling-in-love scenario.

What genre do you write?

Any variety of erotic romance, really. My next two that I'm working on are both contemporaries, but I'd love to write another World War Two erotic romance involving time travel. Just have to ignore Steven Hawking who insists time travel is impossible. How unromantic is that?

Are you a plotter or a pantster?

A bit of both, but I mainly need to plot. I tried being a pantster with the book I started writing after Heavenly Revenge, and  I am still stuck, as I've painted my couple into a corner. I think I've got them out of it, but I'll have to basically rewrite the book.

Are you in any of your books?

I think I am probably going to be in all of my heroines. Though I've noticed my heroines are getting feistier, which is what I'd like to be, but I'm not. And I'm writing in other qualities I'd love to have too. In the book that I'm going to have to re-write (I think I'll call it Emerald Revenge – I love revenge stories), my heroine is not the slightest bit scared of grasshoppers. Very therapeutic.

What do your friends and family say about your writing?

I have some rather staid friends from school days who were a bit shocked with the sex in Lies and Seduction, and my two grown-up kids are embarrassed that their mum is writing "mummy porn". ("I write erotic romance," I cry in the wilderness.) But absolutely everybody else, including my kids' friends, think it's a hoot.

Thanks Victoria. We're looking forward to your new novella on February 22.

Find Victoria Black on:

Facebook  - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Victoria-Black/372243842846377 and

Her Website: victoriablack.htmlplanet.com.