Thanks to Skhye for inviting me to go behind the scenes with my story Thrills and Chills, part of the Halloween Heat V ménage anthology (Etopia Press, Oct. 2012).  I love Halloween for a lot of the same reasons my main female character, Melanie does.  I get off on the adrenaline rush when something scares the crap out of me.  Melanie is an adrenaline junkie, too.  She loves roller coasters and horror flicks as much as haunted houses.  But her love life had been one big yawn lately.   I thought it would be fun to see what happens when a thrill seeker is pushed to the edge of her comfort zones.  In the dark, her two best buddies ratcheted up the stakes with a duo of seeking mouths and four busy hands, and they dared her to chicken out.

Thrills and Chills like all of my others has an underlying theme.  Scratch the surface and you’ll find more than a ‘boy falls for girl’ story, (or my case boys fall for girl).  I wanted to explore the connection between being scared and being turned on.  The bodily reactions are quite similar, chills, quivers, elevated heartbeat—the list goes on.  But beyond that, each condition puts the mind on overdrive.  They create intense sensations that make only what’s happening at that very moment the most important thing in the world; inhibitions are lost, reason is often discarded.

When the fear of danger has ebbed, what lingers in this story is the fear of being exposed.  I toy with the idea of exhibitionism in Thrills and Chills, dabbling with the notion of the good girl gone bad, in the safety of her men’s arms.  I often explore themes focusing on the inhibitions women face as they try to conform to what society expects.  On Halloween, Melanie has the chance shed her pretenses and forget about what she should do and just do what she wants to do.

I also wanted to write a fun story.  Coming off a rather intense novel, my latest solo release from Etopia, Double Take, I was digging the idea of writing something light and free spirited.  It was also a blast to write my characters as college students, where so much sexual exploration occurs.  I liked the idea of best friends hooking up.  There is something all together hot and cozy about the idea of friends taking things to the next level or skipping to the super advanced level as with Melanie, Vincent and Danny.  I love the idea of people who already care about each other, wanting to give each other the best sex they’ve ever had.  The aspect of familiarity advancing the eroticism is a definite plus in a story.  I have enjoyed both reading and writing ‘friends to lovers’ storylines and Thrills and Chills is no exception.

Other ‘friends to lovers’ books I’ve written includes the novella By Surprise, an endearing MMF contemporary erotic romance and Send, a unique multicultural plotline surrounding co-workers who find common ground in a sexy game of power plays in and out of the office.

I hope you check out Thrills and Chills and the four other great ménage stories in Halloween Heat V.  

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