Today I would like to welcome Author Juniper Bell to the blog. Juniper is currently on tour promoting the release of her book Go Deep. So if everyone would please welcome Juniper.
Thank for you having me on the blog, I’m very excited to be here! As a writer of erotic romance, I’m often asked how my friends and family feel about my chosen profession. It’s a good question, even though if I worked as a dentist, I’d probably never face it. I used to say, Oh, they think it’s great. It’s my lifelong dream, after all, and they’re happy for me.
But the truth is, I had to ease them into the idea. My first completed book was a romance, hold the erotica – something I felt my parents could read without cringing. But I included a few sex scenes, because, well, I like them. To me they seemed tame compared to what I’m used to reading. But to my family, I might as well have posed naked in Playboy. They loved the story, but didn’t see why I had to put in the steamy parts.
That’s when I realized I wasn’t writing for my family. They don’t read romance—they never understood why I love it so much. So why should I worry about pleasing them? If I’d really wanted to please them, I should have become a Medieval art history professor or a globetrotting foreign correspondent. No form of romance writing was ever going to fill the bill.
I never tried to get that first book published, and now I know why. I wrote it for my family, so they could read something of mine before I went off into the truly forbidden realm of erotic romance. Once I started down that road, they’d never be able to read me again (without risk of heart attack!)
That experience taught me that I should either quit writing romance or go all the way—write what I want, what fascinates me, what excites me. Obviously, I chose the second route, because once I discovered how fun writing erotica is, no way was I turning back. I never told my family, but my favorite scenes in that first book were the ones they hated.
So why do I love writing erotic romance? I get to follow my characters into their most intimate moments. I get to know them at their most naked, their most exposed, their most vulnerable. My latest release, GO DEEP, is a good example. A husband and wife both long to take their sexual relationship deeper, but not sure how to break through the barriers—what could be more intimate than that?
What else…I get to bring fantasies to life without harming my real life relationship. I get to speak plainly, without dancing around in a vague world of euphemisms. I get to tell stories that involve one of the most basic, primal, essential urges in the universe. I get to connect with readers who feel the way I do—that explicitly erotic stories can be beautiful, emotional, intense, and very freeing. I like reading them, and I like writing them even more.
My family has made their peace with my profession. They don’t read my books, but they don’t criticize either. I’m completely fine with that. It’s our own version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” I don’t tell them about my latest M/F/M with BDSM, they don’t ask.
Luckily, I have a husband who thinks my career is the best thing ever invented.
Beth is the shy, dreamy type. No one guesses at the wild sexual thoughts she hides behind that quiet façade. She doesn’t even share her secret longings with her husband.
Gavin loves his wife, but he’s tired of living in a marriage in which neither he nor Beth reveal their true desires. When Gavin sees Beth’s response to an erotic bondage photo in her framing shop, he jumps at the opportunity to break through her barriers.
He accepts an invitation to a showcase match for the amateur hockey team he coaches during Wild Nights, the infamous winter festival during which “anything goes, nothing counts.” But he’s opened a sensual Pandora’s box—Beth has some surprises of her own. When she meets Eagle, a free-spirited Wild resident, she knows he’s the perfect man to help enact her erotic fantasies. And once they go deep, there’s no going back.
A standalone sequel to Go Wild.
**Author Info**
Juniper Bell lives with her brand new husband in a cabin in Alaska with sporadic running water and a spectacular view of glaciers. She wound up in the frozen north after leaving her career as a stressed-out Los Angeles TV writer. Luckily, her love for writing survived the move, and she soon discovered a surefire way of heating up those long winter nights. She writes erotic romances for Samhain and Ellora’s Cave. She also spends time dreaming of the day she can move to Hawaii.
Places to find Juniper:
I, for one, am glad you decided to keep writing what you love because I love what you write ;) Keep it coming...
ReplyDeleteI loved hearing your story, Juniper. I imagine it can be hard to embrace your career if your family is ashamed of it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I loved Go Deep! You really do delve into your characters' deepest, darkest feelings. The erotica is even more erotic because you make it so personal.