Please welcome Caridad Pineiro!

You just know you’re doing it right when it feels…

First of all, thank you so much for having me here today, Stacey! I so appreciate you sharing your blog home with me so I can chat about a very new experience in my writing life.

Over the years I’ve toyed with the idea of writing an erotic romance, but somehow just never got around to it. I always hesitated, wondering how I would manage to go beyond the edge that I had already done in my romantic suspense and paranormal novels and get “erotic”. After all, my books were pretty sexy.

So I dawdled on challenging myself in that genre, too busy with writing other stories, although I always tried to push the envelope, especially since my tag line is “Live to Love on the Edge.”

But just a few months ago, I finally didn’t have a choice about writing my first erotic romance. I had sold a number of Nocturne Bites, but the line was changing to Nocturne Cravings and with that, I suddenly found myself having to write not only one erotic romance novella, but three!

Whoa, what to do? Research was in order, but more importantly, I had to develop a sense of what was working in terms of conflict, plot and sensuality.

With the stories also being paranormal novellas, there was a lot to fit in a smaller number of pages, but I pushed on like I always do. Developing the characters and their inner conflicts. Deciding what situations I would place them in which would force them to face those inner conflicts. Making sure I had a believable attraction between the hero and heroine and pushing that attraction a lot faster and farther than I would in one of my regular novels.

The first novella, AMAZON AWAKENING, explores what happens when a New York City lawyer is forced to confront not only her family history, but also a sacred space in the Amazon and a very sexy and enticing “Guardian” who will tempt her almost beyond reason.

In the second novella, NOCTURNAL WHISPERS, a British Lord must decide between recovering a mummy and freeing himself of a curse, or falling in love with the museum curator who holds the key to his freedom.

In between the plot and conflicts in those stories is a lot of very sexy foreplay, edgy love-making , adult toys and language I wouldn’t normally use, but there was one thing I discovered as I wrote these erotic tales.

The story and characters let me know when what I was doing was right. In fact, it was so much fun and so exciting, that my fingers flew over the keys and before I knew it, I had finished writing the novellas.

I guess I must have done something right because my editors immediately asked me to do another three!!

What I discovered was that the fear that had kept me from trying to write in this genre (and fear it was although I told myself it was a lack of time, etc.) disappeared as I realized that there was not a great deal of difference from writing a non-erotic story, especially since the bottom line was that I was writing a romance. There still had to be that initial attraction, the development of a relationship and as always, the promise of happily-ever-after.

And of course, in between all that lots of really really hot love scenes. LOL!

Thank you again for having me with you, Stacey. Thank you all for dropping by. I’d love to hear from you about what you think about not only erotic romances, but novellas. Do you find them too short? What are your favorite kinds of erotic stories?

Also, I love to hear from you guys and you can find me at www.caridad.com, www.therebornvampirenovels.com and also on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/caridad.author) and on Twitter @CaridadPineiro.