Interview with Gale Stanley - Erotic Romance Author

Gale Stanley

Erotic Romance Author

Welcome! We're glad you joined us this week. We're in Key West gathered around a table at a Tiki Bar on the beach enjoying the warm breezes. Get your drink ordered, come have a seat with us and we'll get started on our chat with Gale and her male/male erotic stories!

Naughty Reader’s: Gale, thank you for being with us all week. Tell us a bit about yourself .

Gale:  First, I'd like to thank you all for having me!  Hmm, let's see… When I'm not on the computer or reading, I love hanging out with the grandkids and watching movies, especially science fiction and thrillers. Aside from walking and swimming, I don't do a lot of exercise or sports but I love to read about them, especially extreme sports. I have a collection of books and movies about climbing Mount Everest, caving and other stuff I'll never do myself. lol.

Naughty Reader’s: What made you want to become a writer?

Gale: I’ve always been a reader and as kid I loved to write my own stories and entertain other readers—usually my mother. Through the years, I married, divorced, raised three kids, married again and worked a variety of jobs: laboratory technician, realtor, surveyor, and CAD manager. But I still read a lot and I wrote book reviews for RT Book Reviews magazine. Eventually I wrote a short story, a personal memoir that I submitted to Adams Media. They accepted it and The Power of the Purr was published in A Cup of Comfort for Cat Lovers. They published two more of my stories in the Cup of Comfort anthologies and their acceptance motivated me to finish my first novel. Call of the Wilds, a paranormal romance, was published by Siren.

Naughty Reader’s: Please share a bit about your new release Claiming Korey without giving away any spoilers.

Gale:  Claiming Korey was released by Siren Publishing on June 11th.  It's book two of my paranormal Manlove series, Urban Affairs. Undercover Lovers is book one. The stories take place in a world where relations between Humans and Weres are hostile and shifters live in their own segregated neighborhoods. 

Claiming Korey

Urban Affairs: 2

[Ménage Amour ManLove: Erotic Alternative Ménage a Trois Romance, M/M/M, shape-shifters, light consensual BDSM, HEA]

 BLURB:

Korey Wolfe leaves Chicago, rather than allow himself to be claimed by an Alpha he doesn't know. Arriving in New York, he falls for another wolf-shifter, and he believes his running days are over. Life with Tate is good—until Korey is kidnapped by a gang of were-slavers.

Tate sets himself up as bait hoping the slave dealers will lead him to Korey, but the plan goes south and Tate is captured. The slavers deliver him to Indio Lykaios, a wealthy shifter who owns a security company in Chicago.

Indio plans to let go Tate go. Then he discovers there's a connection between Tate and Korey, his missing Omega, and he's forced to join forces with his rival. After a successful rescue mission, Korey is caught between two strong men. Can he stay loyal to one while denying his attraction for the other? Or is it possible to have them both?

Excerpt

“What do you want for your birthday, stud?” Korey eyed Tate’s body with undisguised appreciation. His boyfriend was a wolf’s wet dream. He focused on Tate’s upper body, where his sleeveless leather vest hugged every inch of his delicious torso and showed off upper arms covered in ink. A wolf’s face peered through its paws at Korey from his boyfriend’s right bicep. Resilience and composure. On Tate’s left bicep, a rabid wolf pounced from a scar with bloody red edges, signifying the headstrong traits in wolves. And on Tate’s back, underneath the leather, Korey pictured the Gemini tattoo with two wolves representing Roman twins, Remus and Romulus, who were brought up by a she-wolf. Compassion and warmth. Yeah, all that and more summed up Tate. Under the muscles and ink lurked a man with many sides to his complex personality. And all mine—

Two muscular arms hauled Korey against a hard chest and a harder prick. “Stop thinking so much.”

The heat pouring off Tate’s body just about melted Korey into a gooey puddle and rendered him speechless.

Tate lifted Korey off his feet. “Hmm… You know what I want, Sunshine…?”

I thought I did. Korey looked up at gold-green eyes, so intense they seemed to bore right through him.  He’d planned to give his man the best blow job of his life, but now it looked like Tate wanted something else. Didn’t matter. He could have whatever he wanted.

Naughty Reader’s:  *fanning ourselves* Tonya, turn up the AC please! Do you write under a pen name?

Gale:  I do. I have a long name that probably wouldn't fit on a book cover and it's even harder to pronounce.

Naughty Reader’s: What types of hero or heroine do you like best?

Gale:  What can I say—I lust after the alpha bad boy, especially the tortured hero with a dangerous edge. I like to write about dark, seductive alpha males, preferably Were-wolves or Were-cats. The men are sinfully good-looking, a bit arrogant and capable of bestowing multiple orgasms at a moment’s notice. They can be a lethal predator one minute and a possessive, protective lover the next. Yum!

Naughty Reader’s:  Oh, we always like that and so do our readers. They're also interested in what we do throughout our day. Tell us about a typical day in your life as a writer.

Gale:  Not too long ago I was getting up at four in the morning and heading off to the dreaded day job. It was really tough because I was trying to write on my lunch hour, at night and just squeezing in the writing whenever I could. When I finally retired and left cubicle hell, it was a happy day. Now I get up around seven in the morning, make coffee, read email, go on Facebook, maybe do a little harvesting on Farmville… Then I start writing. 

Naughty Reader’s: Hey, we have to relax the muse once in a while! Do your books have a common theme or are they all different?

Gale: The books in each series are different—different romantic characters, new conflicts—and they can be read as standalones, but a common thread will tie them together. It could be the setting, or a war between the species or a government cover-up. That overlying theme will run through the series.

Naughty Reader’s:  How long does it take you to write and then edit a story?

Gale:  That's a tough one. It depends on the length and the amount of research I need to do. The first book of a series always takes longer than the others. Once the first book is finished, I have the basis for my world building and characters that will revisit in future books.

Naughty Reader’s: Do you have to be alone to write?

Gale:  I can write anywhere—and sometimes I have to because I get ideas in the strangest places. I always carry a pad and pen because I never know when an idea will hit. I've had to pull over the car to jot something down before I forget it. But the ideal place for me to write is in my office, alone.

Naughty Reader’s: Character names stick with readers and pull them closer to our characters. How do you go about naming characters?

Gale:  Mostly the names just come to me once I get into the writing and if all else fails there's always babynames.com. But there are a few things I try to follow, like using names that fit the time period and the ethnic background of the character. And I try not to use names that end in an "s." It may sound weird but it becomes very awkward when you write the possessive form of the name. Another no-no is too many characters with similar sounding names or names beginning with the same letter, which can make things confusing for the reader.

Naughty Reader’s: Is it easier to write about the characters if you find pictures of them before you write or do you write then find character pictures?

Gale: I usually have a picture of my character already in my head. Sometimes it's a celebrity. When I was writing Call of the Wilds, it was all about Clive Owen and I did collect some photos of him.

Naughty Reader’s:  How do you pick locations for your stories?

Gale:  Sometimes the plot comes first and then I pick a location that fits. With the Urban Affairs series I knew it would take place in a big city and I picked New York. With my new series, TomCats, the setting came first. I love Key West and I always knew I wanted to write a story that took place there. Here's an unedited sneak peek from book one which will be released in July.

Jaden's Double Doms

TomCats: 1

Jaden West and his Dominant lover, Kyle Norman, live on an island in the Florida Keys. Despite the idyllic setting, there's trouble in paradise. Jaden isn't getting the love and affection he needs and he's beginning to think he and Kyle are a mismatched pair. After a bad fight, Jaden ends up in TomCats, a gay resort known for its beautiful, top-heavy cliental. Jaden only wants one drink but he gets more than he bargained for when he becomes the prey of a psychopath. 

Owner, Tom Kay, comes to Jaden's rescue and sparks fly, but Tom is hiding the fact he's a cat-shifter. Unable to forget the beautiful blond human, Tom tracks him in catskin, but things go bad when he's trapped and taken to a feral cat shelter.

When vet tech, Jaden shows up on the night shift, he plans to adopt the tomcat and make a house cat out of him, but first the orange tabby has to be neutered...

Coming to Bookstrand July 2nd

Excerpt:

Kyle was acting like an ass wipe. What else is new?

Jaden and Kyle were living in Paradise—sun, sand, and sea, Key West had it all. But lately Kyle had made Jaden’s life a living hell. Normally Jaden kept his mouth shut and accepted Kyle’s criticism, along with whatever punishment his Dom decided to mete out, but there was only so much a man could take.

Jaden was madly in love with his Dom and he wore his heart on his sleeve. In the beginning of their relationship, he couldn't keep his eyes—or his hands—off his roommate, but Kyle considered public displays of affection a form of exhibitionism and he discouraged it. Kyle didn't pretend to be straight, but he didn't flaunt his sexual preferences either. Jaden wouldn't have minded a little PDA but it didn't seem worth arguing about.

Jaden wasn't a 24/7 submissive, but being as inexperienced as he was, he let Kyle take the lead in most situations. They were polar opposites who had been fascinated by their differences and infatuated with each other. But as time went on, the differences were becoming more and more pronounced and Jaden was beginning to think he and Kyle were a mismatched pair.

Resentment and bitterness had been boiling just under the surface for far too long, and now Jaden exploded like Mount Vesuvius. “What the fuck did I do wrong this time?”

For a shocked second, Kyle just stared at him. “Watch your mouth,” he warned in a clear cold voice.

    “Fuck you! I don’t deserve this.” He hadn’t done a damn thing. His only wrong move had been to beg Kyle to go out in the first place. Every single time they went to a restaurant, a bar…it didn’t really matter where. The evening always ended the same way. Every fucking time. Damn stupid on my part to think tonight would be any different.

Naughty Reader's:  Wow, those two sound like trouble! Gale, thanks so much for hanging around all week. Readers, thank you for stopping in to read and to meet Gale. Check out her sites and don't forget to enter her contest below!

Gale Stanley Links:

Website

Blog

Twitter

FaceBook

Amazon

Contest:  I'd like to give two commenters their choice of an ebook from my backlist or an ebook copy of Jaden's Double Doms when it comes out on July 2nd.