A warm Love Bytes welcome to author A.J Rose Who is with us today and answers Questions from Readers about her latest release Consent.
Also she offers a giveaway on a backlist title
Welcome A.J !

Blurb:
Cole, what’s wrong?

Former detective Gavin DeGrassi likes his new life and his job as a university professor, molding the minds of the next generation of law enforcement. It keeps him in the field he loves, but out of the media and out of the danger he seems to draw. He’s settled and happy with his partner and Dom, Ben Haverson.

It’s Myah.

Until a middle of the night phone call from his brother, Cole, whose desperation and fear yank him back into the world of criminals and countdowns. Only this time, the stakes are much higher.

She’s missing.

Detective Myah Hayes, Gavin’s sister-in-law and former partner, has a past of her own, one that has returned to claim her. With only their instincts and the help of a rogue CSI, Gavin, Ben, and Cole will do whatever it takes to find Myah, following a flimsy trail of evidence to Chicago, where all is not what it seems—dirty cops, moral pimps, and a nest of snakes who call themselves businessmen.

They’re on a collision course with the worst of humanity, and more than Myah’s life is caught in the vortex. Can they find her, and if they do, will there be anything left to save?

Teresa Eck: Have you ever experienced writer’s block and if so, how did you work past it?

I have, most often because my current story has a plot point that’s not working with a character’s personality, or something else that doesn’t hang together. After much gnashing of teeth, I have a cocktail to let go of some of the frustration, and try to step into each character’s shoes and look at the plot from their perspective. Usually, that shows me where I’ve slapped a character in the face with a wet fish instead of subtly lit the path they were supposed to walk.

 

Tena: How are you oriented? (No, not that way!) I am visually oriented. First thing I ask when someone gets something new… what color is it? If you’re giving me directions or trying to describe something, write them/it down. My husband remembers things by song lyrics. We were going here when this song played. This magic moment (pun intended, sorry!) happened to this song. So what’s your thing?

I am a visual person. While anything can trigger a memory (especially a smell), things I can see, whether in my mind or right in front of me tend to stick. The teachers I learned from the most used lots of diagrams (biology and psychology) or used real world examples where I could visualize what they meant. If I can see it or imagine it, I can grasp it.

 

Jaycee Edward: So… what about the boyband story???

Uh… Those characters have gotten real quiet in my head. The ones that are the loudest get the most immediate attention. I’ve tried to ignore things to work on what I feel like working on. The ignored item tends to then pour out in a demanding deluge, and right now, that deluge is drowning out the boyband. Maybe they’ll get sick of being ignored and get louder. We shall see.

 

Ann Alaskan: Where do your inspirations come from? Real life experience… extrapolating on an idea… other books… movies?

I get ideas everywhere, but they are unfocused little balls of fur at first. I can see a person who piques my interest and imagine them in a book, but that doesn’t mean a plot will form around them. I can hear a story from the news and think that would make a hell of a story, but the characters never populate the event. It’s only when a character dancing around in my head stumbles into a plot from another puzzle that the story begins to take shape. Once I have the general premise, i.e. submissive detective gets murder case involving BDSM and meets BDSM expert called in to consult, that things start to get interesting. Or brilliant college student with a paranoid, conspiracy spouting uncle, knows the apocalypse is coming, and is forced to save his family and his geeky lab partner from the breakdown of society. Or a dueling piano bar would make a great gay bar, especially if the talent seduces the reluctant bar owner. Or any other of the ten or so ideas I have in the queue.

 

Jonathan Penn: I want to sit down on the sofa with Gavin—just the two of us—and have him tell me about how he came to terms with the idea of submitting to Ben. I mean, I know what he told everybody in those books and all, but, I’m talking about the real blow-by-blow (NPI) of the realization dawning on him that this was something he could actually admit into the realm of possibility. There’s got to have been a pivotal moment that I’d really like to hear him reflect on—at some point in the very near future(hint, hint)—which was the key to opening himself then, and how that relates to the new possibilities he’s opening himself to now.

Gavin: Well, Jonathan, I didn’t come to terms with it until the morning of Seth Adams’s death. To that point, it was the biggest case of my career, and I’d failed to catch the killer before he struck again. I managed to hold it together in front of Adams’s surviving sub and partner, but after dropping him off with his sister, I felt like I was going to fly apart. Everything about the case was bigger than I’d dealt with before. Not to mention all the other parts of my life undergoing a giant structural shift. I’m not proud of it, but I lost it, and Ben seemed to be the most logical to go to in order to get my bearings again. He was a shrink familiar with the lifestyle, he was sympathetic to everything I’d been going through at the time, and we were at the beginning of something big between us. If anyone would understand what I felt, it was him. It didn’t occur to me he’d help me by doing a scene, but it’s exactly what I needed. When he began restraining me, something inside just shifted to where it belonged and I was able to relax. Probably more than I’d ever relaxed with anyone. For someone to see me that vulnerable and still want me, still think I’m someone special, still want to be with me, I couldn’t stop and not see where it went. The submission itself was a revelation. It wasn’t a weakness, but strength. It wasn’t cowardly, but brave. It really takes courage to give oneself to another, and before that moment, those were just words. When I was there with Ben, it became my reality, and a beautiful one. Once I’d had a taste of submitting to Ben, I didn’t want to go back to a vanilla relationship.

 

Kathy McFarland: I have always wanted to know how did you get your information and facts for writing such descriptive BDSM scenes between Ben and Gavin? You write with details and descriptions that put us in the scene with your characters. Idk if everything you have written with those scenes were actual facts, but I do know that if they were not you made us believe they were. I’m thinking right now about the suit they were to be measured for when they wanted to do breath play. I think, if memory serves me right, I’ve read from your other posts that you have never done BDSM scenes personally. Another scene is the rope when Ben wanted Gavin to just let go. Do you just search and search over the internet? Have you gone to clubs in order to witness firsthand these scenes? Or maybe talk to actual people that do participate? Thank you for giving us the opportunity to pick your brain a little.

I spent a great deal of time doing research for Power Exchange, mainly by reading books (non-fiction) about the lifestyle, the impact it can have on people, and the tenets of belief within the community. I read blogs written by Doms, subs, and everyone else I could find. I found myself identifying more with the subs, at least mentally, though you’re correct, I have not participated in a BDSM scene personally. But I think the main thing is the many, many psychology classes I took in college, which gave me a pretty in depth understanding of human behavior. So while I couldn’t speak about exactly what it feels like to be flogged, I had enough of an approximation to be able to describe it, but more so describe how Gavin would react to it. Gavin was my margin for error, since he was new to everything. Gavin was my ability to step into the BDSM slowly, and I found that the more I wrote him and Ben, the more I trusted where I could take them.

 

Candi: How did it feel to become the person you were meant to be? You are super brave.

I’m still working on becoming the person I wish to be, though looking back, I can see how far I’ve come from the demure wife I once was to the woman I am now, completely out everywhere, engaged to a fabulous woman whom I worship, and not backing down from doing everything I can to write full time. But to get here has been damned scary. I don’t feel brave. 99% of the time, I’m scared of something, if the next book flops, if I can get away with a storyline, or if I can psyche myself up to go to the next convention. But I’m well aware of what happens to me if I do things the way I’m “supposed” to, or the way others think I should that may not be exactly in line with how I need to do them. I get boxed in a corner and end up bursting out of it with way more carnage than necessary. So it’s easier for all involved if I stay true to the muse, true to the vision of this amazing life I see playing out before me, and true for the ones I love who are counting on me. I’ve learned my lesson for being c.

 

Dilette: I have a question. How much of your characters or situations do you draw from personal experience and how much is just imagination? Also, what is your process like? How do you begin a new story?

A few things about me bleed into each of my characters in some way. The piano playing in Queers was largely personal experience, though not in front of crowds. The investigative stuff in the Power Exchange series comes from years of watching the detective shows The Discovery Channel used to air. A lot of medical knowledge comes from looking into medicine as part of my job, or just from an interest in biology and how the human body works. I believe in an afterlife, so the ghost stuff was from my personal belief set.

But a lot of it is imagination, too. The characters I write tend to take on a life of their own, so I pretend out their lives in the scenarios I think up, and when things happen, it’s not my reaction that goes in the story, it’s the characters’ reactions. A major chunk of my writing is based on feel. If it feels right for a character to do or say something, if it feels right for this plot twist or that background item.

As for my process, I have a lot of different pieces floating around in my head, scenarios to happen to someone, characters who might fit a storyline. When something clicks where the characters and scenarios match up, I have a story to plot. At that point, I do research into possible plot ideas, and begin fleshing out the characters. What’s their background, what do they look like, can I picture them in this way or that way, do they have voices that will take over and carry them for a whole book? Once I have a feel for the character and the major plot points, I do research into various locations for a setting, or jobs they’ll have or schools they’ll attend, or what things I might need to know to carry out what happens to them. And I start writing. When their voices begin to take over, that’s when the story takes off and I can see it play out like a movie in my mind, where I just write down the next thing until the whole idea plays out and I reach the end. Then I have a book.

 

Kris Michaels: Have you considered writing Ben’s backstory?

I have fleetingly considered it, but Ben speaks to me through Gavin. It’s a little difficult pinning Ben down and I don’t know that his story would take up enough space to be a whole book. I have a spin off idea for the Power Exchange series, however, so maybe there’ll be some opportunity for Ben’s background to get more airtime. We’ll see.

 

Carol Warburton: Where did the idea of Gavin come from? How did Ben get to be a psychologist?

The idea of Gavin came from my best friend and editor Theo Fenraven, who told me I should write BDSM because I have the psychology background to do it justice. When I considered it, Gavin fell in my lap, this closeted police officer in a loveless marriage who might want to submit to someone. What would happen to him? Then the idea for the Dom murders bubbled up, and I had the bones of the story. Ben, truthfully, got to be a psychologist because I needed him to have a reasonable occupation that would get him called in to consult on a difficult murder case Gavin was working. It turned out to be a fortuitous choice when it came time to write the sequels.

It began with a Halloween themed short story assignment from a second grade teacher, and from then on, AJ Rose fell head over heels in love with writing. Even an active social life through school, learning to play the piano in a passable imitation of proficient, and a daring cross country move couldn’t stop the tall tales about imaginary people that refused to be ignored. With college experiences came a change in perspective to romance and passion. A propensity to slash favorite TV characters brought AJ to today, writing mostly M/M for publication. But don’t be surprised if the occasional ghost still pops up.

AJ’s work can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and All Romance eBooks.

AJ tweets as @_AJRose and blogs at http://ajrosewrites.wordpress.com, where there is more information about future titles.

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