Guest Blog: Rose Anderson: Happy Ever After With a Few Exclamation Points!

First off, thanks for having me today! I’m a long-time fan of the romance story. I cut my teeth on the works of Kathleen Woodiwiss. What a topnotch storyteller she was.

This month marks my one year in print anniversary as an erotic romance writer. In some ways, it feels like I’ve always been here, in others it’s like I’ve just stepped off the boat! Not all that long ago, I waited and fretted over that first review for my break-out novel, Hermes Online. I’d been writing various things for more than twenty years, but I’d never attempted this genre before. I was nervous because I’m a reader too…a picky reader who likes that whole brain experience a great story gives you. *gulp*

Writing romance is most definitely an emotional process. When I craft a story, I draw from every aspect of my life. I think most authors do this. Having experienced heartache, I can write pain. Having experienced love and passion, I can write those too. Empathy helps. Add to that a great love of words to fill in the spaces, and before you know it you’ve written a book! :)

I was anxious to learn what readers thought about my first erotic romance story. From what I’ve read, there’s some confusion about that sub-genre. Erotic romance is happy ever after romance. Erotica is different. Porn is very different. You might say erotic romance is the happy ever after love story with a few extra exclamation points thrown in -- an enhanced conclusion for readers who’ve become invested in the characters and want to feel through words, the natural culmination of the love they’ve watched unfold. Falling in love fills our brains with delightful happy chemicals.

Would readers see Hermes Online as it was meant to be seen and identify with my characters? I hoped they would. I wanted them to understand Vivienne’s struggle under the crushing loss of her confidence. Would S be seen as a man of depth and caring as I meant him to be, or would readers just see a man who could turn a pretty phrase?

I took a chance writing my break-out novel in first person. My publisher told me readers generally don’t care for it. Wow, what a way to begin a career! But I was trying to convey the process of metamorphosis. And this concept is a very personal thing. You might say I was creating a butterfly from the inside out. How else could it be done without being inside the mind of Vivienne and seeing the world through her haze of aching emotions? On the other end of things, I left S out of it. Readers don’t hear his inner dialogue. They could only come to know him through his own words and Vivienne’s interpretation. Her eventual emergence from the dull chrysalis she’d wrapped herself in was the point. And he saw the truth of it. He understood her drab and desperate attempt not to be hurt again.

From the very beginning my writing style has been called “a throwback to old style romanticism”. That came from my first ever review and what a great statement to start on because I adore the old style hero woos heroine romance. I thoroughly enjoy seduction and love the slow surrender to it. But more than that, I love a good head trip. I enjoy that light bulb moment some stories give you when you suddenly say to yourself, Oh! I get it! Readers will find my books filled with these cerebral goodies – little psychological insights to what makes the characters tick, and nuance carefully laid like so many mosaic pieces. I promise if you keep them to read again, each read through will uncover more. :)

Just recently, Hermes Online won the CataNetwork Reviewers’ Choice Award for 2011. I can’t express how wonderful that feels. Maybe there’s hope for first person perspective yet!

BLURB:
Imagine if you will a story begun in the halls of Mount Olympus long before this modern tale was conceived. It was a time when the god Hermes flew on his winged sandals and carried messages from the gods to the mortals below. And between that time and this, couriers became postmen and handwritten letters became bytes. It is said the gods still speak to those who listen…

Left bruised and brokenhearted after a cruel breakup, Vivienne Bennet finds herself mired in a world of self-doubt. To her surprise, she receives an email that challenges her to rediscover the sensual woman she once was. Together Vivienne and the enigmatic man known only as S embark upon the world of anonymous Internet communication where suggestive emails lead to erotic chat, where cybersex leads to Skype, and C2C sends both into the arms of a love they’d believed lost forever.

BIO:
As an admitted oddball who struggles with shyness, I write just about everything. It certainly is easier than talking face to face sometimes! Children’s books, nature magazines and historical periodicals, romance, and a five-year-in-the-making series on the best of human potential, are just a few of the many directions my writing has taken me.

I’ve lived with the love of my life for thirty-five years, and have two grown kids (both fine people if I do say so myself). I share my home with a small menagerie of furry and feathered friends…or I should say they share their home with me. ;)

I was lucky to have emerged from the gene pool blessed with a measure of creativity and in appreciation, my blog is dedicated to Calliope the Muse. I figure if she inspired Homer, she might whisper to me now and again. And she does too! Calliope’s whispers have me constantly thinking up images for my hands give form to. That form could be tangible like a molded clay figure, or a sketch, or as in the case of words I type out on my laptop, ephemeral. When the Muse finally releases me from her grasp, my mind can move on to the next thought, the next blob of clay, the next story waiting in the wings. What do such thought-creators say about themselves? People who have this little gnawing drive to manifest some thought into reality know it just is what it is. Describing it is tricky. The condensed version -- I simply love to turn random thought into something lovely.

Ladies, thanks again for having me on Romance Books R Us (lol I tried like heck to get the R backwards!). Thanks too to all my readers. My romantic stories would only be words without you. Find my available in ebook and paperback at the links below and elsewhere, and Hermes Online and Dreamscape are just the beginning. Watch for my new release coming soon.

Please stop by my blog for updates, bits and pieces, and this and thats. If you scroll back a few blog posts, you’ll also see how to get some soon-to-be-famous Rose Anderson goodies!
Now that’s fun. :)

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004XDGWL6
http://www.bookstrand.com/rose-anderson
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Rose-Anderson?keyword=Rose+Anderson&view=list
http://www.calliopeswritingtablet.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/MusesWritingTablet#p/u/1/bp4b1GTV6qQ