AKA Lexi Frost

AKA Lexi Frost

Lexi Frost is a successful photographer in a specialty niche: tasteful nudes. All she wants is continuing success and to keep her private life private. She didn't want to attract the attention of millionaire Paul Lovett. And she really didn't need rock star Flynn Peterson to fall for her during a photo-shoot either. Both are persistent but Lexi isn't interested, in part because she isn't Lexi Frost.

Teri Giles has a successful career, two teenagers, and their four friends. Okay, maybe having six teenagers in the house isn’t ideal. And her son’s basement band makes her buy aspirin in economy-size bottles, but she makes it work. Trying to hide an alternate identity and career from a house full of teens is a little chancy, so Teri was ready to scream before attracting unwanted attention.

Then her worst fear is realized: her cover is blown. In a split-second decision, she takes a chance on one of her suitors after swearing she wouldn’t love again. But Teri isn’t the only one who’s been keeping secrets . . .

Okay, so there’s my second book. Although it was written a good year before my first one. No one said this writing and publishing thing had to be linear, right? Good. As long as we got that straight.

As you can probably tell from the cover, this one has sex. I’ve been writing since 2008, and my first two books had a couple things in common: vampires and extraordinary length. This has neither. This was the book that broke that mold. Instead it has teenagers driving adults nuts and sex scenes. Life imitates art?

Erotic romance is kind of a good market to be in right now, in theory. You couldn’t tell by my attempts to get this book out there though. My editor was a hoot when I first tried to give this to her (keep in mind I also write paranormal with only implied sex). I said ‘contemporary erotic romance’ and her mind went to 50 Shades of Grey. Her stance was hell no! I assured her I didn’t write BDSM, it’s all normal vanilla sex. (I crossed my fingers because I imply . . . never mind. You’ll find out.) She caved, edited it, and didn’t complain.

Note: seeing red all over a manuscript returned from an editor is bad enough. Seeing red marks encroach into a sex scene is just wrong on a whole other level.

Fine, editor: check. Cover: no. Sigh. Cover artists have boundaries, and the one I had for the first book didn’t do erotic romance. She gave me some other names, so I had to shop around again. Okay. Cover: check. Amazon: uh, well . . .

We all know there’s contemporary erotic romance on Amazon. There’s erotica on Amazon (erotica = sex but no love story). I went to upload this puppy, it took the book and went into review like normal. Review is supposed to be about twelve hours.

Twenty-four hours later, I’m looking through the forums wondering why my book is still in review. I haven’t received an email, there isn’t any notice to say Amazon’s having problems, nothing. It took nearly thirty-six hours to get this darling online. But it’s there now. That’s all that matters. (I suspect it’s the cover.)