Let’s welcome Lucy Felthouse to our June Book Brew event.
CTR: Please tell us a bit about the work you are featuring today. The ISBN and buy link is always good and maybe some background or “story behind the story’ to pique our readers’ interest. Many readers would like to know any what special people or events may have inspired you to write this particular story. You can provide a blurb here also!
LF: My short story, A BIT OF ROUGH, was recently published by Noble Romance and the ISBN number is 978-1-60592-302-4. Buy link is: https://nobleromance.com/Books/282
Here’s the blurb:
When Alison meets Andrew (“call me Drew”), she instantly pegs him as a moron. He’s a total bad boy and does nothing but chain smoke and brag about his stream of past conquests. Yet, much to her confusion, Alison still finds herself attracted to him. She’s not had sex in a while, so Alison figures there’s no harm in going home with him to get herself a bit of rough.
The story is a mixture of true events and lashings of creative licence. I liked the idea of writing a bad boy, a guy we all love to hate, into a story. Therefore A BIT OF ROUGH was born. Drew isn’t a law-breaker or a pirate, he’s just a tattooed bed-hopping bad boy with a tarnished reputation. He’s also smoking hot in the sack, a fact that heroine Alison took full advantage of.
CTR: “Bad boy” heroes have been a staple of the romance genre for a long time. What do you think is the special appeal of a lead character who lives outside the law or the normal constraints of our culture? What is your favorite take on this theme? Goodness knows it can appear in any sub-genre from the Regency to the Western, and also works well in paranormal tales and futuristics as well!
LF: I recently did a blog post on the “allure of the bad boy” and my theory was that women like the idea of danger. We don’t necessarily want it in our lives permanently, or to settle down and have kids with one of these guys, but we want to experience the thrill.
If we’re sticking strictly to books, then I would say Eric Northman from The Southern Vampire Mysteries is a great example. He’s ruthless, dangerous, sexy and yet we love him anyway. He’s a brilliantly written character, and such (naughty) fun!
CTR: Looking back over your lifetime of reading do you have a special book or two along these lines that sticks in your mind and maybe inspired your work to a degree? How about a real life character either historical or contemporary that you admired even if they were not quite “politically correct’ or within the letter of the law?
LF: I’d definitely say some of my reading choices have influenced my creation of a bad boy character. I’m a fan of the vampire Lestat, created by Anne Rice, Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries and the aforementioned Eric Northman. Of course, these guys are much darker and more dangerous than my character from A BIT OF ROUGH, but there are vampire characters planned in some of my upcoming works that take further steps in that direction.
CTR: Recently as we have more kick-butt heroines and “tough ladies’ featured in romance and other genres, we’re seeing more bad girls as well as the perennial bad boys. Do you like this? What would you think of a switch and the usual good girl and bad boy theme with a bad lady and a very straight and narrow sort of guy? I have a weakness for the women in all eras who dared to stand up and fight for what they believed in. History is full of them if you look. Some were more outlandish than others but I could visualize a whole series of stories taking the old hero-to-the-rescue and reform-of-the-rake notions and turning them around! Would you consider writing such a book?
LF: Yes, absolutely! The majority of the female characters I write are sassy, strong women, which I really enjoy. I actually have a kick-butt female character, Meg, featuring in my upcoming release from Noble Romance, BITE WITH HEIGHT. She’s a vampire with a cause. I’m not saying what it is as it’s a bit of a spoiler, but let’s just say she’s bad, but she means well.
CTR: Before you leave us today, please tell us where we can learn more about you and your books, how to find your blog, website, twitter or Facebook pages, etc.
LF: Everything you could possibly want to know, and probably even more than that, is on my website, http://lucyfelthouse.co.uk. I’m on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/cw1985 and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/lucyfelthousewriter – I hope to see you there!
CTR: Thanks so much for sharing our event today and giving readers an inside look at you and your work! Live well and prosper (many sales)!
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