…who has a new release out from Etopia Press. Beach Master is book 2 of the Beach Bums Anthology and is a great new erotic romance with light BDSM elements.
Welcome, Alice. Let’s jump right in.
Where is Beach Master set? How much influence did the setting have on the atmosphere/characters/development of the story?
Beach Master is set on a small tropical island that I made up. It’s privately owned by the hero of the story. He uses it as a setting for his own brand of sex therapy. It sounded like a cool idea to do “bondage on the beach,” but it turned out that sun, sand, and surf don’t really fit well with chains and discipline. What was I thinking? I fixed that by putting a cave on the island.
What type of story would you most like to write?
A really huge fantasy romance with lots of world building and a brave hero and heroine who have to overcome titanic struggles to save their world and win each other. The market isn’t there for fantasy romance, I’m sorry to say. Occasionally, I give myself permission to try to think up such a story, but I get distracted with other things I have to write now. I don’t have the time to devote to writing something that long that might go nowhere. I don’t see that situation changing any time soon. Maybe, some day a story will spring into my head that I have to write, and I won’t have any choice.
What’s the smartest thing you ever heard another writer say?
Catherine Coulter said that success in writing was being able to give up your day job. Anything past that was just the cherry on top. (I’m paraphrasing here.) My dream is not to have to go to the J-O-B so I can spend all my time in my backyard writing.
Writer’s block—real or hype?
I’m not really sure about that. I’ve gotten stuck when something in a book didn’t work, but I’ve always been able to work on something else until the solution comes to me. Honestly, I don’t have time for writer’s block. I still have my day job, so when I’m not at that, I need to write, write, write.
I do generally find that pages that I think are garbage while I’m writing them aren’t that bad when I look at them the next day, so I’m never afraid of writing bad stuff. As Nora Roberts says, “I can fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank one.” At least, I think it was Nora who said that.
Do you prefer to extensively plot your stories, or do you write them as they come to you?
I have a vague idea where the story is going when I start. If I plotted every little detail, I’d have no interest in actually writing the story. Besides, things I think up in advance very often don’t work when I try to put them on the page, like “bondage on the beach.” I once thought it would be cool for my hero to pretend to be stupid. He came out looking stupid. I dropped that idea after a few pages. If it had been written into the main plot, I would have been in a heap of trouble.
Any advice to writers just starting out?
Write, write, write. I don’t believe in pronouncements like “you must write every day,” but you should find your own schedule and stick to it. Believe it or not, you can learn a lot about writing by just doing it. So, just do it! Oh, and never give up; never surrender.
Can you tell readers who are interested the general difference between erotica and erotic romance?
Erotic romance is romance. It features at least two people who come to love each other at some point in the story, and it has a happy ending. I find a lot of “straight” erotica depressing, to tell you the truth. I don’t really want to read about the human condition. I want to read about love and sex. As we all know from real life, sex is better with love.
Thanks, Alice! Here’s more info on Beach Master:
A sexy island paradise, a strong dominant lover… what more could a frigid girl want?
Berni Fellowes’s has a problem. She just doesn’t get all the hoopla about sex. When her fiancé sends her to a secluded, tropical island to meet the Beach Master, a Dom who can teach her to be more orgasmic, she decides the tall, seductive stranger is more interested in setting up her hammock than dominating her.
David needs a partner who can stand up for herself, not this woman who’s afraid of her own desires. But once Berni finds her voice and demands what she wants, all David has left to do is make her his own. There’s just that one little matter of her fiancé…
Click to buy it here! Beach Master by Alice Gaines
Find out more about Alice here:
etopiapressblog.wordpress.com 
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