” I wonder if readers are growing tired of paranormal in all genres.”
I’m Gabrielle Bisset (my pseudonym), and I’m an author of erotic romance novels and novellas. I love the romance genre. By day, I’m a college history teacher, lecturing about American and European history, but by night I’m an erotic romance author. My students and even some of my fellow faculty would be stunned, I’m sure. Or maybe they’d want an autographed copy of my books. You never know, do you?
Gabrielle has kindly offered a copy of her book, Gost of Christmas Past, as a prize to the Small Blogs, Big Giveaways event!
The interview starts in 3..2..1!
Who are your writing goddesses/gods?
I love Charlotte Featherstone, Robin Schone, and Marie Treanor. Those ladies write so well, and their stories are so well crafted. Writing gods? As someone who writes romance and erotica, I’m sad to say I don’t read many male authors.And the ones I do read no one else does because their books are usually non fiction and relate to my job as a prof of history.
A fire broke out in your house’s library.What are five books you will take with you on your way out?
First, I grab the Kindle. Is that cheating because it holds 3500 books? As for hold in your hand and rip the page if you flip too fast books (there should be hyphens there, I think), I have to take at least a few of the BDB books. I know I can find them anywhere, but I love those books. But on a far more serious note, my Shakespeare collection (1 book), The Prince, Mythology by Edith Hamilton. I guess those would be the ones I save.
What an eclectic group !Wow! At least you won’t get bored from reading only one genre!
No boredom here. 
How is the experience of being published?
Well, I self-published Vampire Dreams, and my first novel is being published by Siren Publishing.
I find the publishing business is a great deal of hurry up and wait.
I’m still waiting for Siren to get me back the final copy for my approval, and my book is scheduled to be released on June 29. So I’m being stalled a bit from promoting that. Luckily, I’m nothing if not prolific, so I have Vampire Dreams and two others to promote this summer.
How is your approach to erotic paranormal in VAMPIRE DREAMS?
I always said I wouldn’t write a vampire story unless I was really moved to. Then one night I had a dream and when I woke up, the initial scene of the book was laid out for me in my mind. I know that sounds very artsy-fartsy, but it’s true. From there, I had to decide just how I’d make Brandon come across, and once I did that, it flowed well. I guess I should mention Brandon is physically almost entirely based on Henry Cavill. I actually named the character Brandon after his character in The Tudors.
If you could only describe a single scene to encourage someone to read your debut novella, VAMPIRE DREAMS, which scene would you describe?
The initial scene where Brandon visits her while she’s asleep is pretty steamy.
As a vampire, he of course possesses the ability to manipulate, and his seduction of her while she’s hypnotized is quite erotic.
Because it’s erotic romance, I use some relatively graphic language to describe the seduction. It comes pretty early in the story, so readers can see quickly that this is steamy stuff.
Writing sex scenes is the easiest or the hardest part of writing a book?
It’s neither easy or hard, but it is something that I have to be in the mood for. (Not tonight, novel. I have a headache! LOL). I don’t know about you, but I’ve read some of those. They make me no For me, sex scenes require more than he inserted tab A into slot Bt want to even think about sex. But on the other hand, I’m not a huge fan of lots of description in sex scenes. It can get a bit EWW. So I find if I’m in the right mood, I can set a scene that’s erotic and works:
BONUS QUESTION
What’s your favourite genre within erotica and why?
I love paranormal, but I also love historical. It was inevitable that the historical would come out of me since I teach history. I think it’s a toss up between those two. My second novella, Love’s Master, isn’t paranormal like Vampire Dreams, but it takes place during the same time period–the Victorian Age. But that one is about light BDSM. Nothing too scary, but a little on the wild side. The third novella in the trilogy will be straight historical still in the Victorian Age. I wonder if readers are growing tired of paranormal in all genres. I hope not.
Historical also had their glory, people got tired of it and now they’re back!
Yes I just said that to someone about an hour ago. Another author I know was saying she doesn’t think Regency will ever go away. I told her that it wasn’t that long ago that if you wrote a Regency novel, you had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting people to read it. I don’t do Regency, which is a very, very narrow time period, because so many people do it, and the ones who do it well, do it soooo well.
Regency was down. And there, out of nowhere: wait, who’s that? Julia Quinn!
True. But I have to say, when Regency is done incorrectly, ohhh, it’s not pretty. Sometimes it’s better to leave things to the experts!
It’s when you read those that you have to say, “Hey! Where is the editor here? There are no zippers in Regency times! I’m calling shenanigans!”
Haha! Okay, next question!
Ok. Are we too chatty or what?
LOL, Come back tomorrow for part 2, where Gabrielle will talk about her next books, her battle with the publisher, and answer what’s her perfect book recipe and what makes a romance a great love story.
If you can’t wait, read about Gabrielle’s books here and get to know her a little more here.
