Simone Beaudelaire

Who can say? The urge to tell stories stretches back in my memory to my earliest childhood, when I loaded my Cabbage Patch Kids onto a ship, wagon or hot air balloon (my bed) to escape an enemy or in search of a new adventure.

I began writing these stories in elementary school, though I never got too far with it. My first attempt to write a complete story happened in ninth grade, but when I had finished, I was so embarrassed at what I had created, I threw it in the garbage. I tried again when I was in college and got halfway through a novel before I got stuck.

It wasn't until my mid-thirties that I succeeded in finishing in a novel. And like a Patronus, once I knew I could finish a novel, it got a lot easier to do it again.

My first favorite book was a children's horror story, Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn. Even now, I like to tuck little bits of horror and the otherworldly into my romance novels.

My other writing hero is Mary Jo Putney, whose emotionally punchy, sexy historical romances set a high standard for my writing. One I have not shied away from embracing. In particular, her Regency romance Shattered Rainbows showed me the possibilities of how much pathos and how much knowledge a romance novel can sustain. Formulaic? I think not.

Expect heat. I don't write 'sweet' or 'clean' romance. In fact, I find the terms troubling. Because why should we say that a sexual relationship can't be sweet or a woman who enjoys her sexuality must be dirty? No, no. I write steamy romances that bring, as I like to say, sweet (the relationship) with heat.

Beyond that, I have three favorite subgenres: contemporary (but not rom-com. I like the big feels!), paranormal and historical (western and Victorian, mostly). Lately I've been experimenting with genre blending by writing historical paranormal romance, which is a lot of fun.

Asking this is like asking me to choose a favorite child. I don't think I can pick just one. But one character who has been with me longer than most is Katerina from Keeping Katerina. She has been with me since middle school, when I was a new kid in a foreign country. Middle school kids are like seagulls in that, if you're different, they attack without mercy.

To distance myself from the bullies, I made up stories. Katerina's was one of the first. She had it so much worse than I did, and in the end, she found a way to make a good life for herself. Bullying and abuse were not the end for her.

Another favorite who spawned about the same time is Michael from When the Words are Spoken. He's a typical wounded, growly hero, but his tenderness for the woman he loves transforms him. I adore Michael and his story gives me a book hangover every time I read it, even though it's several years old now.

At the moment I seem to have five books bouncing around in my brain. Books 2 and 3 of the Sedona County Shifters series (book 1: Second Skin, is available, though it's not a romance. That changes at the beginning of book 2, Fanning the Flames which is almost written as of June 2022). Also the sequel to Devilfire, called Windtorn, which has a rough draft in place, but I'm waiting for the answer to a messy spot to filter down so I can begin revising. I have another historical romance to write called Grayson Manor, which has Gothic elements to it. Very fun. And last, an untitled paranormal new adult romance about a frightened young woman on the run from an enemy that probably isn't human.