SPECIAL INTERVIEW WITH ROSE CARAWAY
Rose Caraway loves pushing the envelope in her erotic stories and her podcasts. She is especially attracted to the darker side of erotica. She has written an erotic zombie short and is busy working on a new, sexy werewolf novel. Adventurous and not afraid to write or speak her mind, I wanted to know what she has in store for her fans.
Here is what she said!
1) How did you get started writing erotica stories? Do you think erotica and romance can be the same thing?
Rose Caraway:
I’ve always had vivid dreams. For as long as I can remember I’ve been compelled to write as many of them down as I could. Growing up, I had so many spiral notebooks secreted away in the garage where no one could find them, loaded with tons of sexy stories. I’d go to my notebooks and begin developing the juiciest dreams into short stories. I don’t know when I started having sex in my dreams, but it was probably earlier than the “regular” girls. I was so devastated when my parents’ house caught fire just before I moved out… all those dreams were suddenly just… gone.
Predominantly, horror movies did it for me. Nightmares be damned! There was some major hibbity-dibbity going on in many those movies! I’d secretly watch which ever rental movie my parents put into the VCR, crouched in the shadows of the hallway bathroom, mesmerized when I was supposed to be tucked soundly in bed. I easily recognized that some of the movies were titles of books my mother owned and had naturally banned me from reading. That is how I first found Stephen King—out of sheer curious defiance. I ate the apple. Carrie was the first S.K. book I’d ever read. There are so many aspects of that little story that lined up perfectly with me and my life back then. Not only did I empathize with Carrie White, I related to her in many ways. That story felt like the perfect amalgamation of everything synaptically brewing inside of my young brain back then. And that unsettling ending… as much as I adore happy endings, my heart pitter-patters over endings that leave me a little anxious. I can remember in passing, people would tell my mother that I ‘looked just like Sissy Spacek’, I of course smiled deviously on the inside, after seeing her the movie. They had no idea. It was fate that I should fall in love with the little boy heart in the jar on S.K.’s desk.
Can Erotica and Romance be the same thing? Yes and No. Erotica is still treated like the slutty little step sister to Romance. Amazon, Audible and iTunes love to pimp her though. Oh they greedily rake in the profits off of her sexy allure, but it’s behind a black curtain. We Erotica authors have to work within this dirty little category which takes way too many clicks to find. Erotic Romance exists and thank goodness for that. The seemingly limitless imagination of writers astounds me sometimes. But Erotica as its own genre? Well, the big companies are still big ol’ scaredy cats. Erotica is putting up one hell of a fight though, and I am proud to assist in that fight. Romance and Erotica is the difference between R-rated stories and X-rated stories. Romance keeps readers safe, I guess. It kind of ‘fades to black’ when things start getting good. Which cracks me up sometimes because there are plenty of farm-girls and snobby princesses on the page getting fingered until their cheeks turn bright pink! How is that not erotica? Romance is totally sex driven, so is Erotica. Frankly, I really don’t see any difference between a penetrating finger and a penis. Let’s stop beating about the bush (tee hee) when it comes to the words. If a story is good, then a sex scene written just as well won’t steal its thunder, it will add to it. Sex is sex, let it be.
2) You wrote an erotic zombie tale for 2014, what attracts you to the darker side of erotica? Can you tell us a little bit about it?!
Rose Caraway:
Yay! You are talking about my Libidinous Zombie and Other Scary Erotic Tales audiobook anthology! I am going to send out a call for submissions for that audiobook anthology after my Rose Caraway’s Dirty Thirty Vol. 1 is complete. Libidinous Zombie is the title of my story in this anthology and my very first zombie themed erotica story ever, and it is awesome! I really can’t wait to record it. My Lurid Listeners know that I love scary stories and I want to put together a fun collection just for them as I can. This anthology will be scary and maybe a little snicker worthy too.
Ahh, yes… the darker side. Well, that says it all, right there. I think maybe I am attracted to the opposite of what people tell me I should like. Once upon a time I was accused of being a ‘walking contradiction’, and since then I’ve embraced that label. I’m not a rabble-rouser, I don’t always root for the bad guy, I wanted Pazuzu to leave little Reagan alone in The Exorcist. I am one of those people who believes that avoidance doesn’t keep me safe in this world and I don’t know if it’s a rites of passage thing, but I do know that Horror novels and movies get my adrenaline pumping—when Reagan crawls down those stairs in a back-bend, it literally frightens me. Real life is dirty, messy, gritty, raw, unpredictable and horrific. I relate to characters in Horror far better than in any other genre because that extraordinary stage is set in a way that I can be present because it combines romance, comedy, sci-fi and an excellent side-dish of the human condition that we don’t often talk about. Fear and sex! Horror whole-heartedly and often times quite shamelessly, embraces all facets of fear and sex instead of avoiding it. Horror never ‘fades to black’—unless it’s setting up for something even more titillating. I love that. Over-analysis and drawn-out indecision gets boring.
3) What do you like best about writing?
Rose Caraway:
Ooo! That’s easy. Writing lets me pursue my fantasies. I get to share my dreams and stories and turn people on. I love sharing my imagination and passion with the world.
4) I am so intrigued.... How did you get the nickname, ‘The Sexy Librarian?’ Does it have to anything with the book, The Sexy Librarian’s Big Book of Erotica? Can you tell us what makes this book so special?
Rose Caraway:
The Sexy Librarian podcast came to be about a year after The Kiss Me Quick’s podcast had been running in iTunes. I rallied my nerves and took a really big chance. I wanted to reach out to other erotica authors and ask them if I could narrate some of their work, help promote them because I believed in their work and wanted to support them. In 2012, around July if I remember correctly, I came upon Shanna Germain’s short story titled, Skin Deep, from her anthology Beneath Sea and Sky. Skin Deep is a delightfully dark erotica story of Beauty and the Beast with a twist that only Shanna Germain could concoct, and after reading it, I simply had to narrate it. But, it wasn’t my story—the KMQ podcast only featured my stories. So my husband thought that I might wear another hat. Not only would I write, edit and narrate my own erotica, but I would be a librarian of the best erotica I could find for the Lurid Listeners. So, of course that was a completely sexy idea, and thus, I became The Sexy Librarian… and I quickly needed another podcast! The Sexy Librarian podcast format would, at that time, feature erotica from other authors I adored. Well, eventually our audience grew and we decided that no library is complete without a Non-Fiction and Reference section. So, we changed the format to The Sexy Librarian’s podcast completely. It became a blog-cast. All fiction stories—my own and guest authors were shifted over to The Kiss Me Quick’s podcast and now I interview fellow authors and leaders in the erotica community on The Sexy Librarian’s Blog-cast. I will sometimes sit in my recording booth and chat with my husband, Big Daddy about my current projects or be all by myself—just me and my mic. Brenda Knight over at Cleis Press noticed what I was doing. That woman is unstoppable when she gets the scent of anything good. She facebooked me, suggested that I give her a call and—it just happened. The Sexy Librarian’s Big Book of Erotica. What makes this book so special? Well, of the many things I could list here, I believe that the single most important thing about this anthology is that it proves that any genre can become an erotic tale. Whether its horror, sci-fi, romance, fairy tale or a literary classic—erotica is a diverse genre and it takes traditional genres and makes them better. Erotica is fearless.
5) I understand you are also working on another horror/erotic novel named, Wolf. What is it about and what exactly is a horror/erotic novel? Does it have any elements of romance?
Rose Caraway:
WOLF is a story that revolves around nine characters and this book has become so big, I have to put some of it into episodes for my KMQ podcast because I know it just won’t all fit into a single novel. Those episodes will be the darlings I simply couldn’t kill. For example, my secondary character, Tarak the eldest wolf-shifter has an entire backstory that is too good to just leave in the binder. His story needs to be told. WOLF is a blend of horror/erotica/paranormal. I say Horror because this novel offers up some pretty ‘horrific’ events in order to construct the proper stage I am wanting my characters to perform on. There are a couple of tough events to get through, but don’t worry—this book isn’t in any way a form of ‘torture porn’. Balance is everything in this book for me as the creator, I have been working too hard for this beast to be crap. The paranormal aspect of this novel is that there are wolf-shifters involved. WOLF is also very much a love story (Erotica) between several of the characters, but mainly between Jake; a modern half white/half Arapaho man who is tortured by some pretty devastating family baggage and my sweet, sweet Virginia Dawson; a sixth grade school teacher whose struggling with her teaching job, learning to run the family business and care for her older sister, Elise (Virginia’s only living relative) who is dying. Much of the story revolves around a wolf sanctuary in Colorado and acknowledges some political themes surrounding wildlife preservation, American Indian stereotypes and controversial themes regarding human beings. I start big and then bring it all in.
This book has birthed a few wild and crazy antagonists, and so I feel because of these characters this book has to be labeled under Horror before anything else. The ring leader is school principle, Rick McVicar who is completely infatuated with Virginia. McVicar is a complicated little guy who has had an interesting family history in the Great Silver Boom of 1880 in Colorado, and due to certain unlucky circumstances, McVicar has adopted a special friend named, Benry Goothe. Benry right now is my favorite character because he has been the most challenging and entertaining to write. (He might need his own novella at some point.) Benry plays a major part in the novel’s underlying plot twist.
There is definitely some spicy erotica involved in this book. That is what my audience thirsts for, so yeah—sex absolutely happens, I’m dealing with wolf-shifters here! The cast of WOLF are characters that I want to read. I think I’ve always wanted to read them, I just didn’t know their story, until now. They are complicated, afraid, strong in their own ways, and such courageous individuals and I hope, with all my heart that readers will enjoy meeting them when the time comes.
6) How did you get the idea for your unabashed podcast, The Kiss Me Quick’s? I love the name of your podcast. How did you come up with that catchy title?
Rose Caraway:
My tech-savvy husband actually suggested that I share the stories that I’d been writing for him with the rest of the world. He has always been my biggest fan. The KMQ title was inspired by one of my most treasured gardening books, The Complete Herb Book by Jekka McVicar. (You may recognize part of that name) This book inspired not only WOLF, but my pseudonym as well. I love the mystique and traditions of herbs. Flipping through this book, I came across a cute little tri-colored pansy called ‘Heartsease’. According to the book, ‘Heartsease’ “… has been long prescribed for a broken heart”. How perfect is that?! But the name didn’t really roll off the tongue easily, so I looked through the list of its other commonly used names and found ‘The Kiss Me Quick’. Now that worked for the podcast perfectly! Everything about this podcast just came together as though it was meant to be.
7) On your podcasts, what topics do you like most to discuss? What do you think is the most important thing about your podcasts?
Rose Caraway:
On the KMQ podcast, I feature erotic stories with as much variety as I can either create myself or find from other authors. Variety is key. Like I said before, anything can become erotic. And the Lurid Listeners love that I don’t stick with the same ol same ol cookie-cutter erotica. And it is just so much fun to see what I can write/find next. Erotica is limitless. On the Sexy Librarian’s Blog-cast, I like to talk to the people I interview. Writing is just our mutual playground, I like to get to know these people so that the audience can too, because having a prescribed list of questions is great to keep conversation moving forward, but in the end I don’t want to be boring. If an author used to do clown porn, I want to hear all about it. If they climb mountains for fun-tell me why! Erotica authors are some of the most interesting people on this planet and there is so much more to them than their current “works in progress”.
The most important things regarding the KMQ podcast is that it is free, extremely accessible and portable, and it offers a certain privacy. I keep saying the same thing, over and over—audio offers a convenience that nothing else can touch.
8) Do you get inspiration for your books from the Kiss Me Quick’s? Is there anything that you won’t discuss or write about?!
Rose Caraway:
Some episodes are bigger than a single episode can handle and so I have to release them in parts. I had a Succubus story that was going to be an eBook that I would make some money to help fund my podcast work, but in the end I put it out there for the Lurid Listeners for free in four episodes. The KMQ stories written by me are all inspired by my dreams, but when I was bitten by my WOLF dream, I immediately knew it was too big for the KMQ. Although, I may pull a Scott Sigler and release each chapter on a separate podcast for people to listen to for free and then if they want to buy the book or audiobook, they can.
9) As you write more will you ever give up your podcasts?!
Rose Caraway:
I could never give up my KMQ podcast. I owe everything to the Lurid Listeners. They have supported me from the very beginning and I love them. I have fun with them. I may not be able to put out as many of my own stories because of time constraints, but I will always narrate for them and provide the best of the best in Erotica. The Sexy Librarian’s Blog-cast is too much fun too! I am just as much a fan of the people I’m interviewing as those subscribers that are listening!
10) What new books or ideas do you have planned for the future? Can you give us a sneak peak?!
Rose Caraway:
Now that is a very big question. I have so many ideas—so much planned, I don’t even have complete plans detailed out yet. The best place to go see what I am working on is my website; thekissmequicks.com, there I have a calendar with everything listed and you can reach my Sexy Librarian Blog through there too. Right now I am putting together my very first self-published audiobook titled, Rose Caraway’s Dirty Thirty Vol.1 which is completely under the Rose Caraway and Stupid Fish Productions brand. This is an anthology that will include all genres of Erotica, similarly to The Sexy Librarian’s Big Book of Erotica, but will not be available in print or e-Book. The Dirty Thirty is going to be available in audiobook format only. This is a project my husband and I have wanted to do for a very long time, specifically for the Lurid Listeners of the KMQ podcast. After the Dirty Thirty is produced, I am going to send out another call for my next self-published audiobook project, Libidinous Zombie, which I mentioned earlier. That one may go to e-Book, but I haven’t really decided. Audio Erotica is my home, so I will think about it. I also have several audiobook projects that I am contracted to do with the Publisher of the Year, Cleis Press and I am very excited about those projects! I will be narrating more from editors Rachel Kramer Bussel, DL King, Alison Tyler and Shanna Germain!
Thank you so much for taking the time out in your schedule to let us interview you! :)
Rose Caraway:
Thank you, Steph! I had a great time.
Interviewed by Steph from the Bookaholics Romance Book Club
For Additional Information about Rose Caraway check her out at:
http://www.thekissmequicks.com/
http://rosecarawaythesexylibrarian.blogspot.com/
Recent and Upcoming Books by Rose Caraway:
The Sexy Librarian’s Big Book of Erotica by Rose Caraway
WOLF an Erotic Horror Novel written by Rose Caraway
Audiobook - Rose Caraway’s Dirty Thirty Vol.1
Audiobook – Diverse Desires by Allen Dusk
Audiobook - Bound by Lust by Shanna Germain
Audiobook – The Sexy Librarian’s Big Book of Erotica by Rose Caraway
Audiobook – The Big Book of Submission by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Audiobook – Slave Girls by DL King
Audiobook – The Big Book of Submission by DL King
Audiobook – Nine to Five Stories by Alison Tyler
Audiobook – As Kinky as You Wanna Be – by Shanna Germain