Smutketeers

The lovely K.B. Alan, author of PERFECT FORMATION and her latest release, ALPHA TURNED, both available from Ellora’s Cave, has decided to throw caution to the wind along with her interview virginity, and who better to steal her cherry than The Smutketeers? So, grab a warm towel and some lube, and let’s get down to business. We promise to be gentle…

Smutketeers~ALPHA TURNED is your second book. Why do you think you’ve held onto your interview virginity for so long? Did you make a pledge, or has the right interviewer simply not come along until now? (and we do congratulate you on choosing a five-some for your first time, adventurous girl!).

K.B.~I believe strongly in holding out for just the right person. Or persons – if that’s what the job calls for. Who better to take me gently until I’m ready to be…wait, I’m sorry, what were we talking about?

K.B.~Aren’t they just delicious? I can’t get enough of them, and yet, they’re all so different in their own ways. I think they’re perfect for the fantasy that is a good romance, where you just want to be swept up into something (and someone) so powerful, you know? Of course, in real life, I’d most likely freak out and run as fast as possible in the other direction.

Smutketeers ~Speaking of heroes, tell us about Zach, your sexy werewolf in ALPHA TURNED. Is he based on a real life person, or is he purely a lovely figment of your imagination?

K.B.~Zach isn’t based on anyone in real life, but he was my first hero, so I guess you could say he was my first love. He’s a kick-ass alpha but also the sweetest guy who really can’t believe how lucky he is to have Hillary in his life.

K.B.~My publisher doesn’t accept sex with animals, but is perfectly happy with sex between animals, and, as you so brilliantly put it, animalistic sex between humans. My editor asked me if I wanted to include a scene between Zach and Hillary as wolves, and I’ll admit I was a bit nervous about getting the right balance between animal instincts and human emotions and needs. But I gave it a shot and was pleased with how it turned out.

Smutketeers ~Your March 2009 release, PERFECT FORMATION, is a ménage story. Tell us about the complicated logistics involved in writing a threesome-and any other interesting details you’d care to include. I hear there’s some rope involved…

K.B.~I loved writing Perfect Formation, but there were definitely some challenges to getting all the body parts doing all the right things. I found that simply closing my eyes and imagining the choreography for long minutes helped quite a bit. I can honestly say it was never a chore for me! The key for these three was in letting Caleb take charge and seeing how Richard and Taryn would react, which usually involved melting into a puddle of goo at Caleb’s feet. Of course, the fact that they were ready and willing to let him do his thing didn’t stop him from pulling out the cuffs. And ropes. And ties.

K.B.~I like to imagine the Cristal life, too, but unfortunately it’s far from the truth for me! I live by myself so there are no distractions, and I don’t even turn on music. I usually have a can of Dr Pepper next to me as I curl up in my big, fluffy chair, with my laptop on my lap. Most of the time I’m wearing boxer shorts and a t-shirt. There seems to be a distinct lack of loincloth-clad houseboys, I’m afraid. I’ll need to work on that, though I’m not sure how much work I’d actually get done!

Smutketeers~Do your family and friends know you write erotic romance or do you have to pretend you write something more tame? Have they been supportive, or have they disowned you?

K.B.~At first, I didn’t tell anyone that I was writing. Once I got the first acceptance though, that was it. My coworkers even got me a cake on the day of my first release. It said “It’s a boy. No, it’s a girl. No, it’s a book!” Later, they realized they should have put “It’s a boy. No, it’s a girl. No, it’s two boys and a girl!” The day I got the acceptance, I called my parents, who are huge readers, and they were amazed and excited. Then I told them they couldn’t read it! I’ve told them I’ll let them know if I ever write anything they can read, but to be proud from a distance for now, lol. I’m not sure what I’d do if I had to keep this a separate part of my regular life, it’s become such a part of who I am. Thankfully I don’t have to as not one person in my life has been anything less than thrilled and encouraging.

K.B.~Right now I’m working on a BDSM story that may never see the light of day. I’m also working on a contemporary set in the same town as Perfect Formation, as well as a modern day fae warrior and the woman who lives to drive him insane.

Smutketeers ~Where can we find you on the Internet?

K.B.~I love visitors! I am at www.kbalan.com

* * *
Smutketeers ~And now for some either/or questions, which we’ve found can be very revealing…
K.B. says:
~Boxers or Briefs? Boxers. On the floor, next to the bed.
~Vegas or Paris? Paris
~Cold beer or girly drink with an umbrella? Girly drink
~Cotton T-shirt or silk nightie? T-shirt for wandering around the house, nightie if there’s anyone else around, naked between the sheets (but the sheets have to be fabulous!)
~Romantic night in with a movie, or hot night out on the town? Romantic night in
~Cheeseburger or filet mignon? Filet mignon
~Tahiti beach vacation or Colorado ski trip? Tahiti
~chocolate or vanilla? Both
~kink or vanilla? Both! I know, I’m a complicated person :D

* * *
Here’s a peek at K.B. Alan’s latest release, ALPHA TURNED:

Hillary is done with being haunted by the brutal rape that turned her into a werewolf four years ago. She’s made a normal life for herself and is determined to ignore the fact that the moon calls to her and she occasionally turns furry. She’s avoided werewolves since her one nightmare experience and sees no reason that should change.

The minute Zach scents Hillary he knows she’s his mate. Now he just has to convince her that being an alpha werewolf has its benefits. What better way than giving her himself? Body, mind and soul.

~To find out more, you can read an excerpt on her website:
www.kbalan.com/books/alpha-turned

Smutketeers ~Thanks for joining the Smutketeers today, and for handing over your interview cherry! Was it good for you…?

K.B.~I’m afraid you may have ruined me for all other interviewers…

K.B.~Thank you so much for having me! I would love to give away an ebook copy of Perfect Formation. Please leave a comment and you’ll be entered to win. The winner will be announced here on Tuesday, so be sure to check back!

I shared a recent realization with one of my dear friends tonight over pizza. I was reflecting on the fact that in my fourteenth year of agenting, it often seems that life was so much simpler when I worked for someone else. You know, the proverbial “man” (although my last boss in 1996 was also a dear friend. So calling him “the Man” seems not only inaccurate, but unfair.)

I reminisced about life before becoming an entrepreneur. That it had been peaceful to clock out at the end of the day, and not take my work home with me, sleep on it, and eat it for breakfast like some soldier with his MRE’s. I said this by way of explaining how, as both agent and author, I pretty much work seven days a week. Most in either profession tend to do that, so choosing to combine them definitely expanded the work cycle.

Or as my hubby is fond of joking about Sunday afternoons, “The best part of being self-employed is that you can nap on a work day.”

As I talked to my friend, thinking back to life before starting The Knight Agency, I spoke with the sort of wistful yearning one might expect. “Life was so uncomplicated then. Or maybe I was just…young.”

My wise friend replied, “I don’t know. Do you really think anyone ever goes home at night and doesn’t worry about their job?”

Good point, and it gave me pause. Because I have always worried about my work, even when I was employed by someone else. So I made a new point, a more enlightened one: “You know, maybe it had as much to do with the fact that I didn’t have children then. I came home, put on my Nikes and we went for a walk.” More thinking. “And there wasn’t email like now. No Blackberry, no constant connection to the Net.”

I stared into space, torn, halfway drawn to that lost world of simplicity, where there hadn’t been blogging and twitter and e-loops and all that Net energy. Nostalgic for a time when just hubby and I were together, and our nights belonged to us—but then I shook my head and knew exactly how I felt about those days. “They really were simpler times. But I like right now.”

I love the life I lead, as a mother and wife, even when it’s exhausting. I adore being an agent, even on the days of choppy waters, the ones when things don’t go well—and definitely during the open water, free sailing times. As for being an author, I was writing then, I’m writing today, only now I get paid to pen my crazy stories, and people actually read them. Not only that, but they interact with my characters, letting me know that they respond to the world playing out in my head—and on the page.

And I definitely enjoy being part of the digital frontier, the excitement of taking hold of new ideas every day, whether on someone’s blog, or following a retweet, or reading an online newsletter. The trick—and this is all ultimately an answer to “how do you juggle life as an agent, author and mother”—is learning when to step back, decompress and clear your head. It’s an ongoing battle, finding the willpower to turn off the computer and turn to my daughter and say, “Yes, sweetie, I’ll show you that new crochet stitch.” Or to overrule the urge to worry over some niggling business email I just received, one that hit my veins like five alarm chili.

I won’t lie and say that I’m always successful. I find that life in 2009 is more an ongoing war against mental noise than any I’ve ever known. But I’m a girl who loves a challenge. So with each new day I have to prioritize. I make sure that my time isn’t sifting through the Wicked Witch of the West’s mighty hourglass (scared me to death as a child), and do something every day that truly counts, whether in the family column, the agent column, or the authorial one. And hopefully, if I’m really at my best, I can make positive contributions to each of those columns, not to mention score extra points in the categories of health/wellness, friends/social, and especially spirituality.

As an agent and author, I would say that “time sucks” are my biggest enemy, with the Net scoring highest for potential damage. That’s why this past weekend I tweeted something like, “Hellmouth is to Buffy what Twitter is to writer.” We can dance along the edge of time’s wasteful abyss, but we sure as Buffy better not get sucked all the way in.

After all, look what happened to Sunnydale.

In the end, it’s so easy to get nostalgic about the past, but then we forget the glories that the digital age brings—new friends, new books, new opportunities. In the end, my “geographical” location out in cyberspace suits me perfectly. I just have to remember that my deepest roots are in the real world, with my family, friends and soul.

Well, and with my characters, but that’s a valid “real world”, at least for my readers…and for me. Balance, my friends. It’s all about the high wire.

People ask me how I do it all — agent, author, wife and mother. The answer is that some days I go a little crazy. It helps that for me it’s a short trip, so I can make it back fairly quickly. Actually, I’m not so much driven insane by doing everything as nothing. I have a serious nose-to-the-grindstone Type A personality. Nothing drives me as nuts as downtime.

In junior high and high school I filled up my lunch and study hall periods with extra classes, particularly English and art. I did theatre (both school and community) after classes and worked on our high school literary magazine. I couldn’t fit chorus into my schedule, but my hs luckily had a “homeroom chorus” for other over-achievers like me, so I found a way to make even homeroom productive. In case you haven’t guessed, I kind of thrive on being constantly challenged and crazy busy. As an adult, nothing has changed. Instead of waking up at 5:30 a.m. to do my homework, I rise at that ungodly hour so that I can beat my inner editor to consciousness. Otherwise, the perfectionist in me might never allow me to commit words to page.

If there’s time, I go back to sleep afterward for an hour or so before I wake up, grab copious amounts of caffeine, and start my working day, which goes from approximately 9:30 to 5:30, except when I start work at 8 a.m., or work on the weekends, or…. Okay, but let’s assume 9:30 to 5:30. During that time, I focus on my authors. (I have an agent of my own to handle my career so that I can keep it at an emotional and working distance.) There’s no such thing as a “normal” schedule for an agent, but on any given day I might be: making calls to editors alerting them to the awesome new novel coming their way, working on pitch letters and submissions, getting promotional material and finished books out to our subagents for submission to studios and foreign publishers, looking over royalty statements, asking questions about said statements, following up on payments/submissions/contracts/author’s copies, running an auction, negotiating terms, haggling out contract language, answering e-mails, running to the post office, putting together quote sheets, getting editorial notes to my authors, reading the trade magazines, requesting rights reversion…. The only way to do all that is to have a schedule constantly running in your head (or, in my case, on my desktop). An agent has to be highly organized, dare I say even a little anal retentive, in order to keep track of all the irons he/she has in the fire.

After work, there’s time out for dinner and family before it’s back to the grind about the time my son goes to bed, reading and evaluating manuscripts, proposals, queries, etc.

My weekends look much the same, except that for some reason, none of the editors will take my calls, and I might choose not to wade through legalese (contracts). However, unless I’m ahead on my reading, which never happens, I don’t get to take a day off. Not really. So, it’s a good thing I really love my job and my authors.
The folks who ask about timing, sometimes follow up with a question about whether I want to be a full-time writer. Well, actually…no. I don’t think I’d be any more productive with more time on my hands. In fact, I suspect I wouldn’t have that time for long before I filled it up with a million other things, none as fulfilling as the job I already do. Working with creative, talented, brilliant people, helping them achieve their dreams, being part of a very exclusive and impressive posse (for lack of a word to combine both fraternity and sorority)… it’s addictive. Last I heard, they hadn’t developed a twelve-step program for those of us helplessly in love with the written word. I suspect that unless they put it in writing and let someone entertaining like Mary Roach write it, none of us would take any notice, not with so many other wonderful books still to be read.

This week, I’ve dragged–um, asked very politely–Lucienne Diver and Deidre Knight to come on over to the Smutketeers to chat with us about the secret lives of agents who are also authors.

Stay tuned for the fun and games!