SEELIE KAY: Postcards from The Ledge: This week in The Loft: Author Alana Lorens!

Joining me today in The Loft is author Alana Lorens. Alana, who writes under a pseudonym, has been a published writer for more than 40 years. She writes romance and romantic suspense. Under another pseudonym, Lyndi Alexander, she writes Sci-Fi, fantasy, and paranormal mystery. Alana's experience as a family law attorney, journalist, floral designer, and pizza maker often find their way into her stories. A self-described "aging hippie," Alana is the mother of seven children. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her youngest daughter, who is on the autism spectrum, and three crotchety old cats and six kittens.

Author Alana Lorens

S: Good morning, Alana! Thanks for joining me today.

Since you write romance, what's your preference--Brains or brawn/beauty?

A: Definitely brains. I’d choose a beta male every time, but not just any farm boy. My women don’t need a man crushing them and ordering them about. They want a partner who’s as smart and sharp as they are, who can be equal without feeling unmanly. A sense of humor is way more appealing than a handsome face with nothing behind it.

S: I'm with you! I love a man who can make me laugh.

Do you remember your first kiss? What was memorable about it?

A: I do! It was with David Martin, one of the neighbor kids, in the playground at the bottom of the hill behind my house. I was six at the time. I thought it was so romantic, but squishy.

S: Squishy? I hope that when he grew up, he corrected that...uh, deficiency.

You write in a wide variety of genres, rather than sticking to just one or two. Why is that?

A: Because the stories I write aren’t formulaic. I write whatever comes to me, with no nod to any specific rules. So a Cinderella story becomes "The Elf Queen." A mercenary spaceship captain falls into a menage with a human and an alien. A lawyer finds herself at the mercy of her client’s abusive husband. And for my current book, "A Rose By Any Other Name," after learning about blogging myself, I find Marisol, also known as Jerrika Jones, whose mommyblogging gets her into a lot of trouble and brings her back to the one who got away.

S: What would you like people to know about you?

A: That I write from a place of humanity that has much in common with many others. I write about single mothers, because I’ve lived that struggle. I write about women lawyers and domestic violence, because I’ve fought in that war. I write about people coping in recovery, because I’ve lived with those dealing with that hard, hard process. I have lived in loneliness and painful disease and adventure and excitement, and most of all, in love. All of this I use to craft my stories, and they are relevant on some level to everyone.

S: Complete this sentence: “When one of my books is released, I….”

A: …kick myself in the hind end because now I have to make sure everyone knows about it. Marketing is the evil stepchild of the creative writing process.

S: It definitely is the evil stepchild. I don't know any author who enjoys promotion. Most of us would rather be writing.

Is there anything special you would like people to know about "A Rose By Any Other Name?"

A: The book will be released on January 10, 2022 by Wild Rose Press. It’s a sweet romance, safe even for your old grammy to read. I’m much more interested in the interworkings of relationships and people than writing erotica. I trust my readers to know that off-camera my characters are able to generate plenty of heat, and to allow their own imaginations to fill in the blanks.

Here's the blurb--

Up-and-coming mommyblogger and single mom Marisol Herrera Slade returns to her old hometown in western Pennsylvania for her 20th high school reunion in 2005, reluctant and yet compelled to see her high school sweetheart, Russell Asher, who dumped her for the homecoming queen.

Russell's marriage to the golden girl, however, ended in a nasty divorce, and he has been systematically excluded from his sons' lives. In his Internet wanderings, he's found feminist blogger named Jerrika Jones, who glorifies single motherhood, essentially putting a stamp of approval on what's happened to him. His group of single dad advocates have vowed to take this woman down.

What Russell doesn't know, when he thinks to rekindle what he had with Marisol, is that Marisol and Jerrika are one and the same. When his group discovers the truth, will their drive for revenge derail any chance the couple have to reunite? Or will they find they have more in common than they ever expected?

The book trailer is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8qEjPOBzds&t=3s