SEELIE KAY: Postcards from The Ledge: Today in The Loft: Authors Adriana Kraft!

Joining me in The Loft this morning are fellow eXtasy authors Adriana Kraft, a husband-wife team of retired professors who write erotic romance and romantic suspense. Together, the couple has published more than 50 romance novels and novellas. The Krafts have lived in many states across the Midwest but now live in southern Arizona. When not writing, they enjoy hiking, golf, and travel, especially to the many Arizona Native American historical sites. Their four grown sons are scattered across the country, but they're planning a road trip next summer to visit them all, hopefully avoiding the Oklahoma tornado season for their final stop. Today's interview is with Mrs. Kraft.

The avatar for Adriana Kraft

S: Welcome to The Loft! I think I've mentioned in the past that I chose our publisher, eXtasy Books, because I enjoyed your books. It's an honor to host you on my blog today.

Let's start with the basics--Is true romance--the wooing, courtship, passion, seduction, the little gestures of affection, etc.--dead? Why or why not?

A: Not true – we’d be out of business! I’m not saying every couple that gets together experiences everything you listed, but it’s still going on, and even where it isn’t, people crave it. We want to feel treasured and valued by the person we’re in love with. We want to hold hands and touch even if we’ve been married forever. Long formal courtships may be a thing of the past for most of us, but passion, seduction, and the little gestures? Never.

S: Complete this sentence: “I almost married him/her, but…”

A: That’s an intriguing question for someone who’s been engaged four times but only married twice… so the simple answer, when I was 22 and living in Chicago, is that I almost married him, but he drove 700 miles after his last final exam, broke up with me, and turned around and drove back to North Carolina. Out of the blue. A not very helpful fellow student, upon learning the news, said, “You should be grateful he didn’t wait until after the wedding.” My friend was correct, of course, but it wasn’t exactly comforting at the moment. I do suspect that surviving heartbreak, and that’s not the only time, feeds the stories and characters in the romance I now write with my husband, the fourth and last engagement.

S: Unfortunately, I was the jerk in more than one breakup, but I was young and stupid, and eventually, karma did bite.

Do you write in genres other than romance?

A: Short answer: No. Details? Well, within the broad genre of romance, Mr. Kraft and I explore many subgenres. He’s a trained criminologist, so it’s no surprise we’ve written several romantic suspense stories. Perhaps because of our Celtic roots, we’ve delved into energy work, Reiki, shamanism, and Native American Spirituality, so we’re open to the paranormal and often include paranormal elements in our romances, hopefully in ways that respect those traditions. We’re huge history buffs and are finally working on a romance set during the Roman occupation of Britain, which will have a paranormal element, as it stretches across time to the present day.

S: What do people get wrong about publishing a book?

A: I used to answer, “They think anyone can do it.” Trouble is, that’s not necessarily wrong these days in the era of self-publishing. So perhaps I should say “They think anyone can produce a well-written polished novel, and they think it’s easy.” It’s hard work. Hubs and I lose track of how many times we toss a manuscript back and forth to fine tune the editing—and that’s after we’ve read it out loud segment by segment as we develop the story and get it on the page. We’re both quality driven and obsessive about attention to detail.

S: Self-publishing has certainly changed the industry. While it's great that anyone can publish a book, I wish there was a way to control the quality.

What’s the best advice you have ever been given?

A: Again, my answer has changed over time. My pat response used to be. "Never give up." In some ways that’s still true, but the more recent advice that keeps me going now is “Be yourself, be real, and do what you love.” What this has impacted most is how I’m now marketing. I used to hate marketing. I saw it as unpleasant but necessary. This advice has freed me up to do things I love. I read widely, mostly outside of romance, so now I’m posting reviews of books I’ve loved, whatever the genre. Something interesting happens to me or I spot something lovely or unusual? Click, Instagram, maybe a blog post. It’s freed up my creativity outside the realm of writing our stories, and it’s a whole lot more fun.

S: What inspired "A Reluctant Santa?"

A: Our publisher put out a call for short holiday stories, and we immediately knew we wanted to feature romance for a pair of 50-year-olds. The characters? Mr. Kraft’s beard used to be a lot longer, and when we’d be out shopping in the holiday season, tiny children would sometimes point at him and gleefully say “Santa!” So we had our hero--a man with a real Santa beard. We thought it would be fun to play with a practical couple, the opposite of romantic, and see how they’d connect. We cast about a while for setting. We now live in the southwest, which we love, but it still jars me to see Christmas lights in the midst of palm trees and balmy weather. We finally decided that for a holiday story we wanted a winter setting, so we placed it in one of our former haunts, the Lake Como district of St. Paul, MN.

S: Having graduated from UM-Twin Cities, I am very familiar with that area. A good choice for a holiday story.

Is there anything special you would like people to know about "A Reluctant Santa?"

A: The core of this story is that it’s never too late to fall in love. We don’t see enough older heroines in the romance world. So many fantasies about what romance should be revolve around being young, first time falling in love, starting a family. Certainly, there’s a time and place for stories that fill that longing, stories I enjoy reading as well. But we wanted older persons to recognize themselves in the romance stories that are out there. And I suppose at some level we wanted to fight ageism, to flaunt our own age, and say it’s okay to think about folks 50 and over not only falling in love but having a steamy sex life. We hope that’s what we’ve delivered in "A Reluctant Santa."

Here's the blurb--

Is it ever too late to find happiness?

They’re in their fifties. Grief-stricken (her) and battle scarred (him) from their previous loves, they don’t want to risk more heartbreak, ever. They’ll have to take it slow, talk it through, test the waters carefully. Can they make it happen at this speed, get it done in a short story, and reap the benefits of sizzling sex at their age? Why not?