Joining me today in The Loft are fellow Extasy authors Adriana Kraft. The pen name for a married pair of retired professors, they write erotic romance and erotic romantic suspense. The authors of more than fifty erotic romance novels and novellas, when the Krafts retired from positions in the Midwest, they sold their home and took off in a motor home to tour western United States, including Santa Fe, Taos, Puget Sound, and the Black Hills. They now reside in southern Arizona, where we enjoy hiking, golf, and travel, especially to the many Arizona Native American historical sites.
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S: Thanks for joining me in The Loft today. I am eager to learn about your latest book!
Let's start with some basic questions: Do you believe in love at first sight?
A: Skeptics might say it was lust at first sight, but while working on my graduate degree at a Midwest university, I was hired as an instructor in an experimental program. I have a vivid memory of the faculty gathering that autumn, where new hires were introduced. A handsome bald man with a mischievous smile and soft brown eyes was introduced as a new professor--and his assignment was to the same program. My former roommate can corroborate that when I came home that evening, I excitedly told her about him. What was even better was that she worked in the same field, her colleagues had already connected with him for some consulting, and the next week, she brought me his resume.
S: Excuse my laughter. I was the youngest person in my graduate program and none of the other students, instructors, or professors ever lit a fire in me. They treated me like a kid and I just thought they were old.
What attracted you to your current partner?
A: Obviously his looks (see the previous question), but of course, that was just the lust at first sight moment. I did have more data on him than he did on me, so I knew we shared many common interests as well as a checkered and unconventional route to the job that brought us together. I have to add that our first date didn’t occur until the following June, but by then we were colleagues working together, and I knew and highly valued his character. He was forthright, principled, willing to stand up for what was right, gentle, soft-spoken, except when defending a principle, and a good father to his three boys. Oh, and that first date? It was a dinner date, but before we left for the restaurant, we had an important discussion, in case this was the beginning of something serious. He wasn’t going to pursue a relationship with anyone who wasn’t open to being a parent to those boys, in case--which he anticipated--they needed to move in with him. That sold him. His heart was in the right place.
S: He sounds like a wonderful partner!
What’s love got to do with writing romance?
A: Good question. All of us love. Not all of us find that special loving relationship that helps ground us and share our life journey. I do know I’m very lucky in that department. Do I think that’s a requirement for writing good romance? No. I just said we all love, we all know what it is to want to be deeply connected with someone, to crave giving and receiving comfort and love, and of course, sex and intimacy. No matter our personal situation, if as writers we’re able to imbue our characters with that same electric combination of desires, hopes, fears, and longings, we’re writing about love in a true and grounded fashion. More than anything else, romance is about falling in love.
S: Critics say romance novels mislead readers about the reality of romance and in fact, give readers false expectations. Do you agree?
A: No. When Wiley Coyote accidentally runs off the cliff, falls hundreds of feet, splats on the ground, and gets up to run again, do cartoon watchers develop false expectations? I know that’s a simplistic response, and I have more to say. Romance novels are designed to punctuate life at the moment the characters say yes to love. All of our lives are a series of ups and downs, starts and stops, until we reach the final punctuation mark where we no longer exist. By design, romance novels, even second chance ones, where characters work through long standing problems, stop the action at a moment of resolution, a moment of happiness, a moment of fulfillment. This freeze-frame moment provides the escape so many readers are looking for, a fantasy to be enjoyed rather than a blueprint for false expectations.
S: As I tell my friends, romance books are fiction. They are fantasy, not reality.
Do you think romance books have become “too spicy?”
A: Given what my husband and I write? No. There is a wide range of heat levels in the romance genre, and most of them are accurately labeled so that readers can select the level they prefer and avoid content that’s noxious or offensive to them. I firmly believe in our right to read what we want to read. I’m frightened by the current move to ban books--for whatever content. My perspective is based on the concept of sex positivity. I’m indebted to Charlie Glickman, who I think offers the clearest definition of it: There are three criteria for judging any sexual encounter among adults. One, consent of all involved parties, at every step of the process. Two, pleasure for the involved parties, however they define pleasure. Three, it contributes to the well-being of the involved parties. By the same token, adults should have the freedom to choose what to read.
S: Exactly. If you have a choice, it's a matter of free will. Read what you want. Don't let others force their preferences on you.
What inspired "Swingers Light Up Vegas?"
A: I think we first started setting stories in the swing lifestyle because it was inherently erotic--it gave us a medium for three-way and four-way erotic scenes. As we learned more about it, we discovered that for participants, swinging heats up their relationship and their own intimacy, making their bonds stronger and their sex together more exciting. We’ve written a series exploring this dynamic called Swinging Games at Extasy Books, and we wanted to get it in front of new readers. We created a new pair of characters and gave them a brief swinging adventure for the heroine’s fiftieth birthday. We’re all about anti-ageism and wanted to show that an active sex life can be fun and exciting through midlife and beyond.
S: Is there anything special you would like people to know about "Swingers Light Up Vegas?"
A: First of all, it's free if you subscribe to our newsletter (see link below). Elsewhere, it's 99 cents. Even though we’re not gamblers, we love Las Vegas and visit it often, so Sin City seemed the perfect setting. On our last visit we took lots of photos of adventures we might send our characters off to--the LINQ High Roller Observation wheel, a lazy river in a tropical enclave, the Fremont Street Zipline, the view up the Strip from the Stratosphere at night, the rock formations at Red Rock Canyon. Not all of them made it into this short story, but we had a great time, and we think they probably did, too.
Here's the blurb--
What happens in Vegas…
Swingers Dan and Ginger head to Las Vegas to celebrate Ginger’s fiftieth birthday. Through their friends back home, they’ve scored a free week at a posh Vegas resort condominium. They fill their days with every iconic Las Vegas experience they can dream up. But by night? They’re determined not to leave Vegas without sampling what it has to offer in the erotically charged swing lifestyle. A Vegas swing club beckons – will it live up to their fantasies?
S: Sounds like a sizzling story! Where can readers buy "Swingers Light Up Vegas?"
A: Again, it's free to our newsletter subscribers and it's also available on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, ScribD, and Smashwords--
Newsletter signup (free book): https://storyoriginapp.com/giveaways/d1c82f5e-9b43-11ed-8c5e-b712215e57d9.
Universal Book Link: https://books2read.com/u/bQN2lZ.
S: Adriana, it's always a pleasure to have you as a guest at The Loft. If you'd like to learn more about the Krafts and their books, please visit--
Website: https://adrianakraft.com
Blog: https://www.adrianakraft.com/blog
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdrianaKraft
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adriana.kraft.5
Facebook Fan Page: https://www.facebook.com/AdrianaKraftAuthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kraftadriana/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1578571.Adriana_Kraft
BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/adriana-kraft
Extasy Books: https://www.extasybooks.com/adriana-kraft
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