From Echoes to Identities

After test driving a couple of publishers I had the good fortune of finding and subsequently signing with Rebel Ink Press last fall. My first short story with them came in November and after analyzing what I had been doing I revamped a novel I had written and wasn’t happy with and zipped it away to the editor. At the time I was knee deep in a series I’ve dubbed The Sergeants of Echo Company about three marines and their mission to bed three impossibly emotional women. The manuscript I sent E was A Slower, Lower Love and my original intent was to publish it as a stand-alone story. E didn’t have it long before she sent me an email and the opening line was “We need to talk.” Holy crap...how bad was it? That was my gut reaction. However, that turned out to be very good news indeed. You see, two lines had E in love with a side character, Logan and she wanted more. That was the beginning of the Delaney brothers series.

So, here I am with a release date for A Slower, Lower Love and no sequels planned out…oh, and the Echo series half finished. What to do? I put Echo aside and started work on the Slower Lower books. In the meantime, a new muse came to live at my house by the name of Bronwyn. She’s a very kinky little thing to say the least. She wears spike heeled boots and carries a whip on her hip, and it just so happens she likes to write BDSM. Now here I am with one series back burnered, trying to get another one complete and here comes Bronwyn wanting to create a series all her own with a serious bent. The little she-devil. Who did she think she was? Needless to say, she’s relentless and in between finishing Kurt’s story and the release of A Slower, Lower Love, Identity Crisis took shape.

Identity Crisis came as freely as water to me and I wrote it in a matter of days. I positively loved writing it and never dreamed it would get the response that it did. I’m new to the BDSM scene as it were and tried very hard to do my research. It paid off. Some of the comments I’ve received are wonderful and most of them include something to the effect that my characters are so believable the ladies wish the men would jump off the page and keep them company a while. And while Ren and Chad did do that for me, Steph did it that much more. He’s the one I want to hop out of the book and introduce himself.

Steph’s story took me a while longer to write. Not only is it twice the length of Identity Crisis, he and Jill have way bigger issues than did Tori, Ren and Chad. And so I find myself half-way through the year with two books released in both series, and the Identity series is getting rave reviews. I started thinking, wow…would the Echo boys have gone over as well? Maybe it was a cosmic intervention that sent me down this path. Whatever the reasons, I’m glad it happened. I’m having a stellar year and wouldn’t change a thing.

Lila Munro
http://lilamunro.weebly.com/