Taking Risks with Lauren Dane

Unexpected Desire…

It’s been ten years since clean-cut, sexy-as-hell police officer Todd Keenan had a white-hot fling with Erin Brown, the provocative, wild rocker chick next door. Their power exchange in the bedroom got under his skin. But love wasn’t in the cards just yet…

Now, life has thrown the pair back together. But picking up where they left off is tough, in light of a painful event from Erin’s past. As Todd struggles to earn her trust, their relationship takes an unexpected and exciting turn when Todd’s best friend, Ben, ends up in their bed—and all three are quite satisfied in this relationship without a name. As the passion they share transforms Erin, will it be enough to help her face the evil she thought she had left behind?

Every book I write starts with a seed of an idea. In Relentless I knew I wanted a man who was powerful and in control and pair him with a woman who was fiery and passionate. A woman who challenged his control.  I had such a strong sense of what Roman’s world would look like.

Usually, it works that I build the book around that seed, I flavor the story with that basic core. That seed changes from book to book depending on the conflict, the characters, their story and yes, the world around them.

When I write contemporaries, I don’t need to build a world. The world exists already with its own rules and reality. It’s something I don’t have to develop though I do try to draw it vividly. But with a contemporary, I find myself focusing in much more intensely on the people and the conflict. It’s a chance for me to write a different kind of story, which I enjoy a great deal.

And yet, what doesn’t change, from book to book, is whatever that seed was that drew me into the story idea to start with.

With Laid Bare, Erin was the key.  I saw her on stage, the scene which opens the book. I wanted her to be a woman who owned her power, who was not afraid of what she wanted and what made her happy. She’s a strong woman. Ambitious.

When the book opens she’s young and totally in control of her destiny. She believes Todd is part of that destiny and they engage in a brief but very intense love affair. An affair she ends because he is not ready to accept who he is and what he likes and she doesn’t have the desire to be anyone’s excuse or dark secret.

When they meet again, a decade later, she’s still strong and unafraid of her desires, but something horrible  has happened to her and she’s still reeling from it. Todd on the other hand, has finally owned his need to dominate women sexually and he’s determined not to blow it with Erin again.

The pacing of the story, originally, had its own speed and trajectory. Until Ben made his first appearance in the book and then he did not want to let go!

With a ménage, I feel it’s incredibly important to develop each character fully (as many ménages tend to have heroes who are pretty much the same guy, or worse, one really well developed hero and the other is a shadow with a penis).  From word one, Ben felt very three dimensional to me. He loved Erin and he loved Todd and I fought that. I tried to write a threesome scene, intending it to be a one time thing. Ha!

In the end, Ben was so big and bold on the page, even as he was the quieter of the two men, the more calm and accepting of the situation. He wanted to be in the story and after I’d written and deleted about 15K words back and forth trying to find a way to include him, I finally just gave in and let the book be a ménage.

In the end, I think it works. It’s unexpected for all three characters, just as unexpected as it was for me. The pacing is different than I’ve done in ménages before, but again, I like how it worked out. It was totally unplanned and yet, after I let it happen, it felt absolutely natural for the flow of the story.

I’m rambling I know. It’s one of my biggest crimes, LOL. But I suppose for me, the moral of the story is that sometimes you need to rein your characters in and keep them from going off on a frolic with your book. But other times, other times you listen to your book and yourself and you take a risk. In the end, that I took a risk and it worked out makes me more confident as a writer, helps me to remember this is still a craft I need to learn and improve on. I’m pleased by that. By the fact that I can still learn and grow.

I hope you all enjoy Laid Bare as much as I enjoyed turning that sucker in to my editor!

–Lauren

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