Welcome romance author Cris Anson!

I'm so happy to have romance author Cris Anson here today! Not only do we share an EC editor, the awesome Jillian Bell, but I'm always excited to find a great new contemporary author to try.

Check out Cris on her incredible cover for What She Needs! Isn't it beautiful? And her "friend" isn't bad either. ;)

Take it away, Cris!


1) What was your inspiration for What She Needs? 
Part of the inspiration came from real life. I attended my first Romantic Times convention sporting a black eye (I really did run into a door—the cabinet door under the kitchen sink as I swooped down to catch a fumbled flashlight). Because everyone knew I wrote erotic romance, I made light of it by saying, “I didn’t say ‘Yes Master’ quick enough.” Too bad a Dom didn’t come up to me and say, “Then maybe you need a new Master” the way Kurt did to Delia in WHAT SHE NEEDS. After that, the characters started throwing sparks off each other and I just hung on for the ride.

2) Love your cover! It's gorgeous! How did you get a chance to model for it? 
Last October, at Ellora’s Cave first RomantiCon, I was approached by Art Director Syneca and asked if I’d like to do a photo shoot with hunky Angelo. (At the same shoot, Tara Nina posed with Taylor and Eve Vaughn with Rodney as well.) Only one answer there, right? So I spent 15 minutes gazing into Angelo’s eyes as cameras clicked away. Syneca’s skillful use of PhotoShop made me look thirty years younger LOL. BTW, my blog detailing this adventure will be available all this week (July 26-August 1) at Author Island www.AuthorIslandTikiHut.blogspot.com

3) There are lots of "shoulds" and "have tos" in this business. What one piece of advice would you advise an unpublished author NOT to follow?
I’ve heard so many times that you must sit down the same time every day. Write every day. Get into the habit every day. Well, that doesn’t work for me. I can go days (weeks?) without writing then sit down and knock back 25 pages in a weekend. You have to find what works best for you.

4) What keeps you at the keyboard when you're not sure if you should keep going?
If you find the answer to that, please let me know. I’ve spent lots of time just playing spider solitaire because I can’t get revved up to write. But eventually I get angry enough at myself for procrastinating and…see above for the 25-pages comment.

5) Do you have a "dream" genre or book of your heart you'd love to write?
I’m doing it. When I was first published, I wrote romantic suspense (under another name), but my editor kept telling me to tone down my love scenes. When I heard about Ellora’s Cave, I was ecstatic to think I could be as steamy as my muse was urging me to be. So my first book for them was DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS— in Chapter One the heroine dances the veil dance at a masquerade until she’s naked. And it gets even steamier. I love writing for them!

6) What are you working on right now?
At that same fateful RomantiCon last year, I was invited by one of the “Cougar Challenge” authors to join them. So when I was writing WHAT SHE NEEDS, I expected it to be part of that series, but my editor said it didn’t fit the guidelines and she bought it as a stand-alone book. Back to the computer I went, and I wrote a novella entitled ADDING HEAT that my editor just contracted as a Cougar Challenge book. (Check out the unique Tempt the Cougar blog http://temptthecougar.blogspot.com/, where blogs are posted by heroines in the series about their hopes and fears and the younger men they meet—and also post, um, inspirational photos of younger men.)

Now I’m getting all kinds of heat from the playboy photographer who was the hero’s best friend in WHAT SHE NEEDS, so I’ll be writing his story next. While WHAT SHE NEEDS has a steamy-hot ménage a trois, I might take the sequel a little further…depends on the characters’ wishes, of course.

By the way, here’s the blurb for WHAT SHE NEEDS:

Older widow Delia Barnes greets fellow authors before an erotic romance convention sporting a black eye, which she explains away with “I didn’t say ‘Yes, Master’ quick enough.” Sitting at the bar, burned-out ad executive and former Dom Kurt Reinhardt overhears that comment once too often and interrupts to suggest, “Maybe you need a new Master.”


Urged by her friends to accept the younger man’s invitation to learn some D/s basics—hey, an author needs to do her research, right?—Delia joins him to get first-hand experience at being submissive, starting with removing her panties in a corner booth. Later, she learns more than she bargained for when she spends a weekend at Kurt’s home with his eager business partner added to the mix.


But an innocent misstep brings Delia’s world crashing down around her. Can she trust Kurt with her heart…and her life?

You can read an excerpt of WHAT SHE NEEDS and buy the book at: http://www.jasminejade.com/ps-8502-50-what-she-needs.aspx


If you want to know more about RomantiCon 2010, here’s the link: https://www.jasminejade.com/romanticon/index.html


To read more about me and my books, please check out my Website: www.crisanson.com


I also have a MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/crisanson


And an Amazon Profile page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0036LJT7A

Thanks for stopping by! And thank you, Cari, for having me here.

My pleasure, Cris! Great interview and I can't wait to read What She Needs!