Please help me welcome one of my FAVORITE m/m authors, Laura Baumbach! Some of you already may know that she and I are in The Bite Before Christmas anthology (Loose Id) together
Laura Baumbach
Zodiac sign: Aquarius
Chinese zodiac: The Sheep, but I don’;t believe it. Shy? Me? lol!
Favorite food:Well-done steak with A-1 sauce!
When I’m not writing juicy m/m erotic romance I’m…
Taking care of my husband, kids, house and day job which is really a night job. I’m an emergency trauma nurse on the off-shifts at the local hospital. Easier on the kidlets if I’m home evenings and such. I also run a promotions group called Manloveromance.com and I own a gay erotic romance and ficiton Publishing house, MLR Press, LLC. All of it keeps me hopping! If I get free time, I like the movies and crocheting, but not at the same time.
Questions:
Sedonia: Hi Laura. Thanks so much for being a guest on my blog. I’m so happy you’re here.
Laura: Thank you for inviting me, Sedonia. It’s an honor.
Sedonia: What draws you to write M/M erotic romance?
Laura: Don’t really know. It’s one of those things you don’t need to spend time analysing. It just is. It calls to me. It’s what comes out of my creative brain and fingertips on to the keyboard. I don’t have to think about what I’ll write or decided if its going to be M/M or M/F, it is just always M/M.
Sedonia: Where do you draw your inspiration from for you characters and settings?
Laura: Some of it is from the medical settings I’ve worked in for years. Some of it is from adventures I had in my younger days. I always try to slip a sex scene from my own adventures in to each story. Readers have to guess which ones they are! lol. A lot of it comes from having a rich and unbridled imagination. I love writing unknown worlds where aliens, vampires and werewolves roam. I can make my own rules and create entire worlds. It’s the best.
Sedonia: It’s very exciting that you began your own erotic romance publisher. Can you tell readers about MLR Press? How is that going?
Laura: MLR Press, LLC is the result of my being unhappy and impatient with the printing world. The genre of M/M erotic romance and fiction is being pushed to the back of the bus. There are large numbers of readers asking for it, but it has a bias against it by a big segment of the print publishing world and readers are being denied access to what they want. Ebook publishers are breaking down some walls and I hope to help that effort out by adding my support and talents to making the genre more available and providing the best in it I can find to nurture. It’s been an exciting year and I hope I’m making headway. It’s all about getting your name out there so readers know you exist. You can see us and all we have to offer plus the coming books here:
http://www.mlrpress.com
Sedonia: Oooh, I see you have a sequel coming out to Out There in the Night. I LOVED that book! Adam and Conor are so hot together.
Laura: Thank you. It’s one of my favorites, too.
Sedonia: Can you talk about the first one and tell us a bit about the sequel?
The first one came about because I wanted to create my first werewolf. I had written vampires before and I wanted to try putting a different spin on an old myth. I wanted to make them more than the mindless savage beasts. So I did a little research and found a Native American belief that didn’t cast them out as demons or beasts. I built a whole world around that including going so far to contact a university that taught the language of the tribe I was writing about to find an appropriate native word for an endearment to put in the story. The people at the university were very kind and helpful. it was fun. The story uses a lot of my medical background as well. I know nurses who have lived a few months in Alaska with an agency like Doctors without Borders. They were a great help in making the book real for me by providing descriptions and realism.
The sequel is because I can never let my characters go. They become part of my family, like cousins I want to visit every year and find out what they’ve been up to since I last saw them. I want to revisit Adam and Connor, show how their relationship is working out, the bumps in the road they face and the dangers of life in the wilderness. Plus a lot of readers want to know more about Greg and Mitch, secondary characters that shoved their way into the spotlight a bit more than intended in the original story! But hey, you have to let the story flow and the character tell their story.
Sedonia: I definitely want to read this. Mitch was hot! (I know that’s my man’s name so it has that little extra something) however, you really write the most amazing sex scenes!
And please, give a little teaser too.
Laura: I would if I could but it’s all a WIP yet, barley more than a rough outline. I have two other novels to complete before this one, Genetic Snare and Mexican Heat.
Sedonia: Darn! Oh, well. I’m sure there are plenty of other juicy excerpts for readers on your site.
Sedonia: Is there anything you’d like to share that I didn’t ask?
Laura: I’m working on a number of short stories slated to be released in anthologies this next year as well. A new edition of our vampire Blood series with Angela Fiddler, a Hostage anthology with Josh Lanyon and Sarah Black, Wet Skin with William Maltese, Red with Victor J. Banis and other, and of course, my already mentioned novels. I plan on being very, very busy all year long.
Sedonia: Awesome! Where can readers find you and your books on the web?
Laura: My personal authro site can be seen here: http://www.laurabaumbach.com
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Sedonia: Thanks so much Laura!
Laura: Thank you for hosting this blog, Sedonia.