Spotlight on Lila Munro (+Giveaway)

I’m thrilled to welcome one of the auto-buy authors that I enjoy reading over and over again. I really love to be swept-up into her stories and totally sucked under until the last word is read.

Welcome, Ms. Lila Munro!

First I’d like to thank Kacey for having me by today. It’s a joy and pleasure to be here and I hope to get acquainted with a few new friends and have a bit of chat through comments throughout the day.

When Kacey sent me some idea of what she’d like to see in a post for today, I have to tell you, I was most happy. The questions she posed were all things I enjoy talking about and they came in three. Three seems to be a magic number. Lots of things come in threes, good and bad. In my family, births are usually in threes, in fact, me and two of my cousins were born within weeks of each other. The bad, usually when someone passes away in our family, we all start wondering who’s next, death also runs in threes. I have a priest that gives his homily according to three points. Three seems to be a pattern in my life and I thought it was the norm and pattern for series to come in threes as well…

Until I met Dante. Master and commander of my new release, Assumed Master. He broke my mold and shattered my illusion that the Identity series would end with book three, Assumed Identity. It was him and Mason’s wife Julie that were the inspiration for writing Assumed Master. It seemed that after seventy thousand plus words, Julie’s story wasn’t complete and Dante’s is directly related to hers. So it was with trepidation and humble heart I penned his tale, and thought that would be it. Until Allen started chattering. Book five is now in the works, Assumed Calling…will three ever come home again?

With so many stories going on and so many issues for my characters, research became, and still is, a daily activity. You see, I believe that’s what an author simply must do for their readers in the BDSM genre. Research and know the subject matter about which they write. It’s not just a courtesy. It’s a professional obligation as far as I’m concerned. And I believe it’s particularly important in the genre I write. After much discussion with my friends that practice these lifestyles about which I write, I made it my mission to get it correct. It seems what an author must know about the world of BDSM goes far past what must be known to write a standard contemporary. Why? Because this world is so complex. The relationships are more mental than physical in most instances and the hows and whats and whys are as vast as the ocean, most of the interpretation of where a person falls across the less than vanilla line subjective. I’ve written quite a bit on blogs around the cyber circuit about this professional obligation and how I don’t intend to allow myself to fall short. If I don’t understand it, I ask. If I’m unsure, I don’t write it. If it seems unsafe, it gets cut. Writing in the BDSM world can sometimes be a walk along a tight rope.

There are basically three schools of practice, although I’m not sure some writers distinguish and know the difference or even realize where they fall. There are those that write it like a BDSM primer, almost as if they’ve used a check sheet…whip, check, domination/submission words several times, check, St. Andrew’s cross, check, dichotomy, check…I refuse to fall into this category. There is the school of the sex is the only dynamic between the couples. In other words, the emotional aspects are missing and it would seem these folks have no lives except to serve each other with kinky sex.

There are no jobs, there is no outside world, no interaction with vanilla people. Not where I want to be. I write realmantica…how could things not be real?   Then there is the theory that these are everyday individuals living everyday lives. Many of them have children, most have jobs. Not everyone is an uber-rich perfect person. The fact that they live less than vanilla lives is a “side-issue.” This is the school of thought I’ve committed to. If I took out the sex and/or the kink, I would still have a rock solid romance. I don’t necessarily make the issue of their lifestyle choice the forefront of the story. I also mix/match sexual preferences and everyone manages to live in harmony on my pages. I write m/f, m/m, and ménage and sometimes they all live in one book. Together. Not in pigeon holes.

Was there anything that surprised me when I wrote Assumed Identity? Plenty. The fact that I wrote it was surprise enough actually, but then Dante and Blake’s children became an integral part of the plot. Almost a sub-plot on its own really, as I realized that plenty of people that live in full-time relationships do have children and I began to explore how that worked exactly. How much did the children know? How do you hide your toys when they get old enough to know what they are and what they’re used for? When is the appropriate time to talk to them about it all? I’ve not often seen a BDSM involve children that weren’t infants. The twins in Assumed Master are teens, perfectly old enough to suspect Mom, Dad, and Dad are doing more in that room in the basement than playing foosball. This aspect made the story very, very real and although it surprised me I was grateful for it and enjoyed weaving it into the story.

Although I practice discretion with my sources, I’d like to give them a little shout out today and thank them for helping me with all that research and talking to me about how they deal with their older children. You know who you are and are much appreciated. J

Thanks again, Kacey, for having me over!

~~Lila Munro

Assumed Master

by Lila Munro

Book 4: Identity Series

 We may be born to the lifestyle.

Julie Stevens and Dante Larson always knew their tastes were a bit more eccentric than those of the average person, but acknowledgement of their chosen paths came at different times. While their lives have run parallel for the last twenty years, destiny always came knocking at the wrong time. Julie was a closeted edge player and before Dante could pull her free of her fears, Mason came along and dragged her kicking and screaming from her self-inflicted darkness, leaving Dante wanting. Although Dante’s been in love with Julie since the day he first laid eyes on her, he's happily married to Blake. But the tides are turning.

But Lady Fate dictates how it should be lived…

Still mourning the death of the only Master she’s ever known, Julie finds herself forced to live with the one man she’s been terrified of for years, Dante. While she has to admit something between them feels right, just as many things feel very, very wrong, starting with the fact he’s married to her gay best friend. Before she even has time to sort out her current predicament, another man catches Julie's attention. But after losing her mother, her sister, and her husband, can Julie come to grips with the fact that Keegan McKettrick jumps out of perfectly good helicopters for a living, rescue diving for the Coast Guard? And where exactly does that leave Dante, who knows for sure he needs a woman to complete his unconventional marriage? Quite frankly, he's tired of waiting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpt:

“Shhhh…Love, it’s okay. I know. I understand. I suspect Mason will have quite a grip on you for quite a while in that respect, and I get it. I wouldn’t expect anything less.” He stood and pulled her to her feet, turned the water off, then moved to the vanity where he retrieved another towel and started squeezing water from her hair with it. “But you need that anchor. Do you understand that? You need to get settled into a routine. It’ll help bring you back center.”

“I know,” Julie whispered.

She didn’t know how this would ever work. Dante wasn’t the emotional Master that Mason had been. He was more a physical Dom and very stringent. That he was being so easy on her right now defied reason. That was almost more confusing than being here to begin with. If anything, she’d have expected Dante to turn her over his knee immediately for back talking and shutting him out.

“Let’s just use Sir for now,” Dante told her, tossing the wet towel onto the hamper. “Yes?”

“Yes,” she said, still clutching the towel around her middle and peering up at their shared reflection in the foggy mirror.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, Sir.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lila’s Bio and Links:

Lila Munro currently resides on the coast of North Carolina with her husband and their two four-legged kids. She’s a military wife with an empty nest and takes much of her inspiration for her heroes from the marines she’s lived around for the past fifteen years. Coining the term realmantica, she strives to produce quality romance in a realistic setting. Her genre of choice is contemporary romance that spans everything from the sensual to BDSM and ménage. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading everything she can get her hands on, trips to the museum and aquarium, taking field research trips, and soaking up the sun on the nearby beaches. Her works include The Executive Officer’s Wife, Bound By Trust, Destiny’s Fire, Salvation, Three for Keeps, the Force Recon series, the Slower Lower series, and the Identity series. She’s a member in good standing of RWA and Passionate Ink. Currently she’s working on sequels to several series to be released throughout 2012. And has a brand new line scheduled for winter 2012-13.

Ms. Munro loves to hear from her readers and can be contacted via her website http://realmanticmoments.blogspot.com  or through Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Lila_Munro You can also contact her via email at lilasromance@gmail.com

 The other titles in the Identity series so far...

 

 Lila will be giving away a $25 Amazon GC to one randomly drawn commenter during the tour.  Please leave a comment or question for Lila (and your e-mail address) on this post to be entered in the giveaway. Click HERE for the complete tour schedule. The more tour stops you comment on, the better your chances of winning. Good luck!