Today I was lucky enough to nab an interview with Sherri Hayes, author of the romance and erotic romance novels, Hidden Threat; Slave (Finding Anna Book 1); Need (Finding Anna Book 2), Behind Closed Doors (A Daniels Brothers’ Novel); Red Zone (A Daniels Brothers’ Novel), and a short story, A Christmas Proposal.

Hayes lives in central Ohio with her husband and three cats. Her love of books came from her mother, who read to her as a child. While stories have been floating around in Hayes’ head for as long as she can remember, she didn’t begin writing them down until she turned thirty.

When not writing, Hayes can usually be found helping her husband in his woodworking shop.

Q: You write both romance and erotic romance? How do you differentiate between the two? And while writing, does a book ever slide into the other category without your prompting?  

A: That’s an interesting question. Most of it’s about mindset. I know going into writing the story which genre it’s going to be. The thing is, I don’t really write all that differently in one than I do the other. The only difference is that the erotic romance has a little more detail when it comes to the sex scenes. Not much else changes. I’m still writing stories driven by the emotional connection of my characters. I doubt that will ever change.

Q: Slave and Need are part of a series. What are the challenges of writing a sequel? The advantages?

A: The biggest challenge of writing a series is keeping your facts and timeline straight from one book to the next. With every book it becomes more difficult purely because of the amount of information I have to keep track of. To help me with that, my beta goes through and creates a timeline for each book to make sure I’m not talking about summer weather in the middle of winter. 😉

Q: Do you ever embarrass yourself while writing erotica? Do you ever read over what you’ve written and think, ‘Oh my God, I wrote that?’

A: For me, reading over what I wrote doesn’t typically bother me. It’s when other people read it out loud that it tends to make me blush. Not sure why that is, but there you go.

Q: Why romance? And, more importantly, why erotic romance?

A: I’ve always loved reading romance. As a pre-teen I used to read from the collection called Sweet Dreams. They were kind of like Harlequin’s for twelve to sixteen year olds. It just skyrocketed from there. Writing what I enjoyed reading made sense. Writing my erotic romance series is something I sort of fell into just like with my writing. I got an idea to write a BDSM romance, and that is difficult to do without delving into the erotic.

Q: Where do your ideas come from? 

A: My ideas come from everywhere. I’ve gotten story ideas from book covers, the news, aspects of other stories I’ve read, songs on the radio…you get the idea.

Q: Have you always wanted to be a writer, and if so, when did this knowledge hit?

A: No. Not at all. Being a writer wasn’t even on my radar until after my first book, Hidden Threat, was published and the positive reviews began to come in. Sometimes, I still have to pinch myself to make sure its real—even after five books.

Q: What do you do when you’re not writing?

A: I still love to read romance novels when I get the chance. Other than that, I usually spend what downtime I have with my husband.

Q: What’s up next in your writing life?

A: Currently, we are at the tail end of editing the third book in my Finding Anna Series, Truth. That book will be out July 25^th. I’m also in the process of writing the fourth book in that particular series, which will most likely be released beginning of 2014.

Connect with Hayes at Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

Purchase Hayes’ books at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble and TWCS.