Marissa Clarke | Looking Over My Shoulder

See the title of this post? I’m not talking about me looking over my shoulder. I’m talking about other people looking over my shoulder. When I wrote only young adult novels, it never bothered me. Now that I’m writing romance for adults, it does. Here’s a few situations that illustrate why:

1. The kid: I was right in the middle of writing a steamier scene—not crazy, just hot—and my middle teen walked up behind me to ask me a question…and gasped.

“Mom!” she said. “At your age, you can hurt yourself just writing about that kind of thing.”

Ah, youth. My response regarding age and practice-makes-perfect sent her fleeing from the room yelling, “TMI!”

2. The husband: My man has a great sense of humor. Too great, maybe. His favorite thing is to find a sex scene and read it out loud. Not only mine, but random romances in the store. He’ll pick one up, turn to the halfway point, and read out loud—and I mean LOUD. The reaction of people in the store is awesome and terrifying at the same time.

3. The total stranger: On an airplane, I was working on a section from Sleeping with the Boss that followed a scene in which the heroine and hero engage in heavy contact up against the heroine’s front door. She has a fun sense of humor and calls things silly names. From that point on in the book, she thinks about the front door encounter as the “door-gasm.” So, while I’m churning away on this scene, a guy on the plane sitting across the aisle diagonally behind me evidently had bionic vision, because he almost shouted “Hey, you spelled it wrong.” I turned and gave a sick smile (the only kind I could conjure while horrified). “Really,” he said, even louder. “Orgasm is spelled o-r-g-a-s-m.”

It was a long flight.

My takeaway from these experiences is that I’m always looking over my shoulder to see who’s looking over mine. Honestly, it makes writing romance even more fun!

Thank you so much for having me on Fresh Fiction today, and thank you to all the readers who are new to my work, and those who have followed me across genres.

Are you hot for paranormal romance? Check out LOVE ME TO DEATH by Marissa Clarke!

Medical research scientist Elena Arcos has always lived her life under the radar. When she is shot in a convenience store robbery, Elena finds herself rocketed into supernatural insanity courtesy of a sexy immortal law enforcer. He’s convinced she’s some kind of freaky half-vampire thing and that her deceased dad was the real deal: a blood sucking monster. Yeah, right.

Nikolai Itzov never anticipated battling the urge to kiss the offspring of his father’s murderer. As a Slayer, an elite law enforcer descended from Azrael himself, his orders from the Underveil General are clear: Kill her or die.

Nikolai and Elena find themselves in a life and death battle to stop a plot designed to lift the Underveil and enslave humans. With her analytical mind and his centuries of training, they might be able to foil the plot with their lives and maybe their hearts intact. But in order to succeed, he must help her become the very thing he hates the most: an Undead.

Read Fresh Fiction's review of LOVE ME TO DEATH!