SR: How long had you been writing before you were published?

Angela: Well, I started writing at age nine, and I was first published in comics in 1987. So I was 26.

SR: Did you start out writing erotica?

Angela: No, I started out writing hard science fiction comic books, oddly enough.

SR: How did you get started writing erotica?

Angela: My husband was in the Navy on deployment. We hadn't been married very long, and he was at sea and lonely. So I wrote my first erotic story for him. He said he stood outside on the fantail of the destroyer and read it, and watched the sea boil! LOL!

SR: How did you end up writing for Red Sage?

Angela: I went to the Moonlight and Magnolias conference in Atlanta in 1995 or so, and saw a flyer saying Red Sage was looking for people to write erotic novellas. I had a story I'd written about a futuristic pirate captain, strictly for my own amusement, so I took that idea, completely transformed it, and wrote "Roarke's Prisoner." Alexandria Kendall called me maybe two weeks after I sent it in and said, "Are you sure you're not an alien? Because this zero-gravity oral sex scene sounds like you wrote it from experience!" It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I've published four novellas with her since then.

SR: How does Red Sage compare with other publishers that you've worked with?

Angela: Alex is incredibly supportive, and she's always been willing to bend over backward to help me in any way I need. That includes publishing my first novel when I was fretting over selling it! She's a very dear friend.

SR: What do you enjoy the most about writing erotica?

Angela: Research. Heh heh heh.

No, seriously, I love dreaming up wonderfully sexy men who do all kinds of wicked, creative things in bed. Erotica is really fun to write. You can just cut loose with it and have a ball. It doesn't need to be grim or serious or profound. It's just fun.

SR: How long have you been writing? Have you written anything else besides erotic romance?

Angela: OK, I'm turning 41 in December, and I've been writing since I was nine ... Nope. Not doing the math. Just too depressing.

Anyway, yes, I write other stuff. At the moment I'm considering doing a romantic suspense. My husband is a cop and I'm a reporter, so God knows I could write novels about police work in small southern towns for years.

SR: How do you get your ideas?

Angela: A truly lecherous mind. Also I sit back and think, "What have I not done that I'd really like to do? What could I just have a ton of fun with?" Because you can't write 400 pages of ANYTHING unless you enjoy it.

Sometimes I'll see a movie and think, "Boy, I'd like to play with something like that." "A Candidate for the Kiss," for example, was inspired by a James Bond movie. I thought, "What if James Bond was a vampire? And not just any vampire, but a 200-year-old American vampire who got his start as a spy during the American Revolution?" That was a really fun idea. The only thing is, I could have done much more with it than there was room to do in a novella.

SR: What attracts you to vampires?

Angela: I love dark and dangerous heroes, and they just don't come any more dark and dangerous than a vampire. Here you've got somebody who's gorgeous and powerful, and who's spent the past 200 years seducing women for a living. What's not to like?

SR: You are writing Red Sage's first full length novel. Could you tell us a bit about it and how it came about?

Angela: Well, it actually started out as a straight paranormal. I have always wanted to do a full-length vampire novel, but the market, if you'll pardon the expression, has always sucked. Then various people started doing really well with them and I decided to give it a shot. I mentioned I was working on the book, FOREVER KISS, to Alexandria Kendall, and she said, "I've been thinking about publishing a full-length novel. Why don't I do yours?" So I sent it to her.

Thing was, THE FOREVER KISS wasn't an erotic novel, and Red Sage publishes erotic romance. In fact, it was almost straight adventure. So I had to go back in and gut something like 150 pages of the book, and totally rewrite the rest. It's been an enormous project that's taken much longer than I expected. We originally had agreed informally to publish it in December of this year. That, obviously, is not going to happen.

However, THE FOREVER KISS is incredibly hot now. I wrote this scene with the hero making love to the heroine across the trunk of a Lexus that....Ahem.

Anyway, the hero is a former Texas Ranger who is in a battle to the death with his vampire master, an 800-year-old medieval knight who is a sadistic creep. To defeat him, Cole needs to turn my heroine into a vampire. But Valerie Chase has an ugly history with Cole and his enemy -- the villain murdered her parents -- and she's not interested in becoming a vampire. So he kidnaps her. The story also involves the ghost of his 13-year-old sister, sword fights, and a lot of sex. In other words, fun stuff.

SR: Do you have an overarching vampire mythology or universe that applies to all of your vampire stories?

Angela: It's evolved over the years. Initially anybody could become a vampire, but now it's only a small fraction of the population called the Kith that can be changed.

SR: What can we expect from you in the future? Will there be any other titillating little offerings like Bodice Rippers?

Angela: Oh, yeah. In fact, I'm collaborating on a two-novella anthology with another writer, Diane Whiteside. The book will be called CAPTIVE DREAMS; I'm writing one novella, and Diane is writing the other.

It involves two sisters, one an SF writer, the other a romance writer. They're kidnapped by the heroes of their current books, who jump across dimensions to get at them. Seems the heroes are tired of being, respectively, bitten by giant snakes and tortured by aliens. And besides, the heroine of my book plans to kill off her hero, so he wants to bring her back to his dimension so she can't hurt him. Ellora's Cave is publishing it. Should be wonderful fun. I can't wait to write it.