Today we welcome Lucy V. Morgan to Book Lovers Inc. Lucy is here to discuss her latest release, The Chairman of the Whored, an erotic tale of passion and self-discovery. There’s also a giveaway, so be sure to read through the interview for your chance to  win.

BLI: Hi Lucy, welcome to Book Lovers Inc! Can you please tell us a bit about yourself?

Hello, and thank you for having me 🙂

I’m from England. I like to bake. I like the little, beautiful, terrible things about people, the stuff lots of people never notice. All three things inform my stories.

BLI: Describe a typical day of writing? Are you a planner or pantser?

Lucy: A planner—I suck with the pantsing. I drop my daughter off at school, run a few errands, do my admin and probably do some editing work. I tend to write in the evenings—I need silence, and preferably good scented candles (not that I’m high maintenance or anything, ahem). Somewhere in the middle of all that will be friends, and cooking. And panicking over a deadline.

BLI: What do you think is the difference between a reader and a real Book Lover?

Lucy: A book lover is that person who, at 9am, has huge black bags around their eyes and can’t stop yawning, because despite the fact that they had to be up at seven, they HAD to finish that book. They suffer for their art, book lovers 🙂 I’m certainly one of them.

BLI: You pen the Whored series, an erotica series, the 1st book of which Chairman of the Whored was released in February with the 2nd book The Whored’s Prayer to be released in June. Can you tell our readers a bit about this series, what inspired it, what is its concept?

Lucy: I was inspired by feeling what, I’ve learned, a lot of girls in their twenties feel: this melancholy that we didn’t embrace the sexual side of ourselves sooner (whether that means any kind of sex, or a more experimental kind). Leila, my protagonist, has bottled up this hungry side of herself for so long—has separated it, even given it a different name—that it ends up clawing its way out. She works as a tax lawyer and has to be very careful about her professional reputation, and in the end, she uses debt as an excuse to become a high-class prostitute, as if the arrangement somehow sanitises her desires. But it doesn’t.

BLI: It is quite risqué to have your heroine a prostitute by choice, what made you decide to explore this idea and what were the challenges/hardships of it?

Lucy: I was more interested in what happens after you’ve been a prostitute, when I got down to it. I didn’t want to perpetuate the ‘happy hooker’ stereotype because it’s so much more complex than that. I wanted to explore what happens to a woman who leaves her prostitute persona behind; who thinks she’s shed it, when of course, she hasn’t. So I gave Leila two very different men who both knew her ‘dirty’ secret, and let them play with her while she tries to escape. I knew right away I couldn’t make it a traditional romance, but I had a lot of fun working around that.

BLI: Can you tell our readers what they can expect of the series and of Chairman of the Whored?

Lucy: A reader recently described my work as “…hot and uncomfortable and stylish and genuine and awful and well-characterized and very, very good.” Some of that is obviously subjective, but I write intense stories that often explore awkward emotions and secrets. Grimm fairy tales, if you will.

BLI: Would you like to introduce the hero(es) and heroine to our readers?

Lucy: I think it’d be misleading to call them heroes and heroines, to be honest. But here they are:

Leila Vaughn is twenty five, and training to be a tax lawyer at a prestigious firm in London. She’s been moonlighting as a call girl for almost a year, and is preparing to quit after her last few jobs.

Joseph Merchant is a senior partner, and Leila’s boss. He’s a lot more familiar with call girls than he might admit to in the boardroom, and has a rather erotic/dubious preoccupation with knives.

Matt Gordon is Leila’s fellow trainee, and a country boy thrown into the city. He begins as her friend and ends up wanting to be a lot more, but he’s utterly consumed by the implications of her evening job.

BLI: Can you summarize Chairman of the Whored for us twitterstyle (140 characters or less)?

Lucy: Dark. Debauched. Delicious. Are you ready to go under his knife?

BLI: Now can you tell us 3 reasons why people should read Chairman of the Whored ?

Lucy:
1) The seriously hot, uncomfortable menage scene.
2) It will make readers question their sexual selves (in an insightful way, perhaps).
3) Aidan, Leila’s fellow escort and work partner. He’s blunt, cynical, clever, redheaded and completely hot.

BLI: Can you tell us any behind the scenes secret related to Chairman of the Whored? (either to the writing process, or some tidbit about the characters that didn’t end up in the final version)

Lucy: Both novels were originally an online serial, online from 2009-2010. I didn’t cut anything important at all, but I edited the prose for finesse, and added a few big scenes. I was lucky as the work had a natural split which made it perfect for two novels.

I’ve written a few little canon short stories with the characters too, and they’ll go up on my website in June, after the release of The Whored’s Prayer. The novels have a big ensemble cast, and it seemed a shame not to give a few their own stories—though there wasn’t enough for them to have individual novels.

BLI: You are an erotica/erotic romance author. Why did this subgenre appeal to you, what attracted you to erotica? And do you remember how you discovered it?

Lucy: I think above all, I write contemporary fiction. The Whored novels are erotica because Leila’s journey is a very sexual one; it’s a huge part of her identity (far more so than many would assume of a woman, yet I think it’s true for so many of us). I’m often told I don’t really write romance, and that’s a fair point. I rarely structure my stories as romances—possibly because the bits of relationships I find most interesting aren’t the really romantic bits.

I’m not sure when I discovered erotica to be exact—I was a very eclectic reader, growing up. I definitely scouted out a bit of Literotica on occasion though, ahem!

BLI: Erotica has many sub-subgenres and categories. Which ones do you explore in your stories and why those? What makes them exciting?

Lucy: I explore some elements of BDSM because I think the pleasure/pain and dom/sub dichotomies are present in the lives of “vanilla” people far more than might be apparent. I don’t write “lifestyle” BDSM, but you can expect a little fear and pain in the Whored novels because it’s where the characters really find themselves.

I also explore women’s relationships with each other in terms of bisexuality, a little (especially in The Whored’s Prayer). Leila has a very conflicted relationship with her fellow females, especially given the male-dominated environment she works in.

Menage is another area I’m interested in. I wanted to write about the aftermath of one: the jealousy, the misunderstandings, the murky motivation for engaging in the act in the first place.

BLI: What shall we expect from you, what is next on your schedule? Will there be more books in the Whored series?

Lucy: I don’t know if there will be any more Whored books; it will very much depend on how The Whored’s Prayer does on release. I’m currently finishing off OLLY HARRIS: WEDDING WRECKER which is the sequel to my novella, BEAUTIFUL MESS. It’s a much lighter book; a bit like chick lit with a guy, I suppose. Those awkward emotions are still there, but they’re tempered with humour.

I’m also finishing off a TV script, and a young adult novel. I’ll most likely have some more erotica news by the end of the year (I hope!).

BLI: Can you share with us some little secret trivia, something that not many people know about you?

Lucy: Despite the fact that I’m 28, there’s still nothing quite like hiding behind the door and them jumping out to screech “DINOSAUR ATTACK!” at your mother.
Cough!

BLI: LOL I love the Dinosaur Attack idea, sadly my mom is easily scared, so she would have a heart attack and not talk to me for weeks, but I think I’ll do this to my sisters when they are visiting, thanks for the tip 😉 lol

Lucy: Once, with my brother, I crept up on my sister in a supermarket–we were pretending to be velociraptors. We got a lot of funny looks from customers…possibly because we’re grown-ups. (This is absolutely something that Olly Harris would do).

BLI: As a lawyer it was interesting for me to read about Leila and Matt’s day job, the everdays of a tax lawyer and found it quite similar to my workdays. Are you/were you a lawyer or working in a law firm?

Lucy: I’m not a lawyer–my background is in English Lit–but I did an awful lot of research, and then everything was proofread by friends who were lawyers in London. I’m really pleased that it comes across as realistic though; I’m still getting the emails from The Lawyer, heh! (Still reading them, too).

BLI: Can you tell readers a bit more about The Whored’s Prayer, whose story is it? Any supporting character we got to meet in Chairman of the Whored?

Lucy: The Whored’s Prayer is the second cycle of Leila’s story, and offers a lot more in the way of closure, I think. But this time, we put the Chairman of the Whored on the cover (and he suits it rather well, I think!). A third book would be about Leila’s work mate, Aidan, if I were to do it. He has a lot of backstory.

BLI: Would you like to tell readers a bit more about your other works, to show them how wide and varied your writing is (a bit more about the “chick lit wwith the guy”)?

Lucy: Olly Harris: Wedding Wrecker is my next release after The Whored’s Prayer, and it’s about a guy in his mid-twenties who because famous on YouTube by doing vampire and werewolf parodies. Now he’s got a reality TV show with his parody partner, Linc. Linc is getting married, but wants it all to be private rather than featured on their show…but their power-hungry agent isn’t having any of it. So Olly steps in and offers to plan the wedding as the show’s concept, in order to let his friends have some peace from the media. It doesn’t quite go to plan, though. He’s not really a wedding sort of person (he can compose a brilliant song, but can barely make toast).

BLI: The cover of Chairman of the Whored and the Whored’s Prayer are both very elegant and sensual, bravo! Did you take part in the cover creation/selection process?

Lucy: Thank you! My publisher always asks authors what they’d like on their covers, but I just threw a bunch of concepts at them and none were anything like the finished product. I can’t take any credit for my covers, but I love how atmospheric they are.

Some readers have said they took issue with both Matt and Joseph in Chairman of the Whored, but ended up wanting to read about them anyway. So I’d like to know what readers expect from male love interests in erotica (as opposed to romance); whether they’re happy for them to have faults, and at what point they class a guy as irredeemable.

Book #1 in the WHORED series.

Dark. Debauched. Delicious. Is she ready to go under his knife?

Leila Vaughn is a tax lawyer at a prestigious London law firm. And a whore. Leila didn’t take the night job just to pay off her debts–an affair with an older man once stirred a pit of darker desires. Now her year as an escort is almost over, she’s ready to lock up her alter-ego, Charlotte, and be normal once again.

What’s bad is that her colleague, Matt, just caught her out.

What’s worse is that their boss, Joseph, is with him.

Matt wants to rescue Leila. She should want what he does–monogamy and escape from the city–if she’s going to be normal, right? But Joseph is as familiar with the slippery world of escorting as she is, and that makes him hard to resist. In London‘s tightest circles, they call him the Chairman of the Whored. Bold, sharp and ruthless, he’s everything that Leila is trying not to be…so why can’t she say no to him?

Three jobs left before she pays off her debt. Two men playing games she can’t handle. One alter-ego, banging against the mirror. In a dark hotel room, the glass is about to break…

Buy at: Amazon – Barnes and Noble

About the author:

Lucy writes sharp contemporary fiction, usually with a liberal splatter of filth. She is a Lyrical Press author.

Her upcoming series, encompassing CHAIRMAN OF THE WHORED and THE WHORED’S PRAYER, features slick London lawyers with a penchant for sensual violence. It’s definitely on the darker side. BEAUTIFUL MESS, her current release, is a snarky, sexy friends-to-lovers romp.

Lucy is currently working on new novels, and is developing a paranormal television series with producers (think The Vampire Diaries meets The 4400).

She lives at a pub in England, which may or may not explain her perverse sense of humor. When not torturing her characters, she dabbles in the dark arts of baking and dancing. She is still trying to kick her dirty Pepsi habit.

Website | Twitter |  Goodreads

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~*~*Giveaway*~*~

Lucy has generously offered an ebook copy of Chairman of the Whored to a lucky commenter!

All you have to do is answer Lucy’s question: what do you expect from male love interests in erotica (as opposed to romance)? Are you happy for them to have faults, and at what point do you class a guy as irredeemable?

(You can read our full giveaway policy here)

Please be sure to include a valid email address in the comment form (need not be in the actual body of the comment).

This giveaway is open to all!

Giveaway ends on Saturday, June 2nd, 2012; we will announce the winner on Sunday.

Good luck!

About Stella

Stella is a proud bookaholic and a self-taught multilinguist in training. Besides reading, her other great passions are travelling and baking. When she is not globetrotting she lives in sunny Budapest, where she loves to spend her free time preparing (and feasting on) delicious cookies or devouring equally yummy books. Her favourite genres are urban fantasy and romance and she couldn't live without her daily dose of sunshine. Besides being the Latin Lover on BLI Stella also blogs about books and a bookish life on Ex Libris.

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