Educating Eva by Bethany Michaels

Bethany Michaels is a born and bred Hoosier recently transplanted in the South. While she loves her adopted city of Nashville, Tennessee, she still misses the winter snow…sometimes. Bethany lives with her husband and four small children and squeezes in writing between nights as a full-time transportation planner and days as a full time mom. When she’s not writing, working or taking care of her family she likes to…sleep.

Nicole: Welcome Bethany! It's so nice to have you here today! Please tell us about your story Educating Eva in Red Sage Secrets Volume 23, Secret Desires.

Bethany Michaels: Striving to make her mark as a scholar, Eva Blakely attends an infamous house party to research the “Mating Rituals of the Human Male.” The notorious rake Aidan Worthington is only too happy to provide her with all the “research” she can handle. Dare she accept his offer?

Educating Eva was my first stab at an erotic romance and my first historical. I love Regency romance and had a ball putting an erotic spin on it.

Nicole: I'm a major fan of historicals so I can't wait to read this! Do you have a review you can share with us?

Bethany: Here's one from JERR. “Having read most of the Secrets anthologies, I had high hopes for this one and was not disappointed. Exotic new worlds, vampires, witches, erotic fairy tales, Regency romps—this book had it all. Each of the stories was well written, varied and kept my interest throughout. The female characters were all intelligent and strong-willed and actively contributed to the resolution of the plots. The male characters were quite different in personalities yet sexy and equally interesting. And the sex scenes in each story were well detailed and very hot. My favorite story was Educating Eva. Aidan’s subtle seduction of Eva was the best kind of mental foreplay and was extremely arousing. I also really enjoyed the erotic retelling of Beauty and the Beast in Reflection of Beauty. There’s something about a tortured male who finds happiness through love that always works for me. Pick up this volume of Secrets—you won’t be disappointed. Laura Scott, Just Erotic Romance Reviews”

Nicole: Wow what a fantastic review!! What inspired this story?

Bethany: I’ve always been kind of a ‘nerd’—bookish and a little introverted rather than a super-outgoing party-girl type. Some of my favorite romances star similar heroines, the type of lady who is not the belle of the ball and really has no desire to be. So in writing an erotic romance, I thought it would be fun to have a very intelligent, very logic-minded woman like that approach a naughty house party from a ‘research’ angle then get totally caught up in the physical and eventually the emotional aspects of her research subject. I had a blast writing a heroine with such an unromantic view of men fall head over heels in love with the least likely man she can imagine being with.

Nicole: What a fun, sexy premise! Please tell us about your favorite character in this story.

Bethany: I really relate to Eva, but as I was writing, a couple of the secondary characters sort of came to life on their own, too. Lilah, for one. She seems like such a wench, but she has her reasons. I plan to write her story soon. Lady Kempe, the owner of Ivy Hill has an interesting past, too and deserves her own happily-ever-after. I have just the men in mind for each of them. The men, of course, have to be hot and sexy and the kind of guys you’d want to spend a night or two with. :-)

Nicole: I can't wait to read those too. Do you have any advice for unpublished authors?

Bethany: The shift in thinking that helped me most was deciding that writing was going to be a priority for me. With four small children (five counting Hubby!) and a full-time job, time is at a premium. Everybody is busy with work, family, and other commitments. Most people don’t just have a bunch of spare time lying around they’re trying to fill. But if you want to write, you have to make the time. No excuses. For me, writing time is my time and I make sure I get at least a sliver of time each day to work on it, even if it’s half an hour on my Alphasmart at the McDonald’s Playland with about two dozen kids (including mine) throwing french fries screaming like banshees.

Nicole: Wow, you are busy! What’s next for you?

Bethany: A Regency-set erotic romance called The Secret Confessions of Lady H. Lady Amelia Holbrook is a very merry widow whose journal filled with her erotic exploits has gone missing. She suspects the thief is one of her former lovers and when she recruits long-time friend Grayson Turner to help track down the missing book, she begins to see him in a whole new light. This will be Red Sage e-book and released in a three-part serial format. I don’t have release dates for this project yet, but when I do, I’ll post it on my website at http://www.bethanymichaels.com/. I also write light paranormal erotic romance and am working on a story about a demon sentenced to hard time on Earth and correspondence-course private investigator hired to discover his secret.

Nicole: Those sound fantastic! And congratulations on your recent sales!! Would you like to ask blog readers a question?

Bethany: I love erotic historicals and there seem to be a lot of other readers who do, too. What do you think makes the historical setting so sexy? Is there one time period you think works better than others?

Thanks again for being our guest here today, Bethany! Everyone please visit Bethany's website at Bethany Michaels. Click to buy the book or read wonderful excerpts from all the Secrets Volume 23 novellas including Educating Eva.