Interview with Vivacia K. Ahwen

After reading Reaching Lily and posting my review I was presented with the opportunity to interview its author, Vivacia K. Ahwen. Here is what she had to say about her craft. I hope you enjoy.

SG: Congratulations on your first published book Reaching Lily! I really enjoyed reading it. 

VKA: Thank you so much! And also, much appreciation for having me as a guest on Run & Read That. 

SG: Why was this the ONE?

VKA: HarperCollins UK had just started an erotica ebook-only imprint, Mischief, and there was a call for books. I had just written Angels' Prey, a short paranormal...definitely covering some turf in just 120 pages: MMF/BDSM/Lords/Ladies/Servants/Angels/Demons, you name it. I sent the editor, Adam Neville, a copy. He found my sex scenes "evocative," but they were overrun with supernatural sex, and asked me to write a billionaire book. I sent him 75 pages of a comical Christmas smut novel, Maithian's Mistress;  plot a billionaire --who is an Elf-- trying to save a toy company. While Adam was amused, he wanted me to take the elf out of it. Maithian turned into Dorian, the toy company became a fitness company, et al. I tried to keep my voice in the story, and turn some literary tropes on their heads.

SG: How long did take you to complete this novel? 

VKA: Since I worked on Reaching Lily on/and off over a few years, I'm not sure. For several months I was preoccupied getting Angels' Prey on the market with an indie company (the editing process was a bear), but they collapsed a month after my book release. I got back in touch with Adam, and returned to Lily. I'd missed her.

 

SG: And when should we expect to read more about Lily and Dorian? 

VKA: I'm hoping June. Right now Mischief Books is moving to a new building, and I'm waiting on some paperwork. Luckily, the last 75 pages of the book were cut off for the sake of length and artistic differences of opinion....but I'm going to use them. So I'm already a good chunk into the sequel, Finding Lily.

Meanwhile, I've re-released Angels' Prey to fill the gap.  Gifted galley copies will be available for coming week on Amazon. Here's the link:

It's the first installment of the Dark Alchemy Series. Hope you check it out. I'm thinking it'll be a five-book flight of fancy.

 SG: And how many more books will there be in the [Reaching Lily] series?

VKA: Shooting for a trilogy: Reaching Lily, Finding Lily, and Saving Lily.

 

SG: Your characters are quite complex, with some of the complexities yet to be revealed, so what came first? The characters or the idea for the story?

Love Bites by Rachel K. Burke

What do you do when you fall in love with your best friend’s boyfriend?

That is the question that twenty-six year-old Justine Sterling has been asking herself ever since the day she met David Whitman, her best friend Renee’s boyfriend. Justine is determined to ignore her growing feelings for the irresistibly charming David, until one night, when she finds herself in the bed of the one person she should stay away from.

When Justine and David’s affair ends in heartbreak, Justine is forced to repair the damaged friendship with her best friend. In doing so, she learns that right and wrong decisions aren’t always black and white, and sometimes you have to follow your heart to see where it leads.

Love Bites by Rachel Burke is a contemporary romance novel that gives you all of the oohs and aahs and even a few “oh no (s)he didn’t” to draw you in and hold your attention until the end. This novel is a story about how Justine Sterling was coping with the break-up from her boyfriend David Whitman, who just so happens to have been her childhood best friend, Renee’s boyfriend at the time they started dating. Justine is devastated throughout most of the novel as she is trying to get her life in order after she fled California to return home to lick her wounds. Meanwhile her best friend has moved on with her life with a new boyfriend and a new baby on the way. Justine eventually gets her life in order and realizes that things aren’t as bad as they seem, as she began to open her eyes to what was right in front of her all along.

Overall, the story was sweet and well written and the characterization was really good. So, if this is something you value in your romance novels, I would definitely recommend you jog on over to read Love Bites by Rachel Burke.

 

Reaching Lily by Vivacia K Ahwen

Dorian is Lily’s new boss and he wants to rule her, own her, control her, and awaken Lily to the sensuality she never knew she possessed.

Let him in, or run away?

Dorian Holder arrives at work to clean house and change everything, including his dealings with intern, Lily DeWitt. Soon, he’s demanding Lily be subservient both in the office and in his luxury suite.

Lily once believed that sometimes giving in, and being someone’s Everything For Now, could be the ultimate power. But relinquishing total control is altogether more than she bargained for, and falling in love was not part of their agreement.

 

Well, well, well, this was definitely an interesting read. I found Lily DeWitt in Reaching Lily by Vivacia Ahwen to be an interesting departure from the usual heroine. She was of course in distress but definitely not in a way that was common with this genre. She was a twenty-something year old that acted the part. She had a social life. She found herself in the darnedest and weirdest situations and although, I was not a wild child of her caliber, yet she was somehow relatable. Lily can best be described as that friend that was always up to something and nothing all at the same time. She was a college graduate and was under employed for a company that showed little to no interest in her knowledge and skills and she was didn’t know the wiser.

Then one day, the most arrogant Alpha males to ever grace my Kindle app’s screen entered her life as the owner of the company she worked for and shook things up. and forever changed her life. Dorian Holder was his name and being an A-hole was his game, as he changed the company her worked for and intruded on her girls-gone-wild life. He was a strange bird that has to be the most entitled jerk that knew what he wanted and when and how he wanted and he had his eyes set on that Lily.

Courting Trouble by: Kimberly Dean

Sienna Blakely is bright, articulate, underemployed and forced to rely on the one asset she vowed never to use – her looks.

With bills piling up, Sienna signs a contract with Luxxor Escort Services. A contract that strictly forbids any sexual contact with clients… And then she’s assigned to companion Jason Sloan. Just meeting the man causes a full-body jolt. Arrogant, powerful, and sexy, he’s trouble. And he can see through the facade she’s erected, right down to the intelligent and sensual woman underneath. He challenges her wits, and he challenges the rules.

 

 

How can you absolutely love a story and dislike a story all at the same time? I will tell you how and when it happened for me. As I was reading Courting Trouble by Kimberly Dean, I was immediately drawn to the characters Sienna Blakely and Jason Sloan. Sienna was a well-educated young woman who was accustomed to the finer things in life from designer clothes to art and culture. Conversely, Jason Sloan, was a rough and tough ‘git-er-done’ by any legal means necessary kind of fellow who was a former professional hockey player. There chemistry was instant but their timing was slightly off, but then enters Nina, the CEO of Luxxor Services, who seems to be the answer to Sienna’s bleak existence and a fairy-god madam for she and Jason to get their groove oh so right.