A full-time job and a toddler at home hasn’t stopped Canmore writer Lauren Hawkeye from seeing her first novel hit the shelves and electronic book devices this spring.
Hawkeye’s novel – My Wicked Gladiators, published by HarperCollins through its romance/erotica imprint Avon Red – is set for release as an eBook May 15 with the print version on sale June 5.
My Wicked Gladiators, a character-driven novel inspired by the TV program Spartacus, which is set in Roman times, tells the story of Alba, an upper-class woman, whose husband uses her to advance his gladiatorial school.
As it is not a historical novel, Hawkeye said her challenge was including enough details to provide a flavour of the setting, but not too much detail as to weigh down the story.
“A romance reader doesn’t want to read historical details, they want to be swept away by the details,” Hawkeye said. “You just want enough to make the reader feel they are there.”
And the demand for romance or erotic novels is booming.
Take, for example, the trilogy 50 Shades of Grey. What started as fan fiction by E.L. James based on the Twilight series has become a publishing phenomena with the author at one point selling two million copies as an eBook a month on her own through her website. That trilogy is now being published by Vintage Books.
“Studies have shown that when the economy crashes romance sales shoot up. I think that tells you a lot right there. Harlequin sales went up when the economy crashed a few years ago,” Hawkeye said. “You know what kind of story you’re getting. It’s happy. It feels good. There’s an audience for it. People appreciate it. I like to read it. Its valid and a damn hard field to get into. I’m not going to be less proud of it because it is romance.”
But as it is erotic fiction, or as the publisher describes it “the pinnacle of sexy fiction,” Hawkeye said her book, the same as others like it, are still saddled with an undeserved stigma, instead of recognizing the quality of the story.
“It’s just the situation. People say they’re smutty or they’re porn, but they’re still a story. They’re still a literary work,” she said. “It still takes sweat and tears and blood to write.
“To write a book, it is ridiculous. I think a lot of people sit down and think they could write a book. But to spit out 95,000 words is a lot. That is 30 separate scenes that have to make coherent sense and drive the story forward, whether it is erotic, romance or literary; it still has to be a story or nobody would read it,” Hawkeye said.
In fact, breaking into the romance field is difficult and Hawkeye said her agent receives an average of 200 queries each day.
But Hawkeye appears to have broken in and be on her way up. She’s no flash-in-the-pan writer. She is a talented writer with an eye for smooth, crisp sentences and descriptions who has slowly been working her way up, building a solid resume with a series of shorter stories, including a piece in a recent Chicken Soup for the Soul, and her publisher has already asked her for a proposal for a sequel to My Wicked Gladiators. For that, Hawkeye said she’s considering a story about female gladiators, who fought one another in ancient Roman.
With her first novel being released as an eBook alongside a limited print run, her next goal is to take it up a notch and shoot for a mass-market release.
“I’ve got big dreams. I want to hit the New York Times bestseller list and now I’ve got an agent who can help me with it,” she said.
My Wicked Gladiator is available as an eBook through the online retailers Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Chapters. Print copies can be obtained through Amazon or Avon Red at www.avonred.com
Hawkeye and five other published romance writers will be in Calgary at the MacLeod Trail Chapters bookstore on Friday (May 11) from 7-8:30 p.m. for a panel discussion titled Surviving Today’s Publishing World.
