A Special Treat

As you regular readers of Nichevo know by now, Uncle Gerry loves to read and I spend a great deal of time doing just that.  Being the totally hopeless romantic that I am and enormously enamored of steamy, sexy love scenes, one of my favorite genres is that of the Erotic Gay Romance.  Over the last year or so, I have begun following the blog of author Bailey Bradford where she publishes among other things, serialized Erotic Gay Romance stories.  Bailey also publishes novels that are available in soft cover and ebook formats.  I have read a lot of them over the last few months and Bailey and I have corresponded via email and comments on her blog developing a warm friendship between us.  In one of our recent communications, Bailey graciously agreed to an interview to be published here at Nichevo.  In addition, when she sent the answers to my questions to me, she told me I could give a way copies of two of her books in PDF format, 'Chaps and Hope' and 'Leopard Spots: Levi'.  Therefore if after reading this marvelous Conversation With Bailey Bradford, you would like to have one of her books to read for yourself, leave your name in a comment on this post and I will then have a drawing for the two books available and get them to you via email.  Now without further delay here is:

A Conversation with Bailey Bradford

First of all, you have quickly become one of my favorite authors since my discovery of your writing with your vibrant characters and their portrayal in your novels. My readers may not be familiar with you, so please introduce yourself to them.

Hi, Uncle Gerry, and thank you. I am a huge fan of yours—love your blog! I am Bailey Bradford, an author of gay erotic romance, grandmother, wife, mom, etc. Like everyone else, there are many things that make me who I am. Generally, I am a happy, busy person.

As a follower of your blog, I enjoy keeping up with what is going on with you. You frequently mention the DH and Super Teen. Tell my readers a little about the DH and Super Teen.

Let me first mention, it took some convincing years ago to get the DH to believe ‘DH’ stood for Dear Hubby. I’m not quite as ornery as he thinks, and he’s a sweetie. Definitely the nicer of us two. He has always been my best friend and lover both, and my staunchest supporter. He’s pretty awesome, in other words. Super Teen is our almost-14-year old daughter. We have two older girls who have had children, so Super Teen is our baby. I just started home schooling her in December so that’s a whole new adventure for us both. She’s a good kid, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to home school her.

The fact that you are a woman who writes M/M erotic romances does not surprise me as the first Gay novel I read way back in 1975 was 'The Front Runner' by Patricia Nell Warren. When did you first aspire to be a writer?

Ah, this one is tough! I have written stories and poems ever since I can remember. Fear of failure kept me from ever doing anything with them. I have a black binder that is filled with poems and teen angst (embarrassing, heh) going back to 1985. One day I decided to just try. The worst that would happen was, I’d get a rejection e-mail or not hear back from the e-publishers at all. I ended up getting offers from four different publishers for my first submission, and that blew my mind.

I think, for me at least, I’ve grown more confident as I’ve gotten older. Kind of makes up for the whole aging, wrinkling bit…

I am sure men are as complicated to women as they are to us. How do you see into the psyche of two men in love with each other you portray so well in your novels?

Talking, observations, reading—usually non-fiction articles and/or books. I have great friends who have let me pick their brains, and I watch people. Yes, I’m one of those creepy oglers. You can learn so much by watching people when you’re out somewhere. I’m not advocating the Peeping Tom bit or stalking. Those tend to get you in trouble, I’ve heard O.o But keeping an open mind and being aware that I don’t know a damn thing in the grand scheme of things; that helps me to observe and listen and learn.

Do you have some special insight which allows you to create such blisteringly torrid love scenes between your protagonists?

I have a vivid, over-active imagination and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told I have a dirty mind—like that’s a bad thing. It really doesn’t shut off much at all. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. And, I like sex. Not just having sex, but reading about it, watching—not illegally through windows! – sex, porn, looking at pictures. Add it in with love, and the rest plays out on the keyboard. The really fun part for me is, I see what I’m writing play out in my head like a movie. All of the story, not just the steamy parts. I wish I could share that with the readers.

Every writer is influenced by what they have read and by teachers along the way. Who were the greatest influences in your decision to become an author?

There are so many influences, not all of them authors. Anyone I’ve known who has reached out for what they want. My sister, actually, is one of my biggest influences. I’ve never seen her let anything intimidate her. She is pretty amazing.

There was a very close friend of mine who passed away. His life was tragic, and while I won’t talk about what happened to him in detail, every one of my books has a piece of him in there. Every happy ending is, to some degree, for him.

Authors, well, everyone I’ve read since I learned to do so. Shel Silverstein, Dr Suess, Anne McCaffrey, Tannith Lee, Douglas Adams, Louis L’Amour—they are some of the earlier childhood influences. As an adult, I read just about anything I could get my hands on. I was a late-comer to e-books, but six months after I started reading them, I started writing them. I had to. I had finally found something that I wanted to write about, and was passionate about.

There are those who influenced me by being so negative, and even hateful. I’ve never taken directions or orders well. Give me a logical explanation for something, we can go from there. Snap your fingers at me, and I might honestly break them. Sometimes my temper gets away from me. I’m working on the temper issue, because it’s annoying and a waste of energy for the most part.

We all started somewhere whether it be on a blog, a student publication or literary journal of some kind. What was your first published title and when was it published?

I didn’t have a blog, FaceBook, website, anything until Breaking the Devil was contracted by Loose-Id in 2009. Then I was told to make those things, because I needed them. I kind of dove in to e-publishing head first with my eyes closed. It was an adventure  While I use FaceBook some, I generally prefer to interact with people on the blog. I get too distracted on FaceBook and will spend hours on there reading posts when I should be writing. And, I’ve met so many incredible people through the blog.

In writing on Nichevo, I impose my own deadlines for when I should have something up on a daily basis. I know you write on a deadline also, does this enhance or hinder the creative process in the writing of your novels?

Your blog is awesome. You have a splendid way of writing about what is going on, in your life and in the news. Of course the music and pictures are fantastic too!

As much as I wish it weren’t true, I’ve always been one of those people who seems to do their best work when under a lot of pressure. I’d have to say it generally enhances my writing, although there are times that might not be so.

You often write about the daily occurrences in your life on your blog. How do you balance your active family life with both your blog and the pressure to produce your novels on a deadline?

Lol, I don’t, not always. I bobble it all at times. I got quite far behind this past year when my dad was ill, and when he died it threw me for a loop, to put it mildly. I’m still playing catch up on the writing. TEB has been great at working with me on that. I don’t just write the books, I write free blog stories, and try to post there daily even if it isn’t an installment day. There’s the weekly drawing for ten dollars in Are bucks, and book giveaways, picture day, etc. Then the time I do put in on FaceBook, answering e-mails, doing edits. Add in home schooling ST, taking care of a pack of pups—we have four, total, and cats, too—spending time with the DH, my Mom, our oldest daughter, son in law, and grandson who live with us, and someone really needs to add more hours to the days. And gardening. Yes, I got this crazy idea that I wanted to do a few raised vegetable gardens. >.< Now we have 234 at least seedlings sprouting up that need to be planted in the garden boxes, and my flower garden has become a grass garden. Strangely enough, we have no grass growing in the actual yard.

It is not uncommon to find women authors who write specifically for a male audience. What influenced your decision to write Man to Man Erotic Romance novels for all of us to enjoy?

When I first started writing, I didn’t think about a specific audience. I just wanted to tell these stories, because I enjoyed it. Now, I still enjoy writing them, but I want to ensure the readers get what they are looking for out of them. That’s different things for different folks, and there’s no pleasing everyone, but certain themes are universal. Love, hope, redemption. The desire to spread some happiness around for a while, because life’s short and we all need to take more time to be happy and enjoy it. It’s very difficult to pinpoint all of the influences. I need much more caffeine and probably a graph and some formulas to figure it out.

The characters you create are vibrant, colorful and well rounded. The adventures they share are both exciting and exotic. Where do you derive your inspiration for these characters and the many tales of their adventures?

It’s the non-stop imagination. I’m not a TV watcher, because I generally can’t concentrate long enough to watch a show, and I can’t sit still, either. Going to the movies is a challenge, too  Lots of times, a book will start with an idea of an impossible situation, or impossible to the characters, and it goes from there. Like how I started writing for publication, I tend to just dive into a story and let it develop as I’m working on it.

Sometimes people inspire a character or a plot seed. It might just be a picture, someone standing in line somewhere, or a bits and pieces of people I know. I think keeping an open mind, and doing that whole people-watching thing is inspiring.

Shape shifters are featured in many of your novels and stories. What sparked your interest in shape shifters and their culture?

The idea of being more than human was very interesting to me. How would it have happened, what possible scenarios were there for the way someone would shift, and how much of them would be human versus animal? Which side would rule, and would that be consistent? What would their society be like? It was questions like these that got me started after I read an article about wolves being moved to Gila. It was an old article, and I don’t remember how I even found it, but having lived in New Mexico, it caught my interest, and the Southwestern Shifters were born then. I didn’t know there’d be more than the first book, but the series just keeps growing.

We all have our favorite authors, bloggers and columnists. Who are some of your favorites and why are they your favorites?

Ah, there are definitely too many to list them all, but here’s a few:

ZA Maxfield, Amy Lane, and KA Mitchell all write amazing characters that are funny and flawed. They never have written a boring or bad book. Amy Lane’s blog is also very entertaining and I am a bit in awe of her.

James Buchanan write intense, intriguing books that I can’t put down once I begin them.

Toni Griffin, Sue Brown, Cheri Noel, and there are so many other authors I read and admire. My TBR pile is astonishingly large. I also just read a western by Jane Elliot, End of the Trail, and was really impressed.

As for blogs, well, Uncle Gerry, I might have mentioned that yours is pretty awesome. I am so glad I subscribed to it!

Amy Lane, as I mentioned—writerslane.blogspot.com

Eroticromancepublishers.com which I would recommend anyone looking to get into the epub business to check out.

I check in on several other blogs, authors and industry related. I also check out some of the more…erotic ones:

Sethfornea.blogspot.com gives me palpitations. Oh. My.

Gaymalelove.tumblr.com is another favorite. This isn’t just pictures, but questions and answers. Kevin, who runs it, seems to be very cool and tries to be available for anyone who might need him. I don’t know him, but I am impressed with his giving nature, and, even, inspired.

I am currently reading your 'Leopard Spots' series, which is very good by the way, what do you have in store for us after this series is completed?

Thank you. After that concludes in December, I will still have the men of The Mossy Glenn ranch to work on, and there are some stand-alone shifter books that have been percolating in my mind. Those have come right out of pictures or news stories I’ve read online. I can’t wait to get started, but I have to. I’m currently working on four series—the last of the Southern Spirits, Southwestern Shifters, Leopard Spots and The Mossy men. That’s about my limit.

I love the excellent cover art for your books, who is responsible for creating most of this amazing artwork for you?

All but one of my books are out at Total-E-Bound. Those covers are done by the amazingly talented Posh Gosh for Leopard’s Spots, Love in Xxchange, The Mossy Glenn—oh, I love, love the cover for Chaps and Hope! Lyn Taylor has done the covers for the Southwestern Shifters and Southern Spirits. I can’t wait to get the cover art for Ascension from her.

At Loose-Id, Anne Cain had done a gorgeous cover for my first book Breaking the Devil. Now that book has been massively re-written and turned in to Total-E-Bound, so I should be getting more lovely cover art. I can’t wait to see it, either.

The only book I have at Loose-Id right now is Something Shattered, and there are two different covers for it. They had to change it for the print copy. Those are also fantastic covers done by Justin James and unfortunately I don’t know who did the second version. The information isn’t available at the website.

Is the artwork available as a separate item for purchase? If it is available, where could we find it for a possible acquisition?

I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the e-publisher owns the right to it. Total-E-Bound has what they call Goodies/Booty Box. There are several items that can be purchased through them that have the cover art on them. Shirts, cups, steins, bags, boxers—the list is quite long. These are not items that we authors create, but it’s cool that TEB makes them available for readers should they want to purchase them.

I know a lot of your titles are available at AllRomanceebooks.com in the epub format and at Amazon.com in soft cover, where else can my readers obtain your titles?

They are available at Barnes and Noble, Bookstrand, Booksonboard, and many other third party distributors. And, there are the contests at the blog when I have a new release, too.

For those of us with a Kindle or Kindle for PC, are your books or will they be available in the Kindle format?

They are. When Total-E-Bound releases them, you can download the books in Kindle format from TEB. Once you’ve logged onto your account there, you can enter your Kindle address. They even have a handy link to click on to walk you through it—which I had to use when setting up my Kindle. Amazon also has them in Kindle format. Used to, the print copies became available first, but now that TEB has started doing a pre-release for VIP members, allowing them to download titles early, then when TEB does the general release a few weeks later, the titles go out to all third party vendors at that time, too.

I’ll confuse myself with that^

You and I both post regularly on our respective blogs. What blogs, other than Nichevo, do you follow on regular basis?

I was tempted to just import my list!  But here are a few:

wanderingearl.com/blog/ as I love going anywhere new.

suebrownsstories.blogspot.com

top2bottomreviews.wordpress.com for my New Author hunting, when I want to try out someone I’ve not read before.

accrispin.blogspot.com another must-check for those interested in e-publishing

There are others I check less regularly for fun and, er, inspiration ;-)

I find your feature of NSFW photos on your blog on Thursdays to be delightfully conceived, what was your inspiration for this feature?

Simply to share and hopefully help some people have a better day. The pictures are less NSFW than they used to be as finding new ones to purchase and put up every week can be difficult. Have you ever typed in “Where to buy porn pics”? It’s not really helpful, and holy crap, I spent hours distracted, lol.

I have noticed that a lot of women follow your blog and I would suppose that a lot of them read your books also. Why do you feel most women who read your books about man to man romance do so?

A larger percentage of gay erotic romance readers are women. There are many theories on this, and I believe MLR Press put out a book on it a few months back. Yes, here it is, and I have nothing to do with this so I’m not promo-ing it to make money and I haven’t read it.

http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=GKSTWOMN

I’ve had women e-mail me and tell me reading gay romances has helped them to become aware of what’s happening with LGBTQ rights. Some have even gotten involved because of it—not because of my books, specifically. Just the genre.

Do you think some straight women have the alter ego of the fantasy some straight men do about threesomes with two bisexuals of the opposite sex?

Sure. We are sexual beings, and I hope society will become more open minded and people will stop judging others for who they have sex with. That isn’t anyone else’s business as long as everyone involved are consenting adults. If there are three people or a dozen, that’s their private thing and they should, by all means, go for it.

That said, acting on a fantasy and just having the fantasy are totally different, of course. How many times has someone out there tried to enact a fantasy and had it suck in the sucky way? There’s nothing wrong with setting sexual limits for ourselves, as long as it’s our limits and not everyone else’s.

I think I got off track there…

You have just had a new website created for your work. Tell us a little about the site and where we can find it on the web.

Well, I am not a techie at all. Updating my website was not my favorite thing. I love the blog, but had trouble keeping up with downloading cover pics and such. Someone offered to revamp the website and keep it current, and to fix the blog. I jumped on that offer by J-J Designs. It was such a relief to be able to depend on someone else to deal with the website especially. I love the banner they had made for it, too:

www.baileybradford.com

It’s…organized, yay!

Is there something you would like my readers to know that I have not asked you?

You’ve been very thorough. I was a bit intimidated by how well thought-out these questions were! But, I’ve enjoyed your blog, and you’ve been such an incredibly kind person to me. Thank you for that.

All in all, I think I’m pretty boring. I write, I read, I do things with the family and all that being a wife, mother, grandma, sister, daughter, etc entails, and occasionally take a road trip. And garden >.<; That’s about it. If there’s anything anyone wants to ask, they can always email me at itsbaileybradford@yahoo.com

Thank you for having this conversation with me to share with my readers and thank you for following Nichevo! Keep on writing the way that you do and I know I will continue to be one of your biggest fans. I hope that some of my readers will become your fans as well.

Thank you, Uncle Gerry. You are a wonderful person, and I appreciate you taking the time to do this. You rock!! 
  

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 Your Monday Musical Moment is the 1972 recording by The Philadelphia Orchestra with Eugene Ormandy Conducting of Symphony Number 1 in D Major by Gustav Mahler.  In keeping with the Special Treat theme for today, I have some especially delicious photographs of lithesome lads and muscly men lounging about the page in their finest Monday's Undies for your visual appreciation.  Thanks for choosing to spend part of your day here with me at Nichevo.  Be sure to check out both the Blog and Books by Bailey Bradford, I am sure you will be well pleased with what your find there.  Also be sure to leave your name in the comments if you would like to get in on the drawing for a copy of 'Chaps and Hope' or 'Leopard Spots: Levi'.  See you again tomorrow.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!