{"id":349,"date":"2016-04-19T09:37:09","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T13:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/?p=349"},"modified":"2016-04-19T12:49:21","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T16:49:21","slug":"behind-lady-of-lacrymosa-interview-with-brantwijn-serrah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/behind-lady-of-lacrymosa-interview-with-brantwijn-serrah\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind Lady of Lacrymosa – Interview With Brantwijn Serrah"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"woman-254720_1280\"<\/p>\n

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Whether it’s the gunslinger or the lone cowboy, the west has always captured our hearts and imaginations. When it comes to romance, they\u00a0seem to go together naturally. In ROUGH EDGES, we have brought together\u00a0seven different stories, from the old west to the modern cowboy, from women on the run to women looking for a good time.<\/p>\n

Over the coming\u00a0weeks we will take a closer look at the stories and get to know the authors better.<\/p>\n

This week we welcome Brantwijn Serrah.<\/p>\n

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LADY OF LACRYMOSA<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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When Katarina started her shift in the saloon, it was a night like any other. That was before the silent lady\u00a0gunslinger strolled in through the batwing doors. Katarina can\u2019t keep her eyes off the woman, and when\u00a0the gunslinger starts to dance, sensuously spinning a black\u00a0magic spell, Kat finds herself hopelessly,\u00a0utterly lost. \u00a0By morning, nothing will be the same.<\/p>\n

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The West gets weird, the night the strangers come to Lacrymosa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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EXCERPT<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Lady Gunslinger\u2014Katarina gave her the name with hardly a thought\u2014styled her dark hair in a loose, fat braid tumbling over one shoulder. It gave Katarina the absurd, childish urge to take the choco-late-colored plait and tug it, pestering like a girl in school. She pulled her own coppery-red hair into a lush tail and combed her fingers through it, absent-minded, self-conscious.<\/p>\n

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Oh, don\u2019t be a silly bitch, Kat! she scolded herself.<\/p>\n

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Only then did Katarina realize she\u2019d been standing stock-still ever since the strangers walked in, staring at them the whole time like a gawp-eyed kid. So had everyone. The whole bar had wound down to a stop, holding their collective breath, no doubt all thinking the same thing.<\/p>\n

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Hard men like this meant trouble. Strangers wandering in with cold smiles and shooting irons usually meant the neighborhood was going to see a fight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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1) Where did you get the idea for your Lady of Lacrymosa?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Quite honestly, from\u00a0role-playing and gaming with friends. My college group introduced me to the genre of\u00a0“weird west” ten years ago and I fell in love with the entire tone, setting, subject\u00a0matter…all of it. I haven’t had opportunity to write so much of it, but I adore\u00a0the twist of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror set against the rough and tumble world of\u00a0westerns.<\/p>\n

2) Tell us\u00a0a little about Katarina?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kat came out of nowhere and somewhat rescued me\u00a0from a cycle of poor starts to this story. I tried to write maybe 4-5 \"lacrymosaother tales in\u00a0the weird west setting before she came along with\u00a0a brassy, no-bullshit,\u00a0“let’s-tell-this-story” look in her eye, and as soon as she did the narrative came\u00a0through loud and clear. In the story itself, Kat is a tough gal taken by surprise,\u00a0someone who finds herself unexpectedly put in a place of vulnerability and\u00a0submission. Though not implicitly stated, I’ve always felt Katarina was someone who\u00a0had never had a same-sex relationship before Lady Gunslinger walks into her life,\u00a0and is halfway startled by her sudden attraction, and a little more than halfway\u00a0intrigued. I’ve sometimes told folks, there’s\u00a0a wild west saloon somewhere in my\u00a0mind, and that’s where all my characters go to between sets. The vampires, the\u00a0faeries, the steampunk pilots, the cowgirls, the sci-fi heroes…no matter what\u00a0story they come from they all end up around the tables in that mental saloon. Kat, I\u00a0think, has taken her place as the eternal bartender for all of them.<\/p>\n

3) How long did it take you to write this story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Forever. Like I said, I’ve been\u00a0wanting to write an erotic story in the weird west setting for a very long time, and\u00a0when I saw the Rough Edges call for submissions, I must have started 4 to 5\u00a0different stories before this one came to me. Lady of Lacrymosa itself probably took\u00a0two weeks, start to finish.<\/p>\n

4) I love the woman gunslinger, what inspired her?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s a little hard to answer that\u00a0without giving away spoilers, but suffice to say she’s appeared in several of my\u00a0stories in the past. I have a little bit of a long-running love affair with her\u00a0myself.<\/p>\n

5) What other work do you have out there?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have two erotic romance series with\u00a0Champagne Books, as well as several self-published short stories and one self-pubbed\u00a0erotic thriller, His Cemetery Doll.<\/p>\n

6) What do you do when you’re not writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I play video games, work on cover art or\u00a0video art, or read. I’m currently working my way through a couple of Stephen King\u00a0novels after giving up on the Dexter series. Before that, it was The Big Book of\u00a0Submission by Cleis Press and The Story of O.<\/p>\n

7) What’s the best part about writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Without a doubt, the limitless possibilities.\u00a0The capability to write any setting, any character, any situation at all to satisfy\u00a0whatever need or want you might have. You can explore literally anything.<\/p>\n

8) What’s the hardest part about writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Writer’s block. When the words won’t come\u00a0even when I really want them to.<\/p>\n

9) What inspires you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lots of things inspire me, though music certainly drives a lot\u00a0of my creativity. Reading the works of authors I love can get my thoughts flowing as\u00a0well, especially Stephen King, JK Rowling, Jim Butcher, and Kresley Cole.<\/p>\n

10) What are some of your favourite books\/authors?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think JK Rowling is one of the\u00a0best authors I’ve ever read. Jim Butcher is probably the author who inspires me\u00a0most, though. My favorite book is Affinity, by Sarah Waters.<\/p>\n

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BRANTWIJN SERRAH<\/strong><\/h4>\n

When she isn’t visiting the worlds of immortals, demons, dragons\u00a0and goblins, Brantwijn fills her time\u00a0with art: sketching, painting, and cover design. She can’t handle coffee unless there’s enough cream and\u00a0sugar to make it a milkshake, but try and sweeten her tea and she will never forgive you. She moonlights\u00a0as a futon for four lazy cats and can spend hours watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer while she writes.\u00a0In addition to her novels, Brantwijn has self-published erotic\u00a0short stories available on Amazon. Her\u00a0short stories occasionally pop up at Foreplay and Fangs, her blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"Rough<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Reserve\u00a0your copy of Rough Edges<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/a><\/p>\n

Kobo<\/a><\/p>\n

All Romance e-books<\/a><\/p>\n

Smashwords<\/a><\/p>\n

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  Whether it’s the gunslinger or the lone cowboy, the west has always captured our hearts and imaginations. When it comes to romance, they\u00a0seem to go together naturally. In ROUGH EDGES, we have brought together\u00a0seven different stories, from the old west to the modern cowboy, from women on the run to women looking for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,8],"tags":[39,27,38,19],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","category-rough-edges","tag-brantwijn-serrah","tag-interview","tag-lady-of-lacrymosa","tag-rough-edges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.penandkinkpub.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}