Miranda's first erotic romance novella, Bottoms Up, is available from Samhain Publishing. The next in the series, Solo Play, will be released in the spring.
No one ever believes me when I tell them I'm shy, especially when they learn I write erotic romance. (They often don't believe me when I tell them I'm funny either, but they'll get it eventually!) I was geeky as a kid and the feeling didn't disappear when the braces came off and the acne didn't scar. However, even though I still have a book in my purse at all times (and if I'm alone I'll read it just about anywhere), I've grown into my geekiness now.
I embrace it.
What or who am I afraid of? I've got a husband, a house, three kids and a mini-van! I can attend my twenty year high school reunion feeling like I've won the game... or at least I can fake it really, really well now. There are still those brilliant, shiny, mesmerizing people who make me feel two inches tall, and there are plenty of times I walk into a room, see no one I know and wonder if I can sneak into a corner to read my book. Who am I kidding? External measures of success don't matter - it's the stuff inside that counts.
I can't speak for others, but I know my shyness comes from deep-seated self-esteem issues forged in my youth, issues that I'll be writing about for, well, forever. My geeky childhood wasn't perfect, but I wouldn't change a thing about it because it made me the person that I am - a writer. Would I love reading and writing if a book hadn't been my constant companion for the first thirty-eight years of my life? Would I write romance if my parents had a perfect marriage? Would I feel compelled to fantasize if I had lived a series of perfect, larger-than-life social triumphs?
Nope. I don't think I would. So I'll embrace the residual shyness that being a geek casts over my self image and I will continue to write about it - and when I walk into a room full of strangers... I'll just fake it. *grin*
About Miranda Baker: It makes me chuckle to think about all the romantic short stories I wrote in my rather too literary creative writing classes in college. If only one of my professors had steered me toward popular fiction! On the other hand, if I had discovered my calling back then, I wouldn't have gone to culinary school, I wouldn't have met my husband, we wouldn't have had three children and I wouldn't have turned to erotic romance to get my mojo back during all this hair-raising kid raising.
More links:My blog: http://www.mirandabaker.wordpress.com
My book on the Samhain site: http://samhainpublishing.com/romance/bottoms-up
Thanks so much for coming on the blog. You got a lot of hits, but people must be shy about commenting LOL.
ReplyDeleteI checked back a few times myself - only shy people reading the blog? LOL- I can respect that!
ReplyDelete