Support Big Gay Fiction Podcast on PatreonJeff & Will congratulate the finalists of the Romance Writers of America Vivian Award, including two authors of m/m romance: LaQuette for Under His Protection and Philip William Stover for There Galapagos My Heart.

Anna Zabo talks about Cinnamon Roll, their installment in the Bold Brew shared universe series. They share the origins of Max and Tom and how they wanted to write a BDSM story that was full of kindness. Anna also shares what’s coming up for them later this year, including some much anticipated sequels. Plus they have a book recommendation.

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Show Notes

Here are the things we talk about in this episode. Please note, these links include affiliate links for which we may make a small commission at no extra cost to you should you make a purchase. These links are current at the time the episode premieres, however links are subject to change.

Transcript 

This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast.


Intro

Will: Coming up on this episode, Anna Zabo joins us to talk about their latest book “Cinnamon Roll.”

Jeff: Welcome to episode 303 of the “Big Gay Fiction Podcast,” the show for avid readers and passionate fans of gay romance fiction. I’m Jeff Adams and with me as always is my co-host and husband Will Knauss.

Will: Hello everybody. Welcome back rainbow romance readers.

Jeff: Before we get into this week’s interview, we’ve got a little bit of news that we want to share. Last week, the Romance Writers of America announced the finalist for the Vivian Award.

Now the Vivian is the organization’s new award, which recognizes excellence in romance writing and showcases author talent and creativity. Two m/m romances were among the finalists, and it just so happens to be that these are two of our very favorite books. LaQuette is a finalist for “Under His Protection.” And Philip William Stover is also among the finalists for “There Galapagos My Heart.” Congratulations to LaQuette. Phillip and all of the finalists. The Vivian Award winners are going to be announced in late July, so be on the lookout for that.

We are also so excited to note that LaQuette’s incredible “Under His Protection” is coming back on May 3rd after having been out of print for a while. You can pre-order that right now. And if you want to hear LaQuette talk about it, you can check out our interview with her in episode 184.

So last week in episode 302, you might remember that we talked about the Tina Turner documentary on HBO Max. We mentioned that there was some amazing footage in that of Tina alongside Toni Tenielle, Karen Carpenter and Peaches from an Olivia Newton-John TV special that was from 1980. Well we went down the YouTube rabbit hole and we found that program, which is called “Hollywood Nights.”

Not only is the number of featuring those women pretty amazing as they sing the Eagles song “Heartache Tonight” at an array of locations around Hollywood, including in front of a bunch of bikers, which really made no sense. But, you know, this was the 1980s.

There were some other great guest stars in this thing too, Elton John, Cliff Richard, Andy Gibb, Gene Kelly showed up for a whole number about movies. This was recorded shortly after she finished shooting “Xanadu,” which of course featured gene Kelly. It’s such a bonkers special, everybody. Some real eighties fabulousness there.

YouTube also suggested another Olivia Newton-John special, her very first one from 1976. This one’s even a little stranger as she ends up wandering around the ABC Studios backlot looking for guest stars. She ended up on the set of “Happy Days” talking to Richie and Mr. C and also came across Wonder Woman, played of course by Lynda Carter, because this was during the era that “Wonder Woman” was shooting there. And they ended up and talked and Wonder Woman really wasn’t available to come and be a guest star because she was busy saving the world. It was so fabulous. Did you enjoy this fabulousness? It was such a weird going back in time.

Will: I love Olivia Newton-John. That is, of course, without question. These specials though were occasional good, but didn’t quite scratch the nostalgia itch the way that I appreciate. When you turn back the clock and look at specials from this particular era, I prefer the glitzy and glossy camp. It was personified by some of the TV specials that Sid and Marty Krofft were doing at the time. They were actually producers on “Donny & Marie” and did a whole bunch of other really weird psychedelic messed up stuff. And that’s sort of what I get into.

These ONJ specials were lovely. Some genuinely nice moments. But they’re also very awkward. It’s funny what pass for entertainment back then. It was like, huh?

It left me scratching my head at certain moments. But she is a national treasure. And if Olivia Newton-John did a special today, I would certainly watch it.

Jeff: If you’d like to scratch your head like we did, we will put the links to these two specials in the shownotes so that you can set the wayback machine for 1976 and 1980 accordingly.

So as some of you may know, the “Bold Brew” shared universe books have been rolling out since late February when Annabeth Albert released a “Cup of Joe.” This week Anna Zabo’s installment “Cinnamon Roll” arrives. I got the chance to talk with them about the universe and the book, which I have to say I love so much and I’ll be reviewing it fully in an upcoming episode. We also hear from Anna about some new sequels that they’re working on.

Anna Zabo Interview

Jeff: Anna welcome to the show. I’m so excited you’re here. We’ve wanted to talk to you for a while. The stars aligned because you’ve got a new book out.

Anna: I have a new book coming out, yeah.

Jeff: “Cinnamon Roll” comes out this week. It’s part of the “Bold Brew” shared universe. And before we get into “Cinnamon Roll,” for those who haven’t taken a dive into the “Bold Brew” universe yet, tell us a little bit about what that’s about.

Anna: It is a shared universe. Each book is written by a different author. There are 10 books in total, and it is centered around an inclusive coffee shop in a fictional town called Laurelsburg. And the coffee shop is called Bold Brew, hence the name of the series. And it is run by a polyamory trio who own the coffee shop. We don’t actually have a book about the trio. They’re older, they’ve run the coffee shop for a number of years.

So it’s an established business in this little college town and it became kind of a hub for LGBTQ+ community and also for the kink community. So the start of the series is sort of around this coffee shop.

Jeff: And what led you to want to take part in “Bold Brew.”

Anna: The concept was developed by Annabeth Albert. And she came to me and said, would you like to be part of this? Given the books that I write, the idea of a kinky coffee shop and books set around a kinky coffee shop was right up my alley, basically. I mean, that’s sort of tailor made for me in a lot of ways.

And I had really enjoyed writing when I wrote “Outside the Lines,” which was part of the ” Bluewater Bay” shared universe. I really enjoyed playing in a shared universe. And so, the thought of being able to help build the universe was kind of a neat thing. I said, yes, and we got started on it.

Jeff: The shared universes seem to be such the thing in 2021, between “Bold Brew” and “Magic Emporium” and “Vino and Veritas,” just to name a few of them. What do you think is making that so popular right now?

Anna: I don’t know. Sometimes things just happen in fiction and fiction writing or everything that, everybody converges on the same idea.

I think for me, I really enjoy, and maybe it has to do with being in these pandemic times, working with a bunch of authors, it’s almost communal, and we’ve missed a lot of the sort of communal author things that we normally would do. There’s been no conferences, in person conferences.

So, people don’t get to sit around and talk about what they’re working on or anything like that. I mean, you can do it in small groups or Zooms or whatever, but it’s that sort of extended period of really hashing things out hasn’t happened. I think maybe that’s why, people getting together and really spending some time talking about a universe because it does take some coordination. At least ours did. We did a lot of meeting and talking about the town and then we had a database set up where we started plunking in events that were going on. And who got together when, and if the characters were leaving town, or if they’re staying in town, where they lived and you know, the whole thing.

Jeff: It’s important to know who’s where. Possibly even more importantly, the layout of the coffee shop because you can’t move the barista bar around.

Anna: I forget who it was, but there were layouts in the Sims for the coffee shop so that we had an idea of where everything was and what it looked like. You see Max over by the fireplace a lot.

Jeff: Yes, he loves to grade papers over there and also be glared at it if he’s sitting in that seat too long.

Anna: Well, it’s prime real estate.

Jeff: So it’s a good segue. Tell us a little bit about “Cinnamon Roll” and the characters of Tom and Max.

Anna: I mean, all the books are BDSM. When we brainstormed titles and when the title of “Cinnamon Roll” came up, I was like, I want that title. I really wanted to write a book where you have this amazingly sweet, kind guy who’s also a dominant sadist that saves kittens out of trees. The kind of guy who also really enjoys causing pain to his partners. Just cause of the juxtaposition of those two concepts of usually your dominant sadists are these sorta gruff hard men or women or people. And you don’t usually think, Oh, well, they’re so kind and nice and warm and cuddly kind of people.

Jeff: I read on your blog, you actually wrote, “I really wanted to write a cinnamon roll sadist.”

Anna: That was what jumped in my mind when I saw the title was, Oh, I could write this guy, who’s just a sweetheart, an absolutely adorable sweetheart that everybody would love to have as a friend and who is also really good at causing pain and can turn on through the dominant side to him.

Jeff: Which I really enjoyed in the book, seeing that he really is this nice, sweet kind guy. You’re exactly right. I could see him go off and saving cats out of trees and stuff because he kind of wants to take care of people. And in some ways, to me, when he’s inflicting this pain, he’s doing it because the partner wants it.

You pay so much attention to consent in the book too. It’s amazing to me how I found more books dealing with consent over the last few months. And it’s really kind of sexy to watch those conversations play out. How important was it for you to get consent into the book that way?

Anna: It was really important. I really liked seeing consent on the page. I do think there’s a place for con and dub con, but in this sort of more contemporary, real life BDSM, I think it’s healthier to see a lot of consent.

And I find it sexy, so I sort of write what I like. So that it just, it feels right to me. So that’s why I like to see it. And that’s why I like to write it. And I know there’s been a lot of conversations about consent and enthusiastic consent, not just sort of, minimal consent.

So that’s what I tried to write with him, especially in this sort of role that Max is in where he does want to take care of his partners. It’s very important to him, especially with Tom, because of his background of not having very good partners.

It was so super important that he knows that Tom’s on the same page and that he’s not overstepping any bounds that Tom doesn’t want him to overstep. I think that’s the other thing. Cause Tom wants Max to push him somewhat, but Max is very careful that he doesn’t want to push too much and go too far.

Jeff: And that is another one of the elements that I liked so much about how both of them, they’re so careful to set boundaries, but then they push on those boundaries, but they’re taking care of each other at the same time. And it’s really a mutual relationship in those areas. How easy, or maybe how hard was it to find the balance to make that work in the way that it does?

Anna: In this book, I think it came almost naturally from the characterization because of who the characters were. It just seemed that naturally they would find that balance. That was probably one of the easier parts of writing this book, because there were bits of this book that were hard to write.

But mostly it was the organization of events was hard to get into the right order. The actual events were easy to write. It’s just, I ended up cutting and pasting a lot of stuff around in the story. But they just seem to click, sometimes that happens as a writer.

Sometimes you have these characters that you throw them together and it just works. And they just seem to really work as a couple and with this sort of exploring who they were and the boundaries and how they were going to be together and the sort of the giving the space and the time to let feelings develop and be able to be named.

Jeff: And what were some of the more difficult things to write in this book?

Anna: it’s funny cause it wasn’t so much a difficult scene, but I had to rewrite – it was there’s a scene where they go to a little French restaurant, but the joke is that it’s a little French restaurant outside of town that Max knows and cause Max is French/Canadian by the way. That comes out in the book. So, he’s a polyglot. He speaks a lot of languages, French of course being his native language.

So, he ends up going to this little French restaurant outside of town with Tom. And when I first wrote it, it was in the wrong point of view.

And I think I wrote like, the whole sequence is probably about 9,000 words. So I think I wrote the whole thing and I’m like, this is not the right point of view. And so, I had to go back and rewrite it. I think I originally wrote it mostly from Tom’s point of view and I had to go back and rewrite half of it from Max’s point of view.

And that was just difficult to like switch it up and try to convey the same things that I wanted to convey from the other point of view, because suddenly you can’t see in the Tom’s head. So, you have to rely on Max’s observations of Tom to know what’s going on in Tom’s head.

It is an important point in the book because Tom’s really having some issues about this relationship cause it’s fairly early on in the relationship that this happens, and he’s confused about what this relationship actually is. Is it a dominant/submissive relationship?

Is it a friendship? He’s not had a kink relationship like this before. He’s trying to figure out, what this is. And Tom’s immediate instinct when things are a little weird in relationships is to skip out on the relationships. So this was also Max trying to have a conversation and keep this relationship going as well.

Jeff: Tom has not had the easiest time.

Anna: No, No. Because of the type of kink likes, he does like a lot of pain play. He does like a lot of pain. He tends to stumble across doms who are not very respectful of his boundaries and just not really respectful of him as a person.

Because he doesn’t like humiliation. That’s not his kink. He ends up dating these guys who are just not very nice to him and the sex is okay, the kink is okay, it scratches an itch. At the beginning of the book, he’s very downtrodden about the whole thing.

He just feels, beat down, but not in a good way, about kink and he’s is he ever going to find the right Dom… type of thing? And we see actually, because it’s a bit of a shared series. We see a little bit of that in the previous book to the series, which is “Extra Whip” written by L.A. Witt, because Tom works with L.A.’s character, Aaron. They’re both lawyers and they co-own a law firm, so they work together.

You see a little bit of Tom and his relationship troubles in that book. But you don’t actually have to read that book. That was kind of an interesting writing thing, her writing her book and me writing my book at the same time.

Jeff: How much input did you have in how Tom turned out in her book?

Was that all like run past you? Like, here’s what Tom looks like here?

Anna: Yeah. We’d all planned out, like what our characters looked like and personalities and things like that. With Lori, when we would have the other’s characters in scenes, I would send the scene to her and she’d send the same to me so that we would try to get the, yes, that’s the way they talk, or no they wouldn’t say that.

Or, they wouldn’t use that phrase or… that sort of thing. It was neat seeing. Max shows up a few times in earlier books too. Max shows up in Crystal Lacy’s book which is “Vanilla Steamer.”

Jeff: What were the inspirations specifically for the characters of Tom and Max?

Anna: Max physically is modeled after one of my favorite hockey players. Which if you read the book and you know who my favorite hockey player is, you know, like, okay. Which is Kris Letang. So hence the French/Canadian and there’s a little throwback to the Penguins with him being named Max because of Max Talbot. So, there’s like little bits and pieces.

Jeff: And not the least of which is that Max also plays hockey.

Anna: Yes. Max also plays hockey, and he is in fact the defenseman. So there’s like little bits and pieces there, but aside from all that, then the characters diverge wildly, because Kris Latang’s a real person. And Max is not. But I think the reason I chose him is I really wanted a character who was really like a beautiful person physically as well.

And some of the troubles that comes along with that, because Max knows he’s attractive and he’s also a college professor, so there’s a kind of embarrassment about being that attractive when you’re in a teaching position. I think that’s also probably part of why the consent is so important because there’s a thread that lines through where he’s very aware of that.

He has to maintain certain distances from people. He doesn’t date anybody at school. He tries very hard to keep a professional distance with his kids that he teaches. If he has an anti-kink it’s in fact the professor’s student. He’s never going to go there.

He does not find that sexy at all, having actually being a professor. So there’s some of that. So that was part of the inspiration, I guess, for Max. Tom had a little less in terms of inspiration in some ways.

It really is Max’s book in a lot of ways. He is the cinnamon roll in the book. It really kind of revolves around Max a little bit more than it revolves around Tom. Although Tom has, is certainly very important and he has his own character arc that drives most of the plot actually of “Cinnamon Roll.” But Tom had less of a physical, like, I didn’t have like a, I want this character to look like this with Tom.

I guess I wanted the more internal conflict, I guess, the inspiration for Tom, which was the somebody who really is a masochist and not necessarily as submissive as he as masochistic, I guess. I think he’s more. He just really likes pain, and it takes him out of his head, and it sort of grounds him and the desire find the right type of person.

Also, he’s somewhat questioning about his status as aromantic or alloromantic. It’s in the back of his mind, he’s really never fallen and loved before. So he’d sort of in the back of his mind of what is this, he’s has good friendships and things. But this encounter with Max is something that sort of is very different and he needs to work it out in his head.

A lot of it is really built around Tom’s internal state of being. And I wanted somebody competent in most parts of his life too. I didn’t want him to be a disaster everywhere. He’s a disaster in certain parts of his life, he’s actually a really smart guy. He’s a very competent lawyer.

He’s compassionate with his friends and he’s a divorce lawyer. So he has to be compassionate to a certain extent with his clients too. I think he’s one of these people that he can give out really good advice to everybody else. And he’s really horrible at taking his own advice.

Jeff: And even occasionally taking other people’s advice because he has a hard time, at least initially, letting Max kind of help him essentially, because I felt so bad as the book opened and this isn’t giving away any spoilers. I mean, Tom’s put up this ad in the coffee shop, looking for the next dom and poor Max just has to watch all these brutal, essentially interview sessions going on across the coffee shop. And he’s like, just take that ad down.

Anna: Yeah. I mean, Max looked at that and was like, it’s not going to work. You’re not going to get what you want. And lo and behold, Tom did not get what he wanted. I mean, he did eventually with Max, but spoiler to romance.

Jeff: Yes. I mean that part, we can spoil that there is an HEA there at the other side of it.

Anna: Yeah. I mean, it works for both of them, the HEA, both Tom and Max know of each other. They’ve been in the same circles for years and they just kind of have revolved around each other for various reasons. And a lot of it is Tom being Max is too good for me too pretty, too good, too much, he’s not going to want somebody like me.

I guess he’s competent, but there’s this hint of at least within the kink aspect, he’s sort of very down on himself, very sort of has a lot of doubts about his self-worth there, and it sort of does stretch out a little bit into other parts of his life, but that’s the main thing.

A lot of it is, Max and Tom’s friends sorta supporting him as he goes through working out that he’d know, he actually does deserve a lot better, and he can ask for more and ask for respect and still get everything he wants.

Jeff: That coalesces so well, what you just said there, it’s like asking for what you want and believing you can have it. And that is another really kind of sexy part of romances for me is when characters realize that they can’t have it and they should in fact ask for it and go after it.

Anna: I think it’s what we want in real life. Right? We want to be able to ask for what we need and be respected for it and find the right people to give that to us, or help us find it. And I don’t think it’s necessarily just in romantic relationships.

I think there’s a lot of that in friendships too, we’d like to be able to be respected in our friendships as well. I like to see good friendships in romance as well, because I think even if it’s not romantic, those deep personal connections are really important. And I think you get that and romance as well.

Jeff: So much good stuff in Cinnamon Roll. I really hope a lot of people pick it up and get to explore this because this was for me, one of the first times that I’ve done a BDSM book. I was really into seeing how their relationship developed and how they went through everything. I really loved the ebb and flow of it just more often than not, I was just going awwww.

Anna: Yeah, they’re so sweet together. And there’s a lot of sex and kink in this book, but even when they’re sort of in the real heat of the moment, there’s this underlying kindness about it all, even when it’s physically kind of demanding and that’s the kind of kink I like to write. I always want it to be very evident that both people are enjoying what they’re doing, because I think that’s important to me. I don’t know if it’s important to other people, but in a lot of ways I write books for myself too.

And certainly, this was a book I really did write a lot for me. It has a lot of the things I absolutely love thrown into it. From the kink aspect to the hockey. It’s beer league hockey, but it was fun writing some little hockey scenes and there’s a lot of food.

I like putting food scenes in. So, there’s some restaurant scenes, there’s some where Max cooks. Of course, Max cooks and bakes. No, he’s a cinnamon roll. He’s just too good for the world. I really wanted it to revolve around kindness and sort of joy, I guess.

Jeff: And that’s really what I’ve been looking for in books. Through the pandemic year and now, here in early 2021. You give me a book, that’s got essentially nice guys doing nice things, who are kind, I’m all over that.

Anna: It’s probably one of the least angsty books I’ve written. Sometimes I have a lot of angst in my books. They work things out, but there’s no big blow up scene or, huge breakup where everybody’s hearts are shattered.

I didn’t want to write that this time. It really is kind of a little bit fluffier in my own way. There are still some elements with Tom’s background of course. My kink isn’t as fluffy as other people’s I guess, but I did try to keep it a little less angst filled. And more kind of a book that leaves you like, Oh, that was nice. As opposed to I’ve been run through the ringer. I mean, I’m glad I’ve been run through the ringer, but I’ve been run through the ringer last year, it was just really bad for me personally, aside from the pandemic, which was really bad, but you know, the last year was just not a good year. A lot of personal losses and things like that.

Jeff: Doing the kindness thing was the book you needed to write, the book you probably wanted to read too.

Anna: After I wrote “Reverb,” I had I gotten into a bit of a slump. “Reverb” was a really hard book to write, and it took me a long time to recover. And then there was the whole stuff that happened in the romance community which, knocked the wind out of me and then like the personal stuff in my life happened. And at the same time the pandemic happened.

I hadn’t written anything substantial in probably over a year when I started “Cinnamon Roll” and I was in a lot of ways, very grateful for Annabeth for coming up with the idea of this series. And that it was supposed to be a little bit lighter and less angsty and things like that.

The whole series to sort of less, less traumatic, I guess, than other series. Because it gave me the spark to get back to writing. I probably wrote this book, the quickest I’ve ever written anything. It just kind of all came out very fast.

Jeff: Which says a lot that it’s 90,000 words that you still wrote it fast.

Anna: Yeah. Yeah. And it wasn’t supposed to be 90,000 words. I was aiming for 50, but it just, yeah I can’t… someday, I’m going to write a book that’s short. I’m going to write a novella. That’s like my goal is I want to be able to write a novella and I keep missing. “Takeover” was supposed to be a novella. That actually is like 53,000 words. It’s not that long. It might be the smallest book that I’ve written. The shortest, I should say. But again, I was aiming for like 35 and went right past it.

The main thing with it was that the scenes were all out of order when I wrote them. The last big section I wrote fairly early on and it was actually supposed to be like, like the second time they got together, and I was writing it and I’m like, this is the last scene, crap, because there’s not enough space between these two instances that it can be the last scene.

I mean, there’s not enough stuff that has happened for these emotions to come out. So, then I had to move a whole bunch of stuff around and then I had to rewrite things.

There was a lot of moving bits around to make it sure that everything flowed correctly and then filling in. Once I got sort of the major bits into the right place, filling in the relationships because I didn’t want it to be like instalove, I didn’t, I wanted them to actually go through and develop a kink relationship and a friendship and then a relationship. So it sort of needed to put all that in.

Jeff: Let’s talk a little bit about what got you started writing. What was the starting point for you?

Anna: Oh, man, it was actually in high school. I’ve always made stories up in my head. I mean, that’s just the sorta thing I did as a kid, would act things out with stuffed animals and things like that. But in high school I had two friends. I actually had a number of friends, but two friends that I’m still friends with to this day, which is kind of rare that you hang onto those friendships sometimes that long, Tracy and Renee, and they were writing what we would now call fanfic.

This was so this was like in the eighties. So this was 88, 87, yeah. Somewhere in there. And they were writing crossover fic and it was crossover fic of the “Dungeons and Dragons” cartoon and Duran Duran.

Jeff: Oh, wow.

Anna: They let me read some of their stories and this is spiral bound, notebook stuff.

And I really enjoyed reading it. And I said to Tracy I have all these stories in my head. I should write them down. And she said, well, why don’t you? And I didn’t have a good answer.

So, I literally went home from school that day and my dad, he was research chemists, he had actually gotten a PC for work. This was one of the old PCs with the big floppies, and it didn’t have a hard drive. It had a floppy that you put the program disc in and a floppy you recorded things on.

My handwriting has always been atrocious. I went and I typed in the first start of a fantasy story, and then I printed it out on the dot matrix printer with tractor things you ripped off and took it into school and let Tracy and Renee read it. And that’s sort of how it started because they really enjoyed the writing.

And so, I just kept writing and I’d write a little bit every evening and bring it into school the next day. Eventually it got passed around to people during the school day. And I didn’t realize how far around the school it was going until people were asking me for more pages, so that was sort of the first, real experience.

And I guess it was kind of like an analog version of Archive of Our Own, I suppose.

Jeff: I was just thinking that.

Anna: I still have that story. I don’t have the electronic version of it anymore, but I still have the physical copy of it. It’s really very derivative. I went back and read it a little bit and I’m like, oh my God, this is embarrassing, but there’s actually good stuff there too.

And that actually really changed my life in a lot of ways. Because I really fell in love with writing. I’d been decent in English, always loved reading. But it never occurred to me that I could write. And then it really occurred to me that I could, and that I actually like, this is something I want to do, like for a living kind of thing.

I was thinking about in high school, I was thinking about going into some sort of biology, like genetics or something like that. And I ended up doing this complete veering off and deciding, but I wanted to go into English. I ended up going off to college for English though to a school with a lot of science. So, I got a lot of scientific background which ended up for my day job. Very useful being a technical writer. But I never gave up on the fiction writing.

Jeff: What sent you down the path of romance?

Anna: That was grad school actually. I decided to go through college and gotten my bachelor’s degree in creative writing and okay, how do I eat now? And fell into technical writing and took a couple years to really establish my career in technical writing and get to a place where I was settled and had a good job, a good paying job.

And I felt like everything was okay. And at that point, there was a couple of other personal things that went in, but I discovered NaNoWriMo and I wrote the start of a fantasy novel for NaNoWriMo back somewhere between 2005 and 2008, I guess.

I don’t remember which NaNo it was, somewhere in that timeframe though, I wrote, but after I did it, I was like, wow, I’d forgotten how much I really enjoy writing novels. And I was like, it needs to be polished. This has been a long enough that I’ve been out of this. I need to either find a crit group or like take some craft courses.

I need something. So I ended up going to Seton Hill, it has a masters in writing popular fiction and it’s in Greensburg, which is about an hour outside of Pittsburgh. And I thought this is great.

It was specifically focused on genre writing and it was sort of all genres. And when I got there, I sort of fell in with a bunch of romance writers and it turned out that the book I was writing at the time, the book I wanted from my thesis novel had this sort of romance subplot. I had not realized I was writing sort of a romance.

It actually is not a romance, but there is this romantic subplot that runs through it. The romance writers were just so knowledgeable. And so giving of all the information. If you were having difficulty with characterization, there was all this information about how you could look at characterization, it’s the first time I heard GMC, goal motivation, conflict, that sort of thing.

And also one of the things that the program had you do was read a genre novel. The whole group, the whole class would read a genre novel every semester.

And we, the beginning of the residency, we’d all talk about it. And we talk about what defined the genre, how this book fit in with what defined the genre. The first one we did was romance. It was “Bet Me” by Jennifer Cruise. And I really enjoyed the book, and I was like, this is romance.

I just loved the relationships. And I think now looking back on it, there’s some things that I think are problematic in this book but at the time it was, it was sort of like a revelation of, this is this what romance could be. It was certainly not the romance I read in the eighties, which is, I think the thing that people get stuck on, it’s like they read one romance book back when whenever or they only ever picked up one.

And you can go out and pick up one fantasy book or one mystery book or something and not get the right one for you. And you can’t dismiss a genre just by that. I really just sort of fell in love with romance at that point. But specifically LGBT romance, because some of the people in the program were writing that, and it was sort of also a revelation that wait, you can write this?

It helped that one of the mentors was Anne Harris, who wrote M/M as Jessica Freely.

She hasn’t written in a while for various reasons, but at the time she was writing a lot and it was sort of like… what? You can get paid to write this too? There are people out here who want these stories, and that was sort of a real revelation to me. I did write a fantasy novel for my thesis.

And after that, I wanted to write something a little bit more romantic so that ended up being “Close Quarter,” which was my first published novel, which was a paranormal romance. And that was sort of my yay, I finished this thing, let me finish this really complex book.

Now let me do something fun. And that was my fun book, and you can actually kind of tell that. It has the romance things, but actually has a lot of horror in it too. I was also hanging out with a lot of horror writers at the time. So it was sort of all the genres in the one.

Jeff: Who were some of the authors who inspire the types of stories that you’re writing?

Anna: Oh, man, that’s a good question. I mean, I have a lot of my original people that I read when I was younger. I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy. I guess one of my favorite fantasy authors is Guy Gavriel Kay. And he’s not romance at all. There’s relationship plots, but it’s not the same sort of romance, but I loved the layers in his books, political layers and the personal layers and things like that, that ended up in his books. But also, a lot of Sharon Shinn and she writes a lot of sort of fantasy romance or romances with fantasy.

I didn’t know that at the time, again, it was sort of oblivious that I really enjoyed these books because they followed along a romance trope, I didn’t realize it until I went back and I’m like, Oh, look at that. And then Michelle Sagara, Michelle West writes these very sort of big fantasies.

But again, it’s a lot of characterizations, a lot of characters. And the relationships with other characters, I think it’s always gotten into me as characters, having relationships with other people and these deep, either deep friendships or romantic ties, or sometimes even like, villainous ties.

I guess more recently with m/m romance KJ Charles. I enjoy her work a lot. I sometimes get a little intimidated when a new book comes out.

Cause I’m like, do I want to read this? Because it might be too good. I don’t know if you ever get that with your peers. Or you’re like, like, Oh, I know I should read this, but what if it blows me away and I never want to write again?

Jeff: I am familiar with that. And it’s like the book hangover that comes in and it’s like, why am I writing right now?

Anna: Right. And then people that I love. I love Layla Reyne. I love her writing. We’re good friends. So very much a contemporary of me. But anytime she puts out a book I’m like right there.

Jeff: So, what is a book that you’ve read recently that our listeners should be putting in their TBR?

Anna: I really liked “Queen’s Ransom” a lot. Cause I do like reading sort of F/F books as well. And I. Just enjoyed the relationship and the fact that it’s very much a Layla Reyne book, it’s got all the explosions and the suspense and things like that.

And these two really strong women who just sort of fell for each other and take care of each other. You kind of want to slap them upside the head a little bit, but no more than you would with the guys in terms of the stopping self-sacrificing so much/let people in kind of thing.

Jeff: Totally agree with that. So after “Cinnamon Roll,” what’s coming up next for you?

Anna: Well, remember I talked about a little bit about my first book “Close Quarter?” I kind of left it hanging, like at the end of that book. For people that haven’t read, it’s a parallel romance between a fae vampire hunter and a guy who turns out to be part fae, though he doesn’t know it at the start of the novel.

And it takes place in basically a 10 day time span on a trans-Atlantic cruise from England to New York. And there’s this whole buildup about how things once they get to New York things are going to be very interesting because they’re essentially a power couple, right? Suddenly this power couple is going to walk off this boat into New York. And that’s where a “Close Quarter” ends.

And that book came out in, I want to say it’s 2012, 2013, and I haven’t written the sequel. So I’m writing the sequel because it’s been in my brain for a long time. And I’m finally getting it out in the page. It’s just, things happened. I’ve always meant to write it earlier, but things happened that it kept getting pushed out because after I wrote “Close Quarter,” I wrote “Takeover” and that took off basically.

And then I wrote “Just Business,” which did so much better than anybody expected in that sort of, kept that part of the career going. And I wasn’t writing paranormal as much anymore. And each time I would sit down to work on it some other book came up so I’m like, you know what? I owe the readers who have stuck with me since that book, I owe me the sequel and I owe them the sequel.

There’s some stuff I want to do in that world, because I really actually enjoy the world that “Close Quarter’s” built on, I want to do more in it, but it requires that book to exist so I can do more in it. So, it’s that little linchpin that I have to get in there, so I can then go and branch off and do other things.

After the “Close Quarter” sequel, I think there’s a whole set of romances that I want to write set in a fictional Jersey shore town. And they are essentially all around siblings finding relationships. The first book it’s a non-binary love interest with a I think he’s kind of gender queer or gender questioning in the end. I feel very strongly about the series and I think it’s something that people really want. So, I’m just going to do it myself, because I can.

Jeff: How could people keep up with you online to know when the “Close Quarter” sequel comes out and all of these other books that are in the works?

Anna: Well, my website annazabo.com. I’m not the best blogger. I’m few and far between on the blog posts, but at least when I do have a book coming out, I do actually post there.

If you really want to know my day-to-day stuff Twitter’s the best place to follow me. And that’s @amergina is my Twitter handle. And you will see me talking about my day job. You’ll see me talking about writing. You will occasionally see me talking about hockey. Though I did branch off and I actually have a specific Twitter for when there’s a hockey game and I scream about hockey.

Jeff: We will link to all of that. We’ll link to both Twitters so people can follow both sides of Anna and all the books that we talked about in our shownotes. Thank you so much for being here. I loved our conversation and wish you all the success with “Cinnamon Roll.”

Anna: Thank you. This was a lot of fun.

Wrap-Up

Will: This episode’s transcript has been brought to you by our community on Patreon. If you’d like to read the conversation for yourself, simply head on over to the shownotes page for this episode at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. And don’t forget the shownotes page also has links to everything that we’ve talked about in this episode.

Jeff: And thanks again to Anna for joining us. I’m so glad we finally got to have them here. I loved so much hearing how they got started in writing, especially what captured them with the fic that they were reading. The idea of the “Dungeons and Dragons” cartoon mixed with Duran Duran, I would so love a sample to see how those mashed together.

And I really loved hearing about the technology of the day as well. Anna and their friends were passing around spiral bound notebooks and that old school dot matrix tractor feed paper. It made me very nostalgic for many things in the eighties.

Will: All right everyone, I think that’ll do it for now. Coming up on Monday in episode 304, Spencer Spears joins us and he’s got a sneak peek of what he’ll be releasing this spring.

Jeff: Yes. He’s got a companion to the “Murphy Brothers” series on the way, and we will have the full scoop on that.

Will: Thank you everyone for listening. Until next time, stay strong, be safe and above all else, keep turning those pages and keep reading.

Jeff: Big Fiction Podcast is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more shows you’ll love at frolic.media/podcasts. Our original theme music is composed by Daryl Banner.