Romance author Stephanie Draven is at Book Savvy Babes with an interview! Stephanie Draven recently released It Stings So Sweet, which is a Roaring 20′s romance novel, and it’s hot, hot, HOT! (Great Valentine’s read 
) Help me welcome Stephanie to the blog today.
BSB: Hi Stephanie, thank you for doing an interview for Book Savvy Babes. First, can you tell us about your new release, It Stings So Sweet?
Stephanie: IT STINGS SO SWEET is about three women from very different social classes who each experience a sexual awakening in a time when the very definition of womanhood was changing. On, and it’s naughty. Very naughty.
BSB: It Stings So Sweet is set in the “roaring” 1920’s. What drew you to write stories from this time period, what was the inspiration?
Stephanie: My mission is to write very smart books for very bad girls and flappers were the original bad girls of American history. They smoked, they drank, they wore short skirts and had sex and demanded to be allowed to use birth control. It’s a very sexy time period and it’s also a time of social revolution. But I’ll also admit that the clothes are gorgeous and the style is elegant and glitzy.
BSB: There are three different stories to It Stings So Sweet, but is there any one scene in particular that is your favorite from the book and can you tell about it and why it’s your favorite?
Stephanie: It’s hard to pick a favorite, but in this case, I’d have to choose the menage in the back of the movie palace with Clara and Leo and Robert. I loved that scene because I’d been building and building and building the tension, expecting a scorching sex scene. And I think that’s what I wrote. But then it turned so unbearably tender. It was at that moment, when Clara was surrendering to another man, that she actually realized she was loved…and that she loved in return.
BSB: Oohh, I did like that menage scene! I was (happily) surprised when I read It Stings So Sweet and found the book to be more erotic than I had anticipated. As a romance author, where do you draw the line between “mainstream” romance and erotic romance?
Stephanie: I draw the line where the publisher tells me to. Ok, ok, I’m only half-kidding. I tend not to enjoy writing sex scenes. If I had my way, I would probably fade to black. So for me to want to write them out, there needs to be something freakishly interesting about them to me. They have to provoke a question, make me uncomfortable, challenge my beliefs, or otherwise push a boundary. That’s difficult to do in mainstream romance, though I often tried it. For me, writing this hot was actually quite freeing. Of course, afterwards, I wanted to have a cigarette and I don’t even smoke!
BSB: If you could share a glass of wine with any author from any era that has inspired you, who would it be and why?
Stephanie: Oh, gosh. I’m quite fortunate to personally know many authors who inspire me now, but going back historically? I guess I’d like to talk to D.H. Lawrence…
BSB: I saw in your profile/bio that you graduated with a degree in Government and went to Law school. How did you go from law to writing?
Stephanie: Well, I decided if I was going to lie for a living I’d rather write fiction!
BSB: LOL! Since this is a Valentine’s day interview, can you tell us what your favorite Valentine’s Day gift you have ever received (or gifted)?
Stephanie: The sapphire, gold and diamond ring that my (now) husband gave me on our first Valentine’s Day together. When a man gives you bling, you know he’s serious!
BSB: I’m with you on the bling! Sounds beautiful 
Would You Rather receive chocolate or flowers for Valentine’s Day?
Stephanie: Chocolate. No question. Flowers die but sugar lives on your hips forever…
Would You Rather have a date with a vampire or a werewolf on Valentine’s Day?
Stephanie: I find it difficult to choose between bestiality or necrophilia but I’m going to go with the vampire, because I think he’s going to be able to tell me about history!
Thanks Stephanie! I’m looking forward to your stop at Book Savvy Babes.
Stephanie: Thank you so much for having me!
Bio
Stephanie Draven is currently a denizen of Baltimore, that city of ravens and purple night skies. She lives there with her favorite nocturnal creatures–three scheming cats and a deliciously wicked husband. And when she is not busy with dark domestic rituals, she writes her books.
Stephanie has always been a storyteller. In elementary school, she channeled Scheherazade, weaving a series of stories to charm children into sitting with her each day at the lunch table. When she was a little older, Stephanie scared all the girls at her sleepovers with ghost stories.
She should have known she was born to hold an audience in her thrall, but Stephanie resisted her writerly urges and graduated from college with a B.A. in Government. Then she went to Law School, where she learned how to convincingly tell the tallest tales of all!
A longtime lover of ancient lore, Stephanie enjoys re-imagining myths for the modern age. She doesn’t believe that true love is ever simple or without struggle so her work tends to explore the sacred within the profane, the light under the loss and the virtue hidden in vice. She counts it amongst her greatest pleasures when, from her books, her readers learn something new about the world or about themselves.
Blurb
They vibrated with incendiary Jazz. They teemed with sexual abandon. The Twenties were roaring and the women–young, open, rebellious, and willing–set the pace and pushed the limits with every man they met…
In the aftermath of a wild, liquor-soaked party, three women from very different social classes are about to live out their forbidden desires.
Society girl, Nora Richardson’s passionate nature has always been a challenge to her ever-patient husband. Now he wants out of the marriage and she has just this one night to win him back. The catch? He wants to punish her for her bad behavior. Nora is offended by her husband’s increasingly depraved demands, but as the night unfolds, she discovers her own true nature and that the line between pain and pleasure is very thin indeed.
Meanwhile, Clara Cartwright, sultry siren of the silent screen, is introduced to a mysterious WWI Flying Ace. If Clara, darling of the scandal sheets, knows anything, it’s men. And she’s known plenty. But none of them push her boundaries like the aviator, who lures her into a ménage with a stranger in a darkened cinema then steals her jaded heart.
Working class girl Sophie O’Brien has more important things on her mind than pleasures of the flesh. But when her playboy boss, the wealthy heir to the Aster family fortune, confronts her with her diary of secret sex fantasies, she could die of shame. To her surprise, he doesn’t fire her; instead, he dares her to re-enact her boldest fantasies and Sophie is utterly seduced.
One party serves as a catalyst of sexual awakening. And in an age when anything goes, three women discover that anything is possible…
Purchase Info
February 14, 2013 at 6:50 am
Nice interview. Stephanie is very funny.
February 14, 2013 at 2:07 pm
Thank you so much for having me, and I think I’d like to be your new best friend, Sue G.
February 15, 2013 at 5:45 am
Lovely interview and I love the cover of Stings So Sweet. Yes chocolate lives forever *eyes hips*
February 15, 2013 at 10:27 am
No worries, Kimbacaffeinate. It’s just a sign of someone’s love!
February 20, 2013 at 1:04 am
[...] sure to check out my Interview with Author Stephanie [...]