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~ Selah March ~
Selah March was born, grew up, and continues to reside in the northeastern United States. She enjoys solitude, long walks after nightfall, and the bracing rigors of a six-month-long winter.
Ms. March holds a B.A. plus graduate credits in English Literature, and is published in short fiction and non-fiction under another name.Her hobbies include ferreting out the 'Goals, Motivation, and Conflict' in each month's selection of category romance, and buffing the hard exterior of her Yankee stoicism to a high, glossy sheen.
Thank you for joining Sensual Reads and Reviews for this interview, Selah. As our spotlighted author for August, let us first begin with, naturally, your writing. What is it that draws you to write? What inspires you to sit down at your computer, openly face the blank document, and begin crafting the words that your readers so look forward to?
Visit Selah March's Author Page
My earliest memories are of talking to my imaginary friends and making up stories about them. I can recall lying in my crib at about age three, giving names and physical characteristics to the crowd children I saw when I closed my eyes. By the time I was five, that band of kids had a whole back-story -- they were orphans, making their way in a hostile world under the leadership of their eldest sister, a sixteen-year-old girl named Susan, who had soft blue eyes and a long blonde braid. In addition to Susan, there was Nancy, who wore glasses and read stacks of books to the other kids, Sally, the troublemaker of the group, Philip, the leader of the boys, strong and true, Robert, the baby of the family, and a host of others who are lost to me. I made up adventures for them because I couldn’t have any of my own.
Then I learned how to read, and a whole new world fell open at my feet. I spent the next several years rambling around inside my own head, creating stories that I never wrote down. And then puberty hit, and that was the end of that. My love of books never left me, but I’m afraid all my creative energy became otherwise directed.
About six years ago, I was going through a dark time in my life. To distract myself, I began reading online fanfiction based on a popular TV show -- BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Before long, I felt the urge to write a story of my own. The fanfiction experience was so satisfying that I decided to try my hand at original fiction. And that’s how I ended up here.
English Literature was one of your main quests in college. Had you always wanted to be a writer, and what do you think that it was that first inspired your love for the written word?
Although I’d majored in English at college, my focus had always been on literary criticism and then teaching. I’d never believed I could do much with creative writing.
My love for the written word came to me genetically from my father -- I’m convinced of it. Though he never graduated high school, my Dad is a great lover of books and is never without one near-to-hand.
HARDCORE is my very first male/male romance. I wrote it because I wanted to branch out into that subgenre and see where it led me. The story itself is a real labor of love -- I adore those two men, Jesse and Sean, and it about killed me to put them through such hell. HARDCORE contains a good deal of violence as it is, at base, a paranormal suspense story that happens to have two male leads.
I tried very hard to craft my characters in a way that was realistic. I like my men on the page to sound like men in real life. I hope I succeeded.
Each of the three novellas included in SIN STREET was written at a different time, for different reasons. Each is available separately as an ebook, and each was created to match a specific theme for an “AmberPax” collection through the Heat imprint of Amber Quill Press.
LIE TO ME was written for the “Just the Bare Facts, Ma’am” AmberPax, which has a cop theme. Though I tried to write this novella in third person point of view, in order to make it more conventional, I felt driven by the main character, MaryJane Peters, to capture her voice in first person. She spoke to me in a way few characters have. I enjoyed stripping away the layers of her false bravado and showing the scared and scarred woman underneath, and then giving her something to believe in again in the story’s hero, Drew Donnelly.
DIRTY SHAME was written for the “Risk” AmberPax, which has a “sex in public places” theme. For this one, I moved back into third person point of view because I really wanted to show what was going on in both the hero and heroine’s heads. Though I love Josephine “Joey” Fiorello, my heroine in DIRTY SHAME, my heart truly belongs to the hero of the story, Dare Daniels, who is so broken and so full of shame and grief, and yet so full of kinky mischief at the same time.
SKIN DEEP was written for the “Taboo” AmberPax, which has a “taboo relationships” theme. I’ve wanted to write an “older woman/younger man” romance for a while, and this gave me the perfect opportunity. Both the hero, Noah Hollis, and the heroine, Erin Mulally, are both such damaged people -- it was a real challenge for me to bring them together and give them a believable happy ending. I hope I succeeded.
Through your erotic paranormal tales such as Moondance and Dark of the Day, you passionately show your love for the dark side, at least in the written form. Where does this attraction to the paranormal stem from and what, if any, paranormal or horror writers influence you in your literary ventures?
All my life, I’ve been attracted to and fascinated by ghost stories and things that go bump in the night. I could sit for hours and listen to my grandmother tell tales of death omens and poltergeists that had stalked the family from generations back.
I became a devoted follower of Stephen King when I was fifteen and haven’t looked back since. Right now, having read Uncle Stevie’s entire backlist, I’m getting into Bentley Little. But my favorite “paranormal” writer of all time is Shirley Jackson. Her book THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE influences me to this day with its “less is more” way of scaring the bejesus out of me. True literary horror, that one. I read it once a year to remind myself that what you don’t see is scarier than what you do.
Tell us please a bit about Selah March. What do you hope, as an author, to accomplish as your career grows and continues to blossom?
Like many other ebook authors, I hope to eventually sell my work to a larger New York publisher so that I can share my stories with more people. I consider myself a flexible writer. I believe I can watch and use trends to my advantage while still keeping my own, individual voice.
What’s new on your literary bookshelf? Is there anything in the works that you’d like to tell your readers a bit about?
Right now I’m deep into nonfiction research -- lots of dry stuff about how the end of the world as we know it may come about. Eventually, this will culminate in my writing a futuristic erotic fantasy, but I think that’s probably for next year.
My second male/male romance is due out in November from the new Allure imprint of Amber Quill Press, as part of their “You Make Me Live” AmberPax collection. It’s titled SEVEN YEAR ACHE, and it’s about a Montana ranch owner and his love for his best friend, a failed country music singer. I call it my “angsty gay cowboy” story, or sometimes “Brokeback on crack.” But unlike BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, my story has a happy ending.
What advice do you have for aspiring “virgin” authors, preparing their first tales to share with the world?
Discouragement is your enemy. Face him down, beat him over the head with your keyboard and keep writing. Don’t even be tempted to quit. Quitting is the only guaranteed way to fail.
With Historical, Paranormal, and Contemporary tales available for your readers’ enjoyment, are there any genres that you have not yet written in that you would like to try your hand at?
Futuristic Fantasy, which is what I’m working on now. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
What about collaborations? You’ve been included in collections of stories with other authors, but have you written with others before on a single tale, and if you could collaborate with any other of your choice, would you do it and who would it be?
You know, I’ve never collaborated, but if I had a choice of any author in the world, I guess I’d choose Uncle Stevie King. I’d love to add a little steamy romance to his horror.
As our Spotlighted Interview draws to an end, Selah, what would you like to say to your readers – those who soak in and imaginatively live each and every word that you pen?
Only “thank you for choosing to read my work.” There’s so much out there these days, online and off. Sometimes I feel like I’m the tiniest of fish in the biggest pond on the planet. I appreciate every single reader who picks up my work and enjoys it, and I would LOVE to hear from more readers about what they like and don’t like in my stories. I answer every email, I promise.
Finally, Selah, I would first like to thank you again for taking the time out and participating in this interview with Sensual Reads and Reviews. As your finally question, I would like to pick your mind just a hair more. Selah, in your definition, what are the ingredients to writing the perfect sex scene for both m/m and m/f erotica?
Oh, that’s easy. M/f or m/m, the answer’s always the same -- emotion. You have to get inside your characters’ heads and hearts and write about what they’re thinking and feeling, not just what their different body parts are doing. For a sex scene to really work, the reader has to care about and be interested in the characters. You can’t incite that caring and interest if all you show is the kiss-kiss, bang-bang.
Thank you again, Selah, and we wish you the best of luck with all of your literary endeavors! Keep up the excellent work, and we cannot wait for the next Selah March masterpiece to hit the literary shelves!
Interview was conducted by JL Foster
August 2007
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