Interview: The two sides of Katie Porter

Authors Lorelie Brown and Carrie Lofty have been friends and critique partners for six years, and through this relationship, the co-writing team of Katie Porter was born. Lorelie and Carrie are individually multipublished authors in numerous romantic genres. In July, Double Down, the first novel in their Katie Porter Vegas Top Guns series, was released from Samhain, followed by Inside Bet and Hold 'Em. All three novels have gotten rave reviews. In keeping with the holiday season, the ladies published Came Upon a Midnight Clear, a sexy male/male erotic BDSM contemporary romance. They must be doing something right, because it too has received high accolades.

Lorelie and Carrie are here to chat with us about Katie Porter, why they chose to write erotic contemporary romance and how they make their collaboration work.

Lea: Ladies! Welcome to HEA! It's such a delight to chat with you today. I'm a big fan of your Katie books. Is there special significance to the choice of your pseudonym, Katie Porter?

Carrie: Yes. We watched a particular BBC miniseries where the man and woman should've gotten married, darn it! His last name was Porter, and her first name was Katie. We created a little happy ending for them.

Lorelie: We're relentless shippers. It's how we fill our free time. It's an extension of why we write romance, wanting happy endings for everyone.

Lea: When during your friendship and critique-partner association did the light bulb come on and you thought, "Wow, we could do this as a team"?

Lorelie: I had been on a family trip to Las Vegas and seen signs for a singles weekend. Naturally, my writer's brain starting going on about a series of contemporaries where the people who showed up for the singles weekend hooked up with locals. Except I couldn't make the pieces go together, so I kept coming back to my critique partner for help. That would be Carrie, of course. We eventually had the idea to just write them together. Then all the pieces fell into place like magic.

Carrie: I'd co-written before (with Ann Aguirre as Ellen Connor), so I was confident in my ability to move forward with another collaboration. Plus, Lorelie and I had been friends working on each other's romances for so long that it was a fast, easy process. I think we drafted the first version of Double Down in six days. Needless to say, we were stoked!

Lorelie: The first version of Double Down was a bit shorter than the one that was eventually published, though!

Lea: The Katie Porter books are all explicit erotic BDSM-themed contemporary romances, why were you drawn to this genre when you decided to collaborate?

Carrie: Curiosity? The Vegas plus hot fighter pilots theme lent itself to some wild ideas, but I knew that writing a straight-up contemporary romance, such as a sweet one set in a small town, wasn't going to play to our strengths.

Lorelie: I think it was also the very opposite of the historical romances we'd been writing individually, too. By searching for the opposite end of the spectrum, we made the Katie Porter books fun and pure enjoyment to write. We kept away from any hint of worry about marketability or having to conform to all the strictures we know (and for the most part love) in our usual sub-genres.

Lea: Your voices have excellent synchronicity, and your plots flow beautifully. Do you decide in the initial planning stages who's going to write which parts of the story? Just how do you make it work, ladies? You must spend significant time online and on the phone!

Lorelie: We usually break it down by character. I have more than a decade of experience and association with the armed forces, so for the first two Vegas Top Guns, who I would write was the easy part. It got a little more arbitrary with Came Upon a Midnight Clear and other books. And, yes, lots of phone calls and IM — plus texting! We've plotted a whole book via text message.

Carrie: Toward the end of this process, roughly the last third, we call and IM to plan chapter-by-chapter what remains to finish the story. That's essential so we have an endpoint to shoot for. After a draft, Lorelie takes the first crack at revisions to look at the big picture (her specialty) and I follow up with the microedits to make sure our voices blend (my specialty). From there, our editor at Samhain, Sasha Knight, is amazing at making sure all our ideas become a cohesive story.

Lea: Do you share the naughty-scene writing?

Carrie: Because our sex scenes are generally more than one chapter, we block them out together. Ryan will do such-and-such and we'll hook on this moment, then Cass will do such-and-such and we'll hook on this moment. That sort of process.

Lorelie: The hardest part is probably getting new pages and reading this awesome sexy scene with characters I love ... and then it just ends! And I'm the one who has to finish it? What? Oh yeah. I get to finish it however I want. That's pretty cool, actually.

Lea: Please tell us about your lovers-reunited holiday romance, Came Upon a Midnight Clear.

Carrie: Sasha asked if we'd be interested in doing a Christmas story, and we were thrilled. We decided to try what we'd never done before: a gay romance. It was also our first — and, to date, only — romance without an element of BDSM, although it's still smokin' hot. I was at my parents' house Christmas 2011 when we plotted the whole thing in about 20 minutes. London! Stuntman! Reunited lovers! We know a story is right when it comes together that quickly.

Lorelie: I know people ask if it was any different writing m/m, but I don't think it was. We just wrote two people who needed to find the particular kind of love they'd only find with each other. They both just happen to be guys. Nate is an ex-con who now runs a company of stuntmen, and Kyle is the Hollywood producer golden boy who Nate left behind. Or Kyle left Nate behind. It's kind of a complicated question, depending on who you ask.

Lea: I really like Kyle and Nate. Their backgrounds and relationship history provides excellent conflict. It's so emotionally charged. I also like Stephanie Penn, Kyle's business partner and voice of reason when he's struggling with his issues concerning Nate. Steph is quite unique! Any chance readers will see Steph's story in the future?

Lorelie: Steph is definitely a live wire and a fully fledged character in her own right, isn't she? We really like her, and we've toyed with the idea of writing a novella for her, but our schedules are really so jam-packed at the moment. We don't have time yet!

Lea: What can readers look forward to enjoying next from the desk of Katie Porter?

Carrie: On Jan. 8, Lead and Follow kicks off a five-part series called Club Devant, which explores alternative and multipartner romances with BDSM themes, all set in a glitzy high-end burlesque NYC nightclub. The second in that series, Chains and Canes, will follow in July.

Lorelie: As for Vegas Top Guns, book four is called Hard Way and will be out in April. It features a fly-boy you've already seen, Dash, along with his wife, Sunny. Book five of the VTG is Bare Knuckle, and it'll be out somewhere around October. As a matter of fact, I'm deep in edits on Bare Knuckle right now!

Lea: Carrie and Lorelie, thank you so much for joining us today and all the best with Came Upon a Midnight Clear and your Katie Porter publications in 2013. Happy Holidays!

You can find out more about Carrie and Lorelie's Katie Porter at KatiePorterBooks.com. You can also connect with the authors on Twitter: @MsKatiePorter, @carrielofty and @LorelieBrown.

Lea Franczak cannot remember a time when she didn't have a book in her hand. She's read and enjoyed multiple genres but is especially partial to contemporary and erotic romance (with or without D/s themes), dark gritty romantic suspense and paranormal romance. Lea also writes reviews at Book Lovers Inc. and is active on Goodreads.