In case you missed it, my second book, Smoldered, is now LIVE. It is Asher Peterson’s story––Asher, the owner of the Electric Tunnel, the fictitious strip club of my mind and setting of the Electric Tunnel Series.
It may come as no surprise, but I am asked all the time about my personal experience with strip clubs. In fact, I had a chance to chat with Romance at Random about this topic specifically and here is what I said:
…The question I’m asked the most is, “Did you go to strip clubs before, during, or after writing this? Are you going today? Now? Tomorrow?”
Friends ask my husband, extended family members question my mother, readers are extremely curious if I have friends who are strippers, and most of my husband’s gang has offered join me in doing research. Okay, are you ready? Cue Drumroll.
Yes. The answer is yes. I have in fact been to a number of strip clubs before writing Electrified. While the Electric Tunnel doesn’t really exist and all the characters that work there are fictitious, I don’t think it would be wise to write a book about the adult entertainment world without researching it.
I’m not even going to take the fifth…I am here to tell all.
For the record, there were two crazy and wild nights I spent inside the dark and cavernous walls of a strip club long before writing a story about one…Way back when, I was young, carefree, legal, and having a blast at a dance club when someone from my group suggested we go to the latest “adult place” to open. We ended up leaving and going with a semi-famous sports coach, who was out with us, and subsequently we were given the VIP treatment, including secluded tables in the back and use of a limo.
This might have influenced a tiny bit of the adult entertainment culture in Electrified and Smoldered, but a separate visit definitely doesn’t make it into the book. This happened when I was six months pregnant with my first-born and went on a bachelorette weekend in Sin City and found myself hopped up on pregnancy hormones at the all-male strip club. Let’s say, I cut out early that evening; my feet were hurting.
Then, we finally get to the part where I decided to actually create my own adult entertainment empire and a bunch of complex characters residing full-time within its deep purple velour walls. The idea of writing a book was always seated deep within me, and there were a few attempts before Electrified that ended up stuck on some hard drive underneath a pile of junk in my closet. It was late one night, in the bathroom of a posh and exclusive Las Vegas Strip Club when I had my big moment. The brainstorm of the century and I was carrying a purse barely big enough to hold a lipstick, let alone a pen and paper. (I call these napkin––or toilet paper––moments.)
It was way past dark in Sin City; we’d been to dinner and a show before late night cocktails and an evening that never ended…I found myself at the aforementioned adult establishment. I had to pee, and so I went to the ladies room and for whatever reason, one of the dancers was in there, and to say I became fascinated was putting it lightly.
I watched from afar as she moved incredibly graceful through the women’s room, studied her while she studied herself in the mirror …and a story began to come to life in my head. This woman was such a complex creature. A standout on the stage. Sexy, sinful, silky smooth and radiant as she wrapped herself tight around the pole center stage or ran her body along someone during a lap dance in the dim haze of the club floor. But inside the bathroom she was a regular person: a wrinkle here, a scar there, a hair out of place, a tiny tube of lip balm in her hands just like mine. As I watched this stranger’s chest rise and fall with breath in the reflection in the mirror, she became a multi-dimensional being to me and not just a glorious body to envy.
The social worker in me began to wonder what her story was or is and how she came to do what she does. Did she have a family? One that she kept in contact with or saw with regularity? Was she running from something bad? The possibilities pummeled through my brain like a freight train before it became clear, I’d spent too long in the loo...
Head on over to Romance at Random to read more…
