NOT like that!

But, it’s true that my newest contemporary BDSM erotic romance, UNDER CONTRACT, has two adolescent girls in it. NOT like that though!

See, my heroine is raising her nieces in the wake of her twin sister’s tragic death. Tina’s nieces are also twins – and at twelve years old, not easy to handle under the best of circumstances. Compound that with their lingering grief over being orphaned and Tina’s truly disastrous financial straits, the twins add a crushing burden to her life.

Then, when Tina begins a very kinky love affair with the absurdly wealthy and domineering Ryan Black, it becomes even more difficult for her to make sure she’s making good decisions for her nieces—especially protecting them from her own dubious moral choices. Planning her trysts around the girls’ school and activity schedules gave both Tina and me headaches!

I almost didn’t put the nieces in the story.

I almost took them out several times.

One of critique partners (CPs) who also writes erotic romance thought I should take them out.

My editor and other CPs were 100 percent that the nieces were a huge part of the story. So I dealt with the logistical and moral headaches, kept the characters and now I’m glad I did.

The presence of Josie and Carly in the story is important for a number of reasons.

1. They make Tina’s decisions about more than just herself,
2. They reflect Tina’s relationship with her own lost twin and complicate her grief, and most important,
3. Real life couples who like kink also have children and raise them. It’s a reality they deal with.

So, was it a challenge to write girls that age? Yes! Though I remember my stepdaughter when she was twelve and how I was at that age. I used those experiences to inform Carly and Josie as characters. Fortunately one of my CPs is also a local friend who has a twelve-year-old daughter, so I had some sense of how she is in the modern world. That CP had a few tweaks, but overall she said I nailed it!

Writers often talk about how difficult it is to include children and pets in stories, because those logistics must be constantly in mind. The dog has to be walked. The kids have to be picked up from school and not left alone overnight. But then—that’s life, right? And I like my books to be as close to what real people deal with every day, if I can.

Well, except for the absurdly wealthy, domineering and kinky hero part. A girl needs some fantasy, too!

What do you all think—kids and teens in these kinds of stories, yay or nay?

*Previously published on Home Love Books in 2015*