Tempt Me by Remmy Duchene
Dreamspinner Press
Published August 17th 2018

Cover Art:  Kanaxa

Sales Links: Dreamspinner Press | Amazon | B&N

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Remmy Duchene here today on tour for Tempt Me. Welcome, Remmy!

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words Interview with Remmy Duchene

How much of yourself goes into a character? Quite a bit. Sometimes I spend a few hours writing and at the end, I feel so exhausted. I seem to go on the emotional ride with my characters (as weird as that sounds). I cannot tell you how many times I message one or both my best friends with tears in my eyes saying “these characters are breaking my soul!” The struggle is real.

Do you feel there’s a tight line between Mary Sue or should I say Gary Stu and using your own experiences to create a character?: I generally use versions of people I know for my secondary characters. One or two times I’ve used someone for a main – I am always afraid I’ll write the characters too close to a friend or family member and someone they know will read it and well—down hill from there. I know, paranoid but things happen lol

Does research play a role into choosing which genre you write?  Do you enjoy research or prefer making up your worlds and cultures?: Any world I create generally has a touch of a real culture in it. Lately, I’ve been using quite a few made up small towns but I plop them down on top of an actual small town. So, though I make certain things up, some things are real. It’s weird to put it that way and I’m not sure it makes sense to anyone else but me lol.

Has your choice of childhood or teenage reading genres carried into your own choices for writing?: It used to. But over the years the romance genre has morphed into something I don’t recognize. As a writer I have to find a way to adapt while still holding on to those imaginative wonder I am used to from my teenage years.

Have you ever had to put an ‘in progress’ story aside because of the emotional ties with it?  You were hurting with the characters or didn’t know how to proceed?: Yes. My novel WHISPERS OF LOVE wreaked havoc on my emotions. It hit a little too close since Hilo went to school like he was supposed to, graduated and work just didn’t seem to want to find him. He had to work at a menial job, struggling to make ends meet, unable to find love—yeah, close to home.

Do you like HFN or HEA? And why?: It depends on my mood at that point in the story. I mean, everyone prefers HEA, right? And in this industry most people believe HFN means the story will have a book 2.

Do you read romances, as a teenager and as an adult?: I jumped from Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys to romance. I grew up reading Catherine Coulter, Jayne Ann Krentz and Nora Roberts. There weren’t any LGBT books in Jamaica.

Who do you think is your major influence as a writer?  Now and growing up?: I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember. I’ve always loved the ability to get lost in a world not my own. Books took me to adventure, romance, dark places I can escape to and have the time of my life.  I think that is my major influence as a writer—the ability to take someone out of their everyday, and give them the ability to speak foreign languages, travel to places they probably cannot afford and meet spectacular people they wouldn’t have otherwise.

How do you feel about the ebook format and where do you see it going?: I am on the fence about the eBook format. I love the feeling of a paperback in my hand. I was recently at my BFF’s wedding and the power went out. I wasn’t phased in the least because I had my book with me and didn’t have to worry about charging it. On the other hand, I understand that the world is in progression and technology gives you the option of adapting or dying. I chose both—eFormat but still keeps my books around.

How do you choose your covers?  (curious on my part): For my self-published books I have three fantastic cover designs that are my go to. I’ve worked with one, StudioENP for years now. The other two are new. These three designers know me so well, I have never had to send a cover back and tell them it is wrong. I am fairly easy with covers. I understand this is the designer’s art as much as it is the face of my book, and I tend to tell them about my characters and suggest colours I love and then step back and watch them create. So far, I’ve been very lucky since I normally write interracial and stock photos alone are hard to come by.

Do you have a favorite among your own stories?  And why?: Isn’t this a bit like asking which child is my favorite? Lol. Let me see now – My favorite….So far I have to say… Anywhere But Here and Call Me Gideon – I know, those are two. But Anywhere But Here is a tale about a black doctor who was raised in India and a John Doe that is brought into his hospital badly beaten up. I love the change of scenery in this story because it takes place in India and Sri Lanka and this was a first for me.

Call Me Gideon is another one I’d say is up there for my top. The emotions in this story breaks my heart just thinking about it and that was as raw as I’d ever written.

Whispers of Love is close up there as well but you said pick one lol.

What’s next for you as an author?: Currently, for this year I haven’t released much. Aside from TEMPT ME that was release August 17^th through Dreamspinner Press, I am one of the lucky authors in the BEAUTIFUL SKIN anthology being released August 23^rd that was put together by the fantastic Emmy Ellis at StudioENP. She recognized the need for awareness in the diversity area and has stepped up to do something about it. I’m also hard on work on my next novel tentatively titled BABY, COME TO ME (for those who know me, that title will change five million times before the final product is done lol)

If you write contemporary romance, is there such a thing as making a main character too “real”?  Do you think you can bring too many faults into a character that eventually it becomes too flawed to become a love interest?: I’m not sure the answer to this. Readers say they want real but sometimes they tell you a character is too real – which I don’t know if that is possible.

What traits do you find the most interesting in someone? Do you write them into your characters?: Loyalty. That is a very important thing to me. I generally write that into my good-guys. But my bad guys? Forget about it lol

Have you ever put a story away, thinking it just didn’t work?  Then years/months/whatever later inspiration struck and you loved it?  Is there a title we would recognize if that happened?: yes. All the time. Case in point, my short ONE FINE THING (That will be in the Beautiful Skin anthology), I was stuck on that one for years. I started it about eight years ago—wait, no more. Because I started it while I was in college. I graduated college, graduated university, graduated college again, worked for six years—so yea, WAY more than eight years. I just couldn’t make it work. Then Emmy ask for stories for this anthology and WHAM! Unstuck.

Have you ever had an issue in RL and worked it through by writing it out in a story?  Maybe how you thought you’d feel in a situation?: Usually. Some of the hardships my characters go through usually is an offshoot of my some of my real life situation. I mean, some things happen in your life that you cannot make up, right?

What’s  the wildest scene you’ve imagined and did it make it into a story?: LOL – yeah, we’re not going to answer this one. Lol. Nope.

Ever drunk written a chapter and then read it the next day and still been happy with it?  Trust me there’s a whole world of us drunk writers dying to know.: I did that last weekend lol! Granted I wasn’t completely blitz, just a little tipsy. I stared at the screen the entire day nothing would come out right so I poured myself a glass of wine that turned into four and voila! Love scene written that blew my mind lol. Never doing that again though. The consequences were dire lol.

If you could imagine the best possible place for you to write, where would that be and why?: Oh man I could go on and on with this.

1. The Port of Naples – just watching the cruise ships come in on one side and the city with historic buildings on the other.
2. On a beach in Cuba.
3. In an open concept condo in Paris that sits right outside the Eifel Tower.
4. On the ground in front of the louvre.

Like I said – I could do this forever…

With so much going on in the world today, do you write to explain?  To get away? To move past? To widen our knowledge? Why do you write?: Most times to hide. I mean, like you say, the way the world is today you need that time of seclusion from most of it. You can’t keep getting bombarded by all the crazy and not take time away from it. Also, I write because I don’t think I’m remotely good at anything else lol.

What’s next for you as a writer?: I am not entirely sure. I make writing plans all the time and then my muse blows them out of the water. It’s better to not plan…just go with the flow.

About Tempt Me...

Officer Gabe Ford knows finding love could be a tad problematic—especially since he hasn’t come out to his partner of six years yet. But what’s a guy to do when his body wants what his brain is saying he can’t have?

A year and a half after a breakup, Jason Tomlinson isn’t actively looking for a relationship. Hell, he can do bad all by himself. But Gabe Ford is just too damn yummy to resist. Just as things are beginning to pick up, one bullet may end it all before it even begins.

About the Author

Remmy Duchene is a Canadian-hockey-watching-baseball-playing kind of guy. He loves walking in the rain and bugging his friends about his latest story ideas. Remmy believes that true love comes in all shapes, sizes, and sexualities. He is always saying “I’d rather see two gay people in love get married than two straight people that hate each other.”