Please help me welcome Alicia and Roy Street to my blog today. It’s a great interview and they are also giving a ecopy of Kiss Me, Dancer to one lucky commentor.

Tell us about yourselves.

Alicia: We’re one of those couples straight out of a romance novel. Roy was in a drawing class, and I was a starving dancer who made extra money on the side modeling for art schools. Of course, this was a life drawing class, so I was nude. And of course we managed to have one of those silly rom-com spats—but two months later we were so totally in love there was no going back.

Have you had any other careers before becoming a writer?

Roy: Alicia was a professional dancer. It always killed my how this tiny, quiet person would get onstage and morph onto an explosive powerhouse. I did theater and standup comedy, and as a gallery artist I showed my paintings in New York and London.

What genres do you write in and why?

Alicia: Our Dance ‘n’ Luv series is contemporary romance/romantic comedy. We also wrote two humorous mysteries together, one of which won a Daphne du Maurier Award. I have a YA paranormal short story in an anthology, and I’m currently finishing a novel based on that. Roy has a graphic zombie novel coming out with Escargot Books in the fall.

How do you two manage to write together?

Roy: We usually start with a general outline that is based on ideas for scenes and characters that we work out verbally on white boards. Then we go into a phase I’ve named “the marines and the village maker.” Alicia hates facing a blank page, but I love it, so I go in first and muscle out some material. Then Alicia sees what’s usable in it and begins forming a structure and shaping scenes.

Alicia: It’s really a lot of back and forth. Some scenes do get almost totally written by one or the other of us, and sometimes one of us will have a better feel for a certain character and do most of their dialogue. But no chapter or scene is considered finished until we both approve it. We want it seamless so a reader can’t tell two people wrote the book.

Do you have any words of inspiration for aspiring authors?

Don’t give up your dream. It’s a rough business, so be flexible. Keep studying your craft and the market. Be prepared to work your tail off, and hang in.

Tell us about your current series.

Roy: It was inspired by Alicia’s background in dance combined with our love for a windswept, rural part of Long Island, NY, where farms, vineyards and fishing villages line the narrow peninsula that stretches out into the Atlantic Ocean. It’s not far from Manhattan, so we can feature professional dancers, yet it has small towns with the kind of close-knit community we wanted in this series.

Tell us about your heroine’s strengths and weaknesses.

Casey, the heroine of Kiss Me, Dancer, has had plenty of hard knocks and failure. She is generous to a fault, and ironically, it takes a wealthy womanizer to teach her how to be aggressive enough to claim her rewards. It’s fun to compare her to Tanya, the heroine of Touch Me and Tango. She’s an ambitious and tough-minded mankiller whose armor folds in the face of a gentle, sexy gardener.

Do you have any upcoming Free promotions you would like to tell us about?

Readers can try out our series for Free with our short story – SNOW DANCE It can be read as a stand-alone, but it also introduces the siblings that are featured in our Dance ‘n’ Luv novels. It’s free on –
Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007JCTY40
Nook – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/snow-dance-alicia-street/1109480509?ean=2940044550506
Apple – https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id653306017

Where can readers find your books?

All our novels are in the major online stores. Our Dance ‘n’ Luv Boxed Set is a good bargain with three novels plus a short story.

Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AM3C5ZS
Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AM3C5ZS
Nook – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dance-n-luv-contemporary-romance-boxed-set-alicia-street/1046575124?ean=2940016610191
Apple – https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id659025265

Website – http://aliciastreet-roystreet.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/AliciaRoyStreet
Twitter – https://twitter.com/AliciaStreet1

EXCERPT FROM KISS ME, DANCER

Casey swallowed hard when she saw Drew Byrne’s teal blue eyes studying her. She tried glaring at him, but the way his sculpted torso filled out the sleeveless tee he wore and tapered down to his tiny jeans-clad hips made her pulse race. Ought to be illegal to be this sexy.

She glanced at his perfectly carved delt. Sure enough, there was the tattoo of a blue tractor-trailer. So, he was definitely the womanizing player her brother mentioned. Knowing it spelled bad news, she tore her gaze away from him, forcing back fantasies of licking him from head to toe.

Casey turned to his son and covered her discomfort by saying, “How about a game of ping-pong, Josh?”

He tucked in his chin and shook his head. “I’m terrible at it. You’d only get annoyed with me.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” Poor kid. Was it his father who made him feel that? “In fact, I’ll teach you some slick moves.”

Drew stepped forward, his expression cocky, his eyes doing the elevator dance on her. “Like what?”

A nervous Josh must have feared another run-in between his father and his dance teacher because he said, “My dad is a champ at it. You should play with him.”

Oh, she wanted to play with him, all right, but not ping-pong.

Before Casey had a chance to decline, Drew said, “Think you can handle a grown man?”

She wasn’t sure if that was a sultry double entendre or just a snide challenge. Either way, Casey decided this obnoxious, arrogant butthead who didn’t want his kid in her ballet class could use a good ass kicking. “Try me.”

The game moved quickly into a fierce competition. She had to admit he was good. But cracks began to show in his ego every time Casey delivered one of her trademark smashes, sending the ball like a bullet off the far corner of the table for a point. His grumbling and the tense crease that formed between his brows tickled her predatory instincts. Moving in for the kill, Casey revved up her best backhand spin shot. The same one she’d used to beat all the guys she grew up with, including her super athletic brother Parker.

It hadn’t exactly won her any dates in high school, but that wasn’t an issue here. Mr. Sexy Moneybags was way out of her league. He’d never bother with a plain Jane scrounger like her. And if he did, it would only be for a lark. She’d learned that lesson years ago.

Which made her fight even harder to beat him.

©Alicia Street, Roy Street