These authors are gearing up for spooky season with … sexy romance novels.
Yes, you read that right, some major BookTok names teamed up with Amazon Original Stories for Scared Sexy, a series of six spine-tingling love stories featuring some iconic monsters — and some even take more of a nontraditional approach.
Author Katee Roberts went for a gender-swapped romance when it came to their story, Beautiful Nightmare.
“Right now, men who are monsters are very popular in fiction, romance specifically, but if you look back at myths and legends, a significant number of them depict monsters in the shape of women — especially the ones designed to tempt folks,” the writer told Us Weekly exclusively. “In some places, sleep paralysis used to be attributed to the night hag, which would sit on your chest while you slept.”
Your sleep paralysis demon who is “bad at her job”? That’s Roberts’ story.
“Once you have that premise, the jokes kind of write themselves,” the author quipped. “She’s looking at scaring her sleeping human like a first-year medical intern. She’s done the training, now it’s time to do stuff on her own.”
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Spoiler alert, the demon is “hot and sweet” which led the story’s hero to react differently than expected.
Roberts is admittedly “greedy” so wants more of the stories they love (just like this one) and thankfully, some other authors have already started working on “similar things.”
I’m always eager for more,” they told Us. “Every author brings their own spin to the dynamic, so I don’t think it’s in danger of ever getting old.”
Scared Sexy is free to read and listen with Prime and Kindle Unlimited. Aside from Roberts, authors Ali Hazelwood, J.T. Geissinger, Ruby Dixon and Kimberly Lemming have stories included.
Christina Lauren (Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings) were ready to jump in head-first when asked to craft another short story.
“With a short story, you don’t really ever struggle with the ‘mushy middle’ dilemma that you sometimes face with a longer-form novel,” they explained that their focus was on “tight arc and pacing” when writing Falling for Scared Sexy.
“It’s a good reminder to focus on the basics of storytelling and not get bogged down in extraneous details,” they added.
The duo knew it would be “fun” to “dip out of the contemporary space for a beat” for a spooky story, which is how they got on board with Falling. Well, that and a conversation with Hazelwood.
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“Romance is good year-round, obviously, but spooky season also finds us in our comfy clothes, tucked in our favorite chair, under our softest blanket, with our comfort candle lit nearby,” the duo gushed about the collection, which officially dropped on Tuesday, September 23. “There’s really no better set up for reading romance than that.”
The duo — who’ve written more traditional romances like last year’s The Paradise Problem — might even have some more paranormal stories up their sleeve.
“We met writing paranormal fanfiction, and so paranormal romance is in our coauthor DNA,” they teased. “We’ve been making plans to get back into that space and are currently playing around with new ideas, characters, worlds, and creatures. Honestly, we can’t wait to see what comes next.”
Scared Sexy is available now through Amazon Original Stories.
