Horror: Guest Post: Lily Harlem

With Halloween on us soon, it’s only right for us to get into the meat of the season and address the way some of us erotic romance writers use horror. It’s not a common thread, of course, but it has its moments. With us today is the illustrious Lily Harlem.

Hello and thanks for inviting me over today, it’s great to be here. A little about me, I’m an award-winning author of erotic romance and I live in the countryside in the UK with my walking, talking inspiration Mr H. I write for HarperCollins, Ellora’s Cave, Totally Bound, Sweetmeats Press and Xcite, I also self publish, am a proud member of The Brit Babes and a rescuer of animals – any waif and stray with four legs gets a home here!

Halloween is soon to be upon us and ever since I was a kid I’ve enjoyed the 31^st of October and the 5^th of November (Guy Fawkes Night in the UK) immensely. Not only does it mean once they’re over Christmas is the next celebration/round of parties but there is something about the onset of darkness and cold that makes my tummy fluttery and I have the desire to light candles, drink red wine and wear big fluffy jumpers.

I’m not a big writer of horror in the ‘running through the woods with a mad axe man after a screaming heroine’ style but I do like a to add a supernatural twist to my stories. Breathe You In, for example, is about a girl who falls for the man who has her departed husband’s transplanted heart. A bit weird? Mmm, maybe but it stemmed from my time working as a nurse in Oxford in a coronary care unit – many years ago – and becoming completely fascinated by the heart and the emotional, evocative significance it held for people and patients. Breathe You In looks into this relationship we have with this organ in our bodies and was named a USA Today Reviewer’s Recommended Read of 2013. You can read the first chapter here.

My nursing years have often influenced my writing. I met so many interesting people, both patients and staff, that it’s impossible not to let them come to the forefront of my imagination when penning tales. For many of us life begins and ends in hospital, and in Confessions of a Naughty Night Nurse the story hits straight off on chapter one with a trip to Rose Cottage (the fluffy name given to the mortuary by staff!) and some high jinks with a very well-endowed security man! Ohh, this was fun to write in a twisted kind of way, and I think he does point out to her on the autopsy table that the French for orgasm is “La petite mort” which means little death!

Another story of mine that is dark, and features some very suspect characters you wouldn’t want to run into in a back alley is Anything for Him. I co-wrote this with Natalie Dae – we often write under the name Harlem Dae – and used this, rather creepy picture, as a starting point.

So this Halloween I will be carving a pumpkin, setting up a string of “eyeball” lights across the porch and handing out sweets to any village children who happen to knock and are heard over my barking dogs! I’ll also be thinking up my next story and planning and plotting the twists and turns that will get hearts racing and breath shortening!

If you’d like to check out a collection of my short stories, designed for when twilight stretches over the horizon and darkness rules, then here’s the link to Stories for When the Sun Goes Down! And if you’d like to come party with The Brit Babes, we’re having a Shivers and Tingles Facebook Event on the 31^st October that’s going to be a ton of fun with lots of gossip, contests and sexy beasts! We’d love to see you there.