Author Interview With Misty Vixen

Please introduce yourself and your book(s)

I live somewhere in the United States and I’ve been writing professionally (see: earning more than pocket change from my self-published works) for about seven years now. I started out as an erotica author with a focus on down-to-earth human men protagonists having sexual and/or romantic relationships with alien, monster, or otherwise inhuman women. Over the past few years, I have shifted focus to writing harem novels. In short: a male protagonist goes on an adventure of some kind and meets/begins sexual and romantic relationships with multiple women, and they live and work together. I’ve written about 60 novels, with approximately two thirds of those being erotica/romance and one third being harem fiction.

Tell us about the characters and relationships in your stories

In the beginning, I entered the genre as a sort of counterculture author. Almost all the other erotica I was seeing (in my particular part of the genre) featured ‘alpha males’. Or, in other words, ‘tough’ guys calling themselves ‘alpha’ as an excuse to be a jerk. So I spent a few years writing the opposite of that. All of my protagonists were mild-mannered twenty-somethings who were a lot more realistic in their portrayals. They had self-doubt, anxiety problems, and usually tended to have jobs like author or technician. These characters tended to be thrilled at the attention they were receiving from the women who came into their lives.

After awhile, I felt as though I’d satisfied the urge to write about these types of characters, and decided to try something new. As I started shifting my focus to harem, I knew I would need a different type of protagonist. So I decided to try and take on the challenge of making main characters who share some characteristics of the ‘alpha’ archetype, (assertive, confident, strong), while still embodying characteristics I feel ground the character in reality and make the more interesting (compassion, empathy, etc.), and also giving them problems to manage (insecurity, anxiety, depression).

When it came to the ladies in my books, they haven’t so much changed as (hopefully) become more complex and refined. I try to create a variety of different personality types. Some of my women are very bold and assertive, some are aggressive and angry, some are shy and awkward, some are overtly sexual, some are cool and confident, some are distant and detached. Whatever their personality, I do at least try to give them history, motivation, and agency. I try very hard to make them exist for more than the reason that they are there for the protagonist to sleep with.

From the beginning, I’ve tried to make my relationships focus on trust, respect, and communication. Even the casual ones. Even one-night-stands. I try to make them fair. My longer series have given me the ability to work through larger difficulties in relationships, but ultimately everyone ends up happy, and if not healed, then at least understanding that while ‘healed’ may not be an option, ‘healthier’ can be.

What lessons could readers learn about real-world relationships from your novel(s)?

Here’s some of the broader lessons I try to convey in my work:

  1. You should be open and communicative in your relationship. If you are having a problem, either a personal problem or a problem with your partner, tell them in plain, open, non-confrontational terms.
  2. Be respectful. If someone doesn’t want to do something, that isn’t a challenge. Let people have their boundaries.
  3. Relationships are give and take. All parties involved need to put in work.
  4. You should try to find and make your own happiness.

What real-life relationship experiences, observations or insights have influenced your writing?

Observationally, I’d say that I’ve seen too many examples of people who are unhappy in relationships, and think this is not just normal, but expected. I’ve come across so many posts online or people in real life having relationship problems that seem very extreme, and yet they often think they are overreacting. And it’s obvious that we romanticize certain things in our fiction.

We romanticize drama and ‘bad boys’ and several other unhealthy things that tend to not play out the way we’d like in real life. Despite the fact that I sell obvious fantasies in my fiction, I try to come at my writing from a more realistic perspective in how relationships form and how people interact. I’ve seen a lot of unhappiness in the world, specifically tied to relationships, and I want to make happy relationships in my fiction.

Are there any relationship themes or topics you want to cover in future releases?

That’s difficult to say. I’m a very ‘in the moment’ kind of writer and the ideas I do get tend to revolve around setting/plot. In a way the characters sort of manifest organically from there, and I’m not sure what kind of characters I’ll end up with until I’m actually writing them. That being said, I definitely do want to explore more characters who have longer term and deeper issues, both physical and psychological, and ways in which relationships might develop to help heal from or deal with these issues.

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