I’m pleased to have Kay Jaybee and her delightfully mysterious husband, Steve as my guest today in the third installment of the Passionate Partners series. Welcome, Kay and Steve!
KD: Kay, I met you long before I met Steve. But that was because Steve was keeping the home fires burning, since London is quite a little hike for you to make. Keeping the home fires burning is no small task with children, and that is what impressed me most about you two Passionate Partners. While Steve wasn’t there in London with you, you couldn’t have been there without his support back home. That convinced me right on the spot that I was witnessing another one of those passionate partnerships in the promotion and celebration of sexuality through erotica. How did that journey begin, and has it always been a team effort?
K: We met at University a frighteningly long time ago now. Our first meeting was not auspicious! We were both helping a mutual friend get ready for a trip to Italy to study archaeology in Bologna. Said friend was as unorganised as ever, and the five of us who’d been roped in to get him to the train station on time we were all getting a bit tense to say the least!
S: You were as ratty as hell you mean!
K: Guilty as charged! I have a loathing of being late for anything, and the thought of our friend missing his connection and therefore his flight to Italy was making me edgy!
Steve was there with other friends, and I paid very little attention to any of them as I hunted high and low for all the dig equipment needed for the trip. I fear he thought I was a right stuck up cow!
S: I did! Posh southern thing in a bad mood!
K: Says the boy from the backwaters of Birmingham!!
S: What Kay is saying KD, is that she didn’t want anything to do with a bit of rough like me!!
K: Cheek! And you are not that rough Mr PhD!!! I just don’t like blokes with long hair that are mad about Iron Maiden!
S: And yet you married me!
K: Only after the hair got cut and I got you headphones! Lol!! Let’s just say, it took us 18 months from that first meeting to become friends, and then start going out together.
KD: Kay, what does Steve do to help your writing career that you appreciate more than anything else?
K: The most important thing Steve does is give me time to be Kay! It’s not easy reaching all my deadlines with the kids around and my other job to do, so being ‘Dad in charge’ for a few hours every weekend, and while I have my trips to London to do readings and erotica promotions, is vital- I could not do it without him. We have two amazing girls, and they are so much fun.
S: They are great- and both as mad as their mother!
K: And as nuts as their father!
S: Thanks goodness!
K: They also have very big feet- mine are the smallest shoes you can see here
KD: Steve, what, so far (knowing that there are lots more such moments ahead) has been the moment in Kay’s writing career when you’ve been the most proud of her?
S: My proudest moment was when I was looking at the Amazon charts on my iPhone and saw Kay’s novella, A Sticky Situation, in the top ten Kindle charts for the first time. Or it may have been after her first trip to do a reading at Sh! in London. I knew she was really nervous of speaking in front of other people, but she did it!
K: I think ‘terrified’ is the word- nervous doesn’t even cover it!
S: You did it though!
KD: What has been the craziest experience you’ve shared in your mutual journey through erotica?
K: Steve is known for being serious-minded about his work, so when a few years ago, he took a selection of my books to work to feature as lots in a charity auction and told everyone his wife had written them- well, let’s just say he enjoyed the stunned looks on everyone faces!
S: That doesn’t sound that crazy really does it!
K: True, but one of the main things about my erotica work is that it’s something I do separately – so any craziness we come across as a result of it is experienced alone.
S: I am quite fond of people asking who the woman in the photo on my desk is- most people look stunned that a grizzled old science guy like me has such a hot wife!
K: Blushing here!! Daft man!!
KD: Steve, once Kay begins a new story, how involved are you in the process? What do you consider your most important role when she’s with the Muse?
S: I’m not really involved at all, apart from keeping Kay amused with sentences and ideas that are SO bad she would never ever use them.
K: I keep telling him ‘she grabbed his huge throbbing member’ just isn’t good enough, but he doesn’t believe me!!
S: Makes you laugh when I say it though!
K: It’s more how you say it!!
I’d have to add there though that, although Steve isn’t involved in the creative or ideas process, he is essential to it. If it wasn’t for him taking over the housework, cooking, and amusing the kids so I can scribble down my ideas when they hit me out of nowhere, then there would be no 
KJB stories at all.
KD: Steve, you’re the behind the scenes support. You stay home with the kids so Kay can come to London to participate in readings and other events. Do you ever feel like you’re missing out by not being able to be there with her?
S: To be honest I don’t. I often go away for conferences and meetings with my work, which often involve socialising (we do a wicked sing along session!), and so it’s only right that Kay has the same chances with her work. We work so well as a team because we have these different parts to our lives.
K: I’d have to agree with that- we need different parts of our lives that just belong to ourselves. Steve’s career is his- he’s worked really really hard for years to get so far. And my career is mine, and has been hard won. At the end of the day we have a lot of fun telling each other about our adventures! You should hear the recordings of those scientists singing!!
KD: Now THAT, I would love to hear, Kay! What’s the hardest part of the Kay/Steve working partnership?
K: I guess the hardest part is that my workload is so huge, and the PR never ever ends, which can lead me to being rather obsessive!
S: Sometimes I feel like wrestling her laptop out of her hands!!
K: Sometimes you do wrestle the laptop out of my hands!
S: I am the cruellest man in the world KD- I actually force my wife to have a glass of wine, chocolate, and watch TV!
K: He does- cruel in the extreme!!
KD: Oh, such torture, Kay! I can’t imagine how you endure it! Steve, you’r my kind of cruel! What’s the best part? (If there can be better than wine and chocolate!
K: Lol- when he wrestles the laptop out of my hands and makes me eat chocolate!! No- the best part is that Steve never stops making me laugh- bottom line is he makes me very happy.
KD: That truly is better than wine and chocolate!
S: I just love to see Kay smile- and when she’s doing well with her writing the smile is even wider! You do not want to be around if the PR mountain has reached crash helmet and crampon levels!!
K: True- I’m like a PMT monster from hell then!
S: And then some!
K: Steve helps me keep perspective- reminds me that blogs really can wait, that a novel isn’t going to be written well when I’m tired, and that I need far more rest than I let myself have!
KD: What’s the best advice the two of you can offer to make that strange and wonderful relationship between erotica writers and their partners run smoother?
K: Respect each other’s need to do their own thing!
S: Always have black coffee on tap
K: Or tea if you’re weird like my husband!!
S: Never forget that writers are weird- they don’t write because it’s their job. They write because they HAVE to write- there is something in them that makes it an unstoppable force.
K: And writers must remember that normal people aren’t often like that!
KD: Absoulutely true on both counts! Tell us something about the Kay and Steve Team that might really surprise us.
K: Perhaps the most surprising thing to people is that we are just an ordinary family, and one of us just happens to be quite good at writing sex scenes!
S: Normal? Us? Yes, we are normal- but probably only in our own sense of reality!!
K: And we make dolls house sometimes?
S: Well I do
K: And I tidy up
S: True!
KD: Kay, what’s the Muse had you up to lately, and what yumminess should we be keeping an eye out for from Kay Jaybee?
K: The muse is as active as ever- although it is having a slight change of direction for a little while!
It’s been quite a year for me, with the release of The Perfect Submissive as a paperback, my second novel The Voyeur, my third novel, Making Him Wait, and a new anthology The Best of Kay Jaybee!!
I am just finishing up a new novella for the Xcite Secret Library range, and then, after such a nonstop year, I have decided to take a couple of months off the erotica and try my hand at something else (my lips are sealed!!). I’ll be back soon though- it is high time novel number five transferred itself from my imagination to my notebook…
S: Thanks for letting us both visit today KD!! Been a bit of a walk on the wild side for me!!
K: Thanks KD!!! xxx
KD: Thanks, both of you, for stopping by. What a pleasure it’s been to have the whole team!
About Kay Jaybee
Kay Jaybee wrote the novels Making Him Wait, (Sweetmeats Press, 2012), The Voyeur (Xcite, 2012), The Perfect Submissive (Xcite 2012), and 
Not Her Type: Erotic Adventures With A Delivery Man (OCPress, 2011). She has also written the anthologies The Collector (Austin & Macauley, 2012 & 2008), The Best of Kay Jaybee (Xcite, 2012), Tied to the Kitchen Sink, Equipment, (All Romance, 2012), Yes Ma’am (Xcite e-books, 2011), Quick Kink One and Quick Kink Two (Xcite e-books, 2010). Kay has had over 60 short stories published by Cleis Press (inc. Best of Best Women’s Erotica 2, Best Women’s Erotica 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012; Best Bondage 2012, Sweet Love, Smooth, Gotta Have It, Sweet Confessions), Black Lace (Sexy Little Numbers), Mammoth (The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica), Xcite (inc.Ultimate Sin, Boy Fun, Power Play, Threesomes, Finger Music, Tricks For Kicks), Penguin (Oysters and Chocolate; Erotic Stories of Every Flavor), Seal (Oysters and Chocolate; Nice Girls, Naughty Sex),and Sweetmeats Press (Immoral Views)
Details of Kay’s work, past, present and future can be found at www.kayjaybee.me.uk
Lol- that was so much fnu to do!!! Thansk for inviting us over hun! xx
It was SO much fun to have the two of you over! You were great! Thanks so much for stopping by!