16+ years ago, I was a member of a Yahoo group. Most of the other members were romance authors, along with a blogger and an editor or two.
One day, one of the other members, in reference to a book she’d heard about, asked how a werewolf could be vegan. (The book, if I remember right, was about a vegan who became a werewolf and *stopped* being vegan. It was also a heterosexual romance novel.)
I was bored that day and decided I had an answer. I wrote a short scene depicting someone awakening from their first shift into wolf form after being changed to a werewolf…and still refusing to eat meat, even as a wolf, because that was how deep his veganness–and stubbornness–ran. Even when the pack Alpha tried to tell him that he needed meat to rebuild his strength after shifting, he refused.
A while later, one of the editors in the group, who worked for a publisher of male/male romance, challenged us authors to write a scene with “two hot men and whipped cream.” I immediately thought of my vegan werewolf and his Alpha and wrote the scene…and the editor asked when she could expect the book.
At that point, I’d been writing heterosexual romance for over a year. I had thought about trying male/male romance, mainly to honor the three “uncles” I grew up with who treated me like their own and showed me the healthiest relationship out of any of the adults I knew, but I didn’t quite dare to write the book I wanted to write because I am not a man. But one of the group members was a gay man, and he encouraged me to give it a try and even did some sensitivity reading for me on that first book to ensure that I wasn’t being offensive in any way.
I wrote a novel that I called Salad on the Side…because I had never heard the slang phrase “tossing salad” and so didn’t realize the double entendre in the title until after the book was published and some readers informed me.
Readers liked the book. My editor and publisher liked the book. I was asked to plan a series, which I did. I struggled to come up with a series title, until one day I said, “I want it to reference Kyle’s veganism. Something like ‘Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat,’ kind of a takeoff on that old book Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche.” And thus the series title was born.
Five books were published in that series from 2011-2014, and then I called the series complete. In 2016, due to poor sales, I requested my rights back to all books with that publisher; they granted the request. That same year, I experienced massive burnout with writing at all…and I wrote nothing as Karenna Colcroft from then until 2022.
In 2021, out of boredom, I reread Salad on the Side and the rest of the series…and thought “These are really good. Maybe it’s time to get them back out into the world.” Ten years had passed since Salad on the Side’s original publication, and I felt far less burned out than in 2016.
I started revising and updating the books, which were originally set around 2015 and now take place (in my mind, anyway) in whatever the “present day” is when someone reads them. And in the course of revising and updating, I realized that book 5 was not actually the end of the story of vegan werewolf Kyle Slidell and his mate, werewolf leader Tobias Rogan. Books 6-10 now exist, with book 10, released last month, actually concluding their story (I think…).
Salad on the Side, the book that introduces Kyle and Tobias and starts the whole thing, is permanently only 99 cents (US) on Amazon. If you’re looking for something different to read and want to get to know Kyle and Tobias, check it out! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D54SKKCH
