Fan Letter To Shayla Kersten

Today it’s my turn to let my inner fan girl scream, as part of the amazing Fan Letter Blog Crawl that Kassa started.

Yesterday E.H. from E.H. on Books ‘N More did two letters - one to Ms. LaVyrle Spencer and one to Ms. Jourdan Lane. Tomorrow Orannia (from the wonderful Walkabout blog) will write her fan letter. So, don’t forget to check that out!

The blog crawl is a great way to let authors known how much we appreciate them and how important they are to us bloggers and readers. I’m happy to be part of this celebration of authors who’ve touched us and enjoyed us with their wonderful books. For me, one of those authors is Shayla Kersten. So, here’s my letter to her:


Dear Ms. Shayla Kersten,

When I first started reading M/M romance novels late last summer, short after I discovered the joy of reading romances in general, one of the gay love stories I picked up was your novel A Helping Hand. It was a rather random purchase, mainly inspired by the backblurb and cover, at one of the first ebook seller’s sites I dared to visit and trust with my credit card information, after days of hesitating and wondering if this so called Ellora’s Cave publisher would be legit. So, on more than one front it was a bold venture, but boy, am I glad I took the risk.
I not only met these deliciously hot cops Rich and Dan, I also read one of the best Gay For You themed romances as of today. I instantly recognized it as one of my favorite themes in gay romance, together with the Friends Become Lovers theme which was also there. The emotional and sexual tension between these two friends was keeping me at the edge of my seat and making me hold my breath until they finally found their HEA.

I loved how you wrote it all down, how you made me fall in love with these guys, how you let me feel what they felt, how you left me all hot and bothered after each sexy scene and how you kept me so invested that I really didn’t want to finish the book although I desperately wanted Rich’s and Dan’s happy ending.
You can imagine how happy I was to discover your pretty decent backlist. Off I went and bought several more of your books. After reading a few others I declared myself a fan of your work and added you to my auto-buy list. Or actually, I didn’t have one yet, but instantly started one then, with you as the first author on it.

Since then, I’ve read many of your books. And I have quite some favorites among them: besides A Helping Hand, there are for example Forever, Hidden Force and Past Lies.
It doesn’t matter if your heroes are cops (the Tennessee cops series), a Dom or sub (From Thirty Days to Forever series), an attorney or paramedic (Positive Possibilities), a tattooed cake baker (Icing on the Cake), a mayor or self-made millionaire (Past Lies), an archaeologist or time-traveler (For Olympus’ Sake), or a vampire (Eternity series), they all are easy to fall in love with because of the way you make them come alive and three-dimensional. The diversity of your characters never gets boring and they all have one thing in common: they’re sexy as hell!

Your writing has a lot of other qualities I love. Somehow you manage to make it easy to picture a scene with just a few well-placed words, I never go ‘wait, where did he place his leg/arm/etc.’ and have to go back to look it up. I just don’t get confused and it all makes sense, which is a writing quality I appreciate much. Another one is the slightly hidden but still present touches of humor in your books. It’s mostly in the way your heroes interact with each other, no matter how intense their relationships can get there’s always a light moment or two. Yet another quality is how you know how to explore every romantic relationship you write about, to its full potential. For example, I loved how you took Randy and Paul (from Past Lies) not only out of the closet (making them feel like teenagers again) but into some bondage and kinky play as well.

I could go on and on about how much I love your work, your heroes, their relationships and your writing. Just know that although I’m not much of a rereader I would definitely reread your books. The chance is getting bigger since I only have a few of your books left on my TBR shelf… No surprise that I’m yearning for your future novels. I especially can’t wait for the fourth Tennessee cops book!

So, here’s to many more of your wonderful books and thank you so much for the ones you’ve already written!

Warmly,
Janna
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Shayla Kersten's blog
Shayla Kersten's books at Ellora's Cave