Our Daily Show Interview! Tori Ross- Author: Baked & Burned Out Now!
ALTON - Award-winning local author Tori Ross stopped by “Our Daily Show!” to talk about her newest book, a “steamy romance” titled “Baked and Burned.”
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Ross has written several romantic comedies and contemporary books. She said the writing is “totally entertainment,” and she enjoys sharing her work with readers. She hopes this most recent book, which explores a “pregnancy trope” after a one-night stand, will appeal to her audience.
“It’s mostly romantic comedy, but very steamy,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I did not pursue traditional publishing. A lot of times, traditional publishers will be like, ‘Eh, we don’t want this scene here. We want you to clean it up.’ I don’t want to clean it up. I want to make it dirty, because that’s what people like.”
Ross began writing romance in 2021. She previously worked as a special education paraprofessional who wrote during her downtime, and she was pleasantly surprised when all of her coworkers were “very supportive” of her work. Her husband, too, encourages her writing, and she emphasized how much this support means to her.
“I have a very good support system,” she said. “I thought people might be kind of grossed out by it, but everybody’s been very accepting.”
Ross joked that she is a “pantser” — someone who writes “by the seat of [her] pants.” She develops an outline and often begins by writing the first two chapters and the final two chapters of a book. She then fills in the middle of the plot.
This method works well. Ross has received a lot of praise for her books, including the holiday favorite “All I Wank for Christmas” (no, that’s not a typo) and the six-part series “The Traveling Calvert Sisters.” She also received the National Indie Excellence Award for romantic comedy for her book “The Cuffing Season Contract.”
“Baked and Burned” is a sequel to “Contact High,” but Ross said you don’t have to read the original to enjoy her latest work. All of her books are self-published, and she enjoys working with other creatives to edit, format and publish her writing.
Though Ross believes that too much detail can “bog down” a book, she promises her readers don’t have to worry; there are plenty of details in the important scenes.
“The thing about the erotic scenes is you have to be as detailed as possible,” she said. “That is one scene that people do want detail. They want to know what it looks like. They want to know what it sounds like, what it feels like, hey, throw some smell in there too. Every sensory item that you have, you have to really immerse your audience in that.”
For more information about Tori Ross or to order a copy of “Baked and Burned,” visit Ross’s official website at SmuttyBookLady.com.
