I’m back for 2024, and I’ve got even more fabulous authors joining me this year for my Author Spotlights!

For the Author Spotlight of the year, I’m joined by the wonderful Chloe Archer. We talked about being a sci-fi nerd and using all the pop culture references, her forthcoming monster romance, writing romances that are funny, and making her dreams a reality.

Over to you Chloe…

First things first, please introduce yourself!
Hi! Thanks so much for having me! I’m Chloe Archer and I write M/M sci-fi and paranormal romantic comedies with plenty of heat, humor, and zany shenanigans. I’ve been published for about a year and a half and have two series I’m working on. The first is my Tentacular Tales series, which is pretty much Men in Black meets The Princess Bride, but super gay and with tentacles! I have three novels and one novella out in this series, and one spinoff Christmas novel set in the same universe. The first three books are also out in audio and narrated by the amazing Greg Boudreaux. Book 4 comes out this May! It’s an ongoing series that needs to be read in order. My second series is a cozy small town M/M monster romance world called Monsters Hollow. Think Hallmark movie romance but with a very quirky magical small town and all kinds of unusual monsters and humans falling in love! All books are interconnected standalones with HEAs. I have two novellas and one novel out in Monsters Hollow. The second novel comes out in March and Book 1 will be coming out in audio via Podium Audio in late spring.

Tell us a little bit about your writing style.
My writing style is very… me. It’s quirky, funny, and super geeky at times. My stories are chock full of pop culture references, some mainstream and some very much for my fellow sci-fi nerds–represent! Because I write rom-coms, there isn’t a ton of angst in my stories but there’s usually some kind of action, intrigue, or excitement going on. I have a slightly obsessive love for hilarious acronyms and use them liberally! At the same time, I tend to enjoy having certain meta elements in my books. For instance, in my Tentacular Tales series my MC River writes a campy serialized space opera called “The Tentacular Tales of Captain Starblade” and I always include snippets of chapters from it in each of the books in the series. I’m also a huge lover of the grumpy/sunshine trope and use it regularly in my stories.

Describe your books in only three words.
Funny, quirky, and adorkable!

What’s your next book about and when’s it coming out?
My next book is The Gargoyle and the Romance Writer, Book 2 in my Monsters Hollow series. It’s coming out in March and it’s the love story of two characters I set up in Book 1, Vash (a Scottish gargoyle running a security agency) and Ryder (a human romance writer dealing with a creepy stalker). Ryder and Vash had some very obvious UST when they first met in Book 1, and now they’re thrown together when Ryder’s publisher hires Vash’s agency to protect him during his next book tour. There is plenty of hotness (aerial sex, anyone?), humor (Ryder says most of what he’s thinking and it’s often NSFW), and suspense ahead!

Out of all your books, which one are you most proud of?
I’m still pretty early into my writing career, but at the moment I would have to say my first book, It’s Not Unusual To Be Loved by an Alien (Tentacular Tales #1), is the one I’m most proud of. I’ve always wanted to be a published author but it took me a long time to get here. I wrote the book initially as the one that I desperately needed to read while I was going through a hard time after the death of a loved one. It helped me get past the grief and embrace the dream of being an author that I’d let languish for far too long. It will always be special to me because it’s the book that lit a fire in me to keep doing this for as long as I can!

What or who (or both) has influenced you most as a writer?
I’d say probably a wide variety of romantic comedy authors. When I started reading in the romance genre, I really gravitated toward the funny stories–-especially those in the paranormal or sci-fi categories. This was back in the early 2000s, so people like Katie McAlister, MaryJanice Davidson, Lynsay Sands, and so on. If a story could make me laugh and be invested in the characters, it was a winner for me! When I decided to start taking writing seriously, I knew I wanted to focus primarily on writing romances that were also funny. When readers tell me I made them laugh out loud multiple times while reading my books, it makes me so happy! 

What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve been writing off and on since I was in the fourth grade. My initial inspiration to start writing was discovering books that really spoke to my imagination. When I was a kid and throughout my teen years, high fantasy novels became my reading addiction. I read them voraciously! Before long I was imagining my own stories in my head and trying my hand at writing them. In my twenties, I discovered romance and that kind of took over in my brain. I wrote my first full-length novel at 22, but back then self-publishing wasn’t an option and I wasn’t able to get an agent so it never went anywhere. I pursued another path professionally for years, but never stopped writing. I started and never finished more books than I can count! To be honest, I don’t think I was taking it too seriously and kept telling myself “one day” I’ll do this. Then the pandemic hit and I lost someone close to me. That’s when I realized that waiting for someday might be too late. I needed to make my dreams a reality now–and that’s what I’m doing!

What’s your writing process like? Do you have a typical “writing day”?
Because I work a full-time day job and write on the side, I don’t have a typical writing day, per se, but my process is usually the same. Before I start a book, I usually brainstorm stuff about characters and the world of the story first. Generally, I do this longhand in a variety of notebooks I own. Once I’ve sketched out the characters and world, I have to figure out how a book starts and how it will end. That’s enough to get me going since I don’t plan out the whole book in detail beforehand. I often very loosely plot out the first few chapters on sticky notes.Then I use a dictation app to start writing via dictation. The first draft of most of my chapters comes from dictation that I then edit and spiffy up. I find dictation works well for me to get words on the page that I can make better. If I try to type on a blank page I move at a snail’s pace. For me, discovering dictation was a huge game changer!

What comes first for you – the plot or the characters?
I guess for me it’s mostly characters and the world of the story that come together first. Because I write sci-fi and paranormal, I have to know the world where these characters exist and how it’s shaped them. But I’m a character-driven reader as well as writer, so they always are the most important.

What’s a book that you wish you’d written?
OMG, Lyn Gala’s entire Claimings series. That is my all time favorite M/M sci-fi romance series. Her worldbuilding, especially the linguistic and anthropological complexities of an alien species and a human learning their language and customs, is so captivating. Also, Liam and Ondry are my total OTP when it comes to M/M sci-fi! If you haven’t read the series, definitely go check it out.

If you could only write one trope for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
Grumpy/sunshine, hands down. My favorite trope and one I write a lot. There’s just something about a sexy grump being won over, almost against their will, by a sunshiny character who is an undeniable force of light, laughter, and love!

What would be your three desert island books?
So hard! Um… Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which is one of my personal faves. NR Walker’s The Weight of it All because it’s a comfort read for me that never gets old. Lyn Gala’s Claimings, Tails, and Other Alien Artifacts, which is the first book in her Claimings series. Soooo good!

If one of your books could be made into a movie/TV series, which would you choose and who would you cast?
I’d lose my freaking mind with excitement if they ever made my Tentacular Tales series into a TV show! I’d probably cast David Tennant as Kai, especially since I have so many in-jokes about him in the series, which would make it hardcore meta and even funnier to me. As for River, that would be harder since he’s young (22). I think Matthew Gray Gubler (Spencer from Criminal Minds) could totally pull him off and has the curly hair for the part. He’d just need to dye it blond! As for River’s middle-aged stoner uncle, Benji, Keanu Reeves would be a dream casting for sure!

What do you like to do when you’re not writing? Do you have a secret passion or hobby that we don’t know about?
My writing has loads of pop culture references, so if folks hadn’t figured it out yet I love movies, TV shows, and music. I’m a big anime and manga nerd and binge that stuff hardcore when I’m in the mood! I lived in Japan for a year in my early 20s and developed a love for karaoke–I even have my own personal home karaoke machine! When I need to de-stress, I often use it to belt out some tunes. It’s quite cathartic! When I have the time and money, I also love to travel. I’ve lived at different points in Canada, the United States, Scotland, and Japan—and I’ve traveled throughout most of Western Europe. I still have loads of places I want to visit or return to!

Finally, what’s your favourite dinosaur?
Well, based entirely on Jurassic Park, I’d have to say the velociraptor! They’re sneaky, fast, and not to be underestimated!

Chloe Archer writes M/M sci-fi and paranormal romantic comedies with laugh out loud humor because she’s all about bringing the funny-sexy back. Oh, yeah!

She currently calls Minnesota home, but has lived abroad in places like Montreal, Edinburgh, and Tokyo. She’s hoping to relocate to Scotland permanently one day if the stars align. 

Chloe is a fur mama to two adorable Yorkies, Jasper and Teddy, and she loves them in a crazy dog mama kind of way. When she isn’t busy writing, she enjoys visiting friends and family, traveling, reading, binge watching movies and TV shows, and practicing her karaoke skills. She does a mean cover of Pat Benatar and Cher, or so she’s been told.

For more information on Chloe and her work you can visit her website, sign up for her newsletter, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, BookBub, and Amazon. You can also join her Facebook Reader Group for more news and updates.