Who am I?

I’m a small-town girl who grew up on the Alabama Gulf Coast, dreaming of one day being a romance author. Now in my mid-thirties, I’ve developed a mild caffeine addiction, and never lost that desire to write romance books. I still live on the Gulf Coast, still live in a small town, and—despite some fears that paralyzed me for many years—I’m going after that romance author dream, now. A few years ago, I married my best friend, and he encouraged me to be myself, embrace my true voice, and write what I really want to write and to hell with what anybody else thinks about it. So, now I spend my time reading and writing the kind of smutty books that make my heart sing.

You can find posts about my books and series at my B. J. Stone Author Page on Rapacious Press’ website. 

Overcoming Fear:

Getting Rid of My Writing Paralysis

Fear is a hell of a thing, y’all. For years, I let fear eat at me and steal away years of joy from me. I let it stop me from finding my voice and exploring the kinds of stories I want to tell.

After years of not writing at all, I started trying to write again, but nothing I did really sat right with me. I started and then abandoned so many stories it’s not even funny. Why? I was always plagued with what-if questions. 

What if it isn’t good enough? What if it’s too dirty? What if it’s too dark? What if somebody I know reads it? What if my family reads it? What if word gets out in our small town that I wrote something like this and people judge me for it? What if what I write makes my family look bad? What if, what if, what if… 

It was an endless doom spiral of what-if questions, and I couldn’t seem to get out of it. So, I tried to write things that wouldn’t offend anyone in our small town if they read them. Those stories were decent, good even, but they weren’t ME and they weren’t what I really wanted to write. It was depressing, always censoring myself and worrying myself half to death over what people would think if the wrong person found out I was a writer and decided to make a big stink about what I was writing. 

I was unhappy with feeling like I had to censor everything I wrote, having to water myself down to what is considered “acceptable” in our little corner of the world. It made me miserable. 

One day, I was talking to my husband about how much it sucked to never be able to write the kind of books I really want to write because my parents are public figures and it might cause issues for them in our small town. 

My husband, bless him, turned to me and said the most wonderfully liberating thing anyone has ever said to me.

That day, during that conversation, B. J. Stone was born. 

You’re probably wondering what I was so scared of that I let it stop me from writing at all for a long time, and let it keep me from embracing my true voice for years after that, when I finally let myself write again. To answer that question, I’ll have to share my “Villain Origin Story” with you.

My Villain Origin Story…

It is both a miracle and an act of rebellion that I am writing and publishing Robbed for you to read on Kindle Vella.

It has been over eighteen years since I wrote without reservations, without censoring myself, without holding back. I haven’t been this true to myself and my voice since I was sixteen years old. Sixteen-year-old me was uninhibited, free, and loved writing more than anything else in the world. In an instant, everything changed.

My hands tremble as I think about the last time I wrote a story with a sex scene in it, over eighteen years ago. The memory of it comes flooding back and my chest tightens with dread. I was only sixteen then, so passionate about writing and also impossibly naïve and somewhat lacking in the social skills and common sense departments. When I shared that story, something horrible happened that changed my life forever, an event so traumatic that it has been etched into the deepest recesses of my mind, paralyzing me from ever writing something similar again. (Until now.)

Every time I pick up a pen, I hesitate as visions of that fateful day flash through my mind. Allow me to explain exactly what happened. A classmate of mine at school was obsessing over this story I was writing at the time, and begged me to bring her more pages of it so she could read them. It was a fast burn and got to the sex scene fairly quickly, but I asked her to take the pages home, not read them at school because I didn’t want to get in trouble for them. Little did I know that she got caught reading the pages in creative writing class, and when pressed by the teacher, she immediately revealed that they were mine.

The creative writing teacher told me, “While this writing is quite good, it’s certainly not appropriate for school.” I understood where she was coming from and hoped that, since this was the first time she’d ever had a problem with me, that would be the end of the matter. Except it wasn’t. My mother was a teacher at the same school, so the creative writing teacher took the pages and ran straight to Mother’s classroom with them to ensure further shame and punishment rather than simply handling the situation for herself.

(I feel it is factually important to share with you that the sex scene I wrote in that story over eighteen years ago was extremely vanilla and frankly sweet compared to some of the things I’d experienced in my personal, private life by that point.)

My mother was absolutely livid with me for embarrassing her in her place of work. She actually confiscated the story from my creative writing teacher, took the pages home, and showed them to my father when he got home from work. Mother pitched a fit to my father about me being stupid and embarrassing her at work with that filthy smut. 

So, my father then barged into my room with the printed out story in his hand and shouted at me for a solid half hour, shaking the pages in my face while he called me a sick-ass deviant, a freak, a whore, and an idiot, all for writing a fictional story that contained a sex scene that was angelic cotton candy compared to what my boyfriend at the time was putting me through in real life.

My parents shamed, humiliated, and deeply traumatized me for being myself and doing the thing I loved most in the world: writing high-heat romantic stories. Why? Because we lived in a small town, they were public figures, and I’d embarrassed them with my “bad behavior.” I spent the next eighteen years of my life heavily censoring myself and afraid to write the thing I used to enjoy reading and writing most in the world.

In late 2022, thanks to my husband’s love and support, I decided that enough was enough. Eighteen years is much longer than I deserved to suffer for embarrassing them with my words. So, I decided I was finally going to embrace my voice again, and publish the kinds of stories I love to read and write under a pen name to protect my privacy and my parents’ precious, squeaky-clean pillar-of-the-community image, and B. J. Stone was born.

B. J. Stone is my secret safe space to let my dark side and demons out to play, to explore my voice as an author without fear, and to entertain readers who love high heat small town romances with dark and dirty twists along the way.

To those of you who’ve read it, thank you for giving First Secret on Kindle Vella a chance! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it!

If you’ve experienced a similar trauma that’s holding you back, I want to encourage you to find your voice and pursue your passion, too. I promise you, it’s worth it.