Stanislaus resident burning up the book charts with ‘hot’ romances

The world needs more love, says author Audrey Carlan, who’s happy to do what she can through her “wicked hot” stories.

It’s no small contribution, either, considering the Stanislaus County resident has appeared on the New York Times and USA Today best-seller lists and, between paperbacks and ebooks, has sold millions of copies. Just Sunday, all 12 of her “Calendar Girl” novellas were among the top 50 books on the iTunes chart.

“Calendar Girl,” about a 24-year-old Las Vegas woman, Mia Saunders, who becomes a high-priced escort to pay off her gambler father’s million-dollar debt to a loan shark, is the series that has drawn the most attention to Carlan.

But another series, “Trinity” – the novels “Body,” “Mind” and “Soul” – was the first to get her on the Amazon best-sellers list. And yet another, earlier trilogy, “Falling,” probably is her most romantic, the author said while sitting at a table in Modesto’s Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Friday to sign copies of her books.

Yes, Carlan is prolific. When she was signed by Waterhouse Press in August 2015, she’d been writing stories for 18 months, during which time she produced six novellas and six full-length novels. Last week she released her 19th title, “Resisting Roots,” the first in her new “Lotus House” series.

“I write very fast,” she said. “Right now, I’m required to write a novel every eight to 10 weeks.”

It’s just part of the whirlwind that’s swept up the married mom of two, who still takes her boys to school and picks them up each day, makes dinner and does the dishes. Not watching TV is one of the ways she makes time for writing.

Carlan was a self-published author selling about 1,000 ebooks a month when Waterhouse came calling.

“We found her through her Amazon ranking, not because she was doing well but because she wasn’t doing very well,” Meredith Wild, author and Waterhouse founder, told The New York Times in an article published in January.

Carlan had great reviews but low Amazon sales rankings, suggesting she was talented but lacked marketing skills, the article said. Waterhouse bought her backlist and signed her to a 27-book deal.

Now, with “Calendar Girl” in the process of being translated into 22 languages, she said, Carlan finds herself going to book conventions and interviews not only around the nation but across the globe. She’s already been interviewed on the “Today” show, which, as USA Today did, speculated that “Calendar Girl” could be the next “50 Shades of Grey” series, E.L. James’ books that took erotica mainstream.

Carlan will be out of the area for a week starting Monday, then has her next signings in June. In September, she’ll be in France; in October, Orlando, Fla.; in November, Denmark; in January, Paris.

On another front, the wheels are turning to make “Calendar Girl” into a series for cable TV. According to a report on the Deadline Hollywood website, “A decade after adapting the ‘Gossip Girl’ book series into the successful CW show, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are taking on the ‘Calendar Girl’ book series.” The article says ABC Signature, the cable division of ABC Studios, has optioned the steamy 12-book series for Schwartz and Savage’s Fake Empire Productions to develop for the small screen.

“Right now, I’m doing my best to strike while the iron’s hot … because anything can end,” Carlan said. “I don’t think it’s going to last forever. I would love to have a long career like Danielle Steel or Nora Roberts. But if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, and I’m OK with that.”

The speed with which Carlan has risen to notoriety makes it easy for her to recall when she first went into the Modesto Barnes & Noble to see her books and found it had just one copy, period. “It was a little humbling,” she said. Still, it was a thrill, and she had her 5-year-old snap a photo of Mommy holding her book.

Carlan’s 8-year-old son calls what she writes “sexy adult books” and loves to tell people his mom’s a New York Times best-selling writer, though he doesn’t really know what any of it means, she said. “He knows I write love stories and he doesn’t get to read them.”

As for Carlan’s husband, he’s welcome to read them but, well, it’s just not his cup of steaming hot tea. He’d much rather read a bicycling magazine, she said, or Reddit, or about computers and technology.

Sure, it stung a little when he read the first seven or so chapters of the first “Calendar Girl” volume and stopped with only a couple of chapters remaining. But it helped when he said something along the lines of “Babe, you’re better than I thought you were,” Carlan said. “He thinks of this as my world, he supports it, he helps me chase my dreams.”

As her “anything can end” comment suggests, Carlan remains very grounded while chasing those dreams. About “50 Shades” comparisons and predictions of success, she said, “It’s such a compliment, I’d love it.” But she quickly added, “I had no aspirations other than to write a love story that might resonate with someone, give them something maybe they’re missing, entertain them.”

Women work hard, and she hopes her books provide them an escape, a fantasy world.

“I always say I write wicked hot love stories,” she said. “I write erotic romance, I do not write soft porn … any of those vile things people like to call it.”

Take away the sex – and there is a lot of it – and her stories stand on their own, Carlan said.

“The reason this (‘Calendar Girl’) series is so popular,” she said, “is Mia’s journey. ... She learns about herself, life, relationships, friendships. That’s what resonates with readers so much. It’s not the sex – that’s part of life, something everybody does, though not everybody talks about. It’s something everybody needs inherently, I think. It’s human.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2016 at 6:16 PM with the headline "Stanislaus resident burning up the book charts with ‘hot’ romances."