Interview with Author Cecilia Tan

Describe yourself in three words.

Fierce indoor cat

What are three facts about you?

I have a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
I worked at a Renaissance faire for 18 years.
My first paying job was as a mime.

What is your favorite book from childhood?

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

When you read, which authors are your go-to authors?

I'm sad to say that the three authors I've read the most works by in my life have all been publicly exposed as horrible people, so I don't say their names anymore. Recently I've really been loving the works of Holly Black, Jacqueline Carey, and Shelley Parker-Chan, though!

What book has made the biggest impact on your life?

Give Me Your Good Ear by Maureen Brady, because when I was a child, and I was already an aspiring writer, she was my aunt. She had written it and had trouble finding a publisher who could handle the lesbian feminist themes in the book, so she went out and started the first lesbian feminist publishing house in the USA, Spinsters Ink. Twenty years later, when I had written my first kinky erotic science fiction book, and couldn't find a publisher for it, I ended up following in her footsteps and starting my own company in 1992.

Do you have any book related tattoos?

Yes! I have a black feather on my arm for every book I've published, and another one for the Daron's Guitar Chronicles series. Some superfans of the series held a fan get-together when I passed through Louisville in 2017, at an art gallery/tattoo parlor and several of us got Daron-themed tattoos that day! I got one that matches what the main character got in the series--a rocketship logo--and then when the series was done I had the moon filled in behind it.

What is your favorite TV show or movie?

My most recent favorite is Ted Lasso. I know, I seem like I'd go for something much darker or edgy, but Ted Lasso is just the perfect series. Every character gets a development arc, they're all three-dimensional, and it's just amazing television. And we can all use some positivity these days!

What subject could you talk about all day?

Food, cocktails, restaurants, cuisine, cooking... anything food-related, really. I like eating it, knowing about it, traveling to try it, experiencing culture through it. Food is great. And you gotta eat something, right?

What is your dream vacation destination?

I'm torn between Tokyo and Barcelona, both of which I've been to more than once. They've both fantastic. But really anywhere the food is amazing, I want to go.

What do you do for fun when you aren’t writing?

I'm a workaholic so this is a trick question. I would say Pokémon Go, but that game is like a part time job unto itself. But that's one reason I like to travel and experience cultures through food. It gets me away from my computer and experiencing life through my senses and through people.

Are there any causes you support or which are important to you?

I think it's really important that people understand that domestic violence and partner abuse can occur even within negotiated, consensual BDSM relationships. For a long time, people who experienced domestic violence who weren't heterosexual vanilla were basically told it was their fault or if they were queer or trans that the DV services weren't for them. There's an organization in Boston, though, that specifically gears its support for queer, trans, and kinky people experiencing domestic violence or partner abuse. It's called The Network/La Red (TNLR) and you can find out more at www.tnlr.org.

How did you discover writing as a possible career?

As I mentioned before, my aunt was a big role model. But I had been telling the grown-ups in my life that I was going to write books before I even could actually "write." When I went to pre-school, instead of just drawing on the manila paper they'd give us, I'd fold it in half, and write a title on the front and "th nd" (I didn't know how to spell yet) on the back, and then draw on the inside and put words in like in a children's book. My mother saved some of these and they are hilarious. I did not know that spelling was a thing, but I had figured out phonics so I wrote things like "A bo ne hopt." (A bunny hopped.) I quickly gave up the illustrating part, though. I was not good at drawing, and I'm still not.

How did you choose your pen name?

As an activist for women's sexuality and daring to assert our sexual identities, I've never used a pen name. I use my real name.

Where do you find inspiration for your stories?

Oh, gosh. Everywhere. Every dang thing leads to something. I have many more ideas for stories than I'll ever have time to write in my lifetime.

What is the weirdest fact you've found when researching for a book?

When I was scouting out locations to use in Bound by the Blood, which takes place in New York City, I went to the big Trinity cemetery uptown. Since the book is a paranormal urban fantasy with a magical secret society, I figured a cemetery was a likely place for them to end up. Well, not only is there a lot of weird New York history to know, when I was going around the cemetery... I kept finding evidence that someone was secretly doing magic there. Like finding a perfect circle of rice on a tomb that the birds and rats left untouched. Weird, for sure!

What trope is your favorite to write?

I love writing sex = magical healing. I keep coming back to that one again and again.

What is your favorite thing about being an author?

It's all I've ever wanted to be. My favorite thing is my relationship with readers. It's very "sorry, not sorry" though -- I put them, and my characters, through a lot! But I love making the journey worth it!

What is your writing process?

I'm a pantser. In grad school we called it "writing for discovery," which sounds fancier, but it's the same thing. If I plot out a lot in advance, it just kills everything for me. It's like when people don't want to see a movie because someone spoiled the whole plot for them. That's what I'm like with my own books. All I know is that I have to make it all work out somehow. How? I'll find out the same way the reader does, one chapter at a time.

What time of day are you most creative?

Midnight. I am totally a night owl.

What is your ideal writing environment?

I want to say in bed with music on, the cat at my feet, and a pot of tea on the side table. But I am actually probably most productive when I go to a coffee shop where lots of people are working. There's just enough hubbub (and caffeine) to keep me stimulated, but not enough distraction to keep me from going into hyperfocus.

As an author, what challenges do you face?

My biggest challenge is, and has always been, that the publishing business isn't always ready for my big ideas. So I have to go out and find readers myself these days. About every ten years, the big publishers suddenly decide that a BDSM or kink fad is "in," and I sell a book or series to them, and then time goes by and the pendulum swings back the other way and I go back to self-publishing. I think we're on the third round of my career like that, now.

What is your least favorite part of being an author?

Doing my taxes. There's so much to keep track of. I am great at everything involving letters, not at numbers.

If there was one thing you could change about the writing/publishing industry, what would it be?

Of course, I wish we could get rid of censorship. Let the people have what they want! People love romance and stories about love and sexuality, including clean gay romance and spicy kink! So why does every algorithm out there try to keep people from finding it? Amazon, Facebook, itch .io, Paypal, all these big tech platforms are constantly trying to censor us. There are keywords you can't use on Amazon or your book will be suppressed in search. There are titles you can't advertise on Facebook. Et cetera. Why? It makes no sense. That goes for the book ban people trying to remove every book that mentions gay or trans people exist from libraries and colleges, too.

What advice would you give aspiring authors?

Find your voice, find your subject. Find the thing that you are so on fire for that you would rather write than eat or sleep. That's the thing that will resonate with your readers, too.

What is something you’d like to write, but haven’t yet?

I'd like to try my hand at YA or comics, but given the direction my career has gone, there hasn't really been time for a detour into either of those.

Which parts of yourself are reflected in your characters?

Every character of mine has a piece of me in them, even the villains, the love interests, the secondary characters, not just the protagonists. So literally every part of my personality can spawn a character, good or bad.

Which of your characters have special meaning to you?

When I went to get my MFA in writing, one of the "rules" they told us was "don't write writers." I get why: if you write too much about the process of writing, it's not that interesting to the reader. But all my main characters end up being some kind of creative people. Sometimes I do make them writers. Kyle, the main character of Magic University, is a poet. Daron, of Daron's Guitar Chronicles, is a rock star, but that's a kind of writer. He has to write songs all the time and the "plot" revolves as much around his creative struggles as it does around the love story, since he's falling in love with his lead singer. So my writer-characters are always special to me.

How do you come up with character names?

I usually just have a name pop into my head. Main characters have to just pop up with a name or they're not ready to be written yet. Background characters, though, they can be more difficult. I've done everything from perusing the phone book to looking through baby name websites. When I first wrote Daron's Guitar Chronicles, I was so naive, I gave way too many characters names that all started with C or D. (WHY??) Nowadays I would have shifted a bunch of them to unused letters of the alphabet to help stave off confusion.

What kind of readers enjoy your books?

My ideal reader is someone who's ready to dive into a big emotional journey, an often sexually charged journey but one with a lot of emotional stakes, and a reader who'll trust me to pull them through to the other side.

What is something you love to hear from your readers?

I love to hear that they stayed up all night reading it. My long series get called "addictive" a lot. Sometimes they ping me on social media that they can't stop. (That's usually when I reply that they really ought to get some sleep and hopefully my characters will stop by in their dreams?)

Where can readers find you online?

I serialize works in progress and provide other sneak peeks at my process through my patreon at https://patreon.com/ceciliatan. My most active social media presences are on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/ceciliatan.com) and Instagram (https://instagram.com/ctan_writer/). I crosspost to Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon and threads but I don't interact as much, and I just dipped my toe into TikTok.

Do you have any current ARCs or free downloads readers might be interested in?

Yes! You can get a free download of my paranormal romantic thriller, Mind Games, for getting onto my newsletter: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x2zjgaf122

What is your latest/upcoming release?

Launching on January 15, 2026! Bound by the Blood is my latest. https://www.ceciliatan.com/bound-by-the-blood

Closing Thoughts...

I've been writing and publishing spicy fantasy and romance since 1992. Tons of things have changed in publishing since then, from the technology to our culture's awareness of consent, but what hasn't changed is the hunger readers have for really good stories and characters they can fall deeply in love with, and the desire of authors like me to write them. So I'll just keep doing it, whatever ways exist to put stories into readers' hands!

Steam Level

High heat