Author Riley Kade

I spent my twenties working as a math teacher. In 2019, I quit my job, went back to school for my masters in math, and started writing a sexy succubus trilogy– the kind I’d always wanted to read.


I got the concept from this fantasy I’ve had for a while about being able to cause sexual pleasure with skin contact alone (imagine sitting at a table with a partner in public and grazing their hand while no one is the wiser). But such a power felt too easy, too powerful. It needed a barrier.

So how about not being able to turn it off such that casual touch wasn’t possible? And what if instead of giving it to some powerful mythical creature, what if it belonged to a normal farm girl with no sexual experience? And what if she and the man next door were childhood best friends who’d pretty much loved each other since they were five? Enter Flames of Rapture.


I wanted compelling stories that drew me into the plot as much as to the romance. I wanted sex scenes that were not the same old same old. I wanted a hero worthy of swooning over. And I wanted a heroine I could relate to. (I share the identity of my protagonist in that I’m a bisexual polyam cis female, though sadly I am not a succubus.)


I’d written most of the first book before telling anyone what I was up to. My first confessional was to my husband. “So, you know how I’m working my ass off to finish this math degree? Well, I was thinking that when I’m done, instead of getting a well-paying tech job, I could write and publish romance novels instead.”


I don’t know if it was the fire in my eyes, the fact I’m a little type A, or the fact that my husband is just awesome, but he believed in me immediately. “Oh, that’s so cool. I can’t wait to see your book sitting in an airport somewhere.” (Not sure why the airport specifically, maybe that’s just where he thinks romance books come from.)


I finished up the trilogy the summer after graduation while trying to get pregnant. Which led to the great one-liner from my sister when I told her I was afraid to go back on campus lest one of my professors asks what I’m up to. “Well you know you don’t have to actually say I’m writing erotica and tracking my ovulation, right?”


I got pregnant while editing Heat of Unrest and baby launch fell right in the middle of book launches 1 and 2. 

The rest is history.