Cartel: a mum’s dark romance book of bikies, drug cartels

AUSSIE mum Lili St. Germain scored a global hit when she self-published her erotic bikie series Gypsy Brothers online. Now her first print book, Cartel, is set to shake up the erotic romance market.

Australian author Jessica Roscoe, pen name Lili St Germain

DON’T be fooled by Jessica Roscoe’s sweet, almost cherubic, smile. The congenial Perth mother is bound to be thinking murderous and violent thoughts for her erotically charged drug cartel series as she calmly wheels her trolley down the aisle at the supermarket.

“When people meet me they usually say, ‘You look really sweet. Are you sure you’re the person who wrote these books?’,” she says.

“Those books” are the wildly successful dark romance novellas Gypsy Brothers, written under the pseudonym Lili St. Germain and devoured by more than 250,000 people.

Readers in the US, UK and Australia have become hooked on the story of 21-year-old Juliette, who becomes bikie leader Dornan Ross’s lover in order to kill his seven sons and avenge the murder of her father, only to fall in love with his youngest son.

Based on the success of the seven 100-page novellas, which sell for $3 each online, Roscoe, 30, has scored a major publishing deal with HarperCollins and the first in a Gypsy Brothers spin-off trilogy, Cartel, is out in print this month.

It has turned her family life upside down. Her husband has quit his high-powered mining job to stay home and look after their two-year-old daughter while Roscoe writes the second book in the trilogy, which will come out at the end of this year.

The trajectory of her success mirrors the initial response to E.L. James and her erotic Fifty Shades of Grey series. In the same way James shocked suburbia with bondage and spanking, Roscoe has some readers gasping at the extreme violence, language and sex in her books.

But Roscoe researched publishing trends and says that’s what readers want. Growing up in Perth, she always wanted to be a writer, but instead ended up working as a sales representative for a wine company.

“Life kind of gets in the way and you have a job,” she says. “There is so much going on. But when I was on maternity leave. I thought: ‘This was my chance to do something for myself’. ”

Roscoe finished her first book when her daughter was four months old, a vampire thriller (rather than romance) called Walking Dead Girl.

“I’m a really impatient person. I didn’t want to spend months and years submitting to publishers,” she says of her decision to self-publish the book on Amazon.

But the Twilight trend had passed and though the book did “pretty well for a debut book”, she was keen to write something that resonated with more readers.

Roscoe also saw the benefits of writing a serial with cliffhangers that kept readers begging for more.

She researched publishing trends and noted that the TV series Sons of Anarchy had become a top-rating show.

“I’ve always wanted to write a revenge story,” she says. “I’ve never had anything bad happen to me or wanted to get revenge; I just really love the whole psychology of it. An eye for eye. Taking matters into your own hands.

“One day I was in the shower and the whole story for Gypsy Brothers started popping into my head and I had to quickly get out, put a towel on, so I could start writing some notes down, so I wouldn’t forget anything. That was 2013.”

She wrote the first novella — about a third of a novel — in four weeks. She says posting the novellas frequently online and responding to reader feedback has been part of her success.

“That is how the entire Cartel series was born, from people saying, ‘Why is this main character so bad and evil? What has happened to him?’ And also I had been alluding to this woman that he used to be with and they were like, ‘We want to know more about his woman, who is she?’.”

HarperCollins also liked that idea of a spin-off trilogy from Gypsy Sons, and Cartel was the result.

“The main character of Cartel is Mariana. She is the daughter of a Colombian drug smuggler. He’s a hired thug really. He loses a shipment of cocaine, he messes up because he isn’t paying attention and he is drunk,” Roscoe says.

“The head of the drug cartel in Colombia, Emilio (the father of Dorian Ross, the drug lord in Gypsy Brothers) goes to kill him and at the last minute Mariana convinces him to take her as a payment instead of killing the whole family.

“She becomes the property of the cartel. But she’s not trying to escape — he’ll just kill the family. It is a kidnapping story where she is resigned to her fate and she is just trying to survive.”

Roscoe says Mariana, a 19-year-old university student majoring in accounting, uses her valuable money-laundering skills to stop Emilio turning her into a prostitute.

Roscoe thinks people love her books because they are fascinated by things that are taboo.

“They don’t actually want to meet a biker, they would be terrified, but in the confines of their safe space of their house, they can watch something and it’s almost a voyeuristic thing. People love exploring that dark side of life, but in a safe way,” she says.

Roscoe chose Colombia as her setting because 16 years ago Colombia had control of the illegal drug trade rather than Mexico.

“I have never been there. I would love to go there. It looks amazing,” she says. “I watched a lot of movies that were filmed in Colombia. I did a lot of Googling images and a lot of reading true-life accounts of people who have been undercover with drug cartels or people who have turned on the drug cartel and ratted them out to police, or journalists doing investigative work.
I read some really disturbing things as well.”

She loves TV shows such as Breaking Bad and Supernatural, and says she will go on a Sons of Anarchy binge when she has finished the Cartel trilogy.

TV and movie producers have expressed interest in the rights to both her series.

“If Hollywood calls tomorrow, I will be straight over there,” she says.

 

Cartel, Lili St. Germain, HarperCollins, rrp $25

Originally published as Cartel: a mum’s dark romance book of bikies, drug cartels