Lust, Lies & Hitmen: Eric Jerome Dickey

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A FEW MONTHS after his "Sleeping With Strangers" left fans teetering on a cliff, author Eric Jerome Dickey is back with its sequel, "Waking With Enemies."

After a job in Tampa left him uneasy, hitman Gideon is now across the Atlantic and in a race against the clock to discover and outwit the person trying to have him killed.

Dickey reads on Wednesday at Karibu Books in Hyattsville, and he talked to Express about his action-packed departure from the steamy romance novels that fans of the New York Times bestselling author have come to expect.

» EXPRESS: Your attention to detail is superb.
» DICKEY: I spent at least three months [in Europe] last year. I kept going back and forth. I like getting the details right. [Writing's] like any other job you get. You work the job long enough and you're going to go, "OK, I gotta find something to make this [stuff] exciting. For me, a lot of it has been traveling, getting away from just the L.A. stories and getting away from relationship stories.

» EXPRESS: But you have to give the people what they want, right?
» DICKEY: You can only do so many [relationship stories] before it's time to move on. It's like the cats who'll be in a movie like "The Best Man" or "Love Jones" but then go, "OK, I need to move on and do something else." The same thing happens with writers. We become typecast. People will ask you to do the same thing again. And when you do the same thing again, then they blast you for doing the same thing again. And as a writer, you just want to be a writer. You don't want to necessarily have to write in any particular genre.

» EXPRESS: You certainly have a flair for writing action scenes.
» DICKEY: I'm a guy. I love getting to those action scenes, whether [they're] comedic or serious.

» EXPRESS: Seems like you enjoy writing the graphic sex scenes, too.
» DICKEY: That's to keep it from feeling like a romance book. It's no different than, say, James Bond and Pussy Galore. These moments help slow down the pace. [Also] Gideon grew up around people with abnormal desires so what he's doing is very commonplace to him. His mom sent women to his room when he was a kid.

» EXPRESS: Every teenage boy's fantasy.
» DICKEY: I'd like to wake up like that.

» Karibu Books, 3500 East-West Highway, Hyattsville; Wed., 7 p.m., free; 301-559-1140. (Prince George's Plaza)

Photo by Curtis Wilson