From the Editor – Selling the Book via the Sexy Excerpt

 Sascha Illyvich  No Responses »
Apr 052012
 
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One of the things I get asked as an editor is how do I effectively market and sell my book?  In other words, what’s the best use of my time as an author?  Unfortunately, this isn’t a short answer but it is an easy one.  From an editor’s perspective, we acquire books based on how good a story can be told, how well the writer’s skills are and lastly, how the story can make us (the publisher and author) money.

The easiest tool any author has in their arsenal is the excerpt.  Yup, you saw it.  It’s really that easy.  Once a story is polished and the author has seen their corrected galleys, they should feel free to chose an excerpt that meets the needs of their audience.  This being WriteSEX, and an erotica based audience, we want to see SEX!  Yes, adult content, sex, two (or more) bodies building up the anticipation of a climax we believe is going to happen.

In erotica – sex IS the plot.

In other erotic genres -sex FORWARDS the plot

That being said, we want to pull out a selection of text from our stories that sets the scene.  If the story is erotica, we want to see as much of the buildup to the sex scene as possible without giving away the climax.  Why?  Because looking at one handed readers and getting them off doesn’t equal a sale if you do it in the excerpt.  It’s like clip sites in pornography, you show me the money shot, why do I need to bother with the back story?  Or anything else for that matter?

Take fore example an upcoming release “Treasure’s Gift.”  It’s a FFM menage story for Decadent Publishing coming out soon. The blurb:

Treasure has always had a thing for Mark, her best friend.  When he drops in unannounced, she’s glad until she realizes his workload is keeping him occupied when the only thing on her mind is jumping him.   With the help of a very sexy friend, she uses the one thing designed to make Mark slow down and take notice.  What will he do at the temptation of two beautiful women?

Sounds pretty simple, right?

Well here’s the excerpt I used originally:

Mark looked at Treasure, wishing he could just fall asleep in beautiful pools of her eyes. Or swim naked with her. 

His cock hardened uncomfortably in his trousers.  Could Treasure feel his arousal?

Did she know the depths of wickedness he’d love to explore with her?

He fought a yawn from the overbearing heat and length of his flight.  Closing his eyes, he leaned back in the chair and let out a breath.  The hectic schedule his travel required of him would exhaust anyone. 

The fact that his property was in Kingwood, he had to fly into Houston Intercontinental and then drive all the way back to Sugarland where Treasure lived added to his building fatigue, but hell, he’d do anything to see her standing before him, looking at him with a hidden mischievous grin and her hands on her hips.  Nipples would ache for him and jut out proudly while her oh so kissable lips moved.

“I’ve got all sorts of ideas, babe.”

“I’m sure you do,” she nodded.  “Just come to bed when you’re done.”

She walked away, ass swaying from side to side with each step she took.  Hands reached for the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head before she disappeared, leaving him with a view of tanned skin, no bra and the need to slake his own primal needs tonight.

“Damnit!”  Mark knocked back the drink and slammed the glass on the table.  He certainly didn’t look forward to the next few weeks of very long Saturdays despite being so close to achieving his financial goals.  Not if Treasure intended to taunt him with hints at her naked flesh. 

He had to do something about his raging erection.  Maybe a cold shower.  Or maybe a long, hot shower featuring Treasure stepping into the large tub with him, setting her delectably round ass against his cock and coating his dick in her juices would… 

Sadly, Mark showered quickly, ignoring his hard on.  He dressed in pajama bottoms, a tank top that showed off his muscular arms and pale skin.  Bedtime included a nightcap, a large one designed to knock him out so he’d sleep without dreaming of Treasure’s body blanketing his while her pussy milked the life out of him. 

Mark slumped back in his chair, head hanging forward.  He took a sip of bourbon, let the liquid burn his throat before he took another longer swig.  Sitting up, he looked over the now neatly organized stack of papers

“Treasure?”

His lips curled upward. 

The bedroom door opened.  “Mark,” The soft lilting of her voice reignited the spark of arousal. 

Mark set his glass on the desk and waited.  “Yes dear?”

“It’s bedtime.  Come to bed.”

She sounded needy. Another man would have missed the subtlety of want in her voice.  “I have things to do before bed first.” 

“Then I’ll come to you.”  Her voice dripped with unmistakable husky lust. 

Mark arched a brow. 

A moment later, Treasure appeared before Mark wearing a black see through teddy that flowed out at the bottom with lace trimming and barely reached the top of her thighs.  A scrap of lace hid both nipples and obscured his view of her sex.  Dirty blonde hair fell around her shoulders in loose curls, bouncing with each step she took towards him.  Hands started at her shoulders, smoothed down her arms, over full breasts and down her round stomach until stopping at her hips. Treasure stuck one leg forward, took a tentative step closer to Mark and stopped mere inches from him. “Well?”

His jaw dropped.  He blinked several times to make sure he was seeing right before focusing on her expression. 

She frowned.  “You think I’m fat.  I knew it.”

“No!” He stood and took her hands in his.  His stomach tightened from the contact while his cock stirred against his pajamas.  Blood pumped faster down south and his mouth went bone dry.  “No, that’s not it. It’s just…just…wow Treasure.  I’ve dreamed of this for years.”

“What do you intend to do now?”  She tilted her head and her mouth curled into a wicked grin.

We’re left wondering if he’s really going to go forward with it like a man should, or if he’ll play an idiot and turn down his best friend.  I could have used a longer excerpt to show you but again, that’s not creating demand for the reader to want to know more.  Hopefully in the excerpt above I’ve convinced the reader to buy the story.

The excerpt should not only match the desired audience but should be LENGTHY depending on story size.  Treasure’s Gift is only 5k in length, whereas my previous 1NS release from Decadent was 11k, and my excerpt was almost 2k.  The rule of thumb is simple.  You want to create as much want in the audience for your story as possible by keeping them ENGROSSED in your world for as long as possible, then pull the plug, leaving them with only the desire to buy your book.

I’ll cover more next time on Excerpts.

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 Posted by at 1:22 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

New Sale and a best of

 Oceania, Sascha Illyvich  No Responses »
Jul 072011
 
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For those expecting our lovely Audio Goddess Oceania, she’s off this week and for one more round while she handles some personal business.  There are nine of us and from time to time it’s bound to happen that things come up.

So first, I’m going to mention my recent sale to Total E-bound in hopes that A: it peaks your interest and B: It helps me drag out a blurb.  That’s right, there is a lesson here and a new one at that, though only a short one.

You see, when you tell your readers you sold a book to a publisher, they undoubtedly want to know what the book is about.  Is it a new genre for you?  Or a different sub genre like paranormal romance when you normally write contemporary romance stories?  Or are you continuing a story line from a previous series?  Either way, once you tell the first reader, they’ll get excited but if you repeat the same thing to over 100 readers at 98 different times it gets pretty tiring.

So you go for the quickest explanation possible.  Case in point:  My puma story tentatively titled Burning for Derrick has a very Burn Notice like feel but the sequel will feature Max, Derrick’s brother who IS a cross between Max Myers of ACC Cigars and Michael Westen from Burn Notice.  People understand that even though most of my friends don’t know Max.  Once I say Burn Notice, they’ll get a reference point and I’ll only need to mention how I’m working in Max’s love interest.

But this isn’t the story I sold.  It’s in second draft mode.  But it gets the wheels thinking on how to craft that blurb for the story so I can tell the publisher this will sell because of the blurb.  That is the goal, after all.

The traits of the story in question are thus:

It’s a menage. Both males used to be lovers but morals divided them, yet they unknowingly share the same female lover.

It’s paranormal:  Both males are wolves, the heroine is a witch.

It’s GLBT – both males are into each other and the woman, equally.

I used the big themes of the story there for sales purposes.  This lets me play with the big concept.  Get it?  Now I can try to pull out the plot.

The wolf packs in Albuquerque NM are dying from an incurable sickness and only Iolite has the resources to research the illness.  Being of human origin with wolf blood gives her an advantage but her two lovers are the ones who can really help as they are full blooded wolf shifters.  If they could just settle their differences long enough…perhaps the three of them could come up with a solution to what is killing off both their packs.

Does that grab you?  It’s a rough start and ignores the romantic conflict.  But as I said, this is a short lesson.

As promised, a recap of recent Oceania posts as audio is an important medium.  Look at the success of “Go the Fuck to Sleep” for proof.

Writing Is____

Forgive Me Father, I must have Sinned

Audio Books – Break On Through to the Other Side

Those are popular posts for a reason.  Until next time…when we return with Deborah Riley Magnus’s post…

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 Posted by at 8:00 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Using the Character Arc in Plotting

 Sascha Illyvich  4 Responses »
Jun 022011
 
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If we take the plot advice from Morgan Hawke and continue with our writers education, we’re at the part now where we describe the character arc.  This is the particular point of any story at holds interest because it keeps your attention.  But what is the crux of the story?

According to Morgan’s post here we know that stories are about change.  The hero and heroine must face inner demons and come out stronger after they’ve fought their obstacles.  Think about it.  In erotica this is a little less downplayed because the plot is focused on the characters getting together but in longer pieces, novella length and up, there is some sort of change going on.  How exciting would the story be if the plot looked like this:

Hero and Heroine spotted each other.
They fucked in every possible way, position, with all sorts of toys.
The end.

Might be fun for a few minutes and it might be worth a good laugh but how about this plot instead:

Hero and Heroine meet
They fuck only to realize that each has their hangups about certain sexual positions and toys. (Oh noes!)
ENTER CONFLICT
Hero and Heroine separate despite the great sex and connection
Something puts them back together
They fuck more and realize that in the end they cannot stop fucking but they HAVE to get past their hangups.

Morgan talks about the seven stages of Grief and she uses that arc a LOT.  Why?  Because working off the emotion of angst we have something that gives us CONFLICT.  Since our stories, be they erotica or erotic romance in my case, are about emotional connections, we need conflict.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that all fiction stories are truly about emotional conflict.  Think about some of the classic non erotic stories like Huckleberry Fin or anything Shakespeare ever wrote.  The stories are about people. And people are NOT emotionless robots (mostly) but we have to have a vested interest in them, otherwise why bother with them?

I will disagree with one point Morgan makes ONLY in the sense of character development.  I believe our stories are about growth, not change.

Think about change like this:  One moment I’m wearing my blonde hair down to the floor, the next it’s chopped back to an inch in length, spiked and dyed blue. And I’ve stopped listening to metal in favor of elevator music.  That is change.

Growth is a teenager with angst over his father’s “unfair” treatment only to realize as a man that his father was trying to teach him lessons.  The idea is simple:  The underlying resentment caused pain that must be dealt with and in a teenagers mind, but in the mature person’s mind that resentment is analyzed and understood.

Going through the seven stages of grief started from Angst at a situation, person or incident gives us a backbone to our stories.  Using that same bit of angst in our sex scenes helps add depth and flavor to draw our readers in more.  It gives them something to connect with and a reason to keep reading.

 

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 Posted by at 4:37 am  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Plot for Romance Stories Part I

 Sascha Illyvich  8 Responses »
Sep 232010
 
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By Sascha Illyvich

Since I started covering plot basics, I have noticed a trend in authors. The fact that so many authors have no idea how or where their stories are going is bad because it slows down the writing process. Romance novels, whether erotic or not, have the same basic formula.

Revisited:
Hero meets Heroine
They end up in bed.
Conflict separates them
Conflict is conquered due to necessary character growth
HEA or HFN.

In that plot structure, we have to get across all of those elements just to write a story. Assuming we’re writing novel length stories (60,000 words and up) not only do we have to incorporate those elements into the story but writers must figure out what that conflict is, how it affects characters and how the story will progress. How do we achieve this?

We break our story into four acts. Three if we’re being lazy or don’t need to throw in action. This applies to movies, plays, screenplays, every form of entertainment.

Simplified, the typical Four Act Outline is as such:

Act One: Inciting Incident – What is the eternal incident that brings the characters together?
Act Two: Crisis/Ordeal – This is where we begin to throw internal issues of the characters into things.
Act Three: Confrontation – Our characters confront the issue and deal with it. If it’s an action story, a villain and H/H all share the same issue only the villain either dies a megalomaniac or fails to learn the lesson after it’s too late.

Look familiar? It should. This is ESSENTIAL to any story of ANY genre. What makes this work is the fact that it takes the reader on an emotional ride that should go through a variety of feelings so that we bond with the characters. We identify with them. Think back on the last book you read that you really enjoyed. Why did you like it?

Ultimately it’s because you probably identified with the characters and their struggle. In romance, erotic or not, the struggle is to escape loneliness and find that one person who will complete you. So our conflict and issues should revolve around why the H/H cannot be together despite all odds, until they figure out the need for growth. This happens at the end of Act Two and leads us into the Third Act with new behavior patterns.

In my next post we’ll cover how to extend the Acts and what should theoretically go next as well as how and where to write sex into our stories.

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 Posted by at 7:30 am  Tagged with: , , ,

You Are What You Eat

 Thomas Roche  4 Responses »
Sep 022010
 
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In this post, I’m going to address in my own special way one of the recurring problems of a writer’s life. Many of us find that while we’re in a writing phase, we can’t seem to read. It’s not just about time, it’s about attention.

For what it’s worth, I’m going to argue that you gotta. Ignore me at your peril, but then, listen to me at your peril. Do what works for you, because when it comes right down to it, I don’t know shit.

All I’m trying to do is remind you — or maybe remind myself — why you sat down in that stupid chair to begin with. We all began writing because at some point writing something down seemed like a better idea than doing the dishes or emptying the litter box. Locked up in the problems of fiction, it’s way too easy to forget why it ever did.

Anyway, here’s the story:

Recently, while lost in a finger-gallop reverie in the virtual pages of my newest tender romance between a half-clothed young socialite and the crew of the HMS Bon Vivant, I realized something strange and wonderful.

All my recent first-drafts evince a familiar narrative rhythm — one I was completely unaware of during the writing of a considerable number of words.

The novels open with a conversation or interpersonal conflict that leads to an action sequence for which there’s clearly backstory that the reader doesn’t know, so that the resounding “WTF?” in the reader’s mind both intrigues them and troubles them.

The novel then proceeds to a chapter of backstory from the perspective of a single character, which tells you part of why the action sequence in Chapter 1 matters and what in the hell the characters were talking about.

Following that, there’s another conversation and another action sequence that both illuminates the events of Chapter 1, but you still don’t quite know WTF is going on.

You as the reader are more illuminated after the subsequent round of backstory, again from another character’s perspective — often a different character than the first backstory.

So on and so on — through about six or eight chapters, until roughly the midpoint of the book. After that, the narrative proceeds more or less unchecked as a series of conversations and actions sequences, to an ending that’s either a suckerpunch or a bitch-slap, depending.

Let me say here that structuring novels has always bothered me. I don’t do it naturally, which is why I’ve been more successful writing short stories. But as I wrote this round of longer works — about five of them since June — it all came to me as easily as a Cleveland drama teacher who’s mistaken me for Robert Mitchum. And for a time, I didn’t have the faintest idea why it was suddenly so natural.

Then I picked up a Jim Thompson novel, my tenth in a few months, and I realized I was aping  Thompson’s formulaic structure.

James Meyers Thompson, 1906-1977,  in case you don’t know your tough-guy literature, was one of the codifiers of redneck noir, and more importantly of the overall hard-boiled esthetic in the postwar crime thriller — and here I’m talking really hard-boiled, not the saxophone-drenched diaries of some trenchcoat-wearing wisecracker who handwashes his delicates and jots his crime scene notes in a cute little spiral notebook with unicorn appliqués and a glue-glitter “Detective Jake Fist’s Notebook” on the cover, and dots the I’s in “high-velocity impact splatter” with little pink hearts.

Jim Thompson, much like Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich, raised misanthropy in the thriller to a high art — but, most importantly, Thompson was a consummate plotter. His books pound the pavement (or West Texas alkali dust) so tight and fast Raymond Chandler curls up in his grave and weeps, “Uncle.”

Many of Thompson’s short, to-the-point suckerpunch thrillers follow exactly the structure I mention above — some don’t, sure, but the commercial crime novels he sat down and cranked out while slamming down liquor in the ’50s and ’60s all follow a similar pattern. Thompson sure as hell didn’t invent it — really, the structure’s pretty standard. But you tend not to see it quite as evidently nowadays in category crime fiction, which today is thoroughly dominated by 400-page P.I. books and lawyers from Sausalito. With the stripped-down, 60,000-word structure in 12 or 15 or 20 chapters, it’s easier to see the moving parts.

And as far as I’m concerned, the structure works.

I don’t mean it works from a writer’s perspective — who gives a shit about writers? I mean it works for the reader. Remember them? That is to say, it works for me — I love reading it. Add to that predictable an enveloping sense of atmosphere, vivid characters, wonderful narrative language and an ear for dialect, and I’m as happy as a pig in shit as long as no one tries to talk to me while I’m reading.

With Thompson, specifically, he can stuff my peepers with an endless parade of corrupt Texas oilmen, L.A. grifters, slowly-coming-unhinged small-town sheriffs and St. Louis bellboys plotting the perfect murder of a corrupt politician’s cocaine-addled wife; I’ll always be convinced I’m reading a new book, even though I’m actually reading the same damn book over and over again.

That’s probably why I read about ten of Thompson’s novels in couple months — immediately before I started writing in exactly that structure, without even really meaning to do it.

Having found the style fantastically satisfying as a reader, I started pumping it out as a writer despite the fact that at the moment I’m not writing anything even remotely resembling crime novels. The supremely satisfying framework imprinted itself so thoroughly on me that I utilized it without even knowing it — after years of not quite “getting” novel structure.

What’s the point? You are what you eat. You have to read to write. If you are writing novels, you need to read novels; if you are writing short stories, you need to read short stories; if you are writing deconstructive poetry in Georgian — well, you get the point. And you need to read a lot of it, because the structural conventions of the genre you work in need to seem so completely natural to you that you can not only make it your own but make it your own without even knowing you’re doing it.

For years I have been telling people they need to write to write — and there ain’t a damn thing wrong with that assertion, either. But you also have to know what a work of art feels like to be able to do it with a depth of instinct that allows you to make it your own.

I should say that I’ve been somewhat inaccurate for the sake of clarity above; you actually don’t need to read obsessively in the genre or genre you’re writing in. You need to read in the genre(s) you’re most influenced by. In the same way that I”m influenced by Jim Thompson in writing erotica (an improbable marriage if ever there was one), you might be influenced by Robert A. Heinlein in writing gay werewolf romances.

Mazel Tov! The more unlikely your influences, the more likely you can bring a new voice to a given genre, to which — assuming you learn to do it well, or well enough — your readers will say “Thank you, Ma’am and/or Sir, may I have another?”

Now, please don’t take that as an engraved invitation from me (like you need one?) to write “A multigenerational epic fantasy inspired by The Daily Show.” Wacky ideas are one thing. But as a cynical son of a bitch who has heard — seriously — just about every undercooked idea possible come out of writers’ mouths, nothing’s more tedious than writers who intentionally look for improbable concepts in order to impress you with how “original” they are (Hot Tub Time Machine, anyone?), I’m telling you to keep your self-satisfied precocious inventiveness down to a dull roar and leave the truly contrived mash-ups to people with absolutely bloody well nothing of their own to say. The point is not to blow people’s minds with your half-assed ideas, but to blow their minds with the vividness, genuineness and personal flavor of your writing.

You want to give readers That Barton Fink Feeling, for the simple reason that if you don’t, no one else can. How do you do that? You give them what you love — what you really love, not just what you pat yourself on the back for having come up with a sentence-long summary for.

What I’m trying to get at here is that a writer must find what books he or she enjoys reading — or, preferably, LOVES reading with a passion that makes her or him sacrifice sleep and risk life and limb to squeeze in a few extra pages while walking down the street.

I discovered that in spades this year. I spent a decade or more of being sort of lukewarm on all the fiction I read. Therefore, I didn’t read nearly as much of it as I should have. Then I started reading fiction aggressively, and I realized that the experience of reading a book that blows you away is what all this ludicrous self-torture is about.

You do have to write to write — that fact is as unassailable as the meaning of the word is being, well, “is.”

But you are what you eat — so go read something that reminds you why you ever sat your ass down in that stupid chair to begin with.

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Basic Plotting for Novel Writing

 Sascha Illyvich  2 Responses »
Aug 052010
 
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Plot Broken Down Part I

First things first! I’d like to welcome Ralph Greco Jr. and Debbie Riley Magnus to the team. The former I met last year at Cybernet Expo and was impressed with him as he grew into the writer he is now. He’ll be handling some basic Search Engine Optimization for writers while also covering the interview medium. And Deb is my publicist with whose help I’ve created this blog. She’s a marketing genius and an author. She’ll cover marketing for authors. Ralph will fill Dr. Peeler’s slot and Deb’s first post will follow Oceania’s next month.

Last time I had the blog we covered novel writing plot basics and how erotica/romance authors fit sex into their plot. To recap:

In EROTICA sex is the plot. The ONE event (depending on the story length) is that the characters have to end up in bed. This can be conflict driven.

And:

In EROTIC ROMANCE sex FORWARDS the plot.

Having said this, we now need to know how to plot quickly and effectively. The faster we can plot a story that sells, the faster we can write that story with less hassle. Before I continue, I will mention that like my mentor, this is the method that works for ME. You “may” have variations but at the end we’re talking about who gets quality books which readers want to read out faster and how to sell to publishers.

The first question I want to ask you is: When you’re creating your plot, where is your conflict going to happen? Will it be character based as in typical contemporary romances such as those found at eHarlequin. Their BLAZE line (which I am currently targeting) is aimed at relationship conflicts. Sure there’s the outer world to deal with and even in their grittier Nocturne Line where paranormal elements abound, the focus is on the actual character development.

If you’re writing Urban Fantasy, then our focus changes slightly to outside the character conflicts. Look at writers like Jeri Smith-Ready and Yasmine Galenorn, who write series books about worlds, not just characters. There is character development as each story progresses but the focus is on how that development will aid in the war against the BIG BAD ENEMY.

Then we need to ask if we’re blending erotic with any genres. If we are, then we have to account for that in our plot arc and character development arc.

The other elements we must deal with are story length and POV. We’ve covered POV. Who has the most to lose is who should have the POV control. Story length we’ll cover in our next post.

Sascha Illyvich

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 Posted by at 7:43 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,

Blending Genres in Erotic Romance

 Guest Blog  7 Responses »
Jul 012010
 
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By Joey W. Hill

When Sascha asked if I’d do a blog on genre blending, it gave me a grin. Ten years ago, the term was “cross-genre”, and it was a publishing dead zone. I didn’t know that then. Everything I’ve written pretty much falls in the category of “genre blending”, since erotic romance began initially as a meeting of erotica with romance, and then took on additional components from there – contemporary, paranormal, historical, etc. However, a decade ago, when I was starting my writing career, I didn’t consciously say: “Hey, I’m going to blend genres in my writing, because I deeply crave rejection from mainstream publishing.” (lol)

I started with one thing – a desire to write the story that was in my head. I wrote the story my muse wanted me to tell. Starting out as a writer is a lot like getting married when you’re young – you have optimism and you’re not entirely set in your ways. You’re not looking at the mortgage – you’re focused on your dreams. I loved romance, but I wanted much stronger sex in it. So the result was an erotic romance with light bondage, set in a mall over the course of one day (Make Her Dreams Come True). I had no idea I’d blended genres until I took it out into the world to be slapped around relentlessly by cross-genre rejection (good thing I had a masochistic streak).

Fortunately, at that time a whole collective-unconscious craft thing was happening, where a lot of aspiring authors had the bug to write cross-genre work. The universe aligned us with the burgeoning field of e-publishing, which was keenly interested in this overlooked niche and reader demand. Now, ten years down the road, blended genre stories and e-publishing are both notable parts of the book world. In fact, much of that cross-genre work has become genres in their own right: paranormal romance, urban fantasy, erotic romance, etc. So now here’s this blog, discussing how best to blend eroticism with your romance genre—whether paranormal, contemporary or otherwise—as a positive, marketable thing. There goes that grin again…

So here we go. I tend to get wordy and ramble when I think about craft process, but I’ve managed to keep it under 2500 words, a miracle for me (grin). You’re welcome to ask questions about anything I missed, however, or give a different viewpoint in the comments – the wonderful thing about this business is there are a million ways to do it well, many of them yet to be discovered. This is just my approach.

Integration of erotica with romance – erotic romance

Any story, cross-genre or otherwise, has to pull us into it, make us feel that this could happen to us, answering some yearning in our hearts for that ultimate connection. That’s one of the big reasons people read love stories, and just because they want a sexual kick from them, doesn’t mean that can be overlooked. For so many years, all women were given was “erotica”, much of it dark, depressing, adulterous or flat out disturbing. Bringing together erotica with romance means that all the elements of a great romance have to be represented – great character development, pacing, intriguing setting, full sensory involvement, etc.

Make it character-driven – I write character-driven stories, which I think is very critical for an erotic romance of any type. No matter whether it’s contemporary, vampires, mermaids, historical, etc. the erotic love story between the main characters—how it starts, grows, matures, stumbles, etc—is my central story.

Plot cannot exist without the erotic and vice-versa – Making it character-driven does not mean everything else is window dressing. This is VERY important. Let me give you a concrete example of when that no-no happens. I’m sure we’ve all read an erotic romance with one of these two scenarios:

1. Every scene with the main characters is absorbing, hot, emotional…and each time the scene changes to the “plot”, it’s like someone slammed that door, and you actively think, “Oh crap, how long do I have to put up with this boring part before I get back to them again?”

2. The plot is worthy of a suspense master, but then someone flips a switch and suddenly you’re on the set of a bad porn movie. The main characters come to a screeching halt and say, “Hey, it’s three and a half pages into Chapter Three. We’re supposed to fuck like rabbits now. Let’s get that out of the way and then we’ll get back to the real story.”

Yep, excuse my language, but it’s that blatant. In both examples, the story is not well blended. You’re baking a cake without stirring all the ingredients together into a smooth, tasty batter that tempts you to eat it all even before you stick it in the oven. It looks like a gooey autopsy. It’s extremely clear which part of the story interested the author the least. That’s my own personal sanity check when I’m writing. I love the erotic romance/deep character-driven scenes, so if I find myself getting bored or rushing plot points, I know I’m not integrating enough of that into whatever portion of the story I’m writing. The erotic romance must be integrated with the rest of the story line so that one doesn’t really exist without the other.

Plot provides ample opportunity for sexual interaction AND emotional growth in the relationship.
You’re not blending the erotica with the romance if you’re overlooking that. How often do you read the book where the heroine ends up in a sex club, goes through a lot of physical gymnastics with the hero that yes, help her deal with her sexual inhibitions, but other than that there’s really no emotional growth? Still, somehow they end up in a happily-ever-after with the 2.5 kids, golden retriever, picket fence house and a love that never ends? Many of our romance readers are women who’ve experienced committed relationships, and all of us know that they need more than sex to end up as happily-ever-after. As Sascha said so well in his June 24 blog on creating plot: “in erotica, sex is the plot…in erotic romance, sex forwards the plot.” Erotic romance uses erotic interaction to further the relationship.

Integration of erotic romance with other genres
Not because I have this huge desire to pimp my own work, but I can more comfortably dissect it without offending anyone, so let me use some of my storylines as examples of integration of plot/relationship with eroticism in various genres. It will also confirm if I’m qualified to be writing this blog (laughter):

Contemporary erotic romance – For a lot of erotic romance writers, starting in the arena of contemporary is probably your easiest blend, because you can use a BDSM club setting, or the set up of a heroine’s cherished fantasy on the Internet, etc. It gets you comfortable before you move onto trickier blends. Hence, my original Nature of Desire series has a lot of heroes/heroines already Dominant or submissive-oriented, and start inside BDSM clubs. However, it doesn’t have to be clichéd. My muse gave me twists that intrigued me – an alpha cop who is a sexual submissive, or two Doms who fall for each other, etc. Now, if you’ve got it set inside a BDSM club, or are doing the heroine’s cherished fantasy thing, you still mostly have your feet in the erotica room. If you want to blend it, take it into the field of contemporary romance, you’re going to have to get it out of the club or the fantasy and test the relationship (sexually and emotionally) in the real world. That increases the emotional component and even better, brings your characters into your readers’ contemporary world, so they can empathize with the characters.

Paranormal erotic romance – My Vampire Queen series was motivated by my interest in the vampire-servant relationship. To my way of thinking, it practically begged to be explored as a hardcore Dominant/submissive sexual relationship. In my series, vampires form their closest relationships with their servants, even as they consider them their property to use sexually and are expected to share them with other vampires as part of political maneuverings in the vampire world. So there are the emotional, sexual and paranormal conflicts, all rolled into one.

My Daughters of Arianne series was billed as a sensual, borderline erotic paranormal romance series. In the first book, Mermaid’s Kiss, Jonah, a powerful angel, is severely wounded but is hiding not only from his enemies, the Dark Ones, but also his own kind. To heal, he therefore can’t use a magic that would attract a lot of notice. So, with the help of the mermaid who rescues him, he uses earth-based sex magic (which he calls Joining Magic), that must be applied at regular intervals during the healing process. It draws the two of them together intimately, makes more sense in the storyline, and is tied up in the magical plot line as they journey to heal his heart as well as his body.

That all sounds good, and though I loved this book, I was never entirely comfortable with the initial introduction of this erotic element. It felt somewhat contrived, not as well-integrated, enough that I had the irascible seawitch Mina make a joke about it to my heroine: “He had to use Joining Magic. It was the only thing that would work,” she mimicked. “Oh, that’s rich. If I had an anemone for every time I’d heard that one…”

In the subsequent books of the series, I wasn’t so uptight about it and didn’t try so hard. As such, the eroticism evolved in the paranormal setting far more naturally, to my way of thinking. In Witch’s Beauty, to balance the light and dark inside of her, the seawitch Mina discovers a mix of pain and pleasure eases that struggle. The angel David can help her out with that, because the angels of the Dark Legion are pretty virile and often use sex to ground themselves after battle.

Contemporary/paranormal/erotic romance – In If Wishes Were Horses, my hero runs an erotic paraphernalia shop, teaches Tantric classes, and is a Wiccan priest who regularly uses the Sacred Rite (sex magic) to channel the Great Lord. He is therefore uniquely set up to initiate our heroine, the new town sheriff, into an exploration of her own sensuality as they try to get to the bottom of a killing. However, that killing also has a magical/sexual component that further adds to the erotic quotient of the story.

That’s more than enough examples to give you the gist, but I wanted to show you a variety of possibilities.

Pacing - Final note for your blending is to watch your pacing. It’s like inching a tight lid off a box, where you have to take it up a little at a time on each side, until it all comes off at the same time. As a concluding example – in my book, Beloved Vampire – the hero is a vampire who’s grieved for 300 years. He rescues a sick human woman from a tomb by making her his full servant. He already has the sexual dominance, and she’s a natural submissive, so there’s going to be that issue gnawing at them, but she’s been tortured for five years by another vampire, and he’s spent 300 years mourning the Bedouin girl he handfasted. So the trust/relaxing of shields is going to happen proportionately at the same rate as the sexual interaction increases, and the vampire plot thickens, etc.

So recap of the mechanics – keep the character/relationship central to the story, make sure the plot and the erotic romance can’t exist without each other, test the relationship in real world settings (even if it’s a paranormal world), and watch your pacing for the emotional growth/development of your characters as you integrate erotica, romance and other genre elements.

Most importantly however—and this goes back to the original point—If you want to write a blended genre story, make sure your muse has given you one. It can’t be forced – it’s not like a game of chance where you draw two slips of paper out of a hat. “Today, I’ll write an…erotic romance, that’s also a….western! I’ll mash those two things together and see what happens.” The integration has to start in your head and heart—in your creative muse—first.

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