Here’s a bit of good news for those of us who like to read the steamy stuff.
Did you know that Indiana passed a law (which was to take effect July 1, 2008) requiring sellers of “sexually explicit materials” to register with the secretary of state, pay a $250 fee, and provide details about the material they were selling? Hmm, can anyone say “censorship”?
Yes! On July 1 a U.S. District Judge (Sarah Evans Barker, bless her heart) struck down the law. Several bookstores, the Museum of Art, and the Indiana ACLU challenged the law in court, and they won.
The now-defunct law was supposedly targeted toward businesses that specialized in pornography (you know, that’s the stuff that no-one can define but you’ll supposedly recognize when you see it). However, the wording of the law was so general that it would arguably have included countless works of art as well as many romance novels – and no doubt every single title published in our Aphrodisia line.
For more information, check out stories in IndyStar.com (http://tinyurl.com/4nvage) and Publishers Weekly (http://tinyurl.com/5747tu).
The State is reportedly still trying to find a way to deal with “pornographic businesses.”
In this day and age, when so many romance novels (even ones in traditional lines) are sizzling hot, where heroines and heroes are having sex with vampires and werewolves, where ménages have expanded from trois to quatre and show no signs of stopping, where masturbation, sex toys, anal sex, nipple clamps, and bondage are increasingly the norm, where women are writing and reading male-male sex, I have to ask, What on earth is pornography, and what’s a pornographic business? Does the concept of “porn” have meaning any more?
Is there some kind of line that should be drawn somewhere? And if so, how?
I do notice that most publishers of erotica and erotic romance have drawn their own lines. Such as, no sex with a minor – even if it would be historically correct (like in the days when most girls were married by the time they reached the age of majority), and even if it’s perfectly acceptable in young adult fiction. Then there’s the issue of sex with shapeshifters. I’ve heard some people say, it’s fine as long as the shifter is in human form. Others say, a shapeshifter romance is kind of like Beauty and the Beast: the human has to accept “the beast” in beast form, which means making love with him/her in that form.
Is this complicated or what? Quite honestly, I don’t know what to think. The idea of kiddie porn appals me. But so does the slippery slope of censorship. What’s the solution? How do we protect the innocent but still honor freedom of expression?
I know you’re not embarrassed to read spicy books or you wouldn’t be here at our site.
But are you embarrassed to buy them? Do you order online? Do you slink around the bookstore? Here in Canada, Aphrodisias are shelved under Erotica, not Romance, so you have to go into a whole different section and basically proclaim, “Hello, my name is Susan and I read erotica.” (Which, actually, I rarely do. Especially not literary erotica. I much prefer erotic/spicy romance. But here it’s shelved as erotica.) I admit, in the beginning I was nervous about browsing the erotica section – and partly it was because there were so few books and the covers were, uh, kind of freaky sometimes. But that was before we Aphrodisiacs, and our colleagues at Heat, Red, Spice and so on began to dominate the shelves with our pretty, shiny, sexy covers.
Do you pick up your erotic romance and hide it under another book, then linger near the cashiers until you see a friendly looking female who might – gasp! – even read this stuff herself?
How about reading spicy books in public? Do you read your erotic romances at home, as a private pleasure? Or do you proudly carry them around in public, cover visible, and read them on the bus? (And if you do, do you ever get comments?) Personally, I’m not big on reading sexy stuff in public. It’s not so much that I’m embarrassed to be seen with it, as that it’s hard to really get deeply into the story and enjoy it fully (if you get what I mean ).
As for you writers, are you embarrassed by what you write? I bet most of us will say no. If we were embarrassed about it, we wouldn’t do it. But what do you say when, after you’ve told someone you’re a writer, they ask you what you write? My answer is usually, “Spicy contemporary romance.” It’s not because I’m embarrassed but because I think the general public doesn’t really understand what “erotic romance” means. They think “porn”, and that’s definitely not what I or my fellow Aphrodisiacs write. I figure, “spicy contemporary romance” gives the normal reader a much more accurate picture. If they ask, “How spicy?”, I’ll grin and say, “Pretty darned spicy,” and they get the picture.
So, now it’s your turn to fess up. Are you embarrassed? Or proud and bold?
The last week has been totally off kilter for me. I'm still trying to process everything and put it into an ordered state in my mind. And that's a hard thing to do when you're as scattered as I am.
So what's this post about? A lot of things actually. I'd worried that I didn't have anything to blog about. As usual, I have too much. I'll try and break it down into small pieces.
Ok, first I managed to finish my novella for the Trio Anthology and sent it off to NY Nov 1. Yes, No Strings Attached actually got written. This was one of those stories that came out kicking and screaming. I struggled for months to get the darn thing going--and just couldn't. I'm still debating on whether I like it or not. And though I proofed it, it's still full of a million typos, which seems to be a trademark of mine. I simply can not seem to get them all out of my manuscripts. Though I can spot them in an instant when I read other people's work. Seems to be some bizarre blindness block I have when reading my writing. Anyway, the darn thing is gone.
So...once the elation of actually finishing another novella wore off I found myself wondering what I should do next. Nevermind that I had one more novella and two single titles to work on for 09. Well, when Devyn gets to drinking and thinking, dangerous things happen. That's right. I got an idea, so I popped off a few lines to my editor and asked what she'd think of a proposal I had for a Sexy Beast Anthology. I'll admit I've been sitting here gnawing myself to pieces wanting into those anthos, but never expected to be considered. Well, much to my surprise, a day after I proposed the idea Hilary made an offer for a novella--and a single title on the same theme. Imagine my jaw dropping to my knees in shock. You see, I hadn't expected to make the sale and so hadn't sat down and really thinked (yeah, "thinked" out here in the badlands. Remember I'm a hick from the sticks) the idea through because I didn't believe it'd have a snowball's chance heck of selling.
So, what did Devyn sell her editor? Well, here's the synopsis for Heart of the Wildcat, the SB novella. This is rough, so bear with me:
Cultural anthropologist Kathryn Conrad is on her way to North Carolina in the hopes of finding and studying a small tribe of Cherokee mountain men for her master's thesis. The stories of the Tlvdatsi (actual Cherokee word for cougar) told to her by her grandmother have lit Kathryn's imagination—not to mention her desire to track down and verify her Native American roots.
Attacked and almost raped by her hired guide, Kathryn is close to losing her life when rescue arrives in the form of Joseph Clawfoot. (stalking Kathryn and her rapist in cougar form) Red skinned, black haired and handsome as sin, he's just the kind of specimen Kathryn wants to study--up close and personal. Kathryn persuades Joseph to become her contact with his people. She gets more than she bargained for when she learns the truth behind Joseph's strange and solitary existence.
Joseph Clawfoot is a Cherokee, member of a vanishing tribe whose people have learned to survive, they had to adapt to the arrival of the white settlers. A pact with the gods granted them the ability to shape-shift into the form of the cougar. Determined to live away from civilization, Joseph has settled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He follows no man's rules, only those of nature.
Joe's hope that he will find a mate to join him fades daily. His life is one of constant danger. The natural habitat in which he survives is shrinking, and hunters threaten to drive his kind into extinction. Though he fights the attraction, Joseph can't help but desire the petite beauty with the pale skin and lake-blue eyes. Her touch is forbidden, yet to possess her body and soul is all he can think about. Having Kathryn in his life is dangerous. However her strong and independent spirit arms her with the weapons to capture and tame his wild heart.
When poachers threaten Joseph's freedom, Kathryn is forced to kill one of the hunters to save her lover's life. Realizing she has to take responsibility, Kathryn chooses to turn herself in to keep investigators away. So that she will not accidentally expose the tribe to outsiders, Kathryn asks Joe to erase her memory of their time together, using the ancient spells of the shamans. She’ll remember nothing of him. In giving Joseph up Kathryn knows she's preserving his freedom and the heritage of her ancestors. ___________________
So there it is. This novella is the lead in for the single title, Soul of the Wildcat. Some of you may have already noticed that the heroine is being given the heave-ho at the end. Well, she is. And, yes, I've already heard the cries from the pals I've ran this by before sending it off to my editor: EEK! NO HAPPY ENDING FOR JOE AND KATHRYN?
Let me stop and grab something to cover myself with before you HEA people start pelting me with rocks. I'm going to take a deep breath and announce it now: Joe and Kathryn won't end up together. I've got to break them up so Joe can go on to his next adventure in Soul of the Wildcat. I know this is a first (I think) for the Sexy Beast stories and, frankly, I'd wondered if my editor's suggestion to send Joe off with another woman in his next book was the correct idea. Giving it thought, it is. The theme of the novella is not only discovery of dangerous secrets, but to truly love something, you must set it free. (cue appropriate love songs here) So, yes, readers and peers--Kathryn will set Joe free to preserve his freedom, even if it means she must sacrifice her memories of his kind.
Which leads me to a question for discusssion: As a reader do you expect the HEA in erotic romance? And to writers: Do you feel compelled to write an HEA into your stories because you are writing erotic romance? And if so, why?
Are spicy books “hot” in other countries? I’ve heard sales of Aphrodisia titles are great in Australia, but what about countries where English isn’t the first language?
We’ve had a few foreign sales among the Aphro authors. I just got author copies of the Brazilian edition of “Hot in Here” – which, in Portuguese is “Brincando com Fogo” – i.e., “Playing with Fire.” Didn’t they do a great job with that classy chocolate cover? And embossing, no less! By the way, can you count the hands? Yes, there are four male hands, if you look really closely and sneak a peek under the title banner (hint, he’s cupping her left boob!). Interestingly, the book is about one-third the length of the English version. Wonder what they left out???
In Germany, “Champagne Rules” is published by an imprint of Random House under the title “Haut wie Samt” (“Skin Like Silk”). It’s a great cover too. To my delight, a writer friend who was just in Germany says the books are being sold at traveler rest stops along the Autobahn. Stop for gas, a pee, buy a bottle of water and hey, why not pick up a little erotic romance too?
What do you think of the covers, compared to the original US ones? I think they’re all great – the cover fairies around the world are good to me.
It’s so much fun when these foreign editions turn up on my doorstep. I can’t read a word – and that’s probably just as well because I’d stress out over the translations and edits – but I do love to think of people in foreign countries picking up my books, in their own language.
Here’s a bit of good news for those of us who like to read the steamy stuff.
