Tag: rated r for risque

Sex Has a Formula?! by Marsha A. Moore

By Elisabeth Guest Blogs June 28, 2011 2 comments


This was originally posted by Marsha A. Moore at Ravencraft’s Romance Realm and my inner geek loved it so much I asked her if I could please re-post it, here. Thanks, Marsha!!

Sex Has a Formula? By Marsha A. Moore

In one workshop I attended, the instructor presented a helpful progression for structuring a sex scene. I found it useful and often refer to my notes while writing, if there isn’t some primary storyline already establishing the pace of the intimate scene.

Given you have a couple, person A and person B (gender doesn’t matter):

1)      Aggression from A
2)      Submission or pushback from B
3)      Elevated aggression or softening A
4)      Escalating physical contact between A & B
5)      Pull back/ fear/ uncertainty from either A or B
6)      Reassurance supplied by A or B (opposite from #5)
7)      Physical interaction
8)      Increasingly intense physical interaction/ both are lost to the physical sensations
9)      Completion
The moments of hesitation or pushing the other away add tension and invite a change of emotion from the partner, to be supportive or more aggressive. The drama of taking two steps forward and sliding back one builds excitement for the reader. Anticipation is a wonderful device.
As a reader, do you enjoy this gradual build up of intimacy in sex scenes more than wild abandon? As a writer, have you used this type of progression? If so, how does it work for you?

I’ll leave you with a wonderful example, a poem by E. E. Cummings—one of my favorites!

May I Feel Said He

may i feel said he
(i’ll squeal said she
just once said he)
it’s fun said she

(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she

(let’s go said he
not too far said she
what’s too far said he
where you are said she)

may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she

may i move said he
is it love said she)
now said he)
ow said she

(tiptop said he
don’t stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she

(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you’re divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)

—

Marsha A. Moore is a writer of fantasy romance. The magic of art and nature spark life into her fantasy stories. She enjoys watercolor painting and drawing. After a move from Toledo to Tampa in 2008, she’s happily transforming into a Floridian. Crazy about cycling, she usually passes the 1,000 mile mark yearly. She is learning kayaking and loving it. She’s also a yoga enthusiast and never has enough days spent at the beach, usually scribbling away at new stories with toes wiggling in the sand. Every day at the beach is magical!

Links to Marsha and her books:

Website
Blog
Twitter
Facebook
Goodreads

 

Guest Blog: Myths and Legends by J.S. Wayne

By Elisabeth Guest Blogs June 19, 2011 8 comments

Note from Elisabeth: Many thanks to J.S. for guest blogging today, and for sharing his experiences as a man who writes erotic romance.

Myths and Legends: The Romantic Writer

First I’d like to thank our gracious and lovely hostess for having me here today! It’s always a privilege to be invited to someone else’s house; I’ll try very hard not to track mud all over your carpets.

The biggest question that people ask upon learning I’m a guy who writes erotic romance is, “Are you gay?” As my wife will attest, the answer is no. This invariably leads to another question: “What the hell possessed you to write romance stories?”

I’m a romantic at heart. Nothing brings me greater joy than watching a new love blossom. Nothing causes me more despair than seeing a once-promising relationship falter, wither, and die.

Throughout most of my life, I’ve pursued romantic love, with mixed results until I finally met my wife. I have been blessed to witness dizzying highs and cursed to weather devastating lows. The sweet thrill of the first time another person looks at you longingly and says “I love you” is a balm for a multitude of hurts. But the destructive potential of a lover looking at you with loathing and saying “I never want to see you again” is a lethally sharp cutting instrument for the soul.

Having seen all of this, it’s not surprising that for a long time, I was very cynical about love. One of my friends, in a rhapsody of romantic bliss, informed me that he was going to get married. As I’d just suffered a very nasty breakup which was an emotional bloodbath on both sides, my advice was for my friend to lock himself in a dark room and lay down until the feeling passed.

Unsurprisingly, I was not invited to be in the wedding party. Shockingly, I was still invited to the wedding. As this was several months after the breakup in question, I arrived with a date on my arm. We were promptly relegated to the farthest corner of the room with all the maiden aunts and other relatives and friends whom it would have been impolitic not to invite but whose presence could have been taken or left.

This could have been disastrous, but I elected to turn it into an opportunity. When my chance to dance with the bride arrived, I took it and, while awkwardly shuffling with her around the floor, apologized fervently for my previous behavior. I explained why I had said what I said and told her that I wished them both all the happiness they could possibly cultivate. Then I took my leave of her and went back to the table, only to be confronted by my friend. When I explained what I’d said, he got a very odd look on his face.

“I almost didn’t invite you,” he informed me. “I knew how you felt about this.”

“That was me looking at it through my own lens, not yours. And it was my mistake,” I explained.

The rift was healed, and I’m pleased to report that the couple now have two children and there’s a chance they might be expecting a third. I couldn’t be happier for them. And the experience renewed my faith and belief in love.

What that has to do with writing romance is this: I love recapturing that feeling of the first kiss. The moment when a person’s heart leaps within their chest and they suddenly dare to contemplate the idea that they might actually be able to consider being with another person. Not just for a night, or to “scratch an itch,” but forever.

I have learned that there are more ways to write erotic romance than there are writers to do it. The commonality is that ultimately, two (or more) people will find love eventually, no matter what hell the writer puts them through for them to get there. If there’s a way to make it hot for the reader, then so much the better. But the erotic element serves the romance, rather than the other way around., That’s why it’s erotic romance and not romantic erotica.

Romance isn’t the only thing I claim on my list. Urban fantasy and supernatural horror are also there right now, and I have no doubt that as time passes, I will branch out even more. For now, though, romance seems like a pretty good place to be.

A guy I work with asked me a few weeks ago, “So, I hear you’ve got a bunch of stories published.”

I confirmed this, more or less, by saying, “I’ve got a few things out there.”

“Yeah? What do you write?”

“Erotic romance?”

He looked at me like I’d grown two more heads in five seconds. After a few silent moments in which his mouth worked rather comically, he sputtered, “But you’re married. Don’t you have to be gay to write romance if you’re a guy?”

This particular individual fancies himself as a ladies’ man. He’s not, but it’s not my place to disillusion him. After weighing the relative merits of several responses, I smiled at him and said, “Check out my Facebook. You’ll notice that almost all my friends are women.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” He muttered, confused.

I laughed. “I’ve never been more popular with women.” This seemed to end the conversation, as he was unable to mount a comeback, and we drifted back to our respective tasks.

So, the biggest myth I want to dispel is that anyone can write erotic romance. If you can write well to begin with, why not? Write what you know. Write what you believe in.

Write what you want for yourself. By writing it, you may actually help create it!

Thank you all for letting me bend your ear, and thank you again, Elisabeth, for having me. It’s been a lot of fun!

Until next time,

Best,

J.S. Wayne

J.S. Wayne can be found in a lot of places, but the best and easiest to find him are:

www.jswayne.wordpress.com

www.wix.com/jswaynesite/herebemonsters

www.nobleauthors.blogspot.com

Guest Blog: The Benefits of Cheating by Jennifer Probst

By Elisabeth Guest Blogs April 25, 2011 18 comments

Many thanks to Jennifer for guest blogging today! One lucky commenter will win a copy of her delicious book, The Tantric Principle!

THE BENEFITS OF CHEATING…by Jennifer Probst

I slept with Pierce Brosnan last night.

Got your attention?

Let’s just say I woke up with a smile on my face, purred happily and snuggled deeper into the covers. Let’s go, James Bond…

“Mommy!”

My eyes widened. I wasn’t in Vegas and hadn’t bumped into him at the tables and then rocked his world in the elevator, and then the suite. My little one stood over me with a demanding face and the smell of pee. “Get up, mommy. I peed the bed again.”

Crap.

I trudged into my regular existence and took care of business. But as the day passed, I felt a secret smile steal over my face. The dream had been so vivid! And totally safe, not really like cheating, because he was a celebrity and I had always told my husband if he could get lucky with a celebrity, then he had my blessing to have the time of his life.

This led me to the topic of cheating. Cheating can be done in all kinds of ways and means different things to different people. Is a fantasy cheating?  How about good intentions that turn unfortunately bad? Is a sizzling look but no touching off limits? Ah, the list is endless and swarming with snipers at every turn. Fortunately, personal relationships are not my cheating topic of the day.

Writing is.

When I begin a new book, it’s all hot romance and sex and getting to know each other. I fall head first in lust over my characters and the possibility of the blank page. I have high expectations to pen the story so flawlessly done in my head. It’s all heavenly foreplay and so intoxicating…

Then I get to chapter 3. Ouch. The six month bump. Suddenly, my hero is not really behaving very nicely. I told him to do something, and he refuses. My heroine sees my hero acting up and gets in on the action. And the plot that was so tempting seems to stall out and seem..well…cliché. Suddenly, I don’t really love this book anymore. Sitting down and trying to write sucks. I snack a lot, and jump out of my chair a lot, and watch more TV. Heck, I even seek out the attention of my children. So, I need to make my decision. Is this really going to work out? Perhaps we need a break. Maybe I should try that other story or article or essay and come back later and see if we are really meant to be together. Sometimes, I bail. Other times, I stick it out.

My current work, The Tantric Principle, went exactly this way. All heaven and bliss and then quarter of the way I fumbled. The manuscript sat for a while and I left the story for the lure of something more exciting. But then our time came back around – I bumped into the manuscript on my way through cleaning out my desk, and said, “Oh, yeah, I remember you! You’re hot!” And I committed myself all over again. I scrapped the last chapter and soared. I hit a few more bumps but I had promised monogamy. I finished it. Then sold it to Red Sage.

Score…

Sometimes I hate cheating and am forced to do it. I just started a new project that practically hit on me at the bar. Butterflies in the belly from the thought of my hero.  Yummy. Good plot, good characters. I was into the relationship. Then found my editor was interested in another pitch I had done with a book I hadn’t written yet. Another story I loved but quit after half of the first chapter. It had the potential of a great relationship but was basically a one night stand. Well, the one night stand was forced upon me like a marriage of convenience. When you have an editor interested in actually buying something, you write it. At least, that is what I believe for good business.

So, I started my new work and broke up with the last one. It was messy and undignified. I’m still upset but am beginning to think my new husband has potential. We’ll have to wait and see…

How you do like to cheat? Or don’t you? Share your story with me.

Thanks to Elisabeth for having me on her awesome blog – it is quite an honor.

To celebrate my new release, I am giving away a copy of The Tantric Principle – a story well worth cheating with. Leave a comment here and I will pick a lucky winner.

Drop by my website or my blog to check out my other books.

Visit my website at: http://www.jenniferprobst.com

Visit my blog at: http://jenniferprobst.wordpress.com

Any writing mommies out there? Stop by my mommy blog at: http://4badmommies.com

Holy #%*t! My Zipper is Down.

By Elisabeth General December 20, 2010 0 comments

 

Been feeling overwhelmed, so I decided to post something lighter today, that I wrote awhile ago and saved for just such an I’m-too-busy-to-blog kind of occasion:


So. I am one of those annoying people who FREAKS when they meet someone famous. They don’t have to be mega famous like the President or Madonna, just someone I respect and admire and do not know personally.

My friend Katie has a saying: “Donald Trump poops too”. Apparently reminding herself that all beings great and small go to the bathroom helps her keep things in perspective when she’s about to encounter somebody famous.

I think it’s a great philosophy.

I have been fortunate enough to meet a reasonably sized handful of well known individuals whom I admire, and with a couple of exceptions I handled them okay. A couple, not so much. When I managed to make my mouth open I walked away going “What the fuck was that, I sounded so stupid!” The times that I didn’t, I think were because I was too drunk to know better. So instead I hugged them, because I am very outgoing when I’m drunk.

Perhaps I should be drunk more often.

Anyhoo, I have mentioned before in previous posts about how much I love JR Ward. I mean, I love many authors (not in the creepy way, mind you), but reading JR Ward’s dark, sexy, and humorous style of storytelling was what opened my eyes and made me want to write my own novel. In my ignorance, I had previously thought that romance novels all involved flowery language and horseback-riding women in very large dresses. It never occurred to me, for example, that a bisexual Dom vampire could be the hero of a love story.

But he can, and that is AWESOME.

So, I decided a few months ago to take a trip to meet JR Ward (she doesn’t fly so we adoring masses come to her). The trip, sadly, was a total clusterfuck. I had to bring my youngest and flying with a 10 month old is no picnic. The airline rescheduled me several times, ultimately putting me on a flight that didn’t leave until AFTER her Lover Mine book signing. Then we bitched and complained until they agree to put me on a flight leaving, oh, RIGHT NOW which resulted in a mad dash to the airport with a migraine in my head and a screaming child in the backseat, only to be told they wouldn’t let me check in because it was too close to departure time. We wound up having to buy another ticket on another airline and pay for an extra hotel night, thus turning a reasonably priced trip into a ridiculously expensive trip.

Geeze.

So, the dust finally settles, and I’m in line at the signing, AND MY ZIPPER IS DOWN. I had chosen to wear a pair of pants that a friend had given to me because “They don’t fit anymore.” Mmmhmm…or maybe she didn’t want them because of the faulty zipper?

So I check and recheck, and I tug at my shirt because I do NOT want to be the sicko fan who approached JR Ward with a gaping hole in their pants. Of course by the time it is my turn to meet her, the freakazoid deer in headlights is back, so when she very graciously smiles at me and says “Hi”, which is generally the thing to say when you meet somebody, I’m stuck in place, too damn worried about that stupid zipper to move, and everyone is staring at me expectantly. Probably thinking “Move, you idiot!”.

I wind up propelling myself forward, and I think I managed to mumble a hello or maybe a thank you. I don’t remember. I spent the whole rest of her Q&A time checking and rechecking my zipper, to the point where I’m reasonably certain her security guard was keeping an eye out to make sure I didn’t do anything freaky. “Better watch that one, she keeps messing with her pants.”

Luckily my mom lived nearby, and had come with to hang onto the baby for me, or someone might have called child services.

So the whole thing was fun, Ms. Ward was gorgeous, charismatic and SO entertaining with her creative use of salty verbiage. Totally worth the trip, and if I can I will do it again in a heartbeat, presuming her security folks don’t have me on a watch list.

And next time, maybe I’ll just wear sweat pants. Or a skirt. Definitely something zipper-less. Which one, do you suppose, would be safer?

(Author note, updated July 4, 2012. I wrote this post before selling King of Darkness. I think perhaps even before I finished writing it. I have since become better at acting normal when I meet authors who are well-known, and I have also since met…JR Ward’s assistant. LOL. She appeared at RT 2012 and as both a good and bad thing, I was too busy promoting a book of my own to be able to wait in line to meet her.  A lot has changed! But it’s kinda cool to read back and remember.)

Query Letters and Hair Pulling by Kristin Molnar

By Elisabeth Author AdviceGuest Blogs September 29, 2010 5 comments

First of all, I’d like to thank Elisabeth for having me guest blog.  This is my first guest blog appearance, so I’m feeling all professional today.  My name is Kristin Molnar and write mostly dark paranormal romance.  What’s not to love about sexy vampires?  Though I do tend to throw in a bit of murder and mayhem too.

I am in the query letter stage of trying to get published.  It feels like I spend most of my day slumped over the computer, researching agents.  No one wants the same thing.  One agent wants nothing but my query letter.  That’s easy, I can do that.  Another wants query, synopsis, sample chapter, a bio, and rights to my firstborn child (not really but sometimes it feels that way).  And yet another wants a synopsis and a bio.  I have spent countless hours making charts to keep track of who wants what and what I’ve sent who.  My charts are organized, but my head still wants to explode when I look at them.  I think I’ve sent out over fifteen query letters.  Not that many, in the scheme of things, but it feels like a lot.  I’ve received a few rejections, some of them form some of them personalized.  I’m not so much discouraged by the rejections as I am the sheer amount of information needed to keep going.

There are books, blogs, workshops, facebook pages, and twitter accounts dedicated to agents and query letters.  Not a single one of them will tell you the same thing.  I’m starting to feel like I’m playing Russian Roulette with agents.  Spin the wheel, cross my fingers, and hope my query ends up on the right person’s desk while their in just the perfect mood to hear about my novel.  Agents are busy, busy people, and somehow I have to come up with one hell of a pitch in 250 words or less.  Some days it feels impossible.  Then I check my email, and I see that someone else in RWA or FF&P (Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal chapter) has gotten an offer from an agent or publisher.  I might be a little bit jealous, but mostly it reminds me that this really can be done.  By busting my hump, writing like a tempest, and doing my research, I can get there too.  

Every day I feel lucky to know what it is that I want to do with my life.  I might not be selling anything yet, but at least I know.  Some people go their entire lives and don’t even get that far.  As writer’s we are gifted and cursed.  We have to let these stories out, and then we have to work even harder to get it out there for the reader.

Kristin Molnar

Twitter: @KLMolnar
http://klmolnar.weebly.com
facebook.com/kristin.molnar1