Yeah, I Write Erotic Romance, and I'm Proud of It

I have to learn not to take umbrage. I get it a lot. The sly winks. The horrified looks. The gasps. The queries about how does it feel to write smut/dirty books/trash?

I love writing sex scenes. Yeah, I do. Maybe because I like sex so much. <shrug> Does it really matter why?

But there’s something you have to know. I do not write smut/dirty books/ trash. I write stories about people struggling with the same issues they struggle with in non-erotic romance. It’s just that I add in the very real component of their lives that makes some of you uncomfortable.

In Streetwalker (by Sizzler Editions), my protag Carrie carries around some heavy stuff. (Gee, get why I named her that?) She is a victim who refuses to be one, still, she is affected by past events and lives the life she does because of it. Streetwalker is, at heart, is a story of redemption, recovery and renewal. But if you didn’t get past the first page where she is servicing a John, you might not know that.

So why did I write Streetwalker? To the horrified, the offended, the appalled, here’s an open letter:

Dear Reader (who might be a friend, relative, or unknown to me):

I write stuff you probably don’t like. Even secretly. Because there are some of you who ACT appalled, but you really do kinda like to read explicit sex scenes. You just don’t want others to know that.

Okay by me. I’m a live and let live kind of reading person. But don’t go all hypocritical on me. That I have do have a problem with. If you can’t admit to others you are fascinated by LGBT sex, or BDSM, or even explicit old-fashioned traditional sex, at least don’t go mouthing off about how awful it is that I write it.

I do. End of story. And your opinion doesn’t faze me.

But for others of you, those who are truly horrified, offended, and appalled, let me be an apologist for the erotic romance genre. Not all of it. Just mine.

I’m a farm girl. Sex happens. In fact, it must happen if the farm is to be successful. Spring time! Yay! Frolicking! Summer time! Yay! Babies! That’s how it works.

The beauty of sex among humans however is the emotional component. Because, see, I try to tell a story about the people having hot, explicit sex. And some of them are wounded, some are psychotic, some are insecure, some are just lusty souls reveling in all the good feelings from good sex. But that is true in other stories too. We authors create a panoply of characters to play off one another in various story premises.

I wondered what would happen to a girl sexually abused who only saw herself as breasts and a vagina. How would she create her adult self? Could she ever begin to recover from the horrors she faced and develop self-esteem based on accomplishments and intelligence?

And what happens when you put her with an erudite, sophisticated, professional man who lost it all when he couldn’t keep it zipped? How he reinvented his life revealed his own wounds.

I wondered if they could help one another heal. And that’s why I wrote my book. You may still hate the way I told my story, but I hope you can agree that the story premise is a timeless one.

Sincerely,

Angelica French (who uses 3 pen names for different genres, not out of embarrassment)

Sex for Sale, Book Two in the "Sex Sells" Trilogy

I have been working on my erotic romance, Sex for Sale (tentative title), the sequel to Streetwalker. It will be the second book of the trilogy, “Sex Sells”. My plan is to have it off to my editor, Sascha Illyvich at Sizzler Editions before the clock tolls a new year.

I am finding it hard to limit this book. I want so much to happen to set up Book 3, but I know I am being unrealistic. I should just bite the bullet (Do you love the cliché, Sascha?) and move a bunch of stuff to book three. Or not?

Here are the 10 key events for Sex for Sale. Please chime in if you have ideas for other complications/characters/plot lines. The more the merrier (Just for you, Sascha)!

1) Carrie and Harlan have settled into a conjugal-sans-legal commitment, new for both of them.

2) Carrie’s mother shows up and Carrie deals with her baggage from childhood.

3) Harlan has withdrawn more and more from the whore house business to focus on his photography, a talent Carrie encouraged him to develop, but Carrie resents having to carry (!) the business on her own.

4) Carrie develops new products and new delivery modes which Harlan tries to squelch. They include DikMilch, a skin cream made from cum; art gallery with a restaurant with prurient foods; on-line services while clearing out the in-house services, etc.

5) Bored and feeling neglected, Carrie takes up with a fellow who is an undercover Vice cop. She inadvertently implicates Harlan and herself in criminal activity.

6) Laurel comes back into their lives. She tries to snare Harlan but is rejected after an aborted sexual encounter. She turns to the D.A. and makes a plea bargain deal that implicates Harlan but clears her.

7) Laurel engages in risky sex play leading to her death; Harlan is a major

suspect.

8) Harlan is arrested. His mother is gravely ill. His sister tells him to come clean to mom about his work so he can move on with his life and resolve his commitment and sexual issues.

9) Harlan is cleared of Laurel’s death.

10) Carrie wants more than Harlan does from their relationship, but he is inching toward marriage. Meanwhile, Carrie and Harlan recommit to their relationship and turn to legal ways to make money using sex. They sell their brownstones and buy a condo overlooking Central Park.

Would you read a story like this? What’s missing? Do you believe a sex addict and a prostitute can make a go of it? Stay tuned!

Streetwalker Excerpts

Here are two teasers from my erotic romance, Streetwalker, out August 1 from Sizzler Editions. I hope you go to Amazon and download your copy onto your Kindle after reading a bit about Carrie and Harlan. The book opens with a decision point for Carrie:

“Oh, Baby! Oh, yeah, Baby. Oooh, oooh, yeah, oooh. Unhhhhh!” The dock worker held her down while he screamed his release, his hot breath redolent with beer. The smell of diesel fuel on his hands sickened her, dandruff showered her face from patches of thinning hair as he hard-rode her, pinning her shoulders to the thin mattress. The biting jab of aching muscles meant she’d be swallowing another Flexeril after he left. Her skin split where his broken fingernails dug in. He threw back his head and jerked into her two more times before he collapsed, the bulk of him spilling onto the space on either side of her body.

Long ago, Carrie learned to go to “not here” during sex. She tolerated the body pumping into hers if she went somewhere else.

She looked down at his greasy hair covering her tits. She restrained herself from lifting off the dead weight of her John. She knew the rules. He initiated the withdrawal of his limp cock from her pummeled body. He owned her for the remainder of his fifteen minutes. Nine minutes to go.

She waited, still beneath him, afraid her stirring would get him going again. While waiting out her time, she rehearsed the steps of her escape from this hellhole of a whorehouse. After tonight, if it went as planned, everything would be different. No. More. Fucking. Ever. Ever. Again.

Later on, Carrie is telling Harlan about her past. She finds herself attracted to him but fighting that feeling:

Carrie convulsed and her laughter sputtered out. "Only you, Harlan, would worry about SPF levels when you take a girl on a picnic. I love you," then realizing what she had said, she tacked on, "like a brother. Oh, God, no. Not like a brother," remembering her past a beat too late. "Like ... a business partner."

He shook his head. "That's better. I do not want you thinking of me as a brother!"

If you wonder what the book is about, here’s the blurb:

Carrie is a smart woman with a dark past and more than her share of heartache. Determined to retire early from hands-on sex work, she uses her skills as an exhibitionist to bargain for partial ownership of a high-end, brownstone bordello in New York City with the erudite, handsome and powerful Harlan Ledbetter.

But even though she's only 22, Carrie's already been in her line of work far too long. Besides the fact that sex has been little more than Work for most of her adult life, Carrie also has to contend with painful memories of abuse at the hands of her stepbrother. Could sexuality ever truly belong to her? Could it ever become something she would want?

Harlan, meanwhile, certainly wants more than a business partnership with this stunning woman – and the feeling may be mutual, if Carrie can let herself want him as much as she fears she does. But she has a long way to go before she can give her heart and body to a man willingly. How will she get there? If there's one thing Carrie has learned, it's how to negotiate. She has a feeling this skill will come in handy with Harlan in more ways than one.

Carrie approaches Harlan with a unique business proposal – one that offers more than just a way to run their bordello, but a whole new outlook on life, sexuality and love. Intrigued, he takes her on...

Streetwalker is Part One of Angelica French's exciting new "Sex Sells" trilogy.

You can buy Streetwalker here:

http://amzn.to/16lT5Xg

Also check out the Angelica French author page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/author/angelicafrench

Is That Erotic Romance or Erotica or Porn?

As people choose their Halloweenie costumes, some will be drawn to the salacious. Halloweenie. Get it?

What is it about sexually-charged costumes that attracts men and women to choose them (not for trick or treating, thank goodness; the phenomenon seems limited to house parties)?

This is also a topic for discussion on a couple of the writing groups I belong to as well as the subject of multiple blog posts. What is the line between pornography and erotica? A lot of us have wrestled with that and settled it in our own writers’ minds.

What is it about titillating text that causes us to buy it and read it? When folks ask me what I write, I tell them “naughty and nice” allowing their brains to fill in what that means to them.

The whole question has come up again (so to speak) because of the phenomenal success of Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. New York Times Best Seller List? That is unprecedented for a book, much less three, in the genre.

In one of my critique groups I was challenged on one of my naughty books they were helping with. “Is that what you want to be known for?” I was asked. My response that I just want to be known was met with little support.

Clearly people who don’t read much erotic romance have pre-conceived notions of what it must be. Dirty for the sake of being dirty. All about physicality rather than emotionality. Commercial. Provoking acts of exploitation and abuse. You get the idea.

I avoid pornography. But not because I am offended by sexual acts. I’m a farm girl, as I tell my husband. Lucky him that I think pretty much anything goes if it’s not hurtful and mutually agreed upon. We are sexual beings. We are meant to have sex.

Pornography, however, is boring. How many ways can they stick it how many places? I mean really. I want characters who are impacted by the act, not just holes in a mattress. What are the implications of the sexual act(s)? That’s why we read these materials.

I don’t read widely in erotica and erotic romance, either. But I do read some, mostly as mentor texts for my own writing. I find that while I just love writing sex scenes (and practicing before writing), I really don’t enjoy reading them so much. Weird, huh? I expect love scenes to be integral to the plot, not just pasted in for titillation.

Here’s a recent blog by Maree Anderson on the same topic that I know you’ll enjoy:  http://www.mareeanderson.com/porn-erotica-erotic-romance