Tag Archives: sexuality

Getting to know me: The Smut Report 2023

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This re-post of an interview I did with The Smut Report is the fifth in a series of blog interviews I’ve done over the years. The first post explains my purpose.

The Smut Report Interview

Today’s post is from a 2023 interview I did for The Smut Report with the goal of promoting my Harwell Heirs series. At the time, I had just released Book 4, A Delicate Seduction, and so applied to The Smut Report for a review of Book 1, The Pleasure Device. They said they would review The Pleasure Device later, but in the meantime, I could do this promo interview called “My First Smut”, so I did. By the way, The Smut Report hated The Pleasure Device. It seems my Victorian erotic romance was too smutty for a website with “smut” in the title! Continue reading →

Perpetual Pride: All My Queer LGBTQIA+ Stories!

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In celebration of Pride Month, which is June of every year, I am writing this post with the expectation that I will update it every June listing all my new Queer / LGBTQIA+ releases! [I might just end up making a page instead, but will let you know right here.]

I write queer main romantic protagonists only in my historicals. Many readers seem to think there were no queer people in the past. Some even think, while there were queer people in the past, they certainly never had a happily-ever-after. Well, I hope my stories reflect that, indeed, there were queer people in the past. In my historical erotic romances, my characters always have happily-ever-afters (an HEA is not an expectation or requirement for erotica).

The below list provides the genre and subgenre and the type of queer representation for each of my stories. Unless otherwise noted by “secondary”, the main protagonists are queer. Continue reading →

Sex and the Seasoned Romance

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In 2018, I was on a Seasoned Romance panel at the Emerald City Writers Conference. My topic was “Sex and the Seasoned Romance”. I was recently reminded of this presentation when another author posted a rather shocking comment in a seasoned romance author discussion group I am no longer a member of:

“I would not write an erotic romance about an older couple…simply because there’s a level of maturity that makes their sexual relationship much deeper and more meaningful, because of all they’ve been through.”

Uh…that’s exactly why an author can write a seasoned erotic romance! Or even just sex scenes featuring seasoned characters.

I’m still trying to get my head around what this author might have meant. Does she think “erotic romance” means lots of vacuous, meaningless sex? Because that’s not what an erotic romance is at all. In fact, the “maturity that makes their sexual relationship much deeper and more meaningful” feeds into what an erotic romance is: a sexual journey leading to a happily-ever-after. Continue reading →

Sex Scenes: Who, What, When, Why, and How Many

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“How many sex scenes?” is a perennial question in the National Novel Writing Month Erotica Forum. Meaning, how many sex scenes should an erotica or erotic romance novel have? Just this week, I saw the same question asked on a private Facebook group and felt compelled to write this blog post with the answer and an explanation.

The answer? Wait for it… Continue reading →

Reverse Harem? Well, only sort of…

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Reverse Harem is the new hot trend in romance. Stories feature one woman and at least three men, each of whom is in love with her. The heroine can’t decide which man she wants to be with so her happily-ever-after is with all of the men.

Sounds like something I probably write, right? But I don’t. However, my stories do involve themes that are very, very close to reverse harem. I let my female characters have a lot of fun with the men in their lives, even if they only end up with one (or two) of them.

Below is a guide to some of the Reverse Harem-type themes in my stories. Continue reading →

Victorians: Hysteria and the Vibrator, Part Two: The Vibrator

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In Part One of this blog miniseries, we learned how Victorian doctors defined “hysteria” and how they treated it. Spoiler alert: doctors used various methods of stimulation to bring women to achieve the “hysterical paroxysm”, i.e., an orgasm.

Around 1879, the electric or electro-mechanical vibrator was introduced into doctors’ tools of the trade for treating hysteria. Vibrators were first used in France, then this method spread to the rest of the European continent, England, and America.

But what did this Victorian stimulation device look like? One perhaps imagines corseted women cowering as a mustachioed doctor approaches with some bizarre Steampunkish contraption… Continue reading →

Victorians: Hysteria and the Vibrator, Part One: Hysteria

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I recently saw a revival of the play In The Next Room, Or The Vibrator Play by Sarah Ruhl. In case you haven’t heard about this play it takes place in upstate New York in the 1880s. A doctor provides treatments for hysteria – to both women and men – using the latest technology, the electric vibrator. In the course of the play there is emotional and sexual discovery amongst all the characters, along with several orgasms.

I originally saw the play in February 2009 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, California. The play had been written for the Berkeley Rep and made its debut there before being launched on Broadway. I’m not a theater regular – I do see shows from time to time – but when I heard about this play, I absolutely had to see it.

“Had to” because I had already started my notes for Dr. Christopher’s Device (later The Pleasure Device). Perhaps I should have subtitled that book, Or, The Vibrator Erotic Romance. Continue reading →

Definitions: What is Erotica?

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[UPDATE: Please also see my reprise blog post “Definitions: Erotica, Erotic Romance, Steamy Romance”]

People frequently make broad assumptions about what it is I write. Friends, family, and acquaintances snicker about my “porn”. Romance writer colleagues imbued with the cadence of traditional romance often bandy about the term “erotica” as if to signal the ugly otherness of erotic romance.

So I will attempt to answer the provocative question What is erotica? and by doing so answer corollary questions about misunderstood erotic-like literary variations: Erotic romance, steamy romance, smut, porn, and Romantica®. Continue reading →

Keeping Sex Between the Covers

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It’s June 14th and in the United States we’re celebrating Flag Day! I have a special promotion for June (Flag Day month) and July (Independence Day month). See the end of this post!

I generally write historical erotic romance, although I have also written contemporary, mythological, and Steampunk. But my comfort zone is historicals because I’m a historian and, I suppose, I’ve internally fetishized history to a certain extent.

I’ve written stories that take place in ancient Roman and Victorian England. But my favorite book I’ve written takes place in New York state and is set in 1777 during the American Revolution. Continue reading →

My Bisexual Heroes: Extended Version

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Hi Everyone, I’m blogging over at AReCafe today about my bisexual heroes for LGBTQ Pride Month. But I had to keep it short and was only able to promote my books listed on AllRomanceeBooks. I got a lot more stories with bisexual heroes. Below is the extended version of my blog post.

Remember Torchwood? The Dr. Who spin-off show set in Cardiff? There’s definite sexual chemistry between Captain Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper, and we the viewers so want something to happen, but we know Gwen already has a boyfriend who is a nice guy and she can’t just have an affair without consequences then suddenly…

OMG. Continue reading →