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Friday, October 15, 2010

Rachel Leigh, The Allure of Erotic Romance

Dear Readers,

Please welcome Rachel Leigh, and her book Explicitly English! Thank you so much for coming by.

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Thanks for having me here today, Kayden – I love your work and it’s a real honor to be your guest!


The Allure of Erotic Romance


I was recently asked by a friend the difference between erotic romance and spicy romance – she said she loved both, but found it hard to differentiate what tipped a book over into the erotic.

Wasn’t sexy just sexy?

I mulled this question over for awhile and found it a great subject for discussion – so I asked around. The answers that came back were kind of interesting…

It seems there is an almost tickable list among romance readers that makes a book Erotic, I’d love to know what Kayden’s readers and followers feel makes a romance an erotic romance. Here goes…

In descending order, what makes a story erotic is:

5) The physical descriptions of the characters.

The enthusiastic concentration of the hero and heroine’s physicality can push the story over into the erotic. The descriptions are more frequent and far more focused.

4) The amount of sex scenes

Almost every person I spoke to, mentioned this one but didn’t feel this reason alone deserved a number one spot. Why? Because often it could take one intensely erotic scene throughout a story to make it firmly fall into the subgenre of erotic.

3) Graphic language

As long as the language adds to the sensuality, the excitement of the scene then the language is due to the number three spot – but it is a very fine line. The moment the language becomes gratuitous or unnecessary, a lot of readers found their arousal diminished somewhat…or worse, they closed the story and never opened it again.

2) The Characters

I would have said this would come out at number one but it wasn’t so – the characters are hugely important, of course, yet even they were not everything that made a story erotic. They need to be physically attractive to a point but it is their thoughts, goals and internal motivations that make them attractive and believable – and sexy.

Writers and readers want to create/read about characters who love sex, love inhibition but most of all, love happiness.

And the number one thing that my readers and friends felt made a story erotic?


1) Believability of the sexual situation.

What is meant by this is that an author could write a great sex scene, have all the right components but it still makes it more spicy romance than erotic romance. But when the erotic romance writer gets it right? The sexual boundaries are pushed, the inhibitions are gone and the arousal is at an optimum high.

Reader want to be turned on, be lost in the situation, really believe that they are watching the hero and heroine through every emotion, every touch, every orgasm until they are unwaveringly thankful for the invention of downloads!

(Many readers admitted to loving that these stories are so easily available on download now rather than having to hide an Erotic Romance anthology behind the pages of the Financial Times on the train into work!)

So? Do you agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear from you!


Here’s the blurb to my latest erotic romance, Explicitly English, available from The Wild Rose Press from today. Yay!


Laura Markham needs to forget - just for awhile. Be someone else for change - live as her parents will never have the chance to. And for Laura, that means leaving the City for the English countryside and doing just what the hell she feels like…wherever she feels like doing it…

British stockbroker, Stephen Cambridge knows by going home to his country retreat two days early, he's likely to surprise his contracted interior designer. And when he finds out she's the woman who performed the solo masterbation show for him on the inward bound journey, Stephen will do anything to further convince her to miss outward bound train and stay with him forever…

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Buy-Link for Explicitly English:

http://www.thewildrosepress.com/wilderroses/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=182&products_id=790&zenid=f2a1a72409c681f302924508834c36f8


For more information on Rachel Leigh and her guest authors visit:


www.rachelleighromance.blogspot.com

Or

www.rachelleigh.co.uk


4 comments:

Cate Masters said...

Love that cover Rachel!
I think editors tend to distinguish erotic romance from erotic stories by the developing relationship, which has to be central to the plot. Sex should be a result of that developing relationship, not just thrown in here and there.
Best of luck with your release!

April Vine said...

Hey Kayden and Rachel

Congrats on your new release, Rachel, love that cover and can't wait to see what's inside it.

Of course I agree with you and Cate. I think the reason erotic romance get a shady rep is because it's immediately linked with porn or straight up erotica. Erotic romance to me has all if not more of the same elements that make a spicy novel. Emotion is foremost, even though the sex comes quicker and is more frequent, the fact that it contributes to character development and is not just gratuitous, makes it a meaningful emotional read with characters who grow in the end. We just leave the bedroom door open, and maybe let the neighbor's watch too, that's all :)

Good luck! I wish you oodles of success.

Marie Beau said...

What a great description to differentiate between the two. Yeah, it's all in how descriptive you get, both in physical attributes and actions.

I love the excerpt too!

Rachel Leigh - Erotic Romance said...

Thanks for stopping by, Ladies and glad you enjoyed my post. i love discussing the differences between mainstream and erotic romance. People assume its all about the frequency of the sex but that could not be further from the truth.

So happy you liked the excerpt, Marie!

Rachel x