Debra Hyde
The Transition
2009.01.17 00:37:20
Recently, an interviewer asked me about the convergence of erotica and erotic romance and expressed some frustration over the genre-bending.  I won't speak for my interviewer, but I suspect many of us who toiled as authors of erotica and found ourselves ignored and ostracised by most of the publishing community were more than mildly frustrating when erotic romance leap-frogged over us.

When I first saw it occur, I considered taking a romance route with my novels.  I started buying romance in piecemeal fashion, attracted to their plots and the promise of erotic content.  But every time I read a title, I found myself stymied.  I wasn't enjoying what I read.  One novel pitted its protagonists against one another in an emotional wrestling match after every sexual encounter.  They get it on, then get into it.  And it struck me as so passive agressive -- and so lacking in the honest communication -- that I abandoned the novel before its midpoint.

Several of the novels I read alternated its most of chapters between the female and male leads (sometimes with secondary characters commanding a few chapters, sometimes not).  When the approach works well -- like Pam Rosenthall's recent The Edge of Impropriety -- it can make for a riveting read.  But when it didn't, I put the book down.  Sometimes the plot seemed too thin to sustain the story.  Often, the characters didn't earn my loyalty.  And many times the plot revolved around "things unspoken," secrets that pulled protagonists from one another's arms in day-after regret.

For quite some time, the romances I read kept me from authoring erotic romance.

Believe me, I love love as much as the next person.  It's wonderfully euphoric and validating.  But I'm also a pragmatist and I don't pussyfoot around when it comes to relationship issues.  I'm of a mind that you get it out in the open and put it on the table.  And not just for problems, but for compliments and joys as well.  I'm as likely to put "I adore you; I cherish our intimacy" on the table as I am "I have a problem."  The push me/pull you thing I see in some romances just don't cut it for me.  It's a bad relationship habit and if I was single or uncommitted, I wouldn't date anyone who used it as a modus operandi.

Yet I managed to join the erotic romance fold.

Why?  Because I realized that a majority of my erotic short stories already focused on relationships, a key romance element.  Granted, my fictional relationships were already established but they served as the key backdrop for the erotic encounter.  Love, grief, the fear of loss, the balm of intimacy, I explored them all in my characters.  In erotic romance, I simply brought the backdrop into the foreground.

But I remain resistant to characters dragging around a U-Haul's worth of baggage.  I don't want to write a soap opera but a drama.  I'm more of a "when bad things happen to good people" kind of author and I'm more interested in exploring how characters handle unexpected impacts, how they navigate their way through trouble, and, if they're part of an established couple, how they unite and protect the love they've shared.

That's some of what you'll find in my first novel with Ravenous Romance, Blind Seduction, and I hope you'll find it a rewarding read.  But that's not all that captures my imagination when I write.  There's also the sex -- ah, another topic!

Next time.


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Inara Lavey
2009.01.16 22:58:48

The constant pointless and manufactured arguing in a lot of romances used to drive me mad. One decent conversation and they'd have solved the whole thing!
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Debra Hyde
2009.01.17 17:17:38

Inara, I agree! These days, when I read a romance where secrets from the past are involved *and* the plot works, I analyze how the author pulled it off. When it works, it works well, and I appreciate its crafting so much that I want to employ it in my own writing. It'll be some time before I employ it in my own writing simply because my upcoming novels with Ravenous Romance won't revolve around that mechanism, but I am curious about that approach from a writer's standpoint!
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Inara Lavey
2009.01.17 19:39:57

It's funny, Debra, 'cause now that I'm older and have clocked in more relationship(s) time, I understand a lot more of the emotions that make past hurts harder to heal with a conversation...but yeah, some writers really know how to make it work and others just succeed in irritating the readers...
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