Archive | February, 2013

What’s In A Cover?

28 Feb

ShameWhat’s in a name? That’s which we call a rose

by any other name would smell as sweet.  

So Romeo would were he not Romeo called.

But what about Romeo’s face? What about his body? As a writer, I know it’s all about the words, but hey, I’m a very visual person too.  Take my office, for instance.  All my projects are out on my desk, with the important ones on top.  If it’s in the filing cabinet, then I’m not thinking about it.  Outta sight, outta mind.  I’ve got to see it to get excited about it.

So I really appreciate a great romance book cover–especially a great erotic romance cover.  I love romance covers that make me take a second look.  An excellent cover makes me covet a book that I wouldn’t have desired otherwise.

Good or bad? You decide. The title is just too much.

Good or bad? You decide. The title is just too much.

I tip my hat to the people who design them.  I bet it’s a lot harder than it looks. For instance, those romance covers where it indicates a woman is in a menage with several guys.  I bet this is a cover design specialty.  Clearly you want to indicate that there are several men here and one woman, but you don’t want to make it look like a dog pile.  Then there’s the way in which a few men are touching the woman at the same time.  You don’t want the woman to look like she’s in a relationship with an octopus–some multi-armed, naked torso mutant.

Looking through some recent erotic romance books out in the world, I noticed that I have 5 categories of romance covers I’m drawn to.  Here they are:

1) The arty cover.  So arty, you might call it Ahhhhr-ty.  I notice that black, red, and white cover designs are really in right now.

Juicy cleavage never did a cover wrong.

Juicy cleavage never did a cover wrong.

2) The squidy shameful cover–but one with taste.  Something that indicates a little wiggling is going on inside the book.Owning Wed

3) The “I just got f***ed real good cover.Dark Destiny

4) The “I’m just about to get f***ed real good cover.Revving Her Up

5) And finally: the emotive cover.  Cowboys

Faces are hard.  I don’t want to de-personalize others, but it’s so easy to have an expression in a woman’s mouth that makes me wrinkle my nose.

Almost coming out of her corset distracts you from her face a little.

Almost coming out of her corset distracts you from her face a little.

A certain tension around the lips can read, well, bitchy.  There’s bitchy hot, of course, which is great, but I’m talking bitchy in an annoying way.  I also don’t care for the “I’m a dumb blonde mouth”.  So anyway, my guess is that it’s a lot harder than it looks to get an erotic romance cover with emotions on the face that work.  This one worked for me, but her eye is a little dead–if you’d started at her nose I wouldn’t have complained.

study 2What kind of cover do you like best? I found an entirely different cover for A STUDY IN SHAME. Here it is. They look about the same in terms of age and color palate, so I wonder if one cover was designed for women, and another cover for men.  What do you think?

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Commentary From A Non-Sex Goddess

27 Feb

CoupleIt happened again yesterday. I was having a perfectly fine conversation with a male acquaintance when suddenly things went very wrong. The cause behind this unfortunate turn of events? Alas, ’twas my chosen profession.

You see, as a writer – and reader –  of erotic romance, I keep it hot. I like writing love scenes between the hero and heroine that scorch the pages, and I want my readers to enjoy reading them. Sex can be a big, beautiful, complicated bundle, and it’s interesting for me to explore within the confines of erotic romance how relationships begin and build, and how the chemistry works between the players, igniting them to some really great places. But that, men of the earth, does not mean that I’m a lusty, raunchy, turned-on-at-every-minute bonafied sex goddess. In fact - hard as it may be to believe! –  I’m not a sex goddess at all. What I am is a mild-mannered writer by night, corporate slug by day. Nothing glamorous, nothing titilating, and certainly nothing that should make your eyes light up with a weird, I-never-thought-of-her-like-that-before look.

Learning about my writing should not cause you men to leer, or give me a knowing grin. What is it that you know, anyway? Do you think I’m going to need a partner to practice my scenes with? Thanks, but I’ve got my husband for that. Sometimes men who learn of my writing will want to hear my story ideas. Or so they say. What they really want to hear is me describe - in detail, no doubt – the sex scenes. Yeah, like that’s going to happen.

One is the most frustrating things to me about men’s reactions in hearing that I’m an erotic romance writer is that they completely overlook that very thing. I’m a writer. I think up stories. I bring thoughts, ideas, characters, plot lines, and action into one cohesive body of work called a book. I think about pacing, dialogue, point of view, and character development. I suffer anxiety about whether any editor’s going to want to publish my work, and if I’m so fortunate that they are, then I suffer further anxiety as to whether the readers are going to enjoy it. It’s the same journey, with some variations, that all writers take. But just as soon as guys learn that my writing happens to contain steamy sex scenes, the conversation goes to hell in a handbasket.

So guys, please. If we happen to have a conversation that turns to the fact that I write erotic romance, don’t think it means that I’m loose, a nymphomaniac, or available. I’m not going to give you a sneak preview of the sex scenes, and I don’t need your input on what I should write about. I’d love to have an intelligent conversation – which I have, and it’s been great – about what guys like in romance, what doesn’t work for them, what their viewpoint is on building a male character from a guy’s point of view. If we can do that, awesome.

OK, that’s about it. Sorry for the rant, but I just had to get that off my heaving bosom. Now, if I could just get this bodice off. Maybe if I rip it . . .

Sexy Scotland, Honey, and Skeps: Digging in to Research

26 Feb

Right now, my first culinary romance is out (SAFFRON NIGHTS), my second book in the series, CRAVINGS, is with my editor at Kensington and I am starting to write and research the third.  I’m calling it HONEY, but that name may change. (Glimpse the crazy life of a series writer. Let’s not go into the fact that I also write another series under another name.)

I’ve long been fascinated by honey and bees. The more I read about them, the more fascinated I become. I long for the time, property, and money to dive in this hobby and keep my own bees.

So far my research is consisting of reading books and web research. The book I’m reading now is “Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey–The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World” written by a non-fiction writer, Holley Bishop, who became obsessed enough to get her own bees.

For my story, I don’t need to go into in-depth descriptions about how hives are built and hive-society works, and so on. But I think reading as much as I can about it will help to inform the story. For example, in doing this research, I’ve become enamored with skeps, those round straw-built hives and I may give my character a little antique collection of them. These little details are one of many that helps to give characters depth.

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Photo by UmbrellaHead.

And I do need a more than a basic understanding about honey—after all the story is set around large honey business in Scotland.

My main female lead inherits a country farm in Scotland. At first I thought if might be France. But France with it’s perfect climate and upscale culinary appetite was a bit too easy for my beekeeping adventure. Scotland is fraught with weather adventures that challenge beekeepers. The more challenge the better.

So Scotland it is. And while France has a sex-appeal, Scotland is much more alluring and more sexy to me. Something about those highlands and the rugged wild nature of parts of Scotland that just makes my insides sit up and take notice. So to speak.

So I’ve been digging around a bit about Scottish country living and have even picked the kind of house Jennifer lives in. (If you follow me on Pinterest, I’ve got a research board full of gorgeous photos of Scotland.)

I also have a friend who lives in Scotland. She’s filled me in on things like the weather, how long the daylight hours are, and just how difficult it would be to have sex outdoors in most places in Scotland.

One of these days, I hope to be able to travel to the places I write about. The few times I’ve actually done that have turned out well. But, for now, it’s personal connections, books, and the internet. How about you? What kind of research methods work best for you?

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The Season of the Witch

25 Feb

triadI was thinking about the Oscars last night. More specifically, the Oscar curse–you know the one that goes like this: 50% of the actresses who win the oscar supposedly end up getting cheated on/dumped within a year of winning.  (Although we have to keep in mind that one year in a Hollywood marriage is the equivalent to five years in the real world.)

witchfireAnyhoo, thinking about curses got me thinking about THE SCOTTISH WITCH.  I’m reading it and I’m loving it.  Then I started thinking about how popular witches are in romance novels these days, and I went poking around all the many titles out there for some that might be…stimulating.  If you know what I mean.  And I think you do.  ;>

Here’s what I found.

Most sexy title/cover goes to: TRIAD by Lauren Dane.

Award for witch story with best homoerotic sidekick thang: Kim Harrison.  Check out her HOLLOWS series.  You won’t regret it.

FistfulHottest book blurb goes to: Anya Bast for WITCH FIRE. Mira Hoskins doesn’t know she’s a natural-born witch who possesses the rare—and powerful—element of air. And she never expects to find herself tied to a mahogany bed frame, captive of a man who aches to fulfill her every desire and let loose the magick that dwells inside her.

That’s right, magick–with a K.

Finally, the award for best curse goes to: THE SCOTTISH WITCH by Cathy Maxwell.  A mother curses the lineage of the man who betrayed her daughter.  Now every man in the family line who falls in love dies.

scottishOh yes–the power of destructive  female perversity–Scottish style.  I wouldn’t want to be a witch any other way.

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WELCOME!

24 Feb

swanC. Margery Kempe is our newest Lady Smut member! Do you remember her? I interviewed             C. Margery here.  We’re so excited that she’ll be blogging with us on Fridays from now on. :)

mancity

Sexy Saturday Round-Up

23 Feb
Photo by Dollen

Photo by Dollen

Hello Sexy! This week we are ushering in a new system for our sexy round up. Each one of the LS bloggers will chime-in. The more, the merrier, dontchya think?

From moi, Liz Everly:

Inquiring minds want to know, from Erotica Everywhere, what is the best kind of sex?

From Live Science, any interesting look at polyamory.

Not forcing the romance in your writing, from Ava Jae’s blog.

Jody Hedlund on finding the time to read.

From the Just Effing blog, a look at how four busy writers find time to write.

From Madeline Iva:

Armadillos? 99 words for boobs.

On Joshilyn Jackson’s mid-novel blues cycle.

Rent a boyfriend? Sure, for Chinese New Year.

From Elizabeth Shore:

It’s always fun to see what they’re talking about on the other side of the pond. Here are the Guardian’s Oscar picks, from the U.K.

Medieval romance writer Heather Grothaus on why she writes and what inspires her.

The ultimate artist’s retreat: a remote island in the middle of Lake Superior.

Men With Pens talk about sexy writing that satisfies.

Stay Hungry,

Liz

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It’s ‘Rafe’, Actually

22 Feb

Ralph FiennesWe’ve been dishing all week on our favorite sexy stars, beginning on Tuesday with Justin Timberlake and yesterday with Timothy Olyphant. So I think it more than appropriate that we wind up this most enjoyable topic with one of the sexiest actors (IMHO) in the biz, and that’s none other than Ralph Fiennes.

Ralph really came into his own as a face to remember with his stellar performance back in 1993 in Schindler’s List, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor (and, where he famously told a young reporter who was interviewing him and who incorrectly pronounced his name that, “it’s Rafe, actually”). He was awesome in that movie, playing the villainous Nazi Commander Amon Goeth. As far as sexiness goes, this wasn’t a typically sexy guy role. He played a Nazi after all, a horrible, evil person who shot Jewish prisoners from his balcony. Plus he was fat, unkempt, and a lech. Yet there was something so mesmerizing about him, gut and all, that I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

Where I first noticed how hot he is was in the 1992 performance of WutheringWuthering Heights Heights, where he played tortured hero Heathcliff. First of all, the story itself gets me every time. Heathcliff in some ways isn’t really all that nice of a guy, but he’s so damn tortured over his unrequited love of Catherine. As a lover of romance, how can I not feel for the guy? And the way Fiennes played him completely absorbed me in the story. I really felt like he became Heathcliff. He wasn’t just a guy playing him on TV.

The year after Schindler’s List he played Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show, a movie that I happen to really like. Fiennes’ Van Doren isn’t really a “hot” macho guy kind of role, but he doesn’t really play those kinds of roles anyway. Where I think Ralph Fiennes really shines (hey, that rhymes!) is either as an evil villain, or as the tortured lover type guy. He’s not a chest thumping he-man but rather a cerebral, anguished, smoldering lover, and ohhhhh my, is he ever fabulous in that role.

In 1996 he earned his second Academy Award Nomination for his role as Count Laszlo de Almásy in The English Patient. This is Ralph Fiennes English Patientthe ultimate romantic hero role. Fiennes’ character has a fateful love affair with Katharine Clifton, played by Kristin Scott Thomas. It’s a big, epic kinda movie that will truly sweep you away. Once again, the character he plays is a tortured, agonized soul who loves and loses in a tragic, heartbreaking affair. I do wonder why he frequently choses these kinds of characters but clearly he’s drawn to them. Maybe he’s had similar experiences in his personal life, although I can’t really find anything out about it. He was married once, and had a long-term relationship another time. Or, alternately, maybe his relationships have been nothing but plain vanilla so he’s pulled into the complex, tortured ones.

Ralph Fiennes SunshineThere are a couple of movies that I thought he was brilliant in that I don’t know really caught on in a big way with audiences. One of these films is Sunshine. If you haven’t seen it, and are a Ralph Fiennes fan, do yourself a ginormous favor and add it to your Netflix queue pronto! Fiennes plays three roles in the movie, Ignatz Sonnenschein/Adam Sors/Ivan Sors, a grandfather, father, and son, and he’s incredibly awesome. Plus – worth noting for faithful Lady Smut readers - there are lots of mighty fine bum shots in this film because Mr. Fiennes has lots of sex in it.

True to form, he also plays an arrogant aristocrat in Onegin, the classic Russian literary story by Pushkin. He initially rebuffs the Oneginlove of wide-eyed, innocent Tatyana, only to realize years later – and far too late –  what he’s lost. Again with the tragic love! It’s a heart-wrenching film and even though the arrogant Onegin is a real jerk in the beginning for whom we don’t feel a lot of empathy, Fiennes plays him perfectly and in the end I felt for his loss. Also, the final confrontation scene in the end between Onegin and Tatyana is really wonderful. Tatyana’s character is played by Liv Tyler and she’s beautiful in in.

The films I’ve mentioned have all been from several years ago. Fiennes’ more recent work is much more well-known since he played Lord Voldemort in several Harry Potter films. Now, I recognize that a lot of people may howl with indignation, but I haven’t actually read a single Harry Potter book nor seen any of the films. I may get around to them; then again, I may not. There’s just so much reading and film watching time and much more material than any one person can possibly consume. And anyway, Voldemort isn’t exactly the definition of a sexy guy, so I’m not talking about that one.

What I will mention, lastly, is another early film starring Fiennes, and that’s the wonderful End of the Affair. I love that movie, End of the Affairand he’s sooooo hot in it. Yes, hot. He’s quiet but intense novelist Maurice Bendrix who’s hopelessly, obsessively in love with Sarah. There are some really steamy love scenes in this movie, too. For fans of Fiennes, what more can you want?

I could go on and on, but honestly, I think I’ve gotta go fire up my DVR. I’ve got some movie watching to do!

Enjoy the weekend and the Oscars on Sunday!

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When He’s Good He’s Bad, When He’s Bad, He’s Better: Timothy Olyphant

21 Feb

crazy santaI first saw Timothy Olyphant in the movie GO.  A Christmas film about rent money, drugs, & people behaving very badly, it is a slick simple gem. In the movie Olyphant plays a hot drug dealer.  The main character leaves her friend (Katie Holmes) with him as collateral at one point. You watch the friend (Katie Holmes) go from nervous as she hangs out with the mean shirtless drug dealer, to kinda tempted by his hotness, to scared again.  Doing anything with him would definitely be a Big Mistake.  Yet you itch to see that big mistake happen.  Katie runs into him later on and she’s almost twitchy with desire to hop his bones.  You drool to see what happens next.

The next time the big O popped up on my radar was in an episode of SEX IN THE CITY.  He was the younger guy kind of boyfriend who has no TP in his disgusting apartment, who drags Carrie out in the wee after hours to the amoral fetes hosted by his younger generation, and who makes out with her at a party with a pierced tongue. (Hot!)

Mad SheriffOlyphant was almost unrecognizable when he starred for the first time in DEADWOOD a year or so later.  He arrives in a town where the a miasma of lawlessness is so thick you’d think he’d get infected from just one whiff.  And it does seem to affect him.  As sheriff he’s willing to get a little crazy & very mean if he has to in order to make Deadwood into a better town.  And of course he has to.

He walks an ethical razor’s edge and the result is inevitable: he starts having sex with a widow recently recovering from a laudanum addiction.  They are both making a very Big Mistake. There’s this one scene where she sends her daughter downstairs with the nanny to the boarding house kitchen to have dinner so she can get it on with the sheriff.  They rip her clothes off down to her corset and get to it.  They are going at it so hard plaster chunks fall off the ceiling.  We see the shot of the plaster chunk falling into her daughter’s soup below.  Not good.  The affair must end, and one of them pays a price–guess who? You see the knife twist into them both pretty hard, but the law man isn’t really made for love and marriage.

The whole show was as lawless as the town, using a Shakespearean stilted English to convey gun slinger sensibilities.  It didn’t last long, and after it was cancelled, I really didn’t think that we’d see Olyphant again. Boy was I wrong!

Cruel SheriffAlthough he’s had some movie roles that I refuse to acknowledge, (The villain in Die Hard?  Yeesh.) soon enough he found  a cozy new home on the television show JUSTIFIED.  There he plays a U.S. Marshall with a twitchy trigger finger. He makes many a Big Mistake in this show–one of them involves getting back together with his ex, Winona.  While they are a very pretty couple, their relationship is doomed if only because his approach to his job ensures that he keeps tracking nasty murderous men back to his hotel room.  There’s not enough room in his life for Winona and the bad guys — so guess which has to go?

Raylan & WinonaWhat is Olyphant’s magic? In pictures he’s a good looking guy, but it’s not until he’s acting that he gets interesting.  He’s always smoothly controlled, but add a little perversity into the mix and he becomes catnip for women. Take your pick: crazy, shrewd, mean or droll—when Olyphant pitches his character ever-so-slightly in any of these directions his sexiness factor goes way up.

Check out Season four of Justified on DVD.  It promises more of that excellent repartee between Olyphant and his next-doomed-significant-other.  The show has taken a turn towards Terantino-land–but the added shot of blood seems to suit Olyphant.

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A Touchy Subject

20 Feb

Hands touchingI was feeling a little old school this morning, so I fired up Salt N Pepa’s Whatta Man on my iPod as I walked to work. I like that song, and who cares if it came out, like, 20 years ago. As I bopped along, one part of the song perked my ears up. The lyrics go like this:

My man gives real loving that’s why I call him Killer
He’s not a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, he’s a thriller
He takes his time and does everything right
Knocks me out with one shot for the rest of the night
He’s a real smooth brother, never in a rush
And he gives me goose pimples with every single touch

Hmmm. Goose pimples with every single touch. Clearly her man knows exactly where and how she wants to be touched. The dudes in romance novels are blessed with this knowledge as well, never needing any instructions or guidance into where our hot buttons are, they just know it. They also know where our hot button is, and what to do with it once they strike gold. These guys are goooood. I guess that’s why they’re in romance novels. But real life? Not so simple.

Part of the challenge in teaching our partners how to have the right touch is that, well, you actually have to teach them. As in talk to them, telling them exactly what it takes to get you going. A lot of us are kind of quiet on that matter. Why? Is it just way too embarrassing to have to reveal what feels good and what’s not so hot? Is it better to just hope and pray that your guy gets it right rather than speak up and say, “yeah, that’s it. Harder. Slower. Faster. More!”

A friend of mine holds nothing back when it comes to teaching her man. She’s very direct in telling a  new lover what she wants and how she wants it. When I asked her if she was ever embarrassed by having to do that, she said she wasn’t embarrassed in the least, but it’s happened that the guy didn’t necessarily like it. It wasn’t clear to her why that was although she conceded that maybe he felt emasculated by the whole thing. Like he was supposed to just somehow know everything about pleasing her because . . . well, because he’s a guy. Or something.

Honestly, it seems kind of insane to have an expectation that someone new would know exactly what to do since we all like different things. A smart smack on the rump feels sexy as hell to some and tortuous to others. How’s a guy to know? Or a gal, for that matter. Guys gotta speak up for what they want, too.

Maybe it’s the words that make things difficult. Imagine yourself saying, in the heat of the moment, ”Um, you could rub my (pussy? vagina?) a little harder?” It’s so un-sexy seeming, too clinical or dry or un-romantic. How much more fun if our lovers could simply touch us where and when and how we want it. ‘Cause if they don’t do it right, and we have to say something to correct it, they might get a little, you know, touchy.

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In Praise of Justin: Can He get Any Sexier?

19 Feb

Some men really grow into themselves as they age. Justin Timberlake, for example, gets hotter by the scorching second. Me-ow!

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The whole Insync boy band thing? A real turn-off for me. Always has been. According to Wikipedia the times span for their popularity was 1998 to 2002. I was a young editor, newly marred, and I was not concerned at all with boy bands as my husband and I went to the opera, symphony, and other various and sundry music  events in the DC area. (Not all of them high brow—there was Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Rickie Lee Jones. You get the picture. No boy bands for me.)

I think I first started to pay attention when SexyBack came out. I was like Who is THAT? His dancing really impressed me. Attraction for me can be all about  movement…

In any case, I watched him on Saturday Night Live, too, playing some very funny characters. Good dancer, singer, and a man that can make me laugh? HAWT! images-4 images-3 images-2

(Okay at this point I’m sorry if I’m coming off as a dirty old lady because he is MUCH younger than me. But…this is Lady Smut and what wrong with an older woman and younger man? Hmmm?)

For me, it’s all culminated in his newest video for Suit and Tie, which reveals much more mature and, somehow, even sexier Justin Timberlake.

Here’s the thing,  I admire and respect about him, along with lusting after him. A child performer  (starting as a mousketer) who has been smart in growing his career and making the right choices and developing his talent and his life. So many of the rest of them could take lesson from him. Justin is the whole package and his brains just serve to make him that more appealing.

I can’t wait to see what he does next. But God helps us. He couldn’t possibly get any sexier.

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