A gauntlet was recently thrown down and I picked it up, accepting the challenge. What, you might wonder, is the challenge? To try and write romance. But not, I might add, any kind of romance. Oh no, it has to be exotic...erm sorry erotic...actually I will leave it as exotic erotic romance and it needed to be at least five pages long.
Pah, I thought, easy-peasy. After all, it’s only sex.
After much research I discovered that the romance genre, whether in very delicate form or true erotica, is very much in demand by women the world over. How odd, I’d never noticed how lucrative this portion of the industry is.
After vaguely working out a story in my head I started to write. Gaily confident I typed and typed and after two pages had run out of ideas. I left it for a while, then came back to read with triumph my first attempt. My confidence ebbed away with each sentence.
Who’d ever heard of ‘throbbing members’ and ‘quivering lotus flower’? Had I actually written that, I thought with disgust. How many different ways can you describe the missionary style, doggy style and every other style imaginable? I sounded a bit Barbara Cartland-ish. Not that I’m knocking her books. She was a very classy lady who sold millions of books to avid fans.
But surely in this day and age people don’t describe their body parts quite so outlandishly. I then came across this article by Deb Stover called Purple Prose.
Pleased to have received some form of clarification on what could and couldn’t be written, I re-wrote the whole scene. It’s quite exhausting putting yourself right there in the scene, explaining feelings and sensations. Not as easy as I thought. It turned out to be quite...not quite...very hot. In fact sizzling. Blew the top of my head off as I read it.
Needless to say I had to turn on the grumpy old fan on to keep me cool. We inherited him from my brother when he left the country some 12 years ago. He serves a purpose and isn’t often used – you know the weather in England. As a result he has collected some dust over the years and sounds slightly clunky when he works. He’s all right if you don’t have to talk to him otherwise he moans all the time.
Suitably cooled and determined to finish, I pounded away on the keyboard (see there’s a better use for the word ‘pound’) but failed to notice my little laptop was getting slightly agitated. It tried to automatically save while I was in the middle of a long word. Up popped ‘read only’. Screeching to a halt in my typing I stared with dread at that grey block of words.
“No, no, no,” I howled in desperation. “I’ve just got it and you’re *** destroying it.” Taking a deep breath to calm myself down I asked laptop, “What’s the problem?”
Breathlessly she confessed that despite being of the female persuasion and having the ability to multitask, I’d asked too much of her.
Frowning, I asked, “Huh?”
“You send me scurrying around the world collecting information, bringing it back to you, update documents, change them, scurry out again, and so on. AND now you’re writing this...this...hot spicy stuff. I can’t cope.” Taking a deep breath she faintly said, “I’m overheating.”
Horrified, I stared at her. Was this possible? My little laptop was feeling the heat? As I pondered this situation and wondered how to rescue my work, grumpy fan came to my attention. A seed of an idea grew into a full-blown plan.
Walking over to the fan I said, “Fan meet laptop, laptop meet fan.”
Fan wobbled a bit, while laptop burnt my fingers. Hah, matchmaker indeed. And so the courtship began.
I placed laptop on her side on the wooden chest at the end of the bed, her back to fan who blew cool air over her while I lay on my side and retrieved my work. The little hussy whirred with delight her lights flashing. Sometime later I noticed a high pitched whirr. Popping my head over the top of laptop’s side I was astounded to find fan was whipping up a whirlwind in the bedroom, papers flying everywhere.
“Whoa, there old chap, calm down,” I yelled after peeling off a piece of paper that had plastered itself to my face. “You’re getting yourself into a right state. It can’t be good for you.”
The little hussy giggled. Looking at her sternly I said in my very strong no nonsense voice, “Stop or I will place a book between you.” It seemed to calm them down.
The floorboard creaked. In fact all the floorboards creak but the one inside our bedroom door creaks the loudest. Hubby stood in the doorway frowning at me. “Who are you yelling at?” Surprise flitted across his face as he took in the scene. “Why are you lying on your side typing?”
“Um...no reason...I was getting a numb bum.” Hell, I’m a quick thinker, I thought with pride.
He nodded dubiously and left.
Who said I couldn’t have fun?
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