Friday, March 03, 2006

How much sex is too much...?


In a romance novel, of course!

We had a letter last week from a lady who was most peturbed by the amount of sex in one of our books and wondered if we'd ever considered stickering our books so that she'd know which ones were...erm...too hot to handle!

Which led me to wonder:

How much sex is too much in a romance novel?


We publish a whole gamut of romance fiction - from novels that stop at the bedroom door to the sexy adventures of the Black Dagger Brotherhood in the forthcoming J.R. Ward books. (They even merit a 'sexually explicit' label in the bookclub catalogue - I was so proud!) Things even get a little kinky in Keri Arthur's Riley Jenson urban fantasy series which as we've mentioned kicks off with Full Moon Rising in April. (To recap: Riley is a werewolf who's lustful instincts get a little out of control when the moon is full...)

My instinct with sex in fiction - be it a romance novel or otherwise - is that authors should allow their characters to do whatever comes naturally to them. I'm not remotely prudish but neither do I demand all our authors have their heroes and heroines swinging naked from chandeliers whilst practising page 43 of the Karma Sutra...(For the record I do not know off hand what happens on page 43 of the Karma Sutra!!!)

What do people think? Do you like reading sexy scenes , or do you find yourself skipping pages to plot action rather than that of the bedroom variety...?