Year of No Fear: Erotica

I’m going to be frank with you all, okay?  I’m about to talk about erotica, sex, and sex scenes.  I don’t want to offend, only explain.  You have been warned.

I’ve always stayed away from erotica, thinking it was the written equivalent of porn.  Then an indie author named Kendall Grey smashed that to shards with her Hard Rock Harlots series.  I’d read her urban fantasy novels (the Just Breathe trilogy — AMAZING) and when she started sharing teasers of the first Hard Rock Harlots book, Strings, I was hooked.  It was the voice.  And the hot sex.  And, most of all, it had a beautiful love story at its center.

How can an erotica novel have that?

 

And that’s when the fight started.

The fight, you say?  Well, yeah.  The fight within myself.  See, I’ve toyed with ideas for erotica books, but never went there.  Never had any desire to try for the aforementioned reasons.  And, truly, I’m not huge into explicit sex scenes — although Kendall’s in Strings were AMAZING — so I figured I couldn’t really do any of it justice.

But then I wrote a little novel called Fey Touched  that required some very explicit sex.  I mean, come on, a battle-hardened warrior was not going to take his mate’s hand and say, “Shall we retire to the bedchamber to consummate our love, dearest?” and slowly make love to her.  He’d rip the clothes off his mate and he’d tell her, in explicit detail, what he’d do to her.  What he wanted.  What he needed.  So I was forced to set aside my misgivings about erotica and write more explicit sex scenes.

It was kinda fun.

So, in June, when I needed a desperate break from Grave Touched and Reaper Girl, I started an erotica story, per my Year of No Fear Manifesto.  I simply required myself to write something erotic.  I’m thinking the resulting story, Awaken Me, will be a novella.  And, since I’ve been meaning to experiment with shapeshifters, I thought, hey, bonus!  I can combine the two.  What came out was an interesting story about a cat shifter who doesn’t know she’s a cat shifter.  She’s also a ballet dancer.  And there’s a group of women who are all shifters and part of an ancient society and Beth, the main character, is going to have to join.  Do you see where this is heading?  Yeah, I decided to go all the way, so to speak, and write a female/female pairing.  Another thing I’ve been thinking might be fun to write.

And I’m loving it.

Awaken Me is 7k at the moment.  I’ve projected it to be around 50k or so.  It is on hold at the moment while I work like a fiend to make my Grave Touched deadline.  But it’s not over — it’s only just beginning.

I’m hoping to write a story that’s erotic and a great love story, just like Kendall Grey.  She’s my inspiration.  I think I can do it.  I think it’s time I spread my wings a little, see what happens.  Who knows?  Maybe it’ll end up a series.  I have a few publishers in mind…just in case.

What about you, writers?  Have you ever tried something out of your comfort zone and found you enjoyed it?

2 Comments:

  1. Erin, I’m so honored to be mentioned in this post. Thank you very much! I wish you the best of luck with your feline f/f shifters. The story sounds great! ❤️

  2. Thanks, Kendall! You are amazing.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *