Writing Seriously Sexy – With Style!

One of the big questions for me recently has been how to write sexy and erotic romance with style.

So I’ve been reading a fair few steamy romances to get a real feel for it.

I’m not going to share the worst, suffice it to say there was a lot of bumping, grinding, dripping, and grunting (I really hate grunting personally but each to their own!)

I thought I’d review two that as far as I’m concerned have really hit the sweet spot, so to speak.

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

This is a wonderfully quirky, sexy inter-racial romance. The heroine Stella has Aspergers Syndrome, the hero Michael is working as an escort to manage his debts (read the book and all will be revealed).

Clever, witty, funny, a delightful build of a love story and very sizzly.

Why does the sizzle work so well?

Because it’s embedded in the characters and the plot. Both Stella and Michael are incredibly well fleshed out by Hoang and I was already totally sympathetic to them as people before the sex actually happened. It was an absolutely natural progression of both characters and their relationship. Plus there was a lot of emotion. These weren’t two people just having sex, they were two people falling crazy in love with each other. In that context the sex scenes were truly an aphrodisiac.

The Siren by Tiffany Reisz

This was recommended by kinkygirlsbookobsession on instagram. And I couldn’t put it down. It’s a searingly wicked read. Generally I’m not a great lover of bondage and S&M novels. (Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t really count, to me that was vanilla bondage!). But The Siren is in a category all of it’s own.

Dark, extremely clever and beautifully written, it’s the story of charismatic but disturbed erotica writer, Nora, and her sexy but uptight English Editor, Zach. (Though that’s only the half of it)

Tiffany Reisz is the master – or should I say mistress – of weaving clever plot in with great characterisation. So much that is sexy about this book is not in what actually happens, but what doesn’t and the tension and angst woven into the interplay between the characters.

And finally, for thumpingly good sexy romances, you can’t go past Aussie author Amy Andrews. Laugh out loud frollicks that manage to pump in plenty of sex and emotion. So much fun. You can find Amy’s books on her website here:-

http://amyandrews.com.au/

So if you’re serious about writing sexy do your research:-

Read, read, read.

Work out what fits with your own personal style and analyse it to the nth degree.

And then write, write, write…. until your ink turns red.