by Melissa Ford Lucken ( Isabelle Drake)
As you know, the only thing that matters about an erotic romance novel is the book’s cover image. For your erotic romance, the image should be a man’s chest, his bare chest, maybe including his belt, undone, and the lowered waistband of his jeans. Do not include much of what is below said belt; if you do, Walmart will not carry your book. No. That is not a joke. Also, do not include anything above his neck. It doesn’t matter who he is. Walmart doesn’t care, either. We all want him to represent The Any-man. Not any man, exactly. An idealized representation of what any man could look like. If he didn’t have a job or family, and worked out every day, all day, for at least seven years.
You may have thought about having a woman on the book cover. Maybe you thought a story about a woman should have a woman on the cover.
Do not include a woman. Her body will be too sensual, too sexual, and Walmart will not carry your book. No. That is not a joke. Then again, never mind all that. You don’t need to worry about the cover image, as you will not select it. The cover art department will pick it.
What’s that? Are you concerned about the cover image representing what is actually in your novel? You are alone in that worry. The cover art department is hooked up with the marketing department and well, we all know what marketing cares about. Money. Maybe you care about money, too. Why else would you be writing an erotic romance? Certainly not because you want to write something readers will want to read. Not because you actually care about love, romance, happiness. It’s because you read all of, part of, or heard about, Fifty Shades of Grey, and know that if she can get rich and famous quickly and easily, you can, too.
In the text, you will want to use a lot of dirty words. All the dirty words you can think of. The words don’t need to be listed here because you already know them. The list contains all the ‘bad’ words you say when you’re angry. It includes the ‘naughty’ words used in the telling of off-color jokes. It also includes the others. The ones you know but never say aloud. Maybe you don’t even think about them. But you know them and all the others. That’s all there is to it—just the words. Don’t bother agonizing about plot structure, scene structure, character interiority, creating a vivid setting, or even doing any research to ensure your story has a reality to it. Erotic romance novels don’t need reality.
Eroticism isn’t a real thing. It isn’t something anyone ever aspires to in real life. No one even cares about it. No one cares about romance, either, not one bit. That’s why the romance novel genre is consistently among the top-selling in the book market. Top selling means top money, and so, you see, we are back to being all about the cash. And the fame. The glorious, glorious fame of being an author of erotic romance. Before that fame, there is a tiny bit of work to be done. Once you have the list of dirty words, you are ready to begin.
While you are writing the pages, expect to have pink-scented candles lit and glowing gently, chilled bottles of champagne standing by, ready for sipping, and access to endless inspirations, memories, from your own sensational, madcap experiences to bring the story to life. Yes, of course, those inspirations come from your own real-life adventures: menage sex, group sex, trips to BDSM clubs, strip clubs, and swingers’ clubs. Also, extensive experience with all forms of sex toys. Also, sex in cars, sex in barns, sex on boardroom tables. Sex while standing. Sex while sitting. Sex while dancing. Sex on street corners. Sex in spaceships. Sex on pirate ships. Sex on row boats. Sex on millionaires’ boats. Sex on Viking boats. Sex beside a castle moat. Sex on horseback. Sex on motorcycles (while traveling at speeds over 50 miles per hour.) And all the rest of your long, extensive list of experiences.
While writing, toss in words from the list to make the action more vivid. More descriptive. More accurate. Unlike writers of other genres, and for the sake of argument, we will include literary works as a genre, and you will not need to rely on imagination, craft, or creativity. You will simply write down every sexual act you have ever done and then change the names of those involved. If you never knew the others’ names or have forgotten them, this is not a problem. Make some up.
Filling the pages with the words that recreate your own, exhilarating, uninhibited, sex life, then selling said story and guiding it into publication, complete with its distinctive any-man cover, won’t be the slightest bit difficult. Writing a romance novel, especially an erotic romance novel, is not anything writers do with intention. No writers dream of telling a story about passionate characters who come together and commit themselves to each other despite all odds. This sort of thing, love, happiness, and connecting with other humans, these are not things anyone cares about or is interested in. So, don’t bother with first-rate crafting or meticulous character development. Luckily, evoking emotion is easy—especially the complicated feelings involved with emotional and physical intimacy. Just keep writing words until you have 70,000 of them. No heart-wrenching revising. No painstaking editing. Getting that 70K down will take…say…two weeks?
Three weeks tops. Once the pages are filled with words, things will continue moving so quickly and easily that you won’t even have time to tweet about it. Getting an agent, an afternoon. Maybe, at the absolute most, an entire day. Simply email every agent listed on agentquery.com before 9:00 am EST. You will get dozens of offers for representation by lunchtime. Or by dinner time.
Before slipping into bed, sign with the agent most likely to buy you many pretty martinis when you go to New York to sign your multiple book deal from one of the New York’s Big Five Publishers. Getting that deal? That’ll take a bit longer. One week. Maybe two—if the editors are all off at the Hamptons and too hung over to check their email.
Once the contract is signed, you will be busy. You won’t have to arrange your own book signings or send out your own press releases. You won’t have to create your own social media accounts or interact with romance readers. You won’t be lugging boxes of books to event halls or sweating in the sun at outdoor book festivals. You won’t spend hours at the keyboard writing that second book in the series. You will be busy getting interviewed by book bloggers, podcasters, and Jules
Buono, who hosts the Good Morning America book club. The interviewers, except Jules Buono, who will have actually read your book, will ask, “So…where do you get your, wink wink, inspiration?” This question won’t be offensive at all. The interviewers won’t be smirking as they ask it. They won’t be staring at you…oddly, and fortunately, you will have the answer—the right answer. The wrong answer would be, “I craft characters who….” (anything after that phrase). Or, “I start by doing research on… (again, anything after that phrase is wrong). What is the right, desired response is what is true. You simply write down all of your own sexual experiences—then change the names. Maybe the setting, too. Also, perhaps the time period. Also, what you did. You change that. You make it something someone else did. Or something no one ever did. As long as the interviewer gets the opportunity to make sex jokes and minimize your work because it contains sex and has a happy ending, everything will be fine unless you expect to be respected as an author. Then, well, you will be disappointed.
Fortunately, that course to disappointment will only be limited to strangers. Your family and close friends will totally and completely respect and admire your perseverance and dedication. After all, they have been cheering you on, supporting you, encouraging and understanding you each and every time you chose to “work on that romance book thing” instead of helping them clean out their garage. Now that the “romance book thing” is out and getting read and reviewed (by strangers), they are even more supportive. They are even proud. They are so proud that they are embarrassed and joke about you and your work. That’s if they acknowledge it at all. (No, of course, they have not read it. They don’t need to. They have seen the any-man chest. They know the secret about your experiences.) They show their pride in your accomplishment by offering thoughtful encouragement such as, “I get that it took a couple of weeks to write, but with all those sex scenes in there, it must have been easy.” Although you don’t realize it, that is a funny thing to say. You know this because they are laughing. You aren’t laughing. But wait, there is more.
When you run into them during the holidays, it turns out they wonder about that second book you are already “messing around with” and ask, while looking at you oddly, “Where are you going to get inspiration for another one?” You are thinking about the character charts you have created. You are thinking about that research you have begun.
Meanwhile, they are wondering, surely, that one book, the one that is already out and getting read and reviewed by strangers, contains all of your wild, passionate, fulfilling, exquisite sexual experiences? Surely you could not have had more wild, more passionate, more fulfilling, and more exquisite sexual experiences than they have had? That would be sad. That would be unfair. That would make them feel…you don’t know what, but you do know that feeling is something they do not want to feel. And this is the most important part so pay attention, it is totally and completely your fault that they are feeling it. Whatever it is. The two of you ponder about this terrible thing you have done. That moment is the exact moment you both think the same thing. I don’t want to talk with you about this topic ever again. There is a terrible pause, and then one of you thinks about getting back to that third round of binge-watching Game of Thrones; the other speculates about the any-man chest image that will appear on the cover of that next book, the one you are already “messing around with.”
Yes, of course, it’s you who is the one speculating about that new cover. You walk away, hoping the next conversation at this holiday gathering will not be about your inspirations or experiences.
What you really want is to tell someone that this whole thing of writing the erotic romance novel and being an esteemed author of romance fiction is not what you expected. That someone you finally find to tell isn’t a family member or a friend.
It’s me.
You don’t find out about me until you’re lugging your leftover any-man chest-covered books out of a convention hall after a signing. You’re a tad tired. You’ve been smiling, passing out your custom-designed swag, and inscribing your erotic romance novels for three hours. You bump into me, and for no reason in particular, except that we are both esteemed, respected authors of erotic romance, we start chatting. Celebrating. Commiserating. We end up at the bar. We order pretty martinis and invite other weary but esteemed erotic romance authors to join us.
You decide I must know a thing or two about the book business. And about the untamed, exotic, experience-filled life of an erotic romance author. You ask me, did I know it was going to be like this? The looks. Investigations into the experiences. Family and friends are looking at you…oddly, acting…weird. Is weird is another word for rude, you ask. You aren’t sure. It’s been a long day. I take a sip of my pretty martini, set the glass down, and then tell you, no, I didn’t know.
Another esteemed author of erotic romance, she’s drinking a can of Diet coke, tells you that no, she didn’t know either. There are nods around the table, followed by boisterous but dark laughter. I see a familiar black cloud of doubt and despair pass over your face.
I wait until the laughter fades, then tell you something you have discovered, maybe without realizing it—writing romance, erotic romance is serious business. The agents know it. They will get your work to the right publisher. The publishers know it. They will get your work onto the physical and virtual shelves. But the people who are most serious about your work are the readers.
They are as serious as a week at the beach. The right book in their hands, they will tell you, make their hard-earned vacation days perfect. Reading your steamy love story will give them the break they need so they can return to their chaotic life refreshed and ready. They are as serious as a mother of two seated beside her own mother’s hospital bed. The right book in their hands, they will tell you, distract them from the despair so they can last through another night of worry.
The readers are as serious about appreciating your hard work of writing as they are about their hard work of living.
I take the final sip of my pretty martini and say, if you are after that money, chasing that glorious fame, or simply want to write a good book that people want to read, think about the readers. They will not look at you oddly. They will not ask speculative questions about your experiences. All they want to know is the release date of your next any-man chest image-covered book.
Writing an Erotic Romance Novel: Author’s Note
Isabelle Drake was born in the spring of 2005. After five years of publishing mainstream romances with small presses, I’d received a contract for my first erotic romance, Everglades Wildfire. I used a pseudonym not because I was embarrassed about penning an erotic romance but because I wanted to enjoy the creative process of writing. I’d been trying to sell my manuscripts to The Big Publishers for years and had come heart-breakingly close on several occasions; publishing the steamy stuff in silence reconnected me with my love of writing and telling stories.
50 Shades of Grey wouldn’t shake up the book world for six years, but romance readers were already making their desire for steamy reads known. Five years before I came on the scene, a publisher that would at its high point be recognized as the world’s largest publisher of erotic romance released its first books—sold on floppy discs. Its founder, Jaid Black, was told by The Big Publishers that no women would be interested in reading anything that smutty, so she started her own publishing company, Ellora’s Cave. Many authors started with EC: Sylvia Day and Isabelle Drake, for example.
Readers and reviewers ravished the new steamy reads. Wanting in on the quick-growing market, bookstores began to grant the erotic romances shelf space, but it’s likely that Ereaders such as the Kindle made sales skyrocket. A person who wanted a sex-forward story could buy it within minutes and in the privacy of their own home. By the time everyone on the planet was fussing over 50 Shades of Grey, we authors of erotic romance, and our fans were already years into the bookish heatwave.
Amidst that, along comes another wave: reconnecting via the godfather of social media, Facebook. And suddenly, people who knew me, Melissa Ford Lucken, were finding out I was also Isabelle Drake—esteemed and successful author of fiction (some erotic romance, some not) and that I’d been publishing for years. Surrounded by other hard-working authors and dedicated, happy readers, I didn’t find what I was doing scandalous, insignificant, easy, or worthy of ridicule. What did they, these freshly reacquainted folks of my past, think? Well, the essay answers that.
–Melissa Ford Lucken
