Beth Kery: Why I Love Writing My Romances Sexy….Really Sexy.

If you met me, you’d probably be at least mildly surprised—and probably greatly—that I write erotic romances. I’m reserved for the most part, and come from a family that highly values academia and scholarship. Maybe that initial surprise a stranger might experience at my writing career is partially related to why I like my romance novels to leave the bedroom door wide open. When you meet someone, you never really know the inner corridors of their psyche, the longings, the secrets, the hidden gems of what makes them special. I have a doctorate in the behavioral sciences and have studied human beings for a long time. I know this true of everyone, not just a few people. Everybody has a surface they show the world and a hidden, deeper reality. As a reader of erotic romance, we peer into that inner world of a character when we intimately know their sexual fantasies. We see and understand what drives a character when they make love.

So for me, writing an erotic love story or opening the first page of an erotic romance novel is like opening a door to a hidden world. We’re provided access to a place most human beings never allow us: forbidden territory. It’s exciting and titillating, yes, but it also can be profoundly beautiful to see two people open themselves to one another, find trust enough to reveal desires normally locked away, show their scars, and in the process, heal those wounds.

Just as a horror novel might throw open the doors to the dark, twisted stairwells and secret rooms of a madman’s psyche or a piece of women’s fiction might throw light on the conflicts and motivations of a modern woman, an erotic romance uses the arena of sexual and romantic desires to create character and drive plot. Is that a shallow means for portraying a human being? I would say if done well, just the opposite.

Do I always need erotica in my romance novels? No. The writing and the story is always the key to a satisfying book. But I do recall reading romances in the 90’s with incredible sexual tension, but then feeling dissatisfied by the eventual climax. The build up was exciting, but the final payoff was often disappointing. Somehow, brief, vague or flowery descriptions of the character’s erotic thoughts and the sexual act itself left me feeling that the door had been slammed shut on the characters’ psyche. Freud made the idea popular that sex is the key to personality. While I wouldn’t go to that absolute, I would say this: if you were magically able to comprehend another person’s fears and sexual longings, if you were privy to their nightmares as well as their secret desires, you would have a much clearer understanding of what drives that individual.

Do you recall the first time you every peeked in to the realms of sexual desire? There’s an undeniable magnetic pull to the experience. Maybe the reason I love the erotic romance so much is that when you open that book the first page, you’re guaranteed that when it comes to fully understanding the hero and heroine’s sexual longings, conflicts and secrets, the door isn’t going to be slammed shut in your face.

Do you enjoy erotic romances? If so, what are some of your favorites? Leave a reply that relates to these questions to enter to win a copy of (winner’s choice) RELEASE or Because You Are Mine.

**Beth's winner is Rosarita Reader.  Please email totebag@authorsoundrelations.com with your mailing info!**