Apologies to Patrick Henry.<\/p>\n
Way back\u2014gosh, was it only six months ago?\u2014when I sent off the partial for SCHEMES OF LOVE to Kristin Nelson, I wrote an accompanying cover letter that contained a \u201cone paragraph blurb that summarizes your work and highlights your pitch\u201d that she specified in her request.<\/p>\n
Not being shy, I informed Kristin in the cover letter that my romance novel contained the best hook of all: mandatory sex. Yep, in those exact words. The heroine wants a divorce, the hero insists on an heir before he\u2019d allow the divorce to go through. And we\u2019ve got one very hot book.<\/p>\n
There is a reason that romances with setups that stipulate mandatory sex\u2014marriages of convenience, girl selling herself to the highest bidder, etc. etc.\u2014remain perennially popular. We are, or at least I am, hardwired to enjoy the frisson we get when we know something steamy is afoot.<\/p>\n
And for that very reason, I am usually drawn to write historical romances that take place in what I call a hermetically sealed bedroom. Hero, meet Heroine, meet Four-poster-bed. What do you mean you don\u2019t know what to do? You are married, aren\u2019t you? And even if you aren\u2019t, you\u2019ve signed a deal in blood to boink for three months straight. I have it right here in chapter three, so get on with it. And neither of you are allowed out until your cynical black hearts break a little bit.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure you see now why I was pulling my hair out over DELICIOUS. No mandatory sex. This couple, for perverse reasons that drive my muse to the opium den, do not need<\/em> to sleep together. They want to, but they don\u2019t need to, and the reasons against it are legion, and all I\u2019ve got, in my puny armory of writerly devices, is whatever overriding passion I can foment in them. <\/p>\n And then, because I am a charter member of Romance Writers against Deliberate Character Manipulation, I can\u2019t make the heroine run outside during a freezing downpour just so the hero can find her and strip her of her sodden night rail. Or put the hero in a hallucinating high fever, because damn it, she is his cook, not his maid or housekeeper, and she won\u2019t be the one standing by his bedside should he yank someone down on top of himself. And even when I abandon my principles and have her get tipsy, he<\/em> wouldn\u2019t take advantage of her inebriation. What has the world come to, I ask you?<\/p>\n So what is a writer of reputedly hot romances to do? Write, I guess, and pray, and stake out all the opium dens nearby in case her muse wobbles out, ready to be taken home for some tender loving care.<\/p>\n Stay tuned for irregular future updates in The Mighty Struggle for a Good Shag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Apologies to Patrick Henry. Way back\u2014gosh, was it only six months ago?\u2014when I sent off the partial for SCHEMES OF LOVE to Kristin Nelson, I wrote an accompanying cover letter that contained a \u201cone paragraph blurb that summarizes your work and highlights your pitch\u201d that she specified in her request. Not being shy, I informed … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[54,5,33],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}