…..And A Live Chicken

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Rule one: everybody lies about sex.  Rule two: one man/woman’s turn on is another human’s “ew.”  Rule three: the best way to go broke is to assume everyone thinks like you.  Rule four: be aware of your own wishful thinking.

This is the part of the blog in which we talk about sex – again.

I confess I have a conflicted relationship with sex.  Oh, not in my personal life.  Ever since I discovered I could make men incoherent by wearing a certain type of dress, I’ve been a big fan of sex, particularly how it affects the male brain.  You can get away with the most interesting stuff when you’re young, pretty and like interesting stockings. And sex just about kept the husband and me  sane while bringing up the two boys.  Raising kids induces terminal poverty, and often we couldn’t afford books or movies, but by gum we could make beautiful music at any time.  Sex, properly handled (eh eh eh eh eh) is one of those compensations for all the discomfort and problems of the human condition.

However, I have issues with sex in books.  I was thinking about that today – why that is.  I didn’t have any problems with sex in books growing up.  You could trace my awakening libido as a pre teen by how obsessed I became with mythology books…  Because they were the only place I could read about sex (though not in detail) without my parents descending on me like the wrath of parents.

And as a kid, curious about what people did behind closed doors, it’s all too easy to confuse sex and adulthood.  So when I could get my hands on slightly warmer material (weirdly, in Portugal at the time either really bad SF or historical) I did, because I wanted to know what people were hiding from me.  Only normal, right?  It seemed like something everyone else did and knew, and I was being kept purposely away from it.

I think my first intimation that reading about sex wasn’t vitally fascinating to everyone came at about 14, while going through the book fair with my brother and his (mostly male) group of friends.  One of them was picking up all these explicit sex books and my brother asked him “Is it really going to tell you something you don’t know already?” (Brother is close to ten years older than I, and his friend was a medical student.)

That moment remains engraved in my mind, because I went “So, there’s a limited amount of stuff to know about sex.”  Which was by the way of being a revelation, and got the crux of why I read it then.

Now, is that why most people read it?  Uh… no.  Does all sex in books leave me cold?  Uh… no.  Does perverse sex or sex I’ve never participated in, or sex I wouldn’t want to participate in, leave me cold?  Uh… no.  Does everyone get turned on by the same things in books?  Oh, heck no.

Another way to trace my physical maturation/interest in sex is that around about fourteen to eighteen, when I wrote, the solution to every story problem was ALWAYS sex.  People fell in love because they’d had sex.  People killed because they wanted to have sex.  People dug for gold because they wanted sex… etc.

Now, I’m the last one to go against Heinlein, and he claimed that the mating game is the only game in town and everything else we do, from poetry to astrophysics are variations on a theme.  Maybe they are.  A lot of us are brainsexuals – we get turned on by the mind as much as the body.  (Though in my case at least the body needs to be male and, frankly, my being excessively monogamous, it needs to be my husband.)

BUT the point is sex is sublimated into poetry and astrophysics, and most of the time sublimated to such an extent that it no longer acts like sex in people’s brain.  What I mean is, thinking it’s all and always about the sex – and writing that way – seems to be very much an adolescent thing, regardless of the age of the writer.  Kids think sex is more important than it is because it’s forbidden and they get a charge out of reading/writing/thinking about it, because it has the charge of the “I shouldn’t be doing this” (this part is important.  Keep it in mind, because to an extent it’s a human thing.)

To take my questions above in order: I have absolutely no idea what people get turned on reading about.  Well, no, I lie.  I do.  I can figure that out by talking to friends and by examining sales figures for books.  What I can’t tell you is “do people like to read explicit sex so detailed it would put most sex manuals to shame?”  And if so “why?”

The sex is most urban fantasies goes a little beyond where I want to go in detail, but the sexual tension is about right.  My problem with detail is that I start feeling “OMG, I know where he put it.  You don’t need to tell me that.  OR what it looked like.”  And also, I think, because I’m a writer, if a chunk of prose violates my feeling of “this doesn’t advance the plot” it offends the writer in me to such an extent that I couldn’t read it with an impartial mind.

Do most people like the level of detail of sex in romances (ranging from about ten pages to half the book on the positions, what went where, how it felt when it got there, rinse, repeat.)?  I don’t know.  I bet you romance publishers don’t either.  While they have it as an article of faith that books with more sex sell better, I know of people who have standing orders at used bookstores for romances published prior to oh, 75, when most romances had next to no explicit sex.  These books are being read till they fall apart.  (No explicit sex is not the same as no sex.  Most of Heyer’s couples smolder.  They just never do more than kiss on screen.  And Mr. Darcy and Lizzy smolder.  You can feel the sexual attraction.  You don’t need to read about it, because your imagination is probably much more attuned to what you like and if you need to imagine, you can imagine what you like.)

I also know that publishers are not discounting from the “sex sells” bits like “how much heat does the relationship have even without that” – something that’s peculiar to a writer – and “what other factors contribute to the book selling?”  I know they’re not doing those calculations, because they never do them.  About anything, including cover and distribution.

However, from what I’ve seen – and I grant you I’m not seeing figures.  I don’t know if anyone is – books that are MOSTLY sex aren’t the ones that sell best.  Or even books that have explicit sex titles like “taken by” or “the hot” whatever.  The ones that sell best are the ones that hint at a complicated emotional relationship, which might then include sex “The Marquis’s reluctant bride.”  That sort of thing.

This is for women, of course.  Which is why I’m concentrating on romances.

I have this theory guys don’t get turned on by story.  (Studies have been done for this, and some gay guys do.  Some straight guys do too, but fewer.  It’s just not the way the majority of guys seem to get turned on.)  One thing we do seem to actually know is that what guys like are pictures – visuals.  And story or words are secondary.  (Which explains a lot of pornos, and even a lot of the way, as guys get chased away from reading, movies and tv series are starting to be edited, with cut after cut of sex/violence, sometimes with very little explanation between [something that drives me nuts, since I seem to be mostly word-activated, for both enjoyment and sex.  Very girly of me.])

And then we come to the forbidden.   All humans seem to have a sexual response to the forbidden.  Maybe part of this is because deep inside we’re all kids, reading the naughty stuff under the covers – who knows?  Maybe it’s because it’s often “new” and we never saw it or read it before.

Now, we’re not all alike.  Some things might be new and forbidden, but they immediately go straight to – in my brain – EW.  One of those is anything at all involving children or animals.  It’s so intense that honestly the thing about the character in Witchfinder having been a child prostitute felt HORRIBLE to me, and if I weren’t writing it in public, I might have walked away for a few months.  (It wouldn’t let me change it.  I tried.)  It goes ways past “forbidden” to “EW.  Burn it.”  I know that ick factor is different in people, and not just to the level of “well, that’s illegal and immoral.”

For instance my reading Fifty Shades Of Grey would last until we got to the sex, when I’d go “ew” and throw it against the wall.  Something that translates from my real life sex drive to the page is “pain comes in, arousal goes out.  No.”  I remember trying to read Kushiel’s Arrow when it was all the talk of the town.  When I got to the page where an eight year old girl stabs herself for sexual pleasure, the book went against the wall.

Later on, while it was on the “donate” pile, a friend picked it up and asked to borrow it.  I said “please keep it” and that’s the last I saw of it.

Most of the sex in books, while it doesn’t press my “ew” buttons, doesn’t press any buttons.  I’ve confessed before to going over the pages going “this is sex, still sex, etc.”  The difference is if the sex is essential to the relationship/development of the characters, then I’ll read it and appreciate it.

Mind you, appreciate doesn’t mean it turns me on.  Most of the time it doesn’t.  A lot of it can’t.  Look, I can read lesbian relationships as well as anything else, it’s just that I’ll read the sex under the “and that’s how their relationship changes” but it doesn’t do a thing for me.  And if they get REALLY explicit, it will trigger the “ew.”  Explicit hetero sex might or might not.  As might explicit gay male sex.  Most of the time – 99.9% of the time it neither disgusts me nor turns me on.  If it is profoundly detailed, it can ick me, or if the author clearly is obsessed with some kink I don’t share (most of them.  I’m very much meat and potatoes when it comes to real life sex.)

Let’s face it, what Florence King said about a bidet being essential to civilized homosexuality, can apply to ALL sex.  If you’re writing something in a time with no indoor plumbing, please please, I BEG OF YOU, don’t get detailed on me.  And if you’re talking about anal sex in ANY COMBINATION, you’d better have dang impressive bathing facilities available.  Some of us have an hygiene squigg which is far stronger than our turn on squigg. (Possibly a mommy deformation.)

Now we come to “two girls squigg you more than two guys?  But why?  I’ve heard even straight girls don’t mind or are turned on by lesbian sex!”  Yes, what you just heard was my snort.  It probably made the ground shake under your feet.  You’re probably a guy.  And you think all girls are 2 drinks away from girl on girl sex?

Look, it is natural in women not to want to talk about what turns them on.  It is also natural in us to humor the guys in our lives.  So, you know, he’s all enthusiastic about the lesbian couple in Buffy, we don’t tell him “I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, in a million years forgive Joss Whedon for making Willow lesbian.  As a girl who went through school under suspicion of being lesbian for being bookish and liking jeans, I think he indulged his guy thing at the expense of all the other girls like me who will now be considered even more likely to be lesbians because “Willow”” You just smile and nurture that hatred in your heart.

Same thing with female writers not telling male editors “Stop already with the peaceful all-girl planets which are your excuse for getting your jollies from girl on girl sex and not admit to it, but pretend to have a higher message.  If you really think girls are more peaceful, you should have attended my middle school.”  (And then follow up with “no, girls are NOT turned on by girl on girl, though a significant number of them get turned on by guy on guy” And then get in his face and scream “Isn’t your assumption a little sexist?”)  I do, but I’m not most women, or most writers, and I have no self-preservation instinct.  And of course, there’s the part where girls care more for the relationship, and as long as there’s no sex ON SCREEN, girls can enjoy the show.  (Or close their eyes for the sex on screen thing.)

So what I’m saying is that we girls lie to you a lot.  Often compulsively.  You guys on the other hand go all vocal and tell us “two guys is just ew.”

Which is why  for a long time it was almost obligatory to have a lesbian couple in sf/f or mystery, but m/m romances only came into their own with the internet — and are really coming into their own in e-format.

I first found out about “slash” when a friend asked me to proof/help verify her thesis which was that slash was feminist literature.  Ooookay.  So, I visited these sites and… uh… most of the stories involved characters from series and movies.  Usually male characters, though you could have two females (very rare) or hetero couples who never had a relationship – or an open one – on screen (about 25% of the stories.)  Now those who know me know I don’t know most characters from series and movies, so I couldn’t work up an interest.  (The Spock/Kirk slash just makes me giggle.  Sorry, but…  I just DON’T see it.)  But I read enough to know this: these sites were incredibly popular; they were girl-land, with the plots being all girl slanted and the characters most often acting like girls with penises; most of the people writing and reading there were married women; the writing ranged from the “OMG, ew.” to the sublime.  The explicitness, as in romance, ranged from maybe a kiss (and those stories were uniformly okay and might have been good if I had any idea who the heck they were talking about) to “and then he put it in twenty five times at a five degree angle” (and those were, mostly “why do I need to know this?”) The ones in between were okay or not depending on how needed it was to the plot.

Before you think I devoted my life to studying this, let me say most of the knowledge is from the friend who did the research.  My foray into the sites lasted maybe a month in my spare time and was “oh, um” because like most fanfic they don’t develop the characters.  They count on the “emotional impact” from the movie or tv.  Since I lacked that, it was a “whatever.”… unless the rare writer actually went to the trouble of giving you enough to care.  (Because I am a professional writer, I recognized the style of a few friends.  They were, of course, the best stories.  And never worry, your secret is safe with me.)

I’ll confess even I, being an idiot, and being busy with my own writing, gave no more thought to the whole idea of what turns women on and how this might translate into sales in the indie world.  Until I went to RWA four (?) years ago and in a panel a woman said something about “the romance category that’s doing best online – in ebook format – is guy on guy for girls.”

I’ll confess I didn’t go out and look for it – look, kids, my to read pile is so big one day it will fall and reduce me to dust.  While I don’t object to guy on guy romances (given advanced bathrooms and no excessive detail) it’s not something I’ll go looking for obsessively.  So I did nothing about it, but remembered it.

And then two? Years ago I came across a book called Somebody Killed His Editor by Josh Lanyon and, duh, with a title like that, I had to get it.  I’m not going to lie and claim I didn’t know it had sex in it.  I did, and it did.  Though to be honest the sex was no more explicit than in about a low-to-medium straight romance.  The book itself was good and because it skewered (no, there are NO safe words on this subject) the publishing industry and accorded with my experience, I enjoyed it immensely.  I have since read most of his stuff, with varying degrees of enjoyment.  (Futuristic romance is NOT SF but I can’t stop thinking of it as SF, and then it annoys me.)

I know this is starting to (er) bleed through to normal publishing because Diana Gabaldon has the Lord John series.  That’s an example of the level of sex that does NOT bother me, in any way shape or form – in either straight or gay books – and that’s because it’s a reference to “and he did this” but no real detail.  (And let’s be grateful since this is pre-regency and she periodically makes reference to picking and killing lice.  EW.)

Will it squigg most male readers?  Possibly, but Gabaldon is writing in romance, where male readers are fewer.  (Though I actually stumbled on the series through an historical mystery recommendation site.)  I don’t think girl on girl with that level of sex would squigg me, because it’s not that explicit, but I might find it tiresome, because the character is very obviously gay and (in this case) thinks of just about every guy he meets in beddable terms.  (Which I understand is part of the male brain.  Shrug.)  I would not write a gay character that way because I aim for a more general audience.

One thing I can tell you about the m/m books is that to an extent they allow me to relax – they are less distorted by political correctness, unless they’re current day and have nods at “gays as victims.”  Less distorted?  Well, yes.  Lacking a female character, she can’t act like the world’s *ss while trying to show she’s “empowered” (for info see the female character in Pirates of the Caribbean who is exhibit a.  Her feminine semblables and comrades [I use the word advisedly] tromp stomp and act irrationally across most het romances.)  You remove the woman, all you have is the relationship, and since these are not real gay males,  (with varying degrees.  Lanyon’s are, at least, males in thought.  I mean, it feels to me like I’m reading about men, not girls in men bodies and it is therefore better.  But he still is aware of writing for girls and puts the emphasis  on the relationship not the sex) the relationship is all pure “feelings” goodness of the “I would die for you” kind.  And it has the spice of the forbidden.  Okay then.

So… Perversion?  Taboo?  Sick?  Does it bother men?  Women?  Dragons?  Horses? Flying Porpoises?  Penguins?

Guy on guy but slanted definitely for girls – I think most of my gay friends would piss themselves laughing reading these – seems to sell the best in the bespoke, boutique world of indie romances.  After that are guy/girl of various “forbidden” flavors, including but not limited to b & d and s & m (most of it painfully badly written.  Sorry, but it’s true.)  After that comes girl on girl, some distance away, (I understand from friends who write these that you could starve) probably because guys prefer pictures and the girls who would genuinely read girl on girl (i.e. lesbians) are a small minority.  I.e. if you don’t hook the heterosexual majority of at least one gender, your sales are going to (argh, no safe word) suck.

I’m not the kind of person who disapproves of sex as sex.  I’m not even the kind of person who disapproves of reading for titillation.  As long as people aren’t enacting it on the street and scaring the horses, I couldn’t care less.

I just would prefer that you guys writing/reading girl on girl be aware that making it “a peaceful all woman planet” will bring me to your door with a metaphorical machine gun.  Screaming.  Not today, not tomorrow, but eventually.

It’s not the sex that bothers me.  It’s the wrong headed politics and psychology.  And that is a reverse turn-on for me.

For the rest…  Titillating is bringing a feather to bed.  Kinky is bringing a live chicken.  When writing, sort of remember that and adhere to the less is more.

I don’t know how or why other people read sex, but I can tell you I’m more likely to read your story if your couple smolders but doesn’t tell me in explicit detail who got the beak and who got the wing.

193 thoughts on “…..And A Live Chicken”

  1. The best “peaceful all-girl planet” I’ve ever seen is the one in Brin’s Glory Season. Most people focus on his slightly clumsy turnabout depiction of men as second-class citizens, but I was very impressed by the way the planet’s society is basically a series of middle-school cliques all trying to exclude each other. (As opposed to the “no, MY d**k is longer!” style of masculine politics.)

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      1. True dat. (Wait, this is a writer’s blog. I could be killed in my sleep for writing that phrase on purpose – oh, well :-))

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        1. No, no, you can use True That, because it’s a translation of the ubiquitous Portuguese expression “pois e” — Mr. Freerange Oyster pointed that out, and I’ve been using it that way ever since.

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  2. I may have mentioned Wen Spencer’s _A Brother’s Price_ as a reaction to the “everythings peaceful if women ruled” idea.

    Oh, I thought Wen handled the sex just fine.

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  3. Just to throw a wrench in things, I would like to mention the slash westerns (Spur, Longarm, etc.) They are pretty obvouisly written for guys; and apparantly sell well enough that they keep printing mass amounts of them.

    Note here that I can only recall ever reading two of them, and glancing through a couple others, so the conclusions I draw probably need to be taken with a grain of salt.

    The first one I ever picked up and looked at I was shocked, oh not by the sex, by the fact that it was a word for word copy of Luke Short book I had read shortly before that. With of course the name of the main character changed to match the main character of the slash series, and sex scenes with every female character in the inserted. Oh, and of course we had to remove the emotional stuff (can’t be marrying off an oversexed serial character) but since westerns don’t tend to have angsty male leads this a minor detail. I later discovered that the name Luke Short was owned by the publisher, much like the name of the various slash authors, and stories by multiple authors were published under the same name, I always assumed that the publisher had all rights to the story and had the slash written to order; so plagarism charges were not an issue. Necessarily quality varies greatly when multiple authors are writing under the same name, and none of the other slash I looked at was near the quality of the first.

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  4. I think part of the reason that the assumption that women like girl on girl, is because if the story is any good, they will just read on past it. Guys on the other hand (or at least myself, I can’t speak for what goes on in other guys heads) if there is explicit guy on guy; that is the end of the book, period, dot.

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    1. Might be part of it, but to be honest, if there’s EXPLICIT girl on girl, it’s likely to go against the wall. Heavily. Also, if the girl thinks about every girl she meets in sexual terms — The Lord John series (the other way around, since he’s a gay male) is not QUITE that bad, but is close, and I think it would seriously skiv me if I were a guy. As a woman, I find the series good, well researched, the character sympathetic, and the sex not to explicit — as there have been a couple of fantasy books where the main character does, the book gets put down usually after a chapter or two and never picked up again.
      No, I think the reason for the assumption is that men would like it to be true, and women are trained not to tell men the truth. (Aka to be polite.) Like those women who get in the elevator with guys that make their alarms ring, because not to would be impolite. Fortunately, you guys have me. I’m never polite. (Runs.)

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      1. Well, I think that guys who actually read a lot would be, not so much skivved, but have that low, twisting feeling in the back of their mind, that something is just not right, if gay female characters acted like males and lusted after every other woman they met. It just doesn’t feel right to have a female act that way, and she would get labeled (in their minds, anyway) as a hopeless slut. Now, for those guys who don’t read that often, and are generally considered “rutting pigs”, they would not care so much that the behavior was not right, they would just be turned on by all the action.

        Note that this is my personal opinion, and is not backed up by any particular set of data.

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        1. No, a lot of it is the “mind taste” of male and female which is set by what we expect and have grown up expecting. Actually because I have female lesbian friends who are functionally like guys (not so much doing, but their minds go that way ALL THE TIME) it wouldn’t bother me as non believable. It would just get tedious. I don’t read many guys like that either. And note my comment on LKH. When you’re writing people as just bodies, it doesn’t matter the genre, it’s going to annoy me. Gabaldon (whom I can’t read in the romance romances, mostly because of what I call “mystic Celtic stuff” which annoys me because of the fantasy background) doesn’t do that in the Lord John series, and honestly it might NOT bother straight men. (Hard to tell, you know? I’ve never BEEN one of y’all.) While her character might have a thought at the back of his mind about some guy he just questioned like “um… I wonder if,” he’s a thoughtful, “living” human being and views other people ALSO as human beings. The character feels real. I just wonder if the “checking out” which can be d*mn subtle would bother men. I will add that I AM buying that series and have added it to my “buy in paper” which is a high bar for me. I don’t see anything wrong with the way she wrote it and the guy feels “male” to me despite the female author. BUT fair warning, it might bother the guys.
          Oh, and I guess I need to write a post on why your characters — any gender — have a higher purity bar than real people. i.e. we judge characters as “sluts” when we wouldn’t judge a friend acting like that that way. That’s because of the story telling mechanics. And now I should stop answering comments and go write for a while? :-P

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        1. One of my gay friends — I think pulling my tail. I mean, he does say this stuff to see how I react — at one time told me “well, but you women it’s perfectly normal to admire other women’s breasts vocally, you know, to say something like “your breasts look great” and you’re not thought gay.” And I said, “Listen, Bucko, I don’t know what kind of women you hang out with, but even my best female friends would go “Sarah, are you okay?” if I said something like that.” Now I wonder if he’d been reading romances… or bad fantasy.

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          1. UGH – We have a joke in our family that when I am rich I will cover the bedroom wall with fake breasts. The hubby was bottle fed so he has a thing for mammary glands.

            NO NO… I know of no women who admire each others breasts. Definitely fantasy.

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            1. I suspect that what women are doing if they look at/comment on another woman’s bosom falls into the “checking out the competition” bin. Or possibly the “Oh, that’s an interesting way to display them; I wonder whether it’s terribly uncomfortable” bin. Occasionally I am sure it is in the “How on earth does she sit up” bin. Most often it is probably the “Trash!” bin.

              I find it interesting that men in America (don’t know about the rest of the world, especially the non-English portion) find breasts so fascinating. I know that they do, I just don’t know why. Is it cultural or hard-wired? Cultural, i expect. Certainly in Jazz Age America breasts were minimal, but in post Playboy (or do we blame Howard Hughes?) America they’re pushed into guys faces so much that some level of conditioned response seems inevitable.

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              1. Conditioned response for both men and women I suspect. Breasts being pushed in men’s faces and women who think they get more attention with big breasts – so the doctors who have big vacation homes, cars, and yachts.

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                1. Maybe it is an attempt to condition in women an equivalent of BDS (Bigger D*ck Syndrome)? Easy if irrelevant comparison for the simple? Bigger bazooms equals “I’m more woman than you”?

                  I guess for exotic dancers it matters, but otherwise I liked my Beloved Spouse just as much when she was an A as after the Daughtorial Unit gifted her with more wobble … that ain’t the parts I was innerested in. (Ahem: there need be no, repeat NO speculation as to what parts do innerest. That be between B.S. & I.)

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                  1. There are three sizes (I am told by my girlfriends)… Ahem… when you see the largest of these three, you run away. So BDS has not caught on…yet.

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                3. Ah, but women are more comfortable with each others bodies than men are. Several times I have seen women go in the other room (or bathroom if in public, ie bar/restuarant) to compare and check out a womans new (implanted) breasts. When was the last time you seen several men casually go in the other room to drop their drawers and compare?

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                  2. I do hope you realize that women who do have had work done are a sub-set of women in general, and those who will trot off to restrooms to compare their adjustments are a sub-set of that one. And, ah, where do you meet all these packs of openly augumented women?

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                    1. women who have had work done My bad, I really should stop over editing myself, I start creating more problems than I fix.

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                    3. Ah, that would have been mainly when I lived in Forks (pre-Twilight). Which for those who have ever spent much time there probably explains it all. Though I never met any vampires, Forks is its own world; only distantly related it seems at times to the rest of Earth.

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                  3. Umm, eww? Honestly, I have friends who have post-mastectomy reconstructive surgery. Not once have I been asked to scope out my friends’ new constructs. Not once have I asked to. Only folks other than my husband who carefully scope out mine are medical professionals paid to look after my health and the scoping is on an annual basis – get your mammograms.

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              2. The mammary thing IS American, cultural. In Portugal for reasons I don’t know, everyone has small breasts, even the statues and mannequins, despite the fact many of the living women clearly don’t. Seems to be a cultural thing. I suspect it was the bottle baby thing, more prevalent here than anywhere else, and now passed into the culture. It’s a low, Freudian idea and probably wrong.

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              3. I have no visual interest in looking at breasts, myself, and always thought the obsession of other males a little strange . . . but I subsequently found them of remarkably great tactile interest, when the opportunity came along.

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            2. LOL. As a man, I have to admit that I admire women’s breasts — up to a point. I do NOT like excessively large breasts. Nor do I focus on a woman’s breasts without also checking out the rest of her. I know what pleases me. Other men, and women too to a point, know what pleases them, and that’s what THEY look for. It may or may not fit my criteria.

              The one thing that is a total turn-off for me is a whining voice. A woman could be a red-headed Marylin Monroe, but if she has a whining, high-pitched voice, I try my best to leave the vicinity as fast as possible without causing a vacuum. I also don’t like excessively loud voices, and vile and vulgar language is also not appreciated.

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              1. If you’ve ever seen “Singing in the Rain” – we only see the villainess at the beginning, posing in her movies, and she is beautiful. A classically beautiful face, elegant expressions, plus she’s in gorgeous costumes with perfect hair. And then she opens her mouth and lets out that horrible Brooklyn squawk and we never think of her as beautiful again.

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              2. Sigh. I have issues with vulgar language, but I have to really be over the top mad to actually SAY it. It’s easier to type it. ;)

                On breasts. I was a size A sometimes B, depending on cut, when I got pregnant with number one son. I am now DD. For years I kept wearing the same bras (yes, it’s possible, if you don’t mind most of you spilling every way) UNAWARE I’d changed sizes. I thought I was just fat and shapeless. Then one day my husband got to see me dressed (look, he was working 16 to 18 hour days. The hey day of computer sweatshops. For about three years we met in our night clothes. I’m glad we survived) and said “Honey, that bra is ridiculously small. You’re a size DD. Trust me. Go get new bras.” I did and he was right. (which means he looks at breasts way more than I do. He knew the size on sight [runs]) And then I found that are a POTENT distraction weapon. But other than that, I don’t care.

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                1. My wife has changed significantly since we were married, especially after her thyroid shut down. She was very thin when we were married. Natural changes like that are just that — natural. It’s the women who have themselves endowed to a DDD or even EEE size, with a 30-inch waist, that just DON’T look natural. Most of those that I’ve met over time don’t have a very natural personality, either. Personality is greatly under-rated by most guys and quite a few women. A pleasant personality and the ability to laugh can excuse just about everything else, with one exception I’ll keep to myself!

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                  1. “She’s got a great personality” is the kiss of death, unfairly. And yet personality is a hey component of physical attractiveness. Doubt me? Take a careful look at young Barbara Stanwyck, say The Lady Eve or Meet John Doe. Too much nose … but you can’t take your eyes off of her.

                    Back when we home schooled there was considerable overlap with the conservative Christian community about the time that group was pushing Courtship instead of Dating: going about choosing your life’s mate as a deliberate process rather than just “having fun and maybe meeting somebody you like.” Of course, that requires an approach to life that risks your growing up.

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          2. Don’t ruin guys’ fantasies! If we can’t sit around and imagine women admiring each other’s breasts…we’d have little left to dream about. :-D

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            1. If that is the case I am glad I’m a not a guy.

              This brings to mind what is probably my favorite Harry Potter book sequence: Hermione has just explained to Harry and Ron what Cho is thinking. Ron comments that that cannot be true, if someone was thinking all that their head would explode. (As I have commented to The Spouse, it does explain why she was leaking about the eyes.)

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              1. I also like Hermione’s response, something to the effect of, “Just because you have the emotional range of a turnip…”

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              2. I actually think Jeff Foxworthy put it best – the problem between the sexes is that women are complicated creatures. However, since women are complicated, they assume men are just as complicated. You always hear women say, “I’d really like to know what he’s thinking.” Well, tonight I’m going to let you know what we’re thinking – we’re thinking, “I’d like a beer and I’d like to see something nekkid.”

                Not the full truth, but not as far off as many would like to pretend…

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                1. Dave Barry wrote a lovely column about what a couple is thinking on a date and where it goes from there. It starts when the she mentions to the he that they have been going out for six months now. He starts thinking about the fact that this means his car is way overdue for an oil change, as his last one was just before their first date. It goes downhill from there. (She Drives For A Relationship — He’s Lost In The Transmission)

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                    2. If this here Interwebs had a site where one could go for useful extremely shorts youtubey clips, such as “My, I bet you monsters lead interrresting lives” or “There should be an Earth-shattering kaboom, there was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom” I would use it to post a link to Mr. Burns saying: “Exssscellent.”

                      If any of youse guys make the effort to develop such a site and make a humongous fortune I want a “from an idea by RES” credit.

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                3. I like the way Scott Adams put it in The Dilbert Principle. I paraphrase from memory:

                  Men are simple animals, so to market to them successfully, you need to appeal to one of just two motives:

                  1. This product will help you get dates with bikini models.
                  2. This product will save you time and/or money, which you will need to get dates with bikini models.

                  Whereas women are full of psychological complexity and subtlety, so an entirely different approach is required:

                  1. This product will help you become a bikini model.

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      3. I once left a police car without permission. There had been problems in the city that spring and early summer had lead to a curfew being set for youngsters, and the court challenges were still in process. I was walking home — with ample time to get home before curfew.

        A cop had stopped me and asked me to get in the police car. Once I was started lecturing me about the risk of breaking curfew. I politely explained I had plenty of time to get home, if I was allowed to head there. And then it struck me, something was very off. I got out of that car, and headed home – quick.

        Told Daddy about it. He looked very odd. (Oh, I still managed to beat the curfew.)

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        1. My bad, in case it was not clear, this was in reference to Sarah’s comment about not getting on elevators when you get ‘a feeling.’

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          1. It also helps that I carry my keys with the keys out through my fingers so if I have to hit someone, it will scratch the person where it will hurt … so far I have been left alone.

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            1. Note for the women here, if you are ever accosted in a parking lot; grab a radio antennae off a car. They break off fairly easily, and are a much more potent weapon than you would think.

              Obviously I mean the solid ones, not the retractable antennaes.

              Personally I believe all women should carry a gun, but unfortunately not everybody agrees with me. God created all men equal, Sam Colt made it a reality.

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              1. God created all men equal, Sam Colt made it a reality.

                A gun, like any other tool, is only useful if you know how to use it and are willing to do so.

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                1. My dad taught me to use a knife. He says I’d be more likely to shoot my own “d*mfool” foot off while fiddling with the trigger because I did something odd. I respected his knowledge of me. Still do.

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                  1. The problem with a knife is that it is a “grapplin’ distance” weapon, which for a female can be a problem. A gun can provide “runnin’ distance” and as a totemic weapon is more intimidating.

                    Probably the best self-defense option is a large dog, but they can be hard to fit in your purse.

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                3. True, a gun just has a sharper learning curve than most weapons, (for self-defense, competition is a bit more complicated) and in the hands of someone with the knowledge and a modicum of skill is a better self-defense weapon for a physically weaker victim (the feminazis can foam at the mouth, but the average woman is weaker than the average man)

                  For the record I don’t recommend anyone carry a gun without learning how to use it.

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                  1. For the record I don’t recommend anyone carry a gun without learning how to use it.

                    True that: a self-defense weapon you don’t know how to use properly is a weapon that will benefit your assailant much more than you: you might injure yourself with it, or you might give him the opportunity to take it away and use it against you. And that goes for any weapon: gun, knife, pepper spray, what have you.

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                    1. Like the saying goes, there are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous people. I don’t have a gun around the house right now. I DO have a hickory axehandle, and know about thirty different ways to hurt someone very, very badly with it. Unfortunately, it IS a ‘close-in’ weapon, but it only takes one good blow across the bridge of an invader’s nose to take all the fight out of him — possibly permanently. Something my grandfather taught me stays with me — if you have a pistol, and need to use it, aim for the gut and EMPTY the darned thing. Grandpa died from peritonitis after being shot at 72. He was a night watchman at the local mental hospital. The guy that shot him shot first, but only once. Grandpa was in the hospital two months before he died. The guy that shot him didn’t live long enough to reach the hospital.

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  5. I guess my experience pretty much tracks along with Sarah’s – go for the relationship, with the sex hinted at, and don’t get too explicit. My first book had a madly, deeply passionate relationship in it (with a married couple who were crackers about each other after a dozen years of marriage, which I based on Robert Browining and Elizabeth Barrett Browning) and it seems to be the one which readers like the best. Of the other five books, there are only two instances where horny teenaged girls could potentially dog-ear those few pages containing the really hot parts, sexually explicit parts. But I wrote them as part of relationships between characters, and not instructional manuals.

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  6. You could do much worse than reading Josh Lanyon’s books – he’s a solid writer who knows what he’s doing. There are many other awesome writers (Kirby Crow, Rachel Haimowitz, Erastes, Alex Beecroft, to name just the most gifted stylists, there are many more) in the genre, too, so the state of affairs is not quite as dire as some bits of this imply.

    I think also that the m/m stuff is rubbing up against the traditional queer literature – which tends to be uncomfortable with us, just like high literature is uncomfortable with genre lit in general. I’m personally not sure what those categories and boxes achieve – in the brand new indie days, everybody can write whatever they want, and they will find readers, so categories and genres are very much up in the air. :)

    And on a personal note, the “put in more sex, and do it from chapter 1 onwards” seems to be on the wane in the genre. I know editors who pressured authors into putting in more sex, but increasingly the gold old “if it does’nt further the story, leave it out” seems to be prevailing among the better-quality publishers.

    Thanks for your blog, I read it religiously. :)

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    1. Aleksandr,
      Lanyon is a very good writer. I stumbled upon him by sheer accident. I’ll jot down those other names to check out — haven’t found them yet. Um… the “dire” part is mostly the slash fan fic. Like all fanfic some is amazing most is “OMG.” And of course m/m HAS a lot of OMG too — mostly written by very young at heart women. The “ocean of crap” thing about indie… is not true, or at least is easily overcome, but I’ll confess it has made me shy away from m/m written with female author names, mostly because it makes me go “oh, no. Girl with penis.”

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    2. Oh, and on that, I’m glad the “put more sex in from beginning” thing is on the wane. It has kept me from even trying to do romance, unless I do it indie. (Though not having an agent is probably a greater handicap.) My one vaguely sexy fantasy they insisted I put sex in the first book.
      Also on the “despising genre” thing — meh. I have a degree in literature. This accounts for my lack of being impressed by the stuff. I know good when I see it, what people call it doesn’t make no never mind.

      On a personal not, you, sir, have an odd religion. (runs.)

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      1. Well, sex does sell, but I think in the genre, the novelty wears off. People still like sex, but I detect a certain boink-fatigue, as in, if it’s only sex, readers get bored. They do want sex to be revelatory about character and some kind of plot to go with it (definitely once a book/story has a certain length).

        I’m with you on on the literature thing. I was crippled by many years when literary agents and publishers in Germany told me “you’re too poetic/smart for mainstream and not strong enough a stylist to be a high literature writer.” It took me 8 years to go “screw this, I’m now my own genre.”

        (Hey, less b oring that sitting through service in Church. At least here I’m thoroughly entertained and this bounces against my own thoughts on the new paradigm. :) it’s an all-round win.

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        1. Eh. So you did walk in my shoes, sort of. I CAN be a strong enough stylist, it just bores silly. So every new agent had to be beaten out of the “But… but… you can do LITERARY. You should eschew this genre crap and do the high lit stuff. A book every two years. You can teach college for the money and–” This brought out the “I’m a writer, not a professor” which is the polite form of “Sarah SMASH.” Sometimes I couldn’t sign with the agent because of that.

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          1. Yep. So much of what you say resonates deeply with my experiences, and compared to the American market, the German market is kind and forgiving (And slow. And conservative. I mean, they still don’t *get* ebooks – we’re just seeing the first e-first publisher, dotcombooks, and they are starting out with short forms and erotica and no advances).

            I tried to be (under a different name) a genre writer in Germany, but I had ideas “above my station” like ambivalent heroes and villains in my fantasy books, and some philosophical, high-concept ideas that didn’t go down too well with the “boy finds magical sword and kills an evil god” quest fantasy public, never mind I got lots of “ewwww” for having gay or bisexual male characters. Then I went into mainstream contemporary fiction, which robbed me even of the genre readers and put me firmly down in “this is really good, it just doesn’t have a market” category.

            Then, to make money – I was jobless after university and en route to be a summa cum laude taxi driver – I wanted to write historicals, but the paradigm at the time was “cheap and nasty historicals full of Womenz Issues, Rape (written to be titillating), Romance, with a female main character who is a 21st century feminist.” As a historian, I baulked. (I might also have thrown up a little in my mouth.) I gave up ever “making it”, and then discovered e-publishing. Leaving Germany was the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ve found readers and a freedom and confidence I’ve never had before. (Err, so you can see the parallels. :) ) Long road to travel, but it’s the best possible outcome for me.

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            1. Honestly, I wasn’t joking when I said I find m/m a haven from PC. PC distorts how women get written in romance and historical. I’m a woman — looks down and checks — and most women in romance/historical are written in ways I don’t get. Gay characters… gay male characters fall into my books. My friend Kate Paulk says that the writer-mind portal just lands in a gay bar zone, in my case. Eh. I suspect it’s always having had gay friends. BUT the mainstream publishers tied themselves in knots over those, even minor characters. Except, curiously, Baen. [And for those in the blog who’ve read DST — I found a review calling Nat a blond gay bimbo, only not that nicely and implying he’s brainless. I’m flabbergasted. No, truly.] I realized when I was writing Witchfinder and it became inescapable that Gabriel is gay that I was FIGHTING it and automatically thinking “How can I write it so people don’t realize it, ever.” And then I went “WHY? I’m not doing explicit sex, so WHO CARES? My readers don’t.” and just wrote it. It’s very freeing and something I’m still learning.

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              1. Same here. Almost no fictional women I encounter are written like any of my female friends (including explicitly transwomen) – women are more hardcore, tougher and resilient than any of the women on the page I’ve seen in heterosexual romances (m/m romance has the nasty tendency to turn women into the Primordial Evil, which, so much wrong, see as it’s predominantly written by women). Granted, not everybody is a Ripley, but by gods, they aren’t rare. So I’m wondering what kick female authors get out of writing the helpless, the insipid and the frankly too-stupid-to-live. No real life woman is like that.

                For years, I said I can’t write women. Then a writing mentor told me: “Look around and watch real life women, and put them in your books.” Solved many problems. And it’s kinda self-evident. Though, freaky. “Male” is the default. Considering women are the majority of people on the planet, extremely freaky.

                And I’m glad that gay characters are no longer quite as excluded or frowned-upon. In my dream world, people are just people, and even gay people can go spacefaring and dragon-slaying, and if they have sex on the page or off doesn’t even matter. We are writing about people, not gender expectations, plumbing or what we do in bed (or on the floor, against the wall…). Idealist, me.

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                1. “So I’m wondering what kick female authors get out of writing the helpless, the insipid and the frankly too-stupid-to-live. No real life woman is like that. ”

                  Really? You live entirely to sheltered a life, I could introduce you to a couple of women that fit that bill perfectly.

                  And yes I wonder what kick female authors (or males all to often) get out of writing such despicable females as main characters. Since many times the goal is to have the reader relate to the main character you have to wonder what exactly their target audience is.

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                  1. Actually what drives me nuts is writing characters like that and giving them random stubborn attacks and crazy-cakes moments to make them seem “strong.” Example, from Pirates of the Caribbean, when the crazy cakes female is given ONE job — to guard the stupid trunk. Instead of doing it, she runs around the beach trying to stop the guys from fighting, because this is supposed to show her as strong and independent, while, of course, the trunk gets stolen. THIS is how people try to write “strong” and “assertive” women. It makes me want to scream. LOUDLY.

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                    1. YES. I like strong, assertive women, what I don’t like is random idiocy that they try to portray as strong and assertive.

                      Sorry, it’s been to long since I seen Pirates of the Caribbean (and I only ever watched one of them) for me to recall your example.

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                    2. I don’t even remember if that was one or two, but I think it was two. BUT that’s what drives me nuts. Romances are full of these. It’s like “Suddenly, woman is attacked by aliens and does random stupidity.” I’ve gotten so used to it, I’ll ignore a couple of them, but by the third I’ve gone “Hulk,… er Sarah Smash” :-P

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                    3. I suspect that the problem is that the people writing these things don’t know what a strong, assertive woman is actually like. Either they put in things like you describe, or else they have a woman who acts like a total bitch, and who then complains that men can’t handle a strong woman.

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                    5. The Spouse can confirm: I was sitting and watching the second of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies at the theater with The Daughter and he, knitting and behaving myself. We got to the fight on the beach over the treasure chest and the female lead was running around like a chicken with her head cut off (as Momma used to say) flapping her arms uselessly. Before I knew what had happened, out of my mouth exploded, ‘TWIT!’ I couldn’t help it. Really I couldn’t. No one in the audience seemed to mind.

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                    6. You and I should watch movies together!

                      Actually I would have felt better if both the guys had turned on her and given her a royal dunking, until she came to her senses.

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  7. Sarah – thanks for the response. Actually, I know women writers who write the most hardcore alpha males and guys who write very emotionally soft guys who blush and cry a lot. It’s been called the “chicks with dicks” phenomenon, but that’s really quite sexist – first of all, I know no female or female-identified person who blushes and cries quite so much, so calling that behaviour “girly” in my book has that tang of sexism. There are also conventions from yaoi that have poured over into the genre.

    Depending on what you like to read, I’d be happy to give you some recommendations. Kirby Crow writes delicious dark fantasy (horror – won an EPPIE for Angels of the Deep, which, in my book, is obe of the top five books ever written in the genre); Erastes writes beautiful gay historicals – little romance, little sex, usually, and she’s a very accomplished writer. Alex Beecroft – I don’t know where I should start about how much I love her writing. It’s clever and finely-made, the kind of prose that has that read-again-and-again quality. Rachel Haimowitz does fantastic BDSM – her and Cat Grant’s recent Power Play duology wipes the floor with Fifty Shades. (Warning, conflict of interest – I own part of Riptide Publishing and we published those two books, so take it with a grain of salt.)

    I read Josh when I’m slipping into a profound ennui – he always gives me hope when I feel burnt out of the genre. He always delivers, and I’m very grateful for that.

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    1. Yeah, he’s really “Human wave.” ;)
      On the girls with dicks — it’s not the crying or the blushing. There’s a “mind taste” for male and female (which might be personal) and a lot of it tastes female… and er… women are way more raunchy than guys, as writers m/m and other. WAY more. It’s part of the reason I shy away from them. (Though a lot of the fanfic left me scratching my head and wondering if they’d EVER seen a male naked. Or read a description. Things went at angles they couldn’t go. We’ll say that and leave it there.)
      Actually I haven’t come across any blushing or crying. I’ve come across the “going insane because denied sex/love” — an old stand by from austen fanfic and almost, but not quite familiar enough to keep me from throwing the book against the wall. :-P
      I worry about reading fantasy or sf in romance — of any kind — the conventions are WAY different, and it … it’s like walking down a hallway and expecting floor under the rug, but your foot goes through. There are cues and hints you’re used to, that suddenly just AREN’T there. Or are there and shouldn’t be so you go “you’re reinventing the wheel.” As I said, it’s all because it REALLY is aimed at a different public (not sf/f) but to us sf/f people it subtly rubs the wrong way. I have that issue with (het) SF and fantasy romance and even Lanyon’s get skimmed more than his other stuff, because of that.

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      1. I do wonder about how much of this “mind taste” (which I share, btw) is down to a) expectations and b) construction of gender in my own head and c) social group and/or writerly socialization.

        I think many of these things are subtle cues – just as an example, when writing a male-male sex scene, a lot of female writers, talk about how one guy’s strong grip creates bruises. Err, no, male connective tissue is usually – usually – stronger than that. Another dead giveaway I encountered recently: male character tests soft fabric against this skin and goes “oh, soft!” – errr, no, not if he has any beard growth at all. The list goes on, but it shatters the illusion. (Another thing, if people choose to write sex – and I’m of the “do what you’re comfortable with” school – and talk about prostates, for example, having them located in the right place really helps. Graphic example ahead: They CANNOT be reached by tongue, even if the other guy is Gene Simmons).

        Much I think is het romance genre convention (and I’m not dissing heterosexual romance), applied to two men without regards to veracity. But then, many het romance conventions fall down even when applied to a mixed-gender pair. (I’m leaving out some m/m writers who failed selling copies in heterosexual romance and ended up turning the woman into a man, thus selling a few more copies.) I do think that you can tell where an author comes from – in German, we use the word “Stallgeruch” (lit: stable smell), which is a way to express that intangible sense of identity/belonging and being able to sort somebody into a box. People who don’t actually read sci-fi and do a sci-fi romance don’t know the cues and conventions and might even fail at the sci-fi part, so, after buying some pretty horrible sci-fi and fantasy m/m books (and, oh, the historicals), I’m now more careful and read reviews to see if those books work as the other genre, too (whatever it may be). So, yeah, I get you on that.

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        1. I’m new to romance as a reader. My brother was a product of the sixties and told me Romance Is The Opium of Womanhood (yes, with capitals.) and being almost ten years younger and in awe, I believed him. I think I read my first romance at 28 while pregnant (craved romances, which is weird) then stopped until about two years ago when I started reading them like popcorn. (Which is when I found Lanyon, too.) Part of this is economic. I can buy them used for a dollar, then trade them in for half price. For the “popcorn reading” it keeps me going a long time. Also, there are amazing historicals and amazing mysteries published under romance, kind of like a lot of rock is now slanted “country” because it sells better. I enjoy Madeleine Hunter, for instance. BUT as I started doing what I always do, and leaving the best ones in a pile for my husband to read if he feels like (I have more time to read, so I filter stuff for him) we started running into the “Do you really feel like swooning when I kiss you? What if you’re the one who is abnormal?” Um… let me put it this way — these women are put together in ways no woman ever was. AND this is written by women. My favorite from a recent book was “She felt her womb get warm.” So many levels of WRONG.

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          1. Can any woman actually feel their womb? I do get the blushing and the stuttering, but a clenching womb? ARG. Plus have you tried to talk about this stuff with your mother? Mine wouldn’t say a word until we had our first sexual experience after marriage hopefully…. too late imho.

            Last time I felt like swoon (snort) was when I was in the first stages of puberty. Thank goodness that went away after the first year. ROFL

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            1. My mother told me sex was a good time to do your grocery list. I KNOW she was bsing me because well… the walls of the house I grew up in aren’t that well insulated. I think she just felt she should tell me that. As for feeling your womb — no idea. Tons of women seem to feel their ovaries. I don’t. Perhaps that has to do with the infertility issues (since most women feel their ovaries WHILE ovulating. My favorite cousin told me, “How can you not know if you’re ovulating.” Uh.) I can’t feel my womb. And I know a sudden feeling of something “burning” in my stomach area would send me running to the doctor. No, seriously.
              Swoon in puberty was nervousness, mostly, I think. But my husband keeps asking me weird stuff like “so, did you know if a guy was right when you kiss him” I had to tell him, “No, I only knew if he was wrong.” (And this is true. Relationships that worked perfectly fine otherwise, kiss the buy and it was like “Ew. EW” And there was no RATIONAL reason for it. One of my favorite boyfriends (I still dated him after that because I wanted it to work SO badly) we got along great, wonderful guy. Kiss me, and mind went “this is my brother. This is WRONG.”)

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              1. “its in the kiss” so true –
                I had my first kiss in my early twenties… yea, I know, I was a late-bloomer. I was really attracted to the guy until I kissed him and it was yuck. My hubby – I was 28 when I met him. I just knew where he was when he was in the same room (I never believed in that awareness before). I had a warm feeling in my chest when I kissed him. I will smell the sheets still and we have been married 19 years.

                I didn’t date much in my teens. Even worse, I would date a guy once, and he would meet my sisters and next I knew he would be dating one of my other sisters. Talk about trouble.

                ;-)

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              2. Infertility issues – ummm… no kids here and we didn’t actually try… but I have sisters who were so fertile that they would get pregnant first time out. That explains much ;-)

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                1. I have read that there are “studies” demonstrating that a woman’s system engages in a complex biochemical analytic process during a kiss, sampling the man’s saliva and doing a quick genetic analysis determining whether he is a good DNA match and has useful disease antibodies.

                  I’ve read lots of less credible stuff, too. I dunno. Whatever.

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                  1. We did ptDNA and mtDNA (misses a whole lot of other DNA, but that is besides the point) and found that my hubby and I do not match on these levels of DNA. It was great… I was looking for someone who was not related. Coming from a Mormon family, it is harder than it looks. ;-)

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                  2. Possibly. THAT boyfriend I felt sorry to break up with. But eh… it was torture to kiss him, even though he brushed his teeth and everything. I couldn’t face a lifetime of marriage where I tried to avoid my husband touching me. :P It wouldn’t have worked.

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            2. I read a description of a guy “banging the wall of her womb”, and I did wonder how any woman reads that without crossing her legs, cringing and grimacing. (Also, holy Pasiphaae, Batman!)

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              2. Oh, yeah, I absolutely have to say this, to get it off my chest. As a woman who more than once has found herself writing in a man’s head (and btw, the reason for that is that most women unless they’ve been “distorted” by propaganda feel more comfortable writing and reading men. it’s not self hating, it’s evolution. We view women as competition. Yes, it can be overcome, but takes work.) the HARDEST thing is remembering to shave. If your character is under stress, and running in to take a quick shower, then running out, it’s really easy to go “oh, whatever.” You can get away with it, but my experience with males who don’t wear beards (and those who trim their beards) including living with three of them (husband, sons) is that after about two days, it starts to itch, and you REALLY feel the need to shave. Kind of like women who have makeup on and don’t have time to remove it. It feels uncomfortable after 24 h or so. So, I know reading it feels unrealistic if your guy NEVER shaves. OTOH writing, as a woman, yes, even a Mediterranean woman of a certain age, it’s very hard to remember.

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                1. I don’t “itch” when I’ve gone without shaving for a while. Now, I do have to trim my beard because of how it looks. [Wink]

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                  1. When the sides start encroaching on my visual field so that my peripheral vision is constantly triggered, it is time to trim.

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                  2. I don’t itch either, but then it’s probably been 10 years since I last shaved ;) I grow a beard in the winter, then ‘shave’ it with hair clippers on the shortest setting in summer. This leaves me with a permanent five o’clock shadow, which wouldn’t you know it has become fashionable :)

                    Actually, shaving regular used to cause my face to break into a rash, so I just got into the habit of trimming it as short as I can with clippers. It is fast, comfortable, and reasonably presentable.

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                    1. My dad has two settings — shave everyday or become unable to shave, as his skin becomes more sensitive through not being used to it. My kids seem to have same issue “sensitive skin/harsh beard.” Eh.

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                    2. I can get away with shaving every three days(if I push it) without it being noticed. I got grief for my babyface in high school – as an adult, it’s nice because shaving is a pain in the ass.

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                    3. My seventeen year old is there now — every two/three days. It upsets him and we get moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth. I’ve told him next year will be every day, with an optional afternoon shave if going to a party, and he thinks I’m being mean. Ah!

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                    5. One of the few genetic benefits I got from my ancestry. Yes, I’m mostly the standard European mutt, but that Cherokee seven generations back means less facial hair, and less inconvenience as a result. :-D

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                2. My hubby has a full beard, which I had to get used to kissing (lol). Anyway, he trims it about once a month and it usually needs it. When he had to shave it was every morning and since his beard grows fast he would have that fashionable shadow by evening. ;-)

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                    2. Ours, if he wants to be clean-shaven at meals, must shave before meals. Two hours later gives a hobo look. And he has sensitive skin. Arrgh.

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                    3. I suspect Robert will eventually get like this… When I married Dan he barely had beard compared to now, so I think it’s a time-release thing. Only Robert had visible, “grown man” beard at 13. It just keeps getting more… like that. We joke by 22 he’ll need to shave his forehead, so we know which way he’s facing :-P

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                  2. I did try to get him to use shampoo on the beard so it wouldn’t be so rough – but you know that was a lost cause. *snort I have learned that guys have these issues … even the best ones.

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                    1. Now, see, *I* would have done that. I only tried to grow even a mustache once, and gave it up because the hairs were so thick and stiff that they kept stabbing my lower lip once they started to get any length, and I just could NOT train them off to the side. Straight down, nowhere else. Because of the problems with the whiskers being so stiff, I would definitely have tried shampoo.

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                    4. On thing about books & film are that you can’t smell or taste anything. You can’t feel a 2-day growth of beard sanding the skin of the inner thighs, nor the various … fluids exuded by a sexually excited female (is there a technical term for that? I expect there must be …) clinging to a full beard. My impression is that most women do NOT find their own … scent … attractive. Except in porn, where apparently everybody find s everything sexually attractive.

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                    5. Technical term: lubrication.

                      Taste thing… I honestly dunno. I’m on a health community on Livejournal focused on the reproductive system (though with a fair amount of other stuff as well, like bosoms and the occasional relationship thing), and apparently some people are just fine with self-tasting. (There is also a huge variation between people regarding: sensing ovulation, cervical sensitivity, placement of the urethra relative to other anatomy in the vicinity, preferences for stimulation of certain nerve endings and their surrounding tissue conformation, reaction to hormonal birth control methods, who can use soap on the mucous membranes without getting BV, etc., etc. About the only thing that I can say with assurance is that there are a zillion different ways that people experience their bodies. Oh, and that most forms of douching are REALLY BAD and I have found the study or studies to back me up on that. ;) )

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                    6. This is part of the reason that studies find that people in long-term relationships (aka: Marriage) have more satisfying sex. Apparently a partner who has taken the time to learn where, when and how to touch is preferable to one who bangs your womb. Who knew????

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                    7. Beth, all that, aside from the fact that most forms of douching is really bad, leads me to observe: No wonder sex scenes are so bloody hard to write. While most people are interested, aside from the asexual community (which despite Gregory House’s assertion do exist), their interests and their preferences within their interest group and responses all vary. The reader, the writer, and the character are all going to have a different idea of what is is.

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                    11. Waitaminnit — you’re sayin’ when the waitress at the truck stop asks “What’ll it be, Hon?” she’s actually …..

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                    14. Ew, that puts a really bad taste to hearing the same question asked by the waiter I worked with several years ago. (Runs with the rest of them)

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                    15. *nods to CACS and ignores the running people* Yeah, pretty much. If one is writing erotica/smut, there are basically three ways to do it (which undoubtedly have fuzzy overlap and are on a continuum):

                      1: Write it vaguely enough that everyone can imagine their own happy place. This… does not actually work well if what you’re trying for is a Sex Vignette, where the whole point is the sex and “they had a great time” won’t cut it.

                      2: Write it enough in the character’s head that even if the sex in question isn’t the person’s cuppa tea, they at least believe that it is the character’s happy place and will get turned on by the character getting turned on. This runs the risk, of course, that the character’s happy place is the reader’s squick, but I’ve had some amount of positive response for some of my stuff… though that may’ve been 3, below…

                      3: Write the fantasy with all the detail you care to have and figure that even if it’s just you and a half-dozen other people, hey, those half-dozen other people are going to be fanning themselves and taking cold showers by the end of it. Alternatively, if you know the kinks of your designated audience (and are not squicked out by them), you can write to their kinks, in detail.

                      4: I’m not going up above to edit that “three ways” because this tactic isn’t really erotica so much as sexual content that is meant to be disturbing, wrong, and/or brain-breaking. It is best done in fanfic, I think, because it relies on people having a certain model of the participants that you can then either play on (…I am getting closer and closer to Amon/Tarrlok fic, curse it…) or entirely up-end (…such as by making heroes anti-heroes, and/or ruining childhood stories). And then people say things like, “Beth writes things that creep us all out! :D ” and I preen happily while they ask for more.

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                    16. best brain breaking was the austen fanfic — NO SEX — where right after marriage Darcy sits down and explains to Elizabeth how he only married her because Whickam wanted her, and how he’s planned everything to ruin Whickam’s life, etc. It was so well done that for years I couldn’t read P & P. And it was icky. And no sex.

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                    19. I’m gonna sue! I’m gonna sue all of you! I’m laughing so hard my ribs hurt all the way down to my toes!
                      (this is in response to the comments from Cyn’s 6/12/2012 12:29pm to Sarah’s 6/14/2012 11:51 am)

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                3. I shave about twice a week. That’s about as long as I can go between shaves and still feel human. Shaving, for me, is PAINFUL. Lifting my arm above my shoulder is all but impossible. My wife doesn’t like facial hair (goes back to her dad coming home from India with a mustache after WWII), so I can’t grow a beard. Since much of my facial hair is as gray as the stuff on top, I can usually get away with being ‘scruffy’ for a few days. When I was young and unattached, ‘scruffy’ was another way of saying ‘repulsive’. The ladies didn’t like it. The few that did just didn’t interest me.

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              3. Being old enough to have several times seen Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid in theatre, I have noticed that in the knife fight sequence, when Butch kicks his challenger in the crotch, you can hear every woman in the theatre laugh and every guy groan.

                Similarly, tell a guy about somebody delivering a 16-lb baby and he’ll react, That’s rather large, isn’t it? Tell a gal and she’ll wince. It all has to do with what you can “know” rather than simply be aware of.

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            3. I dunno about “Warm,” but I surely did get lightning bolts in my belly the first time I kissed the fellow I wound up marrying. I suppose if I was all Earth-Mothery about things I might’ve attributed the sensation to the uterine area; subsequent aggressive butterfly sensations (aka, the kid practicing her first kicks) were certainly registering in the same vicinity.

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          2. The “romance = trash” stuff is a constant in the genre. To be honest, while I was a s/sf genre writer, I did sneer at romance, until I realised that a great many of my main characters are motivated by – love. That was a nice crow dish, that.

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            1. Oh shoot, yeah. Also, as I said, I’ve come to realize that the whole stuff — like the plot behind the love… well… there is no difference between some romances and mysteries of SF I’ve read. Though Kris Rusch says in romance, the romance MUST be the last solved.

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              1. I think that Kris Rusch is right to a point. In Pride and Prejudice the romance has to be largely solved, i.e., D and E have had to come to terms between themselves, before the Mr. B’s prejudice can be addressed … what a lovely scene that is … and we can get to as happily as anyone can ever expect to be ever after. I have to reread that book again soon … sigh.

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      2. … and er… women are way more raunchy than guys, as writers m/m and other.

        Uh… not just as writers. I’ve said before that I have a sort of effeminate vibe that gets me asked if I’m gay? Well, it also lets me be unobtrusive around women, so they talk as if they aren’t around a man. SHEESH! Talk about raunchy! I know plenty of guys who make themselves scarce if they happen upon such a conversation. I’ve learned to just sit quietly and file it away for later, in case I need it for defense/blackmail/whatever.

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        1. Heinlein touches on this in Number of the Beast in (IIRC) a conversation between Hilda & Deety, although it may merely have been off-stage and recounted by narrative voice. (Speaking of which, this may be old old news to many, but it was new to me when I did a quick Googling for confirmation of character names: http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/numberbeast.html )

          I think because women employ more artifice than men they learn how to look past the paint & foundations. And because of menstruation women are viscerally connected to certain aspects of our “baser” nature than are men. I also think that, in general, women have fewer illusions about men than do men about women.

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      3. (And then there’s my Fantasy-with-romance-plot, where… I think it’s really aimed at SF&F readers, and baffles a Romance reader who isn’t “bi-lingual” in the cues.

        It’s got bedroom scenes in the second book, so be warned, any potential readers. ;) My haid claims that the amount of detail is what’s necessary for the impact, so and thus.

        (Now, if only I could work on that Yaoi SF plot sometime that I had going. It’s tricky; some of the stuff really needs a bedroom scene, but the viewpoint character is being prudish and whiny at me. One of these days I’m gonna hafta figure out whether I can balance that or if I just need to tell him to shaddup, he’s in a Yaoi story, and he’s gotta do the screen time to get the plot reward.))

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  8. Kushiel’s Dart – really dragged me into the story of her life (like Andre Norton’s Witch World did for me as a teenager) so I didn’t get too upset with the sex. But, that is a change for me. Most books with too much sex, girl-on-girl, or other quirks like that just make me say “ew” and then throw the book away.

    Funny I used to go to a used bookstore that sold mostly Harlequin Romances. These were the old ones where the stories smoulder and then the kiss. I don’t remember much sex or even much description of sex. But they gave me an escape from a time when I realized that I was too different from the rest of my community. I had to leave my home and join the Navy to find my husband.

    Also I agree – it does a disservice to smart and independent girls everywhere who are heterosexual, that their characters are portrayed as lesbians in the culture. It is NOT true. Girl-on-girl is ew to me.

    My hubby and I have a relationship that is a lot of communicating in it. I communicate and he drifts off. lol Anyway, we have talked about a lot of this and realize that we are a vanilla couple. But, in many ways we are also an Alpha couple. Strange dogs greet us. They listen. Those that we know love us. lol And, cats come up and greet me first.

    Talking about young girls who are over-sexed. We found one of our neighbor girls having sex with a young man (in his late teens we think) on the stairs to our apartment. That was a real ew factor. Since I didn’t enjoy that in real life. I know I don’t enjoy that type of sex (under-age girl, older guy) in books.

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    1. See, to me it was just too much. Also, I found the way she described men off-putting. I mean, seriously off-putting. I don’t remember the expression exactly, but referring to a man’s testicles as “the bag between his legs” particularly in a non-sexual context (she was saying something like he was as attached to his purse as to) just gave that book a huge hurdle to cross in terms of drawing me in. Now, mind you, these things change with age and circumstances. I read the first 10 (?) LKH Anita Blake with no problems when my kids were little. In fact, I studied them for pacing. So, a couple of years ago, when I was doing Hell Bound (which will, yes, probably come out indie or from NRP next year? probably) I went back and tried to read them for pacing. And OMG. As a woman with teen sons, reading her description of males just put me off so badly. It was sheer objectification. Men are bodies, not people. EVEN in the early books — and I didn’t remember it that way. It bothered me so much I couldn’t re-read them.

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      1. I know what you are saying – I went back to read a few books that were my staples in my teens. It was so much angst (just great for a teen) and empowerment. lol I am definitely at 50 not at that place anymore.

        I see what you mean about teen-age sons… objectification would be a big no-no. I read Kushiel’s Dart when it came out… plus with half a brain – I was still dealing with after effects of chemo. I might not be able to read it now.

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  9. How to irritate a friend: 1) Find a romance book that she has been reading. 2) Ask how she likes it. 3) Upon receiving an energetic and enthusiastic “I love it! You HAVE to try it,” open the book and start reading. 4) Break out in gales of laughter. 5) Explain, “because you can’t do what they’re supposed to be doing on page 85. Human anatomy, the physics of low G-motion and the physiology of low-G on the human body, and the realities of interpersonal relationships on the current space station all mean that this ain’t gonna happen.”

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    2. From what I GET low grav sex is tortuous. But, as I said, Dan and I amuse ourselves with the sex cliches of “He kissed her and she saw stars.” Mind you, sex is HARD to write. (Stop giggling, you!) It really is. Finding a way to make it relevant to the story is… I told an editor once “I can write b & d but not real sex” and it was true at the time. b&d was easy because it comes with a “power arrow” and therefore subverting it, say, is enough for a story line. She told me “but the characters aren’t like that” I said “no. So, no sex.” She won. The book is HOL, and the sex felt forced to me and skimpy to her.

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      1. I snorfled. HARD to write, indeed.

        Eh, low-grav sex just needs a little assistance: something to hold onto to keep you from flying away when things start to get energetic. A ladder, a net, safety lines hooked to the wall, etc.

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        1. Speaking as the owner of a jacuzzi, a safety line won’t be enough. The woman will need at least three good solid spots to brace herself. At least neither of them will have to worry about getting dunked.

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        2. Ah, apparently there’s more than that. Think of something that depends on blood flow, and has gravity-assisted return flow. If you do not have gravity to assist with that return . . . problems can ensue that require very careful solutions. Or so a space physiologist claimed in a book I was reading about the possibilities of colonizing Mars.

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          1. Ah. I was clearly thinking only of the external physical considerations. Never even considered physiological ones, though I’m not completely convinced that this would matter after your body had a few weeks or months to adjust.

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          2. Now my interest is piqued. Two Zero-G alternatives present:

            1. He fails to “stand down” after completing his task.. What’s that about “if after four hours …” advice? “Houston, we have a problem.”

            2. He fails to rise to the occasion, she attempts to orally stimulate … as her head goes down her bum goes up and she starts spinning. Finally getting her re-oriented, on the first bob he goes floating backwards, spinning butt over brain …

            Does anyone want to do the math on how much propulsion would be generated by the male ejaculate in Zero-G? Does it depend on whether it is an English Swallow or African Swallow?

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      2. I think an attempt at Zero-G sex would be hilarious. He pokes her, she wafts away … she grabs him, he starts spinning on his height axis …

        I suspect B& D is easier to write because it is essentially role-play. It has always struck me as extremely tedious and boring, but then RPGs and CosPlay have never had much attraction for me.

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        1. YES. “Too much work” — but maybe that’s the result of most of our fun time having been delimited for years by “how long will The Lion King Game keep Marsh amused?” But it’s way easier to write. Only I have no interest in it. (Sobs.)

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  10. Thought you all might like to know, someone *has* done some research on what appeals/sells as far as sex vs romance, though only in the YA range. I worked as one of the primary research assistants on the project – it was the doctoral thesis of Professor Kerry Spencer, who teaches at BYU Provo.

    The study covered a lot of interesting things, not just sex vs romance, and I only worked on parts of it. I highly recommend it – it was submitted at the University of Wales. She had to fight tooth and nail to get the board to accept sales numbers as a valid measure of the popularity of a given book. *grumbles* Stupid academics.

    The relevant finding was that romance was a huge boost to the popularity of a YA book, but sex was not. In fact, IIRC, there was a fairly low threshold past which it started having a negative effect on popularity. That didn’t particularly surprise me, but it was gratifying for a stuffy, old-fashioned curmudgeon like myself to see.

    Tangentially, that project was the first time I actually got *paid* to proofread, edit, and rewrite someone else’s novel. It’s a heady feeling. :)

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  11. Jumping on board the comment train.

    I am not sure to what extent I find sex per se interesting so much as I find it interesting that people find reading about sex interesting.

    Beloved Spouse & I used to frequent a newsstand (back when such things existed) where the couple who ran it once observed that (f’rinstance) Penthouse Letters sold more to women, Penthouse sold more to men. Limited sample, anecdotal, your mileage may vary.

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    1. Uh, yeah. The first time I got my nose broken was in a field hockey game. Intramural, not even really a nasty game. Par for the course.

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      1. Laura, I am sorry. I had the great good fortune to play goalie on a team that really had no need of a goalie. The play only got near my end of the field once. Those girls at my school were ‘high spirited’ and wicked vicious.

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  13. I think that much of the sex in novels today–like pretty much everything else–is publisher-driven, not reader-driven. It’s not just about the thrill of sex. It’s about “this is the wave of the future and it’s IN YOUR FACE.”

    I remember one of the long-forgotten newstand magazines from the ’90’s that had, on it’s front cover, a picture of a woman and a man and the blurb, “They’re the sexiest athletes in the world–and they’re sleeping together.” Left out, but obvious, was “Take THAT, you prudes!”

    Now, the same blurb could have been made a quarter century earlier for Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors. (Being a straight man, I don’t personally consider Connors “sexy,” but I expect many women might go for his blue-collar appeal. And yes, I did think Chris Evert was beautiful). But it wasn’t, and it probably would have gotten a great deal of ridicule if it had appeared then.

    So what was the change? Contrary to what some conservatives might think, it wasn’t the “breakdown of morals.” Morals were actually MUCH looser in the early ’70’s than in the time of that headline. What HAD changed was that the Manhattan set was increasingly defining itself in sexual terms, and in a very exclusive way. If that headline HAD appeared in regards to Evert and Connors, the subtext would have been, “So why don’t you have sex too?” When it did appear, the subtext was, “Fuck you. We sexy Manhattan liberals are getting laid and you’re not. And we’re coming after your lame asexual lifestyle and we’re going to ruin it.”

    In retrospect, this was a hint at what was to come. At the time, the Manhattan lifestyle seemed to be doing just fine: crime was down (even if a GOP mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, was responsible), and the Democrat president was presiding over a booming economy. So it was kind of telling that they were already on the defensive.

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    1. Yes, flaunting sex is an adolescent ploy. For publishers it is being “edgy” without having to be, you know, edgy.

      REAL edginess is in subverting the dominant paradigm. It is NOT “chicks with dicks” nor is it guys with feelings. Edgy is complex characters who comply with their own internal logic. Edgy requires talent and skill. Edgy involves writing a guy who is a real guy in such way that a gal can understand how he operates, and writing a female (not a guy’s idea of how he’d behave if he had ladyparts) who is whole and has integrity, who female readers can imagine going on a pub crawl with and about whom guys can say: That’s my sister!

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    2. I think it has to do with a perpetual adolescence for a certain set, too. I DO think that a lot of the sex is driven by the publishers, because they think it’s ALL they have to bring readers in. They’re flailing. OTOH there will be “spicy” stuff, and that’s fine, when you’re in the mood. There will probably — though — be “sweet” stuff too. WHY does anyone think Amish romances got so big a few years ago? (And no, that’s not a joke.)

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  14. About girl-on-girl pictures: hetereo Guys do not find much interest in looking at a nekkid man when they could be looking at a second nekkid woman. Quite simple.

    Similarly, a certain category of women probably fantasizes about a guy with whom she can share girlish twittering, a BFF with male appurtenances.

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    1. It’s not just about the nekkid man. It’s also about the perceived exclusion. It’s *another man* having sex with that woman.

      Note that men do read the abovementioned porno westerns. In those books, the overall western macho setting gets them to identify with the hero, so that it isn’t “another” man with the woman.

      Similarly, girl-girl porn generally only works for men if the women are presumed to be basically straight. In that case, they are trampy women who will do anything (including the viewer). Men don’t usually go for storylines in which both women are committed lesbians.

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        1. Is this the appropriate place to quote Bull Durham? “[A] guy’ll listen to anything if he thinks it’s foreplay”?

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    2. Yes, but that’s mostly heterosexual romances (a LOT of them.) The guy on guy I suspect is activated by eliminating rivals, just like the girl on girl for guys. It’s “my fantasy has no girl, except me as a voyeur.” There have been studies made, and the fantasies do run that way. go figure.

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  15. Yeah, agree with everything here. So much to comment on here.

    Does sex sell, or is it sexual tension? It’s the latter that works for me. I love Heyer, and Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books of all time, and I love a good romance as part of a larger story. But from what I can tell with a lot of modern romances (which is very second hand, since I don’t read straight romance, but which a friend who does confirms) is that they don’t make the reader fall in love with the hero. It’s as if all they think all they need to do is wave a gorgeous man with a great set of abs at the audience and we’re there. Well, I can tell you, I never fell in love with a fictional male because of his looks (or a real one, either, for that matter).

    As for sex itself, I find sex can overwhelm everything else in the story, so unless you’re writing a romance, and sex is the culmination of all the tension, it’s better to keep it out. If you have a meaningful scene, and all the meaningful tension beforehand, it takes over everything else. If you don’t have the build-up and all beforehand, you just have meaningless bodies banging each other, and I’ll skim on to the next scene. If I don’t care about it, it means nothing.

    But this is me. I’m a hard sell on romances and don’t care for them, though I respect the genre and really like the romance authors I’ve met. Romance, as a selling genre, is the giant in the room, especially in ebooks, so I’m not the best person to ask.

    And yeah, anything involving pain turns me off completely. Psychological pain and control can intrigue me. Physical pain is definitely squicky – and unless it’s meant to be squicky and awful and there’s a good dramatic reason for it, like we’re supposed to hate this person (in which case, I just want a hint that it’s happening and then please move on), otherwise, yeah, I’m through with that story. And yes, same with children, or helpless animals.

    And yes, as a straight female, women don’t turn me on at all. Men do. That’s how I’m wired. If you’re wired differently, I’m fine with that – I won’t expect you to get excited by men, and you should expect me not to. Women/women romances don’t do a thing for me – though I’m all for the ones I know (I’m very happy when someone I like finds someone they love, but that’s because I like my friends to be happy. I’m certainly not imagining anyone’s sex life, gay or straight).

    I didn’t like the Willow lesbian thing, either – it wasn’t true to the existing character I knew from the previous seasons – I miss geeky unsure Willow. But more than that, there was always this leering attitude to her relationship with Tara (who I actually liked, once she was allowed to become a real person, and will never forgive Joss Whedon for killing her off). But as an occasional fanfic reader, it was always apparent to me that women liked m/m slash (“slash” used to only refer to the “/” between the two participants in the romance fic, which could be any gender. I didn’t read it much of it beyond curiosity, because, as a friend put it, there’s nothing worse than bad porn, but I was amused by the ads for it. My favorite was “everyone/everyone.”) I always put it down to the fact that the only interesting characters back then were males, and the most interesting relationships were between the male characters. I have to laugh at your reaction to the explicit stuff, that was exactly how I felt.

    On the visual vs story – I heard someone say men fall in love with their eyes and women fall in love with their ears, which backs this up.

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    1. Tension, yes; it is the build-up that matters. By the time that train enters the tunnel in North By Northwest the audience is crying for relief.

      It occurs that this may be part of the difference between visual and written porn: visual has (essentially) no foreplay, it’s all right there, while written builds up to an ending.

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    2. Madeleine Hunter makes you fall in love with the guy, and has complex women. At least some of her books. (I haven’t read all of them.) As does Lisa Kleypas, though I find 99% of her opinions on the world, society and politics puerile. She tells a good story, so I’ll read her.

      BTW What bothers me about women in romance is not the helplessness ( a lot of them aren’t, these days) it’s the “Token empowerment.” This woman might be melting in the guy’s arms, etc, but she will at the last minute deny him, to show she’s “empowered” — this falls under what Baen publisher Toni Weisskopf calls “Character does stupid things” and now that I can see it, it ANNOYS me. It’s okay if they give her a reason to do that, but most of the time they don’t bother. She just wants her independence or IN THE REGENCY she values her “career” as a teacher or governess (both of which were at best subsistence.) It’s so annoying.

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  16. Finally had my second cup of coffee, and awake enough to comment. Another of the “peaceful female planet” stories was “Houston, Houston, do you read?” by James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon). It was ok, but not quite totally believable.

    There’s a little sex (and a lot of romance) in all my books — almost ALWAYS man/woman reactions. Of course, my wife and I celebrated our 46th wedding anniversary back in February, so I guess I’m a bit of a romantic. Usually there’s sexual tension, and some problem with the romance/encounter/marriage/relationship. That’s just plot. People meet, fall in love, get married, have kids, have grandkids, and go through life. There are very few of us that don’t experience problems both in our relationships and in our lives. Why shouldn’t fictional characters? They’re not exempt. As one of my high school teachers taught us waaayyy back in the early 1960’s, “they fall in love, get married, and live happily every after — with a few problems.” Sometimes the problems provide a plot twist, sometimes they can enhance the believability of the character, and frequently make the story itself a lot more realistic.

    I have one of my novels where the main character is a young woman who has to grow up, not necessarily fast, but under a lot of pressure. I’m not sure how well I’ve done with that character. It’s the only one of my books where I can’t judge how well I’ve written it myself.

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  17. I think we are living in a world that has lost subtlety.

    For various reasons I ended up as one of two non-jocks in the jock section of freshman English at college. That year the duty to teach the class fell to a most proper older women whose specialty was known to be Victorian poetry.

    After the first week we went back to teach sentence and paragraph structure. (What in the world have they been teaching you all these years?!?) We then commenced to take on Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. (Why we were reading a translated French novel for freshman English was never explained.)

    The teacher was getting more and more frustrated by the majority of the class. One day she started to ask pointed questions. ‘And what do you think they were doing?’ My jock classmates looked dully back at her. ‘And what of the naked arm?’ Nothing. Finally she lost it. ‘Women did not wear sleeveless day dresses in those days. Do I have to spell it out with pictures and four letter words. They were f**k*ng!’ Jaws dropped around the room.

    The next day every one of those jocks had read the section of the book in question. And they still didn’t get it. Maybe they did need pictures.

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    1. LOL – I remember, back in high school, reading Canterbury Tales. The teachers all made a big point of telling everyone that we would be reading only THESE stories in class, but there were several others that they weren’t allowed to teach, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. So, of course, every kid, even the non-readers, was carrying the book everywhere, looking for the dirty stories. ^_^

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    2. This reminds me of taking an English lit class on Noir movies and literature. We saw a scene where the couple were kissing and then it cuts to both of them on the bed smoking (fully clothes, I add). The instructor asked us what happened. I was laughing by this time because the rest of the class had no idea. I was almost 20-25 years older than most of the class. And yes, they just had sex. The sharing a smoke afterwards was the clue. (I think there was a sunset or something too…)

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    3. About twenty years ago PBS did a tribute to movie music and dance, with John Williams as the host. Anyway, one segment was about a dance number in a vaguely Middle-Eastern setting romance/adventure film, and Williams chatted with the choreographer. It was, more or less, a slow, accelerating cross between a tango and a belly dance, after which the guy fell asleep on some cushions and the woman left. At the time the choreographer said they were panicked because the scene might not make the censorship standards – too explicit! It was obvious (to the dancers and choreographer) what they were supposed to be simulating. All the censor said was “lovely dancing” and they got away with it. The man and Williams laughed at it, looking back. A modern audience might miss the cues completely, given what little I’ve seen in recent movies.

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  18. As we’ve spoken briefly about this very thing, you know I was nodding all the way through, with a “hell yes!” from time to time. (Oh, Willow… I admit, I’ve taken a break from the series on Netflix and the relationship isn’t official yet. Though I guess part of my squick with that particular pairing is how incomplete Willow’s girlfriend is… or at least starts out? Like I said, I stopped watching for awhile when the other Slayer was in the boxcar, leaving town. But, yeah, the reason why it bothers me isn’t that it’s girl/girl, but that Willow is more or less a “complete” person and the girlfriend at least seems vastly emotionally immature. Soo it sort of feels like… well, like Willow would be training her mate, not finding her Someone.)

    Also – whenever I read these tropes that people hate, I always want to see if I can make something I enjoy writing and others might enjoy reading from it. I don’t know if I could really enjoy writing a Peaceful All Girls Planet trope, so I’d have to twist it in a way I’d have fun with it – but then it might not end up the trope and so I’ve failed the challenge. xD

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  19. Sex in a story is fine…when it enhances the story. However, it’s too often thrown in simply for spice. I love Harry Turtledove’s books, but he throws it in a lot and I end up skipping several pages because it feels more like filler material than anything that advances the plot.

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      1. I think you will admit that The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress would have been much improved by a twenty page description of Manny’s & Wyoh’s wedding night. ;-)

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        1. Why? Because he has lots of interchangeable prosthetic parts for that missing hand?

          (Ducking, running, zigging and zagging )

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  20. Just had a wicked-bad idea for a book chock-full of sex, with enough plot twists to drive a grown reader insane: a male prostitute in a multi-species “house of ill repute”. The guy isn’t there for gay sex, but to satisfy the needs of the house’s female clientele. He’s one of several, including one that swings both ways. He’s also a spy for the local government. Just to make life more complicated for him, a group of religious fanatics are trying to kill ALL prostitutes, everywhere. The religious fanatics are financing a local rebel group that wants to end contact with other worlds, while the local religious establishment backs the current government. Oh, and a group of local bad boys are trying to force everyone in the house into working ONLY for them. Definitely something to think about … 8^)

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    1. Are you a time traveler or am I? I SWEAR I have read a story which had several of those elements in it, including the male prostitute in the multi-species brothel, but I have no idea where or when, or even whether it was in a book or a magazine.

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      1. or maybe you are thinking about the one male brothel working in Nevada who couldn’t get a client because females don’t have to go to brothels to get sex… yes, it is a true story. The brothel kept the guy (not for gay sex) for about six months before they admitted that catering to the female population didn’t work.

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        2. More likely I’m mish-mashing multiple stories together, like one with a character who works well with multiple species, one in another story who is a gigolo, maybe a couple of others.

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        3. Somehow I am sure there is an EEOC diversity story in there somewhere. Keith Laumer would have slain with a setup like that.

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      2. Spider Robinson’s Lady Callahan stories would have similar themes. They are avalable on webscriptions if you want a sample.

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  21. What’s really funny is that I come up with three or four ideas like that EVERY DAY. I write down some of them, but others come to me at inconvenient times, and I forget them by the time I get to my desk. I also have this HUGE urge to write a book in someone else’s universe. I know that’s a no-no, so I restrain myself, but only just.

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    1. I so want to write in Bujold’s five god universe… I get ideas all of the time… but so far, I have kept my mind busy with other things— MIKE

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        1. Oh yea – PERN – would be fun too… Dragons sunning on the rocks… they are starting to get smaller because they don’t need to be used anymore and then another RED star appears- bang – a comet maybe?
          *trying to slap my mind

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