Cartoonist Claire Folkman reports on why romance is a crucial element to her personality.
Then there’s this one, sent in by Shaina: An eBook Shopping Holiday Poem from Sheldon, who is sadly spot-on about the fast evolution of electronics.
And – oops – I completely forgot to mention this (blame pneumonia – I’m blaming it for everything this week!) but Penguin’s Project Paranormal, complete with really spiffy retro graphics, featured an extended interview with Marjorie M. Liu talking about the inspiration for her Maxine Kiss series, and a brief overview of the series itself. And me. In hot pink cowboy boots. Talking about stuff I’ve talked about recently here about paranormal popularity, and about the powah of the series. I also predict that faeries are the next trend – though I think I disagree with myself now. (Also, last time I wear a knee length skirt on camera while sitting on a very comfy, deep-set couch OMG. I kept waiting to see my own underwear).
And finally – a few days ago the Bad Sex award winners were announced. The finalists are all online for your reading (and screaming) pleasure. One of them contains the amazing phrase, “Meanwhile, down in Vaginaland….”
The winner was Jonathan Littell for his description inside The Kindly Ones, for a sex scene that included comparison of orgasm to spooning out the inside of a soft-boiled egg.
As Jane from DA pointed out, romance authors who write sex well never get enough credit because it’s far, far too easy to write sexual scenes that make you feel utterly bewildered. I read one this week that included a reference to the heroine’s “sweet muff” that is still befuddling me – though thankfully the hero didn’t say the words out loud.
What sex scenes have been memorable for you, for good or confusing reasons? And is it just me, or do some of the things heroes say in the course of talking dirty in romances (especially erotic romances) just crack you up? Somehow my brain always imagines a computer voice saying the words out loud, instead of a male voice, which automatically makes them hilarious.
Thanks, everyone—now I can read nothing but “Forsooth, she doth not bleed! Lucianna, you hath some ‘splainin’ to do!” novels for the next few weeks. December is now the official month of Uncorroborated Virginity.
Per the do-not-name-your-weiner discussion, I’ve never forgotten that scene in Forever where the “hero” announces his penis has a name. Was it Ralph, of all things? I can’t recall. Even at twelve, when I was bonkers with curiosity (and very likely had the “breasts of a twelve-year-old-girl”) I was totally oog’d out. Winkle-naming was always on my erstwhile do-not-date red flag list.
I also remember Judy Blume (well, the heroine) referring to a man’s head as a “silken mushroom” in Wifey. That’s very evocative (and clearly memorable), but fungus just doesn’t work for me when we’re waxing anatomical… Not to be confused with waxing your anatomicals.
@MaryKate: YES! That was it!
@Marie, you are apparently my romance twin! Though honestly, I like Eloisa James and always buy her books, mostly because they’re a light, enjoyable read. I agree with you on Coulter, there’s something I suppose about character development that allows you to really enjoy the books despite the ‘cream and angst’. I will always love Marcus and Duchess, I just, I can’t not.
I want to add to the list Julie Anne Long, specifically in “The Secret to Seduction”, the scene in the gallery between Rhys and Sabrina. HOT. But later a hairbrush was introduced and I was like, HOLD UP. Also I am very drawn to the work of Madeline Hunter, Laura Kinsale, Jo Goodman, Connie Brockway and Suzanne Enoch and echo Loretta Chase, Duran. Balogh’s “Slightly Dangerous” and “Slightly Scandalous” work for me in every possible way. Kinsale’s “Shadowheart” was such a conflict for me, because the idea of the pain was a turnoff but it just worked so beautifully for the characters that it ended up kind of a turn-on instead, and if that’s not the deft hand of a master I don’t know what is.
Julia Quinn, well, there’s a little of an eyeroll factor there. Kleypas is so hit and miss for me. Stephanie Laurens’ new book is so ridiculous in its sexual prose that I was too busy copyediting in my head to enjoy it. If she does not get those adjectives under control she will go the way of Anne Rice and no one should want that, ever.
Kleypas once wrote the phrase, “amorous, maurading mouth” and I laughed for days.
“Kleypas once wrote the phrase, “amorous, maurading mouth” and I laughed for days.”
Hee, that sounds like it should be put on a leash and taken out for walkies.
A lot of sex scenes could basically be cut from the books they’re in and replaced with a one-line “and then they had sex.” Those that can’t, where you’re getting character development or a pivotal moment in the development of their relationship, tend to be the best ones. You can make gratuitous sex awesome, too, but you have to have much better writing skills to do so.
One of the worst (published) sex scene lines I’ve encountered recently was in a Harlequin historical that I’ve forgotten the title and author of. The hero was going down on the heroine (his pov) and mentally compared the taste/texture to “clotted cream.”
Clotted cream is semi-solid and has lumps in it. Nothing with that texture should be emerging from your girlbits. (also, PSA to straight romance novelists: A woman’s hoo-haa, no matter how magical and glittery, does not taste like strawberries, cream, honey, or any other sweet desert-type food. Ask your husbands/boyfriends to corroborate this for you before you launch into long, flowery descriptions. Please.)
Also: Jean M. Auel. While not outright bad, her sex scenes are mind-numbingly repetitive and boring. “Jondalar’s huge organ entered Ayla like a bee sipping nectar from a flower,” or something similar appears at least three times in “Valley of the Horses.” And while the sex scenes in “Clan of the Cave Bear” aren’t ment to be sexy at all, I found them deeply confusing as a young teenager. Broud “makes the signal,” and Ayla “assumes the position,” and then “he enters her,” blah, blah, rapetiems, and it’s overwith, and exactly what position she’s assuming is never described. I have several friends who ended up with really bizarre ideas about what sex entailed as 11-13-year-olds based on that book.
I’ve also encountered too many eye-searingly bad sex scenes in fanfiction to even list, as well as a number of incredibly good ones. I don’t know if it’s still around, but years ago when I first gained access to the internet, there was a semi-infamous smutty fanfic full of unfortunate uses of passive voice (“the hand” did such and such, “the body” did so and so) wherein the author lost track of how many appendages two humans actually have and ended up with an extra, disembodied hand that didn’t seem to be attached to anyone in particular.
Good sex scenes:
Lisa Kleypas has already been mentioned about a zillion times, but I’ll mention her again. Also Suzanne Enoch, Emma Holly, the low-on-explicit-detail-but-still-lovely sex scenes in Alex Beechroft’s “False Colours,” and Jaqueline Carey’s Phedre-pov scenes in “Kushiel’s Dart.” And the scene in Loretta Chase’s “Lord of Scoundrels” where the hero unbuttons the heroine’s glove in public while speaking to her in sensuous Italian (I think he’s actually describing draimage ditches or something, just to prove a macho point that he can make anything sound sexy, but the scene is meltingly hot anyway). I also remember the sex scenes in Dianna Gabaldon’s “Outlander” as being very good, but that could be because I was about eleven/twelve at the time and they were thrillingly naughty and horizon-expanding (likewise “The Wolf and the Dove”—I somehow doubt that one would hold up to a re-reading now that I’m no longer 13).
@Elspeth Frankly, I can’t even think about Lord of Scoundrels without wanting to read it again. Between the glove and the lampost I just, man. I can’t deal.
I just finished Outlander and am just about to start the next, and as I haven’t been twelve in a long time I can confirm that they are very good. They somehow magically ride the line between explicit and not, I have no idea how she accomplished it. Really though, the sex in that book/series is so secondary to the awesome that is going on around it.
Huh. I actually liked the sex scenes between Michael and Francesca the best of all Julia Quinn’s sex scenes. Probably because I wasn’t distracted by mysterious internal hymens. I thought the scene on the table was hot.
Normally, I’m not all that into sex scenes anyway. I’m all for foreplay, and I’m into it until the moment of penetration, and then it just becomes a lot of thrusting and moaning. Yawn. I read somewhere that you should never write sex scenes unless they add something to the story – moving the plot, revealing the characters, etc. I happen to agree – there’s nothing worse than gratuitous, mediocre sex. This doesn’t have to limit the nookie either. I’ve read stories that were almost entirely sex that were fantastic, because the sex told the story.
I can honestly say that this is the first time I’ve seen personification applied to a condom.
I think that Lisa Kleypas’s love scenes are well done. My favorite is the first one between Cam and Amelia in Mine til Midnight.
shot53: what should happen to some of those authors.
Rosalind, I stand corrected—and very much surprised! Not that the members of the Privy Council are counsellors as well as councillors, but that the former is the customary spelling for their title. I am absolutely certain that I have seen the spelling ‘councillor’ used in this connection in perfectly respectable British sources, because I should have noticed if the other spelling were used, so I infer that I would not be the only Brit to be surprised.
Thank you for correcting and enlightening me. 🙂
No: no lumps. If you’ve had clotted cream that contained lumps, there was something wrong with it. It has a buttery surface crust, but the body of the cream has a very smooth, silky texture.
But I agree that it is an inappropriate analogy in the context.
No one’s mentioned Linda Howard yet? Older Linda Howard has some incredibly hot scenes (not so much the new ones). Dream Man – the courthouse scene…whoa. *fans herself* Also in Kill and Tell and Son of the Morning.
I will also always have a soft spot for Amanda Quick’s older ones, esp w/ the super-innocent heroines. Mistress made me laugh (in a good way) w/ the heroine’s utter shock at having made the hero come (she thought he was dying). Also Scandalous (I think? the one w/ the revenge plot and the study filled with Chinese dragons) w/ the light bondage. I first read them as a teen and they were just plain fun.
As for sexxxay…I don’t read much erotica, but a couple scenes in Emma Holly’s Fairyville just do it for me. A lot of Holly is too extreme for me, but these scenes I go back to again and again. Mmmm….
as for non-romance: second Lois McMaster Bujold’s Sharing Knife series, Dag and Fawn are so tender, while not being very explicit. You really feel the emotion.
spamword: square88. Why yes, I am still a square, why do you ask? and 88’s a lucky number…
cara davies, I think that for the hymen to be affected by horse riding you’d need to straddle the horse. but I’m not sure.
Slightly off topic, I remember a very wonderful conversation at the Semana Negra (a festival/conference for writers and pretty much everybody in Gijon, in Northern Spain) regarding “the best sex scenes never written” in Spanish literature. A bunch of writers started going through the (potentially) great sex scenes that were NOT able to make it past the censors pre-1900 in Spanish literature, and ended up suggesting an anthology of great sex scenes from classic works where they were left out. Some of the suggestions were Don Juan and Ines from Zorrilla’s Don Juan Tenorio, the leads in Pepita Jimenez, and La Regenta (“I mean, 800 pages about whether she does it, and then it’s one paragraph!” commented Elia Barcelo. “It can’t have been that good then.”) Given the spate of Pride and Prejudice “sequels” ranging from decent to eewww, I bet an anthology of “sex scenes left out of classic novels” would totally sell.
Back on topic, I know it’s a movie not a book, but I found the sex scene in John Duigan’s Flirting extremely sweet. (I was a little younger than the teenage protagonists when I first saw it, so I don’t know how it would hold up now, but I loved giving the name “Camus, C-A-M-U-S” to the hotel clerk.)
@CaraDavies – I’m a Kinsale fangirl, so I thought I would point out that she has a book in which the heroine is a virgin who did lose her hymen by riding horses astride – Uncertain Magic
I agree that the scenes in Lord of Scoundrels are hot (*fans self*). However, Dain’s internal monologue about his irrational . . . logistical concerns (?) just make me want to reach into the book, smack him upside the face, and yell.
(At which point, he would probably be stunned, trying to find a section in his personal dictionary for ‘madwoman’. 😀 )
One of my first sex scenes and still the best imho, is Valley of Horses by Jean M. Auel. I never read Clan of the Cave Bear because of the rape (saw the movie instead) but I wanted to know what happened to Ayla afterwards.
So here I am, fourteen and absorbed in learning about making bowls and hunting meat. Hm, I wonder if she’ll meet this Jondalar guy, oh they do meet that’s nice. Aw, they like each other, I’m glad. First Rights? Sounds nice and now ther-Oh MY GOD I THINK MY BOSOM IS HEAVING.
As far as bad sex scenes go, I can’t remember any that actually revolted me, but I hate the ones that are mechanical. When experienced authors write a sex scene because they’re contractually obligated to, not because they’re interested in doing so. Its like they’ve lost interest in the whole process of writing the book.
a couple of authors that I feel have lost it recently are Liz Carlyle and Loretta Chase. I’ve loved both authors in the past, but their recent books have left me cold.
Now having said that Carlyle and Chase have also given some great sex scenes. Carlyle in A Women Scorned and A Women of Virtue and Chase in Lord of Scoundrels and Mr. Impossible amongst others.
An friend of mine was really into the vampire romance novels. I picked one of hers up to skim through it. I can usually find the sex within a few flips. Not so with this one.
I couldn’t find it. So I went back a few chapters, thinking I had gone too far. A few more minutes of fruitless searching.
I was shocked to find that I had already read the sex scene several times.
It was so incredibly vague that it was only when the author slipped and the word ‘rod’ was put in there that I knew this wasn’t one of those muddled vampire bonding moments. They were going at it and I had no idea. Although going at it probably isn’t the right phrase. Maybe-sorta touching softly while Mr. Whiny Vampire protests, but they vaguely ‘make love.’ Or something.
I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed by the sheer level of confusion this author put me in, or to tell my friend to go buy a book of erotica and be done with it. She couldn’t have been reading that specific book for the storyline. There wasn’t one!