Vixenwriter

I’m having a really interesting discussion with several authors at Romance Divas about condom use in contemporary erotic romance.

My personal belief as an author and also as a reader is that it’s something that should be included in contemporaries, if not, an explanation of why not should be there.

Now you don’t have to put in a big thing every sex scene, just something that lets the reader know even once at the beginning of the book, that condoms are being used is enough. In Giving Chase there’s a point when Kyle and Maggie have been together for many months and they’re living together and both have been tested for STDs that they stop using condoms and I mention that.

I know it’s fiction but with contemporararies there are real life rules that IMO, shouldn’t be ignored. I can’t have my heroine swallow poison and not get sick or eat a nail either. For me, AIDS and STDs are a big enough tragedy in real life I’d feel irresponsible not to have condoms in my books.

Some folks feel like it takes away from the fantasy to use condoms and that writing in condoms is giving in to some kind of pressure to be responsible for readers’ choices.

In paranormals, I’m freed of this, I can explain away STDs and pregnancy, which is why they’re so much fun, but contemporaries are grounded in a certain level of reality that I find inescapable. I think this is especially the case with my erotics.

what do you all think?

This weekend just flew by! I got soooo much writing done on Saturday, my best writing day ever, 9500 words done on Taking Chase! I’m now 45K words - about 20K left go to although this one might edge toward 70K.

Had lunch yesterday with another Romance Diva, Lacy Danes and it was a blast. It’s nice to have folks in the area that are also writers and moms - she’s got FOUR books coming out from Aprodesia between April of next year and the end of 2008 and she told me about them - historical paranormals! I can’t wait to read them.

Let’s see, whate else? Hmm, oh, I’ll be at Novelspotters tomorrow with the Samhellions chit chatting. My time is noon eastern/9 am pacific. I may post a sneaky peek of Taking Chase. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Novelspotters/

Megan, Anya and I are holding court over at the Ecatareader chat all day on Thursday! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CataNetwork-Readers/ Come by, hang out, chat, win stuff, read excerpts. The usual.

Oh and on June 25th I’m having a LM Day at EC to celebrate the upcoming release of Vengeance Due! I’ll be there from 8 am pacific/11 eastern until 1 pacific/4 eastern. Please come and join me! I’m also doing another day on August 14 all day for part II!

Saturday I’m going to see Pearl Jam, oh yes I am! Woooooot! Then out and about getting ready for family vacation and solo vacation time and then back home! whew!

Anyone do anything fun this weekend?

Lauren

Is it wrong of me to be amused that one of the search terms that brought someone here was “ass whore?”

If so, I don’t want to be right. Cause really, I’m snickering now. The “sister seduction” search last week was creepy enough, but “ass whore” ahh, comedy gold.

Taking Chase:

35,000 / 65,000 (53.8%)

So I finished writing the first big sex scene for Cassie and Shane and well, it led into another one inside the house, in front of the mirrored doors in his closet. I think sex is done for now and there’s some more revelation coming up soon.

Vengeance Due is coming out August 2! The cover is up on the EC coming soon page! Yay. I love that point, it begins to feel real when your cover shows up on the site. I’m going to have a big List Mom Party on August 15 (as I’ll be on vacation with my husband on the 2nd) and in the days approaching the 2nd, look for some fun contests at my loop, website and here.

My print galley for Giving Chase arrived yesterday. I need to look it over this weekend and turn it around. Chrissy is on the ball! I don’t know when the woman gets any time to sleep.

Oh, and just a tad of “nanny nanny boo boo” I’ve been fortunate enough to have critted Megan Hart’s three books for Spice. I just finished the last chapter of the last book, Perfect, yesterday. People, the women kicks ass. I’ve loved Megan’s writing for a while now, but she really hits it out of the ball park with these books. When they hit the stores next year, be sure to run out and snap them up. The first one comes out in January - Dirty, and the cover is just gorgeous and the writing is amazing.

And more on the fabulous writing front, I’ve also been critting Anya Bast’s, Witch Fire, her first Berkley book and boys and girls - it’s amazing too. Jack, whooo! Is Jack ever hot. It’s good stuff and I’ve only seen two chapters so far. I’m addicted. This is a summer release for 07 so don’t forget. Oh, that’s all right, I’ll remind you.

Okay, my marvelous husband is home from a very long business trip so I’m off. Have a great Saturday!!

D’you know how some people cannot say anything positive to save their lives? Ugh. I know someone like this. She’s not someone I’d say was a friend but I swear that the only comments she ever makes to me are negative. I won’t hear a peep for months and then she’ll swoop in to deliver some odd backhanded compliment - on my author pictures she made a comment about how she liked more makeup in pictures and some other stuff that was basically a burn but I was like, “ooookay, well thanks then” and then, okay, I love shoes. If you’ve read my books you’ll probably know that I love lingerie and shoes. I’m a shoe whore, I admit it. So anyway, I posted pictures of my newest shoes because I’m sick that way and she made this odd comment aboud how they looked great with pants but she wouldn’t buy them because the strap took away from the long leg effect.

Now, I’m not Miss Manners or anything, but I do understand some basic rules about posting to people when they put up pictures of something shiny they just bought. If you think something is ugly, you just don’t comment. Unless you’re a good friend and you can IM your friend and find some way of telling her the shorts make her ass look gigantic or the dress is slutty, whatever. But you don’t make critical comments to someone you don’t really know. It’s not about you and frankly, I don’t care what you would buy, they’re my shoes, I bought them.

LOL, god, I’m bitchy.

On to something nicer. The ever so wonderful Ciar has a really fun thing at her blog and I am totally going to rip it off and use it here, because I think it’s wonderful (and it’s her idea, I want to give her full credit here)

SHOW YOUR LOVE - Essentially the gist is this: Is there someone(s) that deserves your thanks, your love or a kind word for something they’ve done for you? A crit partner, agent, editor, friend, spouse? If so, lay it on me. Tell them here and let them know.

Loribelle at Romance Divas gives Giving Chase 4 1/2 kisses and says in part: As usual Lauren Dane delivers an entertaining, fast-paced, and hot story in an emotionally charged tale of two people coming together not just for steamy sex, but friendship and respect. Maggie is sweetly independent and really comes into her own, and Kyle is more than willing to go along for the ride. The rest of the Chase family is fantastic. I’m already addicted to this series!

Thank you, Loribelle!

I don’t often talk about craft type stuff but today I’m gonna… This may be of no interest to anyone but I’m writing it anyway. Just a warning up front…

I’m writing the first major sex scene between Cassie and Shane in Taking Chase. This is a very difficult scene to write. Not because I don’t like to write sex, I do. But because of who these people are.

Cassie was in an abusive relationship for four years, the last two of which involved serious physical control/abuse and some forced sex/rape. She finally left and divorced him but after the divorce was final he found her and shattered the bones in several of her fingers with a hammer (she was a vascular surgeon) and then with the broken handle, stabbed her fourteen times in the back and neck, nearly killing her.

This was all a year before you meet her and there’s been a coma, major hospital time, the loss of her career, a trial and he skipped bail between the judgment and sentencing. So essentially he’s out there and she’s on the run.

ANYWAY, so it’s been a year and she’s been sort of seeing Shane for about two months, seriously for a few weeks and they’re going to have sex. There’s been a sexual interlude between them once before, and she trusts him but her issues are still there - A) she hasn’t told him about the last attack and she’s ashamed of the scars and doesn’t want him to see them; and B) she was married to a man who had pretty much devastated her self esteem to the point where she has body image issues.

There’ll be a “reveal” about the last attack in a few more scenes but he can’t see the scars just yet, which sort of plays into the whole hesitancy on her part of him seeing her.

So they’re outside at night, in a garden in the moonlight and she’s still got a camisole on. I’m going to have her keep it on. It buttons down the front so he’ll open it that way and see her breasts. I’m taking it slow, writing the scene bit by bit because while she’s broken, I don’t want her to be irreparably so. She’s a survivor. It’s just a different way to write sex for me because my heroes generally tend to be, uh, big dominant men. And he’s a very big man but he’s being gentle for her.

There’s a line here, this scene is one of those sex scenes that is way more than just hot sex but a big moment of revelation for both people. He’s been a casual sex man and she’s anything but casual. He’s going to realize many things in this scene, probably more than she will.

Anyway, this is today’s writing challenge. I like this kind of thing because not all books are the same, not all women feel the same comfort level with their bodies and with sex and some people have wounds in their past that make them approach intimacy differently.

Hey Campers! So my house went from six people to two this morning when my parents left with my boys. I miss them already. Goodness is my house quiet. Moo is napping now and I don’t know if it’s been so quiet in this house during the day in a very long time. I was surprised by how sad I was when they drove away. I couldn’t shout, “I love you” after I told them and smooched them into the car because I didn’t want them to see me cry as they drove away. But once inside I let it go. Sheesh, I’m excited for them to go but still, it’s hard to see my babies leave, even for just a little while.

Anya’s Tempted By Two released from Ellora’s Cave today! If you don’t have it yet, you should!

I also saw that Bachelor #4 from the fabulous Megan Hart has been tearing up the reviews lately. Congrats, Sparkles.

It’s cold and rainy here today. Odd summer this year but thank goodness not a whole lot of really hot days. I hate the heat!

I’m about at the halfway point for Taking Chase. I didn’t get much done last night. The boys were bouncing off the walls excited about leaving with my parents and Moo split her lip open when she fell holding the lid to a sticker container that she stole from her brothers so she was clingy. I’m expecting a long nap today because of that.

Anyway, Cassie and Shane are going to really have sex for the first time but he won’t see the scars on her back yet. I’m trying to figure out how to do that in a believable way. She’s got issues about her body anyway so she may leave her camisole on. They’re outside as it is, I think there may be some lovely action on a blanket under the moon. Heh.

I have a stack of books three feet high that I need to read. Sigh. They call to me! I read one really fun Blaze (romantic suspense by Jo Leigh called Closer) and another fun and hot one by Alison Kent (Kiss and Makeup) - basically, I love both Leigh and Kent’s books and those are most of the Blazes I read. I tried a new author but I was not impressed. There are a few others that I quite enjoy - Isabel Sharpe is one. Some others are on my TBR list but I’ve read them in other lines and liked them too. I’m working on an outline for a romantic suspense Blaze. I think I can do the voice well, we’ll see after I finish Taking Chase and Battlefront.

This morning I spent nearly two hours at the Department of Licensing to get a new driver’s license. My two year old got into my wallet and while I managed to track down all of my credit cards, etc, I could not find my license.

So I head down there first thing because the website said their busy times were afternoons. I walk in and it’s standing room only. I get #30 and it’s on #14. But there are also numbers in the 200’s and the 600’s.

I wanted to plot and I had a book and a pad but it was too chaotic. Plus, people talk to me. Doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing, people talk to me. I don’t know why, I’m really not that nice a person. Still, I had a conversation with a weepy mom with her 16 year old getting her driver’s license, an elderly woman who complained about “foreigners” but was otherwise delightful and two men who kept making small talk about how long it was taking. Sigh. One was nice enough, one of those people who talks to everyone, the other shut up after I made sure to show my wedding ring a few times as I sat there.

I understand that it wasn’t the fault of the employees there. I really wanted to turn around and smack the crap out of the guy behind me who kept yelling, “Our tax dollars at work!” over and over like he had a tic or something. I mean, yeah, I was frustrated, but I can’t imagine what it’s like to have to work at the DOL, I’m not gonna add to their misery. And so I just gave up hope as I sat there, just glad my kids weren’t with me.

I envision hell as the DOL.

Anyway, the new picture looks better than the old one taken about two years ago when I was eight months pregnant and a giant ball of pissed off, sweaty pregnant woman.

Oh and Anya Bast’s Tempted By Two releases tomorrow from Ellora’s Cave. Don’t miss it!

Yeah, Monday again. I thought I’d have more time today but Ms. M stole my driver’s license and I must go and deal with a replacement, my middle kiddo has an eye infection and I had to pick up medication for my oldest who is going to his grandparents for several weeks. So I’m running around and dealing with stuff and doing laundry and not getting as much writing done as I’d like although I am consistently putting out 3K words a day, which is very nice.

I got two more excellent reviews of Sudden Desire today!

4 1/2 stars from Contessa at Romance Junkies: Lauren Dane has crafted a magnificent and highly erotic summer-time fun read with SUDDEN DESIRE. My attention was instantly absorbed from the start with Tess’s explosive and much deserved actions towards Trevor. Here is a woman after my own heart. A person can only be pushed so far before she/he comes out fighting. I can certainly say that I would not have taken that much attitude for as long as Tess did. Trevor needed to be knocked down a peg or two. But, what surprised me the most was how much my attitude changed toward Trevor once he turned on his charm - no wonder he was so popular with the ladies. The sexual encounters between Tess and Trevor were scorching-hot and deliciously passionate. SUDDEN DESIRE is a great, short novel to enjoy on a hot summer night.

And 4 cups from Susan at Coffeetime Romance: Ms. Dane is one of my favorite authors and this terrific story is another example of why I enjoy her work so much. The characters are fascinating and easily believable. I like a good strong heroine and Tess is definitely that. I recommend Sudden Desire to anyone who likes a good solid story with plenty of smoking hot sex.

Not a bad way to start the week, eh?

Okay, I think I’ll be done with Taking Chase by the end of the month! Yay! Then on to Battlefront, which I hope to have done by the end of August and then it’s on to some stuff I’m working on for NY - a romantic suspense I’m targeting at Blaze and something I may target at the new Nocturne line. Cause I’m just gonna keep hitting until someone bites!

How was everyone’s weekend?

Lauren