As a child, when I used to color pictures, I would weave tales about the crayons in my crayon box. One of the first things I did when I learned how to string letters together to write words was to write a poem. I still have it, along with all the short stories I used to write, loads more poetry, and Young Author’s Contest entries I put together. In college, I took a creative writing class and other seminars. Writing grew up with me as I became an adult and began to learn about my craft.
When I was a senior in high school, we read a book about a woman who had an affair. We’d read a section and come in to talk about it the next day in class. One day, I was quite stunned to find out that the woman had had sex. Because it sure didn’t read like that to me.
I read a lot of romances at that time, and I wasn’t fond of some of them because they left so much to the imagination. I didn’t want things left to the imagination. If the couple had sex, I wanted to know it! I didn’t want to guess. I just read a contemporary romance last month, and I’m still not sure they really went “all the way” or not in a sex scene. And that maddens me. I also feel that a sexual relationship is such a big part of romance, of the developing bond, that it needs to be explored.
A few years ago, I was still writing, but not particularly finding my niche in any genre I was attempting. It didn’t click. I had taken a long break from reading romances, one reason being because I was tired of the annoyances cited above. Over a weekend at the beach, I read four or five romances on a whim. I remembered how much I loved the relationship development between a man and a woman, what a wonderful precious thing I thought it was. And I said, “I can write this!” I went back and wrote a romance novel, which stills needs lot of craft work, and also revamped a vampire thriller I had written, revving up the romance in it.
Going back to reading romances, I discovered during my break, they’d gotten a lot more explicit, a lot hotter than the ones I’d been reading. The current buzz is, “Not your mother’s romance novels”, and I’m glad. I was and still am in heaven reading erotic romances and those classed as sensual.
When I turned to romance writing, I wasn’t about to do the things that frustrated me most reading. I wasn’t about to stop at the bedroom door or make it unclear through word or action what the couple was doing. My sex scenes are honest. There’s no mystery about what’s being done. I want each sexual scene to convey the impact to the relationship and also to each person, because that’s what I love about romance, the impacts of the growing bond. And for me, that best happens when the bedroom door is open, when all parts of the relationship are layed bare, from emotional to sexual.
And that’s how I came to write erotic romance.
Mechele Armstrong writes romance with bite, http://www.mechelearmstrong.com and co-writes as Melany Logen, where the future’s never been so sexy http://www.melanylogen.com