So, this is my clean rant on 'dirty' books.

Is anyone else following the dialogue in the other Town Square™ about there being too much sex in books?

There's so much vitriol directed at the steamy romance genre and erotica. We who write what some call smut are writing for our audience. I love my readers. Shaming someone for enjoying a sexy book as a welcome distraction from the chaos of everyday life seems like a really poor use of time. (more...)

Telling any writer to stick to 'clean' romance (I wince at that term) is asking them to censor themselves. It's also preposterous.

Romance is never 'clean,' if you're doing it right. At the very least, you're likely to get grass stains on the hem of your pantaloons while riding your tandem bike with your beloved. Or that ice cream cone might drip a little on your crisp white linen blouse. Love is a delicious, dirty, sticky thing. (more...)

But that's not what's behind all of this. There has always been a push to regulate and censor love. War is okay. Murder is fine. Gore is welcome. Love... No.

The romance genre endures, despite this, as it has for centuries. One of my favorite classic smutty authors is Shakespeare and the Bible is full of awkward love and sex. So I roll my eyes at all the pearl-clutching. (more...)

The real reason for this complaint is that we who write steam and erotica are the first easy entry to more stringent censorship of other so-called 'taboo' topics.

Humanity is an odd beast, finding shame in the means of its procreation. Besides, sex is about so much more than reproduction. It's the expression of our identity. It's a connection to another being on a level words can barely express.

And that's the key thing here. (more...)