Favourite romance/erotica genres

I don't write or read romance erotica, although it appears most of the writers here have it as primary erotica focus or market.

Not to hijack the discussion, but might we expand the replies to include all erotica subgenres rather than only romance erotica?

If not, that's fine, too. It's not my thread, after all.

Maryn

I also like dark/horror and contemporary, sometimes with a dash of plausible paranormal. (If he really knew what I was thinking, he'd do this...). Lots of unconventional relationships as well, like full-time S/m and menage.

Maryn

I cannot peddle any present day erotica worth squat, but then I target women and especially those women reading that billion a year worth of mainstream romance novels so.....

That means the historicals do well but what I really like seeing is the newer (last few years) upsurge in sales of SF and Future erotica or romance. That is my favorite. I like writing it and reading it.

I think vampires is getting close to being over done, but I would like to try a Viking or Pirate erotica. It is just the Futures, Regencys, and Medievals are selling pretty well now so it is hard to stop and take a chance on Viking or Pirate.

Takes me back to those first Pirate romances I read so long ago.. Et oh, showing my age.

When I do write these days, it can be anything at all. It all depends what springs to mind. I do write a fair % of stories with a dominant or submissive tone, but I've also done romantic poetry and noir erotica.

More important, I find, is the methods under which I write. I do write a lot of short stories, because I find my time is fairly limited so I need to make best use of the fresh idea that might be buzzing round in my head. It's not the first time I've headed back to work with an inspiration that came from nowhere while at lunch and typing madly to get it down before it disappears!

I have a few ideas for novel/novella stories that I'd love to develop someday.

Paranormal, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Thriller. I do have a hard time writing anything without a strong intricate story and lots of romance. I keep trying to work on short and steamy pieces for more "skin" type mags and am just not cutting it. So, romantica/ erotica with another sub-genre tossed in, it is!

There really are 31 flavors!

Although I read a wide range of fiction, I think I'll keep my personal erotic tastes to myself for the time being.

Writing-wise, I gravitate toward contemporary settings with mature, non-formulaic, characters--men and women past the insecurities of youth, in tune with their sexual natures and able to articulate their needs once they're between the sheets. Or on the floor, or up against a wall, or in a party's unlocked bathroom, or with forest leaves crunching beneath them...

Sorry, my muse is set on scouting locations this fine a.m.

For what it's worth, I generally prefer writing contemporary, but I'll usually read contemporary or historical. I liked vampire/werewolf for a while, but my tastes change almost as much as my mood.

I have only skimmed the surface of the subject, but skimmed for thirty years. The settings (space and science, fangs, beasts as directed as real men, nursie, horses and corsets, shamans) are all curtains that open up to explore libido. The value of these settings is the root of erotica itself. The luring of ourselves (and our readers) outside the boundries of daily life. No one plays bridge with a unicorn or vampire. They are excuses, pass-ports, to venture into the forbidden rarely (if ever) raised over a bridge game.

The problem is it takes a very skilled writer to do this convincingly. So often the background of space/time/other world is a laughable cobble job of stage props and nothing more...to reveal perversions of contemporary mores. That includes no one here I hastily and happily declare.

That is why I read and write contempory. The potential is limitless. The setting is easy to create and is part and parcel of the motivations of every character. In real time. In hum-drum daily living. For me, the erotic lure a step away from these conventional restrictions is the most compelling and convincing of all.

To carry it further, I just remembered a short novel published many years ago that was a literary sensation. "Bear," by Mariam Engels (I think was her name.) It was published by Random House or Knopf, one of the biggies. It was about a normally experienced woman who went to live alone in a cabin on an island in a lake in Canada. The owner had a docile bear chained to a stake and sleeping in a near-by log crib. Yes, the woman has intercourse with the bear. But the progress to that was literary genius and erotica of the purest type. The irrestible, inevitable lure to the forbidden, but possible. And she was contemporary woman. In fact, I think she was your run of the mill librarian. (Don't trust my memory.)

Reviewers were hard put to explain why this story was so damn good. The mere idea was mind boggling. The path and resolution was utterly believeable. There was no moral, psychiatric, social judgement available to place on the fictional woman or the author. Not any that an intellectual mind could accept. She out-flanked them all. The author gave us a lightening flash of literary genius of the highest rank. The reader could only marvel. Find it, read it, put it in your library.