The longer that I write, the more interested I become in the creative process. It’s a fascinating business, and I’m as intrigued to hear where musicians and painters find inspiration as I am to learn where other authors get their ideas. Because I write for Blaze, my curiosity about the creative process takes some interesting turns.
For example, I spend a great deal of time thinking about what makes for compelling sex. Besides the obvious.
I mean, if we’re going to bill our books as “red-hot,” I want to carry my weight. So I devote creative energy to a) dissecting what makes for a successful love scene and b) how to re-create my own, implementing what I’ve learned while maintaining appeal unique to my characters.
Admit it. This sounds like fun homework, right? So here’s a little bit of what I’ve discovered.
Sex can be intriguing when it’s a game of power. This is why we love captive stories (and because I’m so very trainable, look for my
April release The Captive, coming to a store near you). There is a compelling dynamic between hero and heroine when one has power over the other, whether it’s physical, emotional or situational. The stowaway on a pirate ship is at the mercy of the captain. The ward of the rich duke is dependent on his will. The Viking’s captive is subject to his wishes. When the person in power is a villain, of course, the dynamic can have frightening consequences. But with the hero, the same situations are charged with high tension that can lead to very memorable love scenes.
Next, sex is hot when it’s forbidden. Maybe that’s obvious as you think back on the time you smuggled your high school boyfriend into the house while everyone else was asleep. But it’s an idea that’s important for the Blaze author to keep in mind as it’s not easy to create these situations with a modern heroine. First of all, a grown woman doesn’t have the same limits as the cheeky high school seductress. Second, contemporary women choose their own partners, so we don’t have the same restrictions our historical heroines encounter. In historicals, there are forbidden relationships between the duke and the groom’s daughter or between the Scotsman and the English lady. Think about how much steamy sensual tension those forbidden, clandestine meetings generate. Scenarios abound in historical where birth control wasn’t an option and the stakes were high for losing virginity. But a Blaze author must be more creative in finding forbidden relationships to capitalize on this.
I’ve got a few more ideas in mind that I’ll bring back next month. For now, I’d be curious to hear about a memorable love scene that’s either been a long time stand out for you or that you’ve read recently and it really perked up your day! I’m not asking for any great detail, just a particular moment whether it was the dressing room scene in Susan Elizabeth Philliips’ What I Did For Love or the first time Wrath showed up at Beth’s place in J.R. Ward’s Dark Lover. If you share a moment with me, I promise to put it to good intellectual use! I’ll also choose one random poster to win a copy of my Blaze Historical, The Captive.
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What stands out for me…and what I’ve read recently is the first love scene with Jamie and Claire in Outlander. With him being the virginal hero…it was interesting to see how Diana Gabaldon would write it. It was a great scene and I think she did a fantastic job they way Claire helped him along without demeaning him. Great scene!!!
So much to love about Outlander all the way around. I’ve met readers who say they don’t read romance but who adore this book!
I just finished reading Stephanie Tyler’s Navy SEAL trilogy, Hard To Hold, To Hot To Hold and Hold On Tight. So I have those scenes in my head. I really like the scenes between the characters who shouldnt be together for one reason or another, but are so drawn to each other that its explosive. Its like no matter how hard they try to stay away from each other, the chemistry between them is just to great. So I guess the forbidden is one of my favorite setups. Well have a great day!! (*)
Her SEALs are doing really well! When I think of characters who shouldn’t be together, I always thing of Thorn Birds as a classic example. Lots of tension there :-).
Hi Joanne,
Great cover for The Captive. I just love it. The 3 scenes that came to my mind first were the one in Pearl Cove by Elizabeth Lowell when they do it on the floor in that storage room. Then in Restless by Tori Carrington when they do it on the kitchen counter. Finally the scene in Good Time Girl by Candace Shuler where they do it outside the bar. 3 of my all time favorites
Funny you should bring up that particular Carrington series, Tammy. I actually was thinking of both the scene at Kyle’s house in Restless. It came off really deep and emotional for me (like tears in my eyes emotional), which was a great contrast to the bathroom scene earlier in the book, which was just crazy hot.
Another that book that comes to mind is Addicted to Love by Lori Wilde. The story was very lighthearted, but the first love scene is really intimate and tugs at your heartstrings because the hero has a prosthetic leg and he’s pretty self-conscious about it.
I know there are more, but those two are the first that come to mind. Great topic, Joanne, and I LOVE the cover for The Captive! Beautiful!
Thank you, Sally! I really love the cover too. And I figured the Blaze blog is always a good place to talk about love scenes :-). Love scenes are on my mind as I’m starting a new book and thinking about the chemistry between the characters and how it will evolve.
Tammy, the Good Time Girl scene is one of my favs too. And this one will fall into a future category I’m going to discuss!
Wow so many great choices… one that stands out for me is in Karen Kay’s SOARING EAGLE’S EMBRACE… the characters both think it is a dream… and who could not say that BLAZE has many great scenes to choose from… (*)
(F) My favorite romance of all-time is “Ashes in the Wind” by the late, great Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. To me, the whole book is wonderful “love scene”! The setting is The Civil War, with a handsome Yankee surgeon meeting a hunted, beautiful Southern Belle in disguise as a “cleaning boy” at the army hospital. Thirty years have passed since the original release of “Ashes”. I recently reread it, and fell in love all over again!
I missed that one, Virginia. I think I’m going to find this for my eReader today! I’m teaching a class about Writing Popular Fiction next semester and I think Woodiwiss is a great place to start for romance classics. I want to be sure I’ve brushed up on all her stuff!
Ms. Woodiwiss has always been a “class act”, and a tough act to follow! I am a “born and raised” Southerner, and I fell hard for that Yankee surgeon, Cole Latimer. He was more than a tall, leanly-muscled azure-eyed hunk. He was a man of great compassion and intelligence! Ms. Woodiwiss wrote so eloquently about the losses suffered on both sides of The War Between the States. “Ashes in the Wind” is Historical Romance at it’s finest! (F)
Hi Virginia,
I have to agree. Ashes in the Wind was the first romance novel I ever read. And look where it landed me?
Brenda
Brava! We have great taste in romance reads and authors! (F)
Funny, Blaze senior editor Brenda Chin has often told me how very much she loved this book!
My favorite Woodiwiss was A Rose In Winter. But Ashes comes close!
Hi Joanne!
I love historicals and I love Blaze books, and how excited am I that your next release is a Blaze Historical! I wish there were more Blaze Historicals. I admire the way you can move effortlessly between the two sub-genres of Historicals and Blaze. I just read “The Knight’s Redemption”, loved it!
I just read ‘Hidden Fire’ by Jo Davis, and whoa. Those love scenes were intense and on ‘fire’, Hunky firemen are always a plus, but when they are inwardly vulnerable as this hero was, it made the scenes poignant. Even the ‘wild’ bits. So I guess to me, that is what lifts a scene from just ‘strictly sex’ to an actual love scene. One of the participants has to be engaged emotionally, even if it is secretly. (L)
Karyn, thank you so much! I feel very fortunate to get to tell such different kinds of stories. And you make a great point about being emotionally engaged… even if they aren’t yet aware. (*)
One of my favorites is in Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas where Evie seduces Sebastian when he’s recovering from a bullet wound.
One of my favorites was in a Kate Bridges historical – I don’t remember the exact circomstances but I do remember it was one of the hottest scenes I’d read in a long time – enough so that I had my friend, who was commuting with me, stop what she was doing to read it
Love the cover for The Captive!
Kathleen Woodwiss is a favorite of my as well. As for specific love scenes – I’m afraid my memory is a goner – in fact I have to write down all the books I’ve read so I don’t buy seconds.
First off can’t wait for The Captive. I’ve been really enjoying the historical Blazes.
Two books that come to mind with memorable love scenes are Lori Foster’s Too Much Temptation and Catherine Anderson’s Phantom Waltz in both the hero shows the heroine what beautiful passionate women they can be.
Thank you, Nicole! I was hooked on the Blaze Historicals from Hope Tarr’s and couldn’t wait until I had a turn.
Your mention of the Lori Foster book also brought the mind Jennifer Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation (it’s the sound of the title that mixes those books up in my mind). That was a great one too! I remember a very sexy billiards game…
Joanne, that is a GORGEOUS cover… just had to say it.
A love scene I just read was fantastic — in Victoria Dahl’s Start Me Up, she has a bondage scene that gets pretty intense, it’s wonderful, but then the best part is the sort of laughing and intimacy between the chars after — it made the scene rise above and beyond.
Sam
Hhhmmm….great love scenes. A recent good one is Tessa Dare’s Surrender of a Siren. OMG! Hotness ensues. :-P There is one of the hottest scenes I have seen in a while and the hero doesn’t even touch the heroine. A must read. Very forbidden…very much the power play. All rolled into one awesome scene. Also, Christina Dodd has some great love scenes in her historicals like Candle in the Window and Once a Knight.
My fave is from a book I’ve touted to death because I love it, Kathryn Shay’s SOMEONE TO BELIEVE IN, where the heroine meets the hero at the outside door of her apartment complex, then he shuts it, while deeply kissing her, & both shed their clothing all the way up the stairs to her individual apartment. An interesting setting for the morning when the heroine’s 4 brothers show up at her door.
Patricia
Patricia, it’s been too long since I’ve read a Kathryn Shay book! I remembered really enjoying her firefighter heroes.
Joanne, I call Kathryn Romance’s most well-kept secret. I own all of her books & really believe she writes some of the best stories, which encompass important RL issues, along with entertainment. STBI is one of her STs featuring a hero who is a Conservative, Republican Senator (former DA) & the heroine who is a Liberal, Democratic 30ish woman, with a 4-YO son, who runs a shelter & website for girl-gang teens trying to escape their terrible lives. The two insult each other’s positions in the press & are chosen by the Governor to serve on a committee to allocate social service funds. This is one of my all-time fave books. I highly recommend it, & hope you will try it, as I’m certain you’ll be very touched, entertained & informed.
Patricia
Quite a few scenes come to mind, most of which are from Blaze’s, because they make up the bulk of my romance reading. The scene from Overexposed by Leslie Kelly where Isabella dances for Nick, the sexual tension between them just about sets the pages on fire and also another scene from that same book, involving a delivery truck and cannoli. After reading that, I’ve never looked at cannoli quite the same way. And also the scenes from Private Confessions by Lori Borrill where the hero and heroine are having very steamy cyber sex, those stick out in my mind big time. And lastly for the Blaze series at least is the scene from Drop Dead Gorgeous by Kimberly Raye where because he can’t come into her house without her invitation, he seduces her in her sleep from her balcony with just the power of his mind and a wine bottle. And also the scene from Kiss Of Midnight by Lara Adrian where Lucan seduces Gabrielle in her sleep, my glasses figuratively fogged up reading that scene. The Captive looks great, and i love the cover, I’ll definitely keep my eye out for it in April. I loved Dark Lover, and the first time Wrath and Beth made love definitely sticks in the mind. How J.R. wrote the scene, the emotions, everything about it, just wow.
Lauren, you’re not the first person I’ve heard mentioning the cannoli scene! I usually gobble up Leslie’s books, but I missed that one and have remained curious about it .
Thanks Lauren! lolol…a lot of people just refer to that one as “the cannoli book.”
I love the bath scene between Nick and Charlotte in Lisa Kleypas’ “Worth Any Price.”
(D) I have a winner! Congratulations to Lauren, winner of an advanced copy of The Captive. I’ll email you privately, but all you need to do is send a mailing address to joanne@joannerock.com and I’ll ship this off ASAP!
Thanks so much for sharing love scenes with me! I’m going to write a bit more about this in a future blog as it strikes me as very Blaze relevant.
Have a great weekend!
Congrats Lauren! (*)
Congrats Lauren!
This topic definitely fits Blaze.