I’m blogging today at Access Romance about my recent family vacation. But here, I thought I’d tell you about my girl time—the five-day summer party officially billed as the Romance Writers of America national conference but what I like to call my personal summer camp.

It’s so much fun to hang out with my romance writer friends and meet new readers every year. My good friend, Love Inspired author Renee Ryan, led the First Timers Orientation this year and she had a really fun analogy for a writer’s first time at RWA. She talked about the conference at large as the cool sorority and the other first timers were your pledge class. That each year you attend RWA, you look for your sisters who rushed along with you, cheering on their successes and commiserating on the bumps in the road. You share your journey with those folks, and it’s all the more fun for having a few BFFs around. Together, you become the cool sorority, squealing in the halls to see each other once a year at your personal summer camp. I loved that idea. To me, RWA is exactly like that.

Renee, for example, was in my pledge class. So was SIM author Beth Cornelison and Desire author Catherine Mann, my critique partner. Other classes close to me included Tanya Michaels, Winnie Griggs and Anna DeStefano, friends I seek out faithfully every year.

And we do more than just gab it up. We sign books to raise money that supports a literacy initiative. We teach workshops for aspiring writers to share what we know and attend workshops to learn from our peers. Oh, and we dance.

Summer camp isn’t summer camp without a glitzy party after all. The RITA and Golden Heart ceremony is our fun excuse to dress up and the publisher parties provide our opportunity to shake our collective groove thing. I’ve discovered Blaze authors Wendy Etherington and Jacquie D’Alessandro are just as committed to the dance floor as me, so I like to hunt them down once the music starts hopping.

I think every woman should have a summer camp – your personalized version of the sorority reunion. Whether it’s a handful of high school friends or the crowd from your book club, you owe yourself a retreat weekend to celebrate friendship and a common interest. Don’t have a big budget? You can tent it down by the lake for a night and share a few bottles of cheap champagne. I guarantee you’ll come home happier!

**You know what I’m talking about…. girlfriends speak a different language than our significant others! What’s been one of your favorite friend-dates? Ladies’ poker night? Neighborhood bunco? Chat with me on the boards today about fav ways to hang out with friends and I’ll give one random poster a signed copy of my August relese, Double Play.

Summertime is baseball time at my house and not just because I have an August Blaze with a major league manager. We watch a lot of baseball—from major league to little league—and critique games, plays and coaching decisions on an almost daily basis. The sounds of cheering ballpark crowds and the crack of a bat on a hardball are as rooted in our summer family memories as the scent of barbecue and cut grass.

Even the pace of baseball is suited to summertime. With one hundred and sixty-two games in the regular season, the sport is spread out over time so that we don’t live or die by the outcome of a single game. Win some, lose some is a given attitude, though obviously we want the win column to boast the better number by the time all is said and done. Games are long and languid, with plenty of downtime as pitchers kick the dirt around and batters adjust their gloves. That leaves me enough time to order a beer and a bag of peanuts without missing a beat.

I like the friendliness of baseball and its players, too. The tradition of batting practice allows fans to see their favorite players up close before game time. The ability to catch a foul ball or a home run ball gives everyone in the park a shot at returning home with a free souvenir. Also, the accessibility of tickets means you can afford to take the whole family to a game without taking out a second mortgage, the way you might have to if you want to catch the NFL live.

So summer and baseball go hand in hand for me. I’m already planning a trip to watch the Reds beat the Pirates in Pittsburgh the first week of August. But I’m not just going to root, root, root for the away team. I’m going to savor a family tradition with my glove in hand in case any balls are fouled off in my direction. And with any luck, maybe I’ll lay eyes on a player who inspires the sequel to Double Play…

***As I make a list of what to bring to on my road trip to see the Reds, I wonder what road trips you’ve got in mind for the summer. Water park for the weekend? Picnic at a friend’s camp? Chat with me on the boards about your summer day tripping plans and I’ll give one random poster an advance copy of my August Blaze, Double Play.

Writing sex often gets mistaken for writing love in a lot of articles and workshops — a love scene and a sex scene are not the same thing, though they can overlap, obviously. Love scenes imply a certain emotional commitment has been made, and I think people tend to see the love scene as more acceptable than the sex scene for that reason. For those of us who write erotic romance, we often write sex that happens before love. While the we know these two characters are meant to be together, and that they will have their HEA, they will fall into bed (or into a closet or onto a table, or whatever)–a lot–before they fall in love.

Writing good sex isn’t easy, and it intimidates a lot of new writers. I assume we all know the sex should be relevant to the story–and that there should BE a story–and the plot, so what I am talking about here, is how to best approach the actual writing of sex itself (just to be clear). So I thought I would see what advice was out there for writing sex.

One of the most available and reproduced articles I found was this one, by Steve Almond, who offers 12 “rules” for writing sex. I liked all of them except rules 6 and 9, which I didn’t agree with at all. People’s sexual experience is wide and varied — we simply can’t make these assumptions about how fast climax happens, or slow, or if it happens at all. And we should consider all three scenarios when we’re writing sex.

I also disagree with him on not “using the rude words” — and in fact, I don’t find sexual words rude. I like to use all the words at my disposal, and many times my characters like using them, too. And maybe his characters would never talk to each other during sex, or announce their pleasure, what they like, or what they want, but that doesn’t mean that’s a general rule. Lots of people love dirty talk — it’s the basis of an entire phone sex industry, right?

Another resource is an entire book on the subject, Elizabeth Benedict’s The Joy of Writing Sex, and it gets some good reviews online, though I haven’t read it, but it looks like it might be a good resource for those looking for advice on writing sex. If anyone has read it, please let us know what you think.

This is also a fun discussion, if you have time to read through it.

I’ve always thought that the key thing to keep in mind if you are writing sex is that everyone’s sexual experiences are different, and in that difference, you have a broad range of what can happen. No two people ever have sex or think about sex in the same way, and that gives writers a lot to work with. There are no limits — almost.

Here is my own list of tips for writing sex:

1) Beware of the “ick factor.” In general, you can assume anything dangerous, violent, insulting or demented, anything which would make most reasonable, open-minded people back away, will qualify as “ick.”

2) Beware of being too tame. Keeping the “ick” factor in mind, don’t be afraid of the kink, and use whatever words you need to make it happen.

3) Make sure the sex in your book is true to the character having it, as you have described them. If they are experienced or a virgin, or have various kinds of backstories, make sure the sex is consistent.

4) Beware of falling into a rut. Characters in different books should have their own sex lives, not the same sex as characters in the last three books. What do these people like? what makes them unique?

5) Switch it up. Use different locations, positions, toys, kinds of sex, etc. Have your characters explore and surprise each other. If you don’t know about something, do your research. (Online, or otherwise, it’s up to you).

6) Have fun! Don’t be afraid of the humorous, awkward, or sticky moment in a book. On this note, make sure your logistics work, be clear in your physical descriptions, i.e., This Side Up, etc.

7) Don’t make a public service announcement out of your sex scene. i.e., birth control, STDs. Smart characters will act responsibly, and should, but there are a lot of ways to work around this without dampening passion or spontaneity.

8 ) Be clear on what the sex is about. Even if it’s not about love, be aware what emotions are in play. For more on this, I wrote this blog on Sexual Motivation that people seemed to like.

9) Remember (and this comes in handy when people mistake your characters’ sex lives for YOURS), This is about your characters, not you. Once an editor wrote me a line edit “Is this really sexy?” I thought about it, and could only say, “It is for her.” To me, the heroine was clearly enjoying herself. Readers seemed to agree.

10) What do you find sexy? If you can communicate that, it will probably be sexy for your readers, too. Likewise, don’t write anything you are uncomfortable with, because once it’s on that page, it’s there for good.

So what would you add to the list, as a reader or writer? What makes the sex really great to read, and to write? What have been some of your favorite sexual moments in books? Share your ideas, thoughts, and I’ll send out a book to two lucky winners at the end of the day.

It’s a lot of work being a Blaze Babe. I mean, all writers have to work hard at their craft and possess the persistence and determination of an NFL lineman to sell their books. But beyond that core commitment to writing, the Blaze authors face some unique challenges.

1) We can never say “Not tonight honey, I have a headache.”

There comes a time in every romance writer’s life when she doesn’t feel like writing a love scene. Maybe her kids are ill and writing a love scene is the last thing on her mind. Or maybe she just had a fight with her significant other and there’s a bit of anger projected onto her fictional hero. But when you’re a Blaze author, writing a fade-to-black love scene simply isn’t an option. You’ve got to be ready to sizzle at all times.

2) We’re the resident sex experts.

Now at first, this is kind of fun. When you become a Blaze author, your friends and family all try to hide their surprise that you write “those books”—the ones with the sexy-as-hell covers your mother doesn’t admit she’s ever read. But eventually, being the local sexpert will land you in embarrassing situations. Your newspaper boy winks at you even though he’s barely reached puberty. Your neighbor reveals an acrobatic event in her bedroom the night before and offers more details in case you’d like some ideas for your next book. Men older than your father will guffaw with lecherous glee to learn what you write and ask if you want any pointers. Umm… no.

3) We’re the bad girls.

While the men in a Blaze author’s life are busy suggesting they’d be happy to supply inspiration for future projects, there is another population of friends and family who can be less enthusiastic. Non-romance reading buds steer their impressionable children away from our bookcases full of splashy covers. Quasi-helpful siblings read our books while hiding them behind copies of National Geographic. A few utterly non-helpful friends hide our autographed labors of love all together, unwilling to admit they like racy romance.

Still, I wouldn’t trade being a Blaze author for the world. A Psychology Today study assures us that readers of romance make love with their partners 74% more often than non-romance readers. So I’d like to think I’ve had a hand in making the world a happier place through my stories. And maybe I’m deluding myself, but I hope even those friends who are hiding my book covers are kicking their love lives up a notch the night after a sexy Blaze read.

So razz me all you want. Any way you look at it… you’re welcome.

***
Whether you’re a reader or a writer of hot romance, I’ll bet there are people in your life who give you a hard time about liking “those books.” What’s your response?