Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Smut-o-Meter

You know what I want? A Smut-o-Meter. I picture this as much like the golden egg weigher thingamajig in Willie Wonka. You drop your completed, unreleased manuscript onto the scale and it gives you a little "bing! bing!" and tells you how hot it is - sweet, sensual, sexy, erotic, or erotica.

Cuz here's the thing - heat level is all shades of gray to me and I have a hard time figuring out when the gray is dark enough to be considered black in the black & white distinctions of "is this erotic romance?" And then regardless of how I think of the books, the stores selling them will sometimes slap their own designations on the books because they think the subject matter of a strip-teasing ghost mentioned in the blurb must be erotica. Or there are those who believe (erroneously) that Samhain and other epublishers only publish erotic romance so that is clearly what I must be writing. So my books get weighed in their minds not on the Smut-o-Meter or even on the Is This a Good Book scale, but on the Is This a Good Erotic Romance scale - and I'm not surprised they walk away disappointed (and send me letters of complaint).

For the record, I do not intend the Karmic Consultants books to be erotic romance. And the Serengeti Shifter books are not erotica. Call them all steamy or sexy romance. Say the shifters are erotic romance (barely) and the karmics are mainstream romance (you betcha). Create your own rating, but please, pretty please with loads of cherries and whipped cream, do not complain to me that The Ghost Shrink is a crappy erotica. Because you are so right about that, baby. It's awful erotica. Good Lord, I hope so. Since there's nothing erotic about it. It's terrible erotica. Cuz it isn't. See?

And if an online bookstore where you bought it lists it as erotica, I have no control over that. One online retailer also lists it as religious and puts it in the same category as the Bible, so we know those categorizations are sacred.

Romantic Times calls it "Hot". All Romance eBooks gives it Three Flames (out of five). Go ahead; make up your own rating. On a scale of lemons to bananas, I'd rate it a solid papaya. Call it whatever you like. Tell me it's too short, it's too silly, it just hit you wrong and fell flat, but please please please don't tell me I write awful erotica. Or do. Go ahead. I'll just laugh. Because when you're right, you're so right.

Does your expectation for a book's heat level impact your enjoyment of the book? Where do you draw the lines? Do you have a heat level preference? Is heat level a deal-breaker when it comes to your romance reading?

1 comment:

Vivant said...

I enjoy a wide range of heat levels. The story, the emotional connection of the characters, and the quality of the writing matter much more to me than the heat level.

That said, I'm at a loss how anyone could mistake The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo and the Poltergeist Accountant for erotica. That title and the cover blurb put it pretty firmly in the realm of romantic comedy. Is there such a thing as erotic comedy? It seems to me that most erotica takes itself more seriously, and that successful erotica needs to create a deeply sensual tone that is at the other end of the spectrum from ghostly accountants doing amateur strip teases.

So what's next in the interest of truth in advertising - including a warning that the book is not erotica?