One of These Things is Not Like the Others
My thanks to Teresa and the other fine folks at the Barnes & Noble store in Pickerington, Ohio for a great author event last Saturday. I was one of eight authors at the signing and we met and talked to and signed books for dozens of readers.
It was a lot of fun, but truth be told, I was something of a fish out of water.
You see, the other authors–TL Gray, Isabelle Drake, Saralee Etter, JC Wilder, Madeline Oh, Marcia James, Paige Cuccaro–write for a publisher called Ellora’s Cave.
Never heard of them? Well, if you’re not familiar with the new wave of erotica in the romance industry, you probably haven’t. Since I published my first books in romance, I’m familiar with the publisher, though I have to say, their books are not (in my traditional definition of the genre, anyway), anything like what I would call romance. Ellora’s Cave is new and has been wildly successful. They are located in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, just a stone’s throw from Akron.
What does Ellora’s Cave publish? Here’s how their website describes the levels of sensuality in their books:
S-ensuous–love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination
E-rotic–love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination.and are high in volume per the overall word count.
X-treme–differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Stories designated with the letter X tend to contain difficult or controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart
Like I said, not the kind of romance I used to write!
There was an upside to the whole experience. In fact, there was more than one. All the authors were great, so were the Ellora’s Cave staffers who showed up, and I had one especially interesting reader encounter:
Reader: I just got divorced after 29 years of marriage. I’m not in the mood for romance.
Me: Well, I kill people in my Pepper Martin mysteries.
Reader: Sold!
PS–This same B&N store is having a mystery event in the fall and I’ve been invited. Want to take the blog show on the road, fellow bloggers? If we’re all interested, I’ll let Teresa know.
