Sisters Tell All Part 1: TMI and Editing Erotica

I would like to thank my sisters, who are also my editors, beta readers, sounding boards and so much more, for sharing some of their insights into life with a romance author. Welcome to my three wonderful sisters.

EWWWW!

We are the sisters of Madison Michael. After years working in a staid, unremarkable corporate job, one day, our normally reserved sibling announced she would become an author – – not just an author, but a romance writer. We quickly learned that in today’s world, being a romance writer apparently requires a healthy knowledge of sexual gymnastics, mixed together with formulaic plot lines (lovers, conflict, resolution).

TMI! HOW DO YOU THINK WE FEEL?

You don’t want to imagine your parents or siblings having sex, do you? How do you think we feel when we are reading descriptions of steamy, mind-blowing sex written by our baby sister?! To make it even worse, we are not only reading for the action, but reading to make sure these sexual feats are even possible!

It is perfectly natural that Madison would ask to sisters to be her editors and beta readers, but it might stretch the bounds of sisterhood to ask us to read hot, explicit sex scenes set in garages, elevators and on sidewalks, let alone in bedrooms. Now think about us sitting at our computers, trying to wrap our heads around the idea that our little sister might have actually lived those scenes! Do we need to know if Madison actually had her backside fondled by a stranger in an elevator as in Bedazzled? Has Madison had a torrid interlude with her caregiver while recovering from an injury as in Bedeviled? Or to put it simply, does Madison, our sister, have a vast history of sexual activities and proclivities that have so far been undiscovered by her family?

REALITY CHECK?

As her readers and editors, sometimes we need to concentrate on the physicality of these acts. Can one really move in the way required to accomplish these acrobatics? Here’s a little secret about how Madison works out the details. While writing a particularly intense scenario, Maddy might realize she is asking too much of her Beguiling Bachelor. How does she check this?

If you’re Madison, you invite your boyfriend to the bedroom to do a little role playing. We are told that the boyfriend is a willing accomplice. If you’re a writer, it is apparently more important to work out the physical placements than it is to complete the actual act. Madison hopped up to continue writing, and we don’t know what he did to complete his part of the scene. We didn’t dare ask!

This is a lot of information for family members to absorb, of course, especially when we are asked to review these scenes frequently, for blog inputs, short stories and novels. Maddy writes quite a bit.

So as you can see, reading and editing romance novels can have a paralyzing effect on family get-togethers and communication. Sometimes there really is TMI – too much information!

We will be back after recovering from the embarrassment of talking about our sister’s sex life to get into the nuts and bolts of editing – yes, we will reveal just how frustrating it is to find out that your sister needs help with the rules on punctuation despite all that education!

YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY:

Bedazzled – Beguiling Bachelors (book 1)

Beholden – Beguiling Bachelors (book 2)

Bedeviled – Beguiling Bachelors (book 3)

Bewildered – a Beguiling Bachelor Prequel