I write erotic romance under a pen name (Aurora Reese) and am self-published. I’ve read some romance novels in the past. In fact, in my senior year of high school, my mother gave me one of her favorites from back when she was young and working as a nurse. She and her coworkers would pass the book around. It was quite the big deal for them. I enjoyed it at the time, having very little experience with a bodice ripper and still curious about sexy things.

A couple decades, a few boyfriends, and a wedding later, I decided to buy a digital copy of that book and re-read it. BOY was I suddenly aware of a lot of problematic issues in that book!

So, when I decided to start writing erotic romance to self-publish, I wanted to write something that was WAY more modern and keeping with my ideals of consent, equality, and equity, while still working with popular tropes and being considered sexy. I want to move away from the patriarchal and misogynistic tropes of the past, where women have to be conquered, dominated, and tamed, and instead focus on equal or complementary partnerships, mutual adoration, and safe, fully informed consensual acts of naughty, naughty sexy times.

In other words, I wanted to write something that younger generations could read and find healthy habits to follow, or lessons to help them in troubling situations they might face. Not reinforce the stereotype of a submissive woman and overbearing man.

I understand there are still those who want to delve into the fantasy of being whisked away by a knight or cowboy or demon (it’s surprising the amount of people that just want to be physically wrecked), but I am not into rape fantasies.

Let me stipulate that I am not against writing rape scenes that further a plot and display how evil a character or traumatized another would be. But I will never publish one where the aggressor is the hero or ends up winning the heart of the one they raped. That is just not cool to me in today’s climate.

I also am not super into large age gaps, like over ten years. (Yes, I’m aware of the irony that I write vampire smut, and all bets are off when it comes to vampire ages, but being supernatural makes it a little more flexible, in my opinion.)

Am I being short-sighted in this? It seems that from all the requests I’m seeing from bookish groups I follow, that all they seem to want are things where there’s torture, coercion, bullying, and downright assault before the main characters confess their love to each other in the end. And even then, their apologies and confessions seem fairly weak compared to what they’ve endured up to that point.

I know it’s fantasy. I know it’s not supposed to be fully based in reality. But I just feel like some things shouldn’t be considered romantic?

Eh. Perhaps I should just finish writing what I’ve got planned and move on to a different genre.

-K