That’s another question I get asked a lot. Undertones reach from the giggly – “You’re so daring, you!” – to the reproachful – “Why don’t you write something respectable? Something you can show your grandmother?”

So first, let me say that I think erotic romance is a perfectly respectable genre. Sales numbers alone prove that it has a large following among perfectly normal people. (Even if many of those may not want their grandmothers to know about it, either.) More importantly, there is nothing “wrong,” “dirty” or “evil” about sex. Most people do it. Many of those who don’t wish they did. None of us would be here without it.

It’s a worrying trend in modern culture that sex, a natural part of life, is considered crude, wicked, and unmentionable in polite society, whereas movies that include amounts of violence none of us would want to experience in real life are rated PG-13. Which one of these do we want out children to consider “normal”?

But that only explains why I don’t oppose erotic romance. What makes me want to write it?

Mostly, it’s the characters. My writing has always been driven by people and their interactions and relationships. That’s what fascinates me. And for many people (and therefore many characters), the most important kind of relationship you can have – the one that really turns your life upside down, makes you reevaluate what matters and do crazy things – is love.

It’s certainly possible to tell a love story without including the sexy bits, but there’s a price for leaving them out: sex, if written right, isn’t just body parts in motion. A lot of it is about the characters’ headspace and feelings. Letting go, trusting, giving and receiving pleasure, and seeing your partner come undone: that’s powerful stuff. Showing a couple only up to the bedroom door skips over the main thing they’ll be thinking about the next day at the breakfast table.

I write erotic romance because I want to tell stories about people, and I want to include all the important bits.

What genre(s) do you write, and why?

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I’ve told stories as long as I can remember. I “read books” to my grandparents’ dogs when I barely knew the alphabet. (I’d just grab a random book, make up a story, and occasionally  turn a page.) I told stories to friends and family – both about events from my life and about things that had happened only in my mind, but seemed no less real to me.

When I was seven, my mother asked, “Why don’t you write down those stories you come up with all the time?”

Well, mostly because my clumsy fingers could not keep up with my imagination. I was too impatient to slow down the invention of the story to accommodate my writing pace. (I did record some stories on tape, though. Wonder if my parents still have those…)

I got faster. And home computers arrived. My fingers still couldn’t quite keep up with my imagination, but the gap shrunk enough that writing my stories down became a viable plan.

So I did. It never occurred to me to ask myself why.

As I got older and no longer fit the, “Aw, how cute Tara wrote a little story!” mold,  more and more friends, relatives, and teachers would ask me why.

I never knew what to say. “It’s fun!” – true (most of the time), but not the whole story. “I had this idea…” – also true, but lots of people have story ideas they never attempt to write.

The truest explanation of all – “These characters popped into my head and started talking to me.” – made people look at me strangely and back away. I stopped giving that reason.

So, why do I write?

Because it’s what I do.

How about you?

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