November 7th, 2008 | by Melissa MacNeal |
After twenty years of writing books that range from racy to extremely explicit, I can tell you it’s sometimes a challenge to be up for the sex scenes (sort of like real life, after 30+ years of marriage… 
Here are some tips for keeping those scenes fresh for your readers–and for you as a writer, too.
**Try different H/H combinations: While, yes, you can explore same-sex and multiple partner scenes, you can also vary the heroes and heroines you write. In “Naughty Noelle” from UNWRAP ME, I created an older woman/younger man, and Noelle and Andy’s romance plays against her mom and his uncle falling in lust, too (at their age! Imagine!)To keep myself fresh story after story, I vary the personality matches a lot, and I vary the secondary characters. In “The Captain’s Courtesan” from THE PLEASURE OF HIS BED, privateer Damon is a friend of Blackbeard–who then kidnaps Sofia, the love slave heroine, for his own nefarious uses. I also like to mix ethnicity, because describing a Latino or an Asian or a Native American offers varieties in accent, skin color, and cultural expectations about sex.
**Use the conflict to your sexual advantage: When Noelle’s duffel rips and her faded old panties fall out, Andy quips that while many women have dropped their panties for him, none were as hot as she is. And what better excuse for him to buy her a sparkly red thong as a Christmas gift? 
Noelle is ordinarily a very capable competent woman but this first Christmas without her dad, her husband, or a job makes her vulnerable. The last thing she needs is a too-cheerful, too-cute Santa who’s determined to lift her spirits as he lowers her jeans. In my WIP, identical twin heroines are so dissatisfied by their husbands’ sexual performance, they swap mates–which creates more conflict!
**Draw upon the H/H’s occupations: Andy’s rehabbing bungalows (which offers plenty of places for nooky, where only he has the key…) and Noelle ran an interior design biz with her ex (whom she caught in bed with a client and her college-age daughter. Talk about conflicted!) I’ve also written a female loan officer who turned the hero down for a mortgage on his mama’s ranch, not just because he ruined her small-town rep at Prom fifteen years ago, but because she has the clout over a high-dollar male model with a cash flow problem. Some occupations, like rodeo rider or striptease artist, are sexier by nature, but the real fun comes from creating a computer geek or a librarian who sets your pages and his/her partner on fire.
**Play up the setting: Andy lives in large beach home with his uncle, and the two bachelors have a doorknob code for “don’t come in now.” Noelle’s mom has a broken leg, which will confine her to the upstairs of their rental house (and Andy appears as the White Knight who carries Mom up all those steps when they arrive, which incites Mom’s matchmaking tendencies. I’ve written stories set in snowed-in cabins and isolated ranches, but the large desk in a banker’s office, a cocktail lounge on a cruise ship…places that seem too public–or too dangerous–created heat that was fun to write, too.
**Got a holiday or a theme? Christmas, Halloween, office parties…even cemeteries, offer unusual times and places to do it. When invited to write a novella, let the theme direct your naughty mind to wherever it’ll go before you write the proposal, so you can milk every opp for setting, language, season, and life circumstances to play a part in the hanky-panky.
**Write to a different kind of music: I have a CD of Yo Yo Ma playing Argentinean tangos that is just hot and passionate. I like the soundtrack from “Chocolat” (now there’s a fantasy, with Johnny Depp as a wandering gypsy-trash hero… 
) for playful moods. And when I was writing “Naughty Noelle,” I was surprised at how much sexy dialog lines of Christmas carols provided. The lyrics to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” inspired a lot of this story, because Noelle was pouting and crying and all of those things “ya better not” do when Andy Hathaway happened along in his Santa hat.
**Toss in some personal experience: I always smile furtively when asked if I’ve tried every sexual thing I write about! My husband, while a devoted fan and supporter, is not the model for my erotic heroes. I’m writing fantasy, after all! So the faces in my collages tend to be rugged, hot, provocative models from ads who inspire my imagination. And yes, when I close my eyes in a tub of hot bubbly bath water and let my mind wander, they always come through with fascinating flashes of do-it-to-me scenes. My cruise vacations gave me great stuff for ALL NIGHT LONG and HOT FOR IT. “Naughty Noelle” is set in the Outer Banks, NC, where I’ve spent many a wonderful week enjoying those huge, fully furnished dream homes.
**Dirty movies: Yes, I do watch the occasional porn flick to pick up on some costuming or positions or situations (certainly not for the plot or dialog! “Oh, God…oh, yeah baby…yeah, baby…(insert moan).” But it’s a lot more fun to create characters with believable personalities and conflicts!
And gee, seeings as we all do this for our books…why not share YOUR most outrageous/daring/unusual encounter now? We could all use a little fresh fantasy…and I’ll send a signed copy of UNWRAP ME to the two who share the best stories! How’s that for some early Christmas spirit?!
Thanks for coming out to play today! I’ve enjoyed it!
Melissa Mac
Hi Melissa! I can imagine how that would be tough to do after writing so many authors. But so far with the Aphrodisiacs books, I love the unique themes, genres and yep story lines too!
I do love those types of like a cabin read… like stuck within a cabin in a blizzard, and even more creative such as in a tree!, forest, mountains and so on, where they end up together and that sort of setting is unique and can do so much with it.
Here’s a couple of ‘encounters’ I’ve had that I can say they were fresh for me
It was very daring, and one that he bulit, must be sturdy, ahem! But imagine looking up in through the trees and to the sky and still be out of breath among all that air up there!
and really had to run off when needing to escape from the loft up there to break away after be discovered after!
1. Um that tree house
2. This too requires alot of privacy, but sneaking into a barn!!
So alot of daring does make it exciting and creative!
by Caffey · November 7th, 2008 at 6:47 pmHi, Caffey!
I can honestly say I’ve never done it in a treehouse! But it sounds…exhilarating! Thanks for stopping by!
Melissa
by Melissa MacNeal · November 7th, 2008 at 7:09 pmOH–and Caffey!—If you like that “snowed in at a cabin” type of story, you’d love my cowboy novella “Cabin Fever” in the Aphro Christmas anthology from a year or so ago, called NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY.
Melissa again
by Melissa MacNeal · November 7th, 2008 at 7:12 pmLOL, Caffey loves those quiet out of the way spots. Like the boat in Pure Sex.
Melissa, I do much the same thing with all my different stories. Vary the characters, the settings, situations…the conflicts, both internal and external. Even time and place and bodies can be switched around in my books.
As for unique places….once I looked overhead and waved to the nice people looking down from the sky as they took off from a seaplane terminal. we were in a grassy field on an island.
And we were very very young. LOL (still are, and yep, same guy!)
by Bonnie Edwards · November 7th, 2008 at 8:52 pmHi, Melissa! What a fun post! I’ve been pretty vanilla, I have to say! I’ve always had a bit of a fantasy about the great outdoors, but haven’t had the opportunity arise (or gone out to make one ;)) But I also know I wouldn’t do well with the real-life reality of bugs and sand and whatnot…
by Fedora · November 7th, 2008 at 9:01 pmHi, Bonnie and Fedora….gee I have a really hot blonde named Fedora in ALL NIGHT LONG! I’m not into getting sand in my uh, crack, either but I will confess to doing it on our college campus in the nursery plot amongst the young saplings and bushes they were growing for future plantings…can’t recall why, but that plot of campus was where my guy of the moment and I could watch students passing to and from classes on that sunny summer day.
I don’t *think* anyone spotted us!
Ah to be young and adventurous and constantly horny (and surrounded by horny guys) again.
Then again…maybe not!
by Melissa MacNeal · November 7th, 2008 at 10:35 pmI can’t even remember the last time I was IN a treehouse. Although, I can see the appeal!
Great tips. I alternate between really nasty music and then sweet country stuff to keep my own emotions mixed up when I write.
by Lucinda Betts · November 8th, 2008 at 9:12 amDo you really?! I’m going to have to get myself a copy! (Not that I’m hot or blonde, but I’ve never had the pleasure of reading about a character with my name before!)
And I know they say youth is a state of mind, but I’m even more cautious in my uh… advancing years
Oh dear!
by Fedora · November 8th, 2008 at 7:44 pmBetter pick some winners, a little after the fact, eh?!
Caffey and Bonnie, you win copies of UNWRAP ME, and because I’m glad to finally meet someone with your name, Fedora, I’ll send you a copy of ALL NIGHT LONG, so you can meet my Greek cruise ship gal who has a pretty neat secret!
Thanks for joining in!
by Melissa MacNeal · November 8th, 2008 at 11:02 pmMelissa
Thanks bunches! Congrats too Bonnie!
by Caffey · November 8th, 2008 at 11:07 pmOh, Melissa, you’re too kind, but I’ve already got a copy from Susan! (not to mention a dedication
for giving her the title, Unwrap Me)
Please, pass along the book to someone else!
Bonnie
by Bonnie Edwards · November 9th, 2008 at 2:37 pm