Romance novels turn up the heat Michigan writers are among those burning up shelves

Nice girls do. Oh yeah, baby, they do.

Write erotica, that is. And the steamy, sexy stories they write are finding a big audience, one that has gotten the attention of some of the biggest romance publishers.

Yes, romance publishers.

Berkley, Harlequin, Avon and Kensington recently launched romance lines that are more sexually explicit and adventurous than anything they've done before. Other big publishers, like St. Martin's and Pocket, are planning books that would've combusted their catalogs a year ago.

And the small publishing houses that began the trend in hotter and sexier romances -- Ellora's Cave and Red Sage -- are seeing their sales of an average title grow by 10% in six months. Passionate Ink, the chapter of the Romance Writers of America devoted to erotic fiction, is a year old and has nearly 400 members.

If you still believe that romance fiction is limited to endless pastel paperback covers with cursive titles and swooning virgins, prepare to have your world rocked.

There's never been a better time to be a reader with a dirty mind.

Or a writer with one.

Some write it hot

Tamara Denby of Canton, who writes under the name Tawny Taylor, is such a writer.

"When people look at me, they're stunned I write it," Denby says. "I'm your typical, middle-aged, suburban Detroit mother-looking-type person."

In 2001, the 40-year-old married mother of seven decided to try to write "category" romance, shorter books by Silhouette or Harlequin that come out in batches monthly. But she couldn't nail the specific requirements of each line.

She was still writing "sweet" romances -- so chaste they seldom feature a kiss until the last page -- when she came across Ellora's Cave, then a little-known online publisher of erotica that wasn't yet recognized by the Romance Writers of America. RWA is the main organization for romance writers, with 9,500 members.

Denby read Christine Warren's "Fantasy Fix," a sort of bawdy "Waiting to Exhale" with vampires and bondage.

"And I thought, 'I can do ,' " she says.

And how: She's written or contributed to 15 books for Ellora's Cave since, along with a couple for Echelon Press and a couple of more mainstream romances under the name Sydney Laine Allan.

That many sex stories? The work ethic runs deep among romance writers, including those who write racy stories.

Take Jodi Lozon of Perry, who writes under the name Jodi Lynn Copeland.

The 31-year-old mother started writing erotic romance in 2002, after a friend told her about Ellora's Cave. Lozon has published eight books with them since and has placed two books with Kensington's new erotica line, Aphrodisia.

She sets herself a goal of 10,000 words or two chapters a week. "If you're really in the mind-set, you don't really notice," she said. She even typed around her newborn when she insisted on taking all her naps in Lozon's lap.

Another Aphrodisia writer, Renee Gipson of Detroit, who writes as Renee Alexis, has an even clearer schedule. The 46-year-old substitute teacher makes a habit of writing for a couple of hours "every night after the baseball game."

Romance fiction wasn't Gipson's first choice of genre. Then she found erotic romance and made a bet with herself.

"I wonder if you could do anything as hot as this," she asked herself. Gipson has sold four books to Aphrodisia and another to Genesis Press.

Turning up the heat

The first erotic romance is probably painted on a cave wall somewhere. Talking about sex is nothin' new.

But frank and lusty sex scenes are new when it comes to mainstream romance fiction.

Even a few years ago, the contemporary romances that included premarital sex between the hero and heroine were heavier on the tension than the actual act.

Enter a gifted Tampa erotica writer and single mom, Tina Engler, who couldn't get a New York publisher to take her explicit stories. So, in the spirit of being responsible for your own orgasmic literature, Engler turned to the Web and the promise of e-books.

The result was Ellora's Cave, the imprint she founded in 2000. She published her own stories as Jaid Black, and soon began to publish other writers. She added paperback versions in 2003.

Ellora's Cave today has more than 200 authors with more than 1,100 titles. In the first quarter of 2006, they sold more than 67,000 e-books and more than 13,000 paperbacks, says Susan Edwards, vice president of media relations.

"We like to think we started the storm," says Raelene Gorlinsky, managing editor. "And we hope we're successful at it."

Borders Group began carrying Ellora's Cave paperbacks in 2004, says Sue Grimshaw, the chain's head romance buyer. Erotic romances are doing well for Borders, though they still constitute a small portion of its romance sales. They're evaluating other erotic lines as they're released, she says.

But even a small part of the romance pie can be big: Romance fiction accounted for $1.2 billion in sales in 2004, the last year for which the RWA has figures. Nearly 40% of all fiction sold is romance.

More than just sex

Any attempt to explain why women would enjoy erotic romances runs the danger of inspiring giggles and snorts.

But let's try.

At Paperbacks 'n' Things in Westland, owner Melissa Bliss often hosts erotic romance writers for book signings. She began carrying the titles in early 2005 and they proved so popular that in November 2005, the store began a monthly book club for erotic fiction. The club attracts 10 to 20 women -- from their late 20s to their late 70s -- who discuss a title and then talk about "everything," Bliss says .

The women who buy and read erotica buy and read all genres of books, Bliss says. And when it comes to erotica, the club members agree: Sex isn't enough. A book has to have a strong plot and believable characters to hold their interest.

"Men appreciate pornography, but women who read have a mind, all right?" says one member, who would give her name as only Marilyn C. "We need to have a story."

She's a happily married 59-year-old mother and grandmother from Westland. Even her husband has read some of her romance books.

Bonnie Zeigler, 77, of Westland, another club member, says she's been reading all her life and loves the new erotic fiction. "If I can read a book and it has a little love and a little sex in it, I'm happy," she says.

The club has a favorite book, "Megan's Mark" by Lora Leigh, and has even had a speakerphone chat with its author.

Just don't call it pornography. Divorced from the story, the explicit sex in erotic romance can seem sensational.

Roberta Brown is a Florida-based book agent who represents so many erotic fiction writers that other agents call her "the Queen of Erotica."

She says publishers have long put out "lustful romps" for men. So why not for women? Especially today's modern, empowered women?

"Erotica reflects the freshness of today," Brown says. "The books are very bold, very sexually explicit and very empowering."

But not just any old episodic sex story will do, Brown says. The erotic romance that sells is a strongly plotted relationship story in which the progression of the relationship depends on each sex scene.

Gorlinsky said erotica fulfills women's need for escape.

Laura Bradford is Lozon's agent, and she remembers when she first saw the Ellora's Cave paperbacks in a bookstore a few years ago. The cover art seemed amateurish to her, so she didn't expect the writing would be much better.

But Bradford knew that romances were getting spicier, so she picked out one paranormal erotic romance, one historical and one contemporary to read.

"It seemed so fresh, so new," she says.

She admired the pioneering attitude of the Ellora's Cave writers and was impressed by the quality of the stories.

"It changed my thinking about books, about romances, about how I was agenting," she says. Today's an electric time to be in romance, Bradford says -- especially erotic romance.

Burning up bookshelves

And that might explain why every publisher seems to be starting erotic romance lines or, at the least, publishing more erotic titles.

Berkley, a division of the Penguin Group, was the first big publisher out of the gates with its Heat line, which debuted in mid-2005. Berkley already publishes Sensation romances, which feature sexy themes, but Heat tends to push more boundaries, says Cindy Hwang, executive editor.

Heat publishes about one title a month and is experimenting with different subgenres of erotic romance, she says. What Hwang has found is that the authors who write erotic romances -- stories that have some kind of long-term relationship or happy ending -- develop the greatest reader loyalty.

Independent publisher Kensington debuted its Aphrodisia line in January, releasing three books a month. Harlequin debuted its Spice imprint in May, releasing a title or two a month. And in June, Avon, a division of HarperCollins, debuted Red and plans six titles in 2006.

Other publishers, such as St. Martin's, are getting more stand-alone erotic titles into their catalog, says Rose Hilliard, associate editor.

And Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, is repackaging 30 novellas from Ellora's Cave into 10 anthologies, beginning in November.

Not to be outdone, in December Ellora's Cave also will debut a new line, Exotika. The books will have the same sexuality of other Ellora's Cave titles, but without requiring a happy, romantic ending, Gorlinsky said.