Book Releases

Holding On (Colorado High Country #6) —
The Colorado High Country series returns with Conrad and Kenzie's story.

A hero barely holding on…

Harrison Conrad returned to Scarlet Springs from Nepal, the sole survivor of a freak accident on Mt. Everest. Shattered and grieving for his friends, he vows never to climb again and retreats into a bottle of whiskey—until Kenzie Morgan shows up at his door with a tiny puppy asking for his help. He’s the last person in the world she should ask to foster this little furball. He’s barely capable of managing his own life right now, let alone caring for a helpless, adorable, fluffy puppy. But Conrad has always had a thing for Kenzie with her bright smile and sweet curves. One look into her pleading blue eyes, and he can’t say no.

The woman who won’t let him fall…

Kenzie Morgan’s life went to the dogs years ago. A successful search dog trainer and kennel owner, she gets her fill of adventure volunteering for the Rocky Mountain Search & Rescue Team. The only thing missing from her busy life is love. It’s not easy finding Mr. Right in a small mountain town, especially when she’s unwilling to date climbers. She long ago swore never again to fall for a guy who might one day leave her for a rock. When Conrad returns from a climbing trip haunted by the catastrophe that killed his best friend, Kenzie can see he’s hurting and wants to help. She just might have the perfect way to bring him back to the world of the living. But friendship quickly turns into something more—and now she’s risking her heart to heal his.

In ebook and soon in print!


About Me

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I grew up in Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, then lived in Denmark and traveled throughout Europe before coming back to Colorado. I have two adult sons, whom I cherish. I started my writing career as a columnist and investigative reporter and eventually became the first woman editor of two different papers. Along the way, my team and I won numerous state and several national awards, including the National Journalism Award for Public Service. In 2011, I was awarded the Keeper of the Flame Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism. Now I write historical romance and contemporary romantic suspense.

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Seductive Musings

Monday, February 19, 2007

Favorite sex scenes

I spent this weekend — and entire three-day weekend — working on a 1,000-word sex scene for UNLAWFUL CONTACT. Now, if you've ever been to Gennita Low's blog (link provided to the right and down) there's an image — she calls it a profile of herself — that aptly demonstrates how I felt all weekend long.

It was like bashing my brains out on my keyboard. If I were only slightly less sane than I am — I'm not saying I'm sane or anything — I might indeed have resorted to smashing my head on a wall. It likely would have produced similar results on the page.

Kurt Vonnegut once said that he feels like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth when he writes. And I can relate to that, too. There's a feeling of KNOWING what you want on the page and yet being limited by your own klutzy use of language. You feel the beauty of a particular story moment, and yet the words you find to describe the scene completely lack the ability to convey that beauty. And when you did deeper, try to reconstruct it, try to get at the heart of the emotion in the scene and how it feels for your character to be in that moment, you find yourself without words altogether.

I truly hate that.

I'm not sure how to get beyond it except to keep pushing. Even now writing about this, I feel the same extreme sense of "I've got to break something" agitation that dominated my weekend. (Breathe! Breathe!)

The writer's life is made up of moments such as this. In the end we hope to achieve something transcendent, something meaninful, something real and powerful. In romantic fiction this is just as true as it is in literary fiction. (Feel free to eat my ass if you disagree.) But along the way there are so many moments where we feel we have failed as writers. Put those failed moments together and you have what's called a "book." :-)

I'm about to reread the crap I wrote this weekend and see if I can move forward or if it's time to take out my much-used machete.

But before I go, I wanted to ask what makes a sex scene in a romance novel perfect for you. Is it a set of physical actions (he went down on her and then they had intercourse); an emotional sense of union; the two combined; sexy language and imagery? What is it? And which authors write sex the best.

I'll put Tara Janzen out there as a new-to-me author who write sex well.

Thoughts?

3 comments:

Debbie H said...

Hi, Pamela
You know this will all turn out great.
As far as the sex, for me it is a combination of physical, e.g. looks, touches, then emotional, humor that turns to seriousness as they get closer to the "act".
Take a deep breathe and don't hurt yourself LOL. It will be ok.

Hugs
Debbie

Nes said...

hmm.... for me it's the looks, touches and then the passion. Raw hot sex. Especially the first time. I love tender romantic sex scenes too, but really, sex is usually raw, sweaty, hot and dirty. *EG* Romantic sex can be emotional but sometimes, not as realistic especially when you can't get into the characters. Like the book I'm reading now... *sigh*

Ooooh, after reading what I saw, I can't wait to read the first of the series!!!

Pam! So, so, so glad you're doing better! And nice chatting with ya, chick! MWAH!

Joanie said...

Um, I like to see an emotional connection while they are having hot sweaty wild monkey sex!

I don't like poxy euphemisms for the ahem secondary sexual organs involved.*grin*

Bit of creativity for future inspiration never goes astray either.
Gennita has made sure I never, ever look at pearls quite the same way!

Oh, I also like evidence of the males strength, it's all about me and I love to be picked up and hauled about!!!

It was nice chatting to you albeit briefly, take care, J xx

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Favorite Writing Quotes


"I am an artist. I am here to live out loud."
—Emile Zola

"I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day."
—James Joyce

"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."
—Jane Austen

"Writers are those for whom writing is more difficult that it is for others."
—Ernest Hemingway

"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."
—Kurt Vonnegut

"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar is the test of their power."
—Toni Morrison

"No tears in the author, no tears in the reader."
—Robert Frost.

"I'm a writer. I give the truth scope."
—the character of Chaucer in
A Knight's Tale