Burning Question: Which do you prefer?
Which do you prefer: steamy romance, erotica or erotic romance?
Steamy romance usually has a plot that centers around a sometimes steamy relationship. Erotica is all about the sex. Maybe it has a plot, or maybe just a series of sex scenes.
In Erotic Romance, you’ll find the hero or heroine in a very sexual relationship. One example I’m thinking of is Lauren Dane’s Wolves Triad, where the hero werewolf happens to sleep with another woman the night before he meets his Mate, and when the heroine comes to his home, she winds up throwing out his bed sheets because she can smell the other woman there.
The key difference between Erotic Romance and Erotica is that there is an Happily-Ever-After at the end. The couple “wins,” and they are together. Or the threesome finds a way to make their arrangement work–or whatever the coupling is for the story–but regardless, they are together, and all is right with the world.
Myself, as a reader, I prefer to keep it within the boundaries of Romance, because I like the Happily Ever After. The few straight Erotica stories I’ve read have left me disappointed and wishing for more story and resolution, and of course, the characters to wind up together in the end. That is just the way I like my stories, though. Everyone has their favorites, of course. What’s yours?