Review: A Reference That's Actually Useful
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 11, 2014
I have a marked aversion to "How To" books when it comes to writing.  My personal experience has been less than satisfactory with a large portion of these so-called `guides'.  Such books actually have the opposite effect.  In some instances they inhibited my creativity because I was either too busy following the directions closely or agonizing if I thought I wasn't doing it right.  It also didn't help when books featured authors who were already huge successes spilling the same old advice that never seemed to speak to the genre I was writing on or to the realities of writer's block.  Many of the books I've bought have ended up as dust-catching doorstops where they serve a better purpose.Thankfully, M/M romance author Val Kovalin manages not to fall into either category with How to Write Sexy Descriptions and Sex Scenes. Writing sex scenes is hard.  I know.  Writing good sex scenes which engage more than one of the senses is even harder.  Even for those whose bread and butter is primarily erotic fiction, keeping those scenes from becoming the standard "Insert Tab A into Slot B, C or D" takes practice and knowing when less is actually more. Kovalin's easy-to-navigate guide gives tips and tricks to make the process a little less daunting with practical and down-to-earth advice.  This is a book meant to be used in a practical sense.  It's a great resource to have, especially the appendix filled to bursting with words and phrases that will definitely come in handy.  Turn to this rather than a thesaurus when you need to make something throb, swell, pucker or ache (in a good way).There were only two definite personal FAIL sections which had me gritting my teeth, such as her definition of a Beta Male: "He is a more ordinary man, not as strong or as aggressive as the Alpha Hero."  Worse, she goes on to equate the Beta with being slighter and/or more effeminate.WRONG!The well-written Beta Male (i.e. Diana Gabaldon's Jamie Fraser instantly comes to mind) can be just as powerful and aggressive, but the difference is he's not shoving his masculinity down the heroine's throat (yes, I know what that sounds like).  My personal definition of the Beta Male is one who can whip ass then whip up a crème brulee.  He's a strong man who loves a strong woman.  It's really sad that there is such a prejudice against Beta Males in Romancelandia.  Part of the problem is that some authors don't have a clue how to write them without resorting to typical 'weaker' stereotypes.  The other problem is hidebound readers who cannot envision a hero unless he's some hard-bodied, huge-c*cked, brooding, monosyllabic man-slut.  I have nothing against the alpha, but in a lot of books these days, he's less multi-dimensional and more of a caricature.The other personal fail: "Interracial sex introduces physical differences in skin color, body hair, and facial features."Most interracial romance books thankfully don't spend a lot of time on the skin contrast thing.  If a reader can't tell from the cover--provided the publisher isn't committing epic cover fail--that it's an interracial book, or if they haven't already been introduced to the characters in Chapter One, then it's not an interracial romance.  The best authors in this sub-genre aren't spending time describing skin color, especially during a sex scene; they're concentrating more on the emotions, on the feelings between the characters, which is what readers are more interested in.  In the case of G.A. Hauser's Live, Love, Last, the male couple (black male/white male) brings up the subject during the getting ready to do the horizontal mambo scene, but it's not about difference, but about experience.  The white male character has never been with a black man and says so.  Any book that delves too much into the "differences", especially when we're talking about sex, skirts dangerously close to stereotype.  Bottom line, sex is sex and there are only so many orifices parts will fit in and we all have them.Again, those were my personal quibbles with the guide, but as a tool for writing, I highly recommend it.