Guest Author Francesca Hawley-Why I Write Erotic Romance

FRANCESCA HAWLEY

Hi everyone - I'm Francesca Hawley and I write erotic romance. I know readers sometimes wonder what prompts a writer to pick a particular genre - like erotic romance. Why not a story with a gentle kiss at the end? Or a story that gets steamy but ultimately fades to black? I'm not sure why others chose to write erotic romance, but that's what I've always written. Always, you may ask? Yup, pretty much.

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 When I was in high school, I started writing romance stories. Highly emotional and full of angst. They also contained quite a bit of purple prose that now make me wince. In my twenties, the first line of one of my stories was actually, "Ho, there you vile wench." Seriously.

But in spite of the drek that can even now make me laugh, there was sex. It was graphic - or as graphic as I knew how to make it - and hot. Not only did my high school friends pass around Judy Bloom stories back in the day - sharing those passages - but they passed around my stories. I was in damn good company even if I wasn't anywhere near the writer that Judy Bloom was.

For a long time, I quit writing though I was an avid reader. When I came back to writing back in the early 2000s it was because I stumbled across a web site publisher that published really sexy romances - a company called Ellora's Cave. I read some smokin' hot stories by Jaid Black and a number of other authors and suddenly I yearned to write again. Not the dry graduate studies papers that I had been writing of late, but really hot romances like my new favorite authors from EC.


So I started. I was older, but a lot of my efforts were still in purple prose range and actually writing some of the graphic words to describe sex made me blush. But I persevered.

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 I discovered RWA - the Romance Writers of America - and honed my craft. In RWA, I found the online chapter, Passionate Ink. It was a great help to write what I wanted to write. Although I considered writing more "mainstream" romance, I realized that wasn't me. My stories needed the heat.

When my first novella was published by Draumr Publishing in 2005, it felt like a validation of who I was and what I wrote. I'm grateful to Rida Allen at Draumr for giving me my first opportunity and the confidence to keep writing. So I started erotic and only got hotter.

In 2007, I had the good fortune to get a pitch appointment with Raelene Gorlinsky from Ellora's Cave. She told me to send her my manuscript. My book found an editor who liked the story and my voice. When she offered me a contract, I was over the moon. Finally, I was published with the publisher who'd gotten me interested in writing again.

It's been a great ride and I know I have so many more stories inside of me just begging to be written. I'm excited about the future, and that's why I write erotic romance.

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Visit Francesca Hawley's Website at http://www.francescahawley.com/