After years of being a connoisseur, being a member of writers' forums on and off for the last twenty years, and reading lots of reviews, it's very apparent that there is a whole swath of romance readers out there who really don't like the steamy sex scenes.
Really.
To an extent, I'm one of them.
See, the bedroom can be quite distracting from the actual story, and yes, a lot us writers know this.
The first time I realized that the sex scenes were not "all that" was some time ago in the middle of a Virginia Henley novel. Seriously, this was the soft core porn precursor to "Fifty Shades of Gray." And the sad thing is...not too long ago I read a novel by a different author who outdid Henley on the descriptions, and none of it was germane to the story.
Honestly.
And the big push on sex in romance novels isn't coming from the writers necessarily. Reports are out there that the publishing houses have been known to send manuscripts back to the authors asking for the scenes to be "hotter." Guess they haven't read the reviews where reader write notes saying that such interludes are unwanted.
So, when I started self publishing, I took the chance on clean romance and while there are some steamy scenes (one of them was actually in a steam shower), the characters remain covered. Hopefully. (If I slipped up, readers, please let me know.) The idea is to tell the story, not to get the reader all hot and bothered.
(For more on this idea, the legendary Mary Balogh had a good piece and discussion on her website a few years ago.)
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