I’m tired of orgasms.

No, not of having them.  Of writing about them.

My alter ego, Virginia Reede, occasionally writes erotic romances.  Way too long ago, I outlined a series of novellas, about a group of seven women who form sort of a witch’s coven.  There is an underlying plot that runs through the stories and each book also has a stand-alone romantic story arc involving one of the seven women.  These will eventually be published in e-book format by Ellora’s Cave, and possibly put together into one or two anthologies in print format.

I’ve learned a couple of things about erotic e-books.  One is that the shorter ones actually make more money than the longer ones, even though they cost less.  The other is that those with a hotter rating sell even better.  So my goal is to write a short novella that is so hot it burns your fingers.

This means LOTS of very explicit, juicy sex.  In my current work in progress, the hero and heroine have had sex four times by page thirty-six, and will need to do it at least twice more before I finish up at about 70 pages or so.  And I still need to have a complete story arc with goal, motivation, conflict, a black moment and a realization. 

Some of the stories in the series may have one less or one more sex scene, but I figure they will average about five per novella.  This means that to complete the series of seven, I will have to write thirty-five explicit sex scenes without them becoming too repetitive. 

And, despite the fact that my selection of circumstances and sexual positions are drawn a combination of (long) memory and (complete) fantasy, it’s really not that difficult for me to come up with thirty-five different ways to do the nasty.   But these books are for women, and they’re erotica, not pornography.  Women want to know what the characters are feeling.  If I’m going to keep that spicy rating, they also are going to need to know what the characters are smelling, tasting, seeing and hearing.

So, did the earth move?

Which means that at some point in every sex scene, I’m going to have to describe the orgasm.

Now, I can whip out a copy of the Kama Sutra and figure out plenty of ways to do it.  But I frankly only know two types of orgasms:  Good ones and great ones.  In an erotic book, they all need to be great ones.

So, I dust off the metaphors.  There are the disaster scenarios:  The heroine can explode, erupt, or shatter.   I can use water images:  She can dissolve or melt or, in one scene I wrote, rise up like a fountain and burst into droplets.  There are metaphysical orgasms that turn into out-of-body experiences. Similes:  popping like a champagne cork, vibrating like a kettle drum, squeezing like an angry cobra.  (Hmmm…have I used the cobra one yet?  Better check and, if not, put it on my list.)

I’m only on book one of the series.  This means I’ve got thirty-odd orgasms to go.  Wish me luck.