Okay, the jungle just got a WHOLE lot steamier! Please give a sweaty jungle welcome to multi-published novelist, Charlotte Hubbard and her erotic alter-ego, Melissa MacNeal. Charlotte and I met through Novelists, Inc. and I’ve always been impressed by her unique point of view! I’m so excited to have her here, particularly to talk about such a hot (literally!) topic. Hi, Charlotte/Melissa and thanks so much for blogging with us today!
An Erotic Novelist Tells All
Or,
How do you keep the sex fresh time after time after time?
After twenty years of writing books that range from racy to extremely explicit, I can tell you it’s sometimes a challenge to be up for the sex scenes (sort of like in real life… ; ) Here are some tips for keeping those scenes fresh for your readers, and for you as a writer, too. And then you can tell me about your most unusual rendezvous, to win a signed copy of UNWRAP ME!
**Try different H/H combinations: While, yes, you can explore same-sex and multiple partner scenes, you can also vary the heroes and heroines you write. In “Naughty Noelle” from UNWRAP ME, I created an older woman/younger man, and Noelle and Andy’s romance plays against her mom and his uncle falling in lust, too (at their age! Imagine!)To keep myself fresh story after story, I vary the personality matches a lot, and I vary the secondary characters. In “The Captain’s Courtesan” from THE PLEASURE OF HIS BED, privateer Damon is a friend of Blackbeard–who then kidnaps Sofia, the love slave heroine, for his own nefarious uses. I also like to mix ethnicity, because describing a Latino or an Asian or a Native American offers varieties in accent, skin color, and cultural expectations about sex.
**Use the conflict to your sexual advantage: When Noelle’s duffel rips and her faded old panties fall out, Andy quips that while many women have dropped their panties for him, none were as hot as she is. And what better excuse for him to buy her a sparkly red thong as a Christmas gift? Noelle is ordinarily a very capable competent woman but this first Christmas without her dad, her husband, or a job makes her vulnerable. The last thing she needs is a too-cheerful, too-cute Santa who’s determined to lift her spirits as he lowers her jeans. In my WIP, identical twin heroines are so dissatisfied by their husbands’ sexual performance, they swap mates–which creates more conflict!
**Draw upon the H/H’s occupations: Andy’s rehabbing bungalows (which offers plenty of places for nooky, where only he has the key…) and Noelle ran an interior design biz with her ex (whom she caught in bed with a client and her college-age daughter. Talk about conflicted!) I’ve also written a female loan officer who turned the hero down for a mortgage on his mama’s ranch, not just because he ruined her small-town rep at Prom fifteen years ago, but because she has the clout over a high-dollar male model with a cash flow problem. Some occupations, like rodeo rider or striptease artist, are sexier by nature, but the real fun comes from creating a computer geek or a librarian who sets your pages and his/her partner on fire.
**Play up the setting: Andy lives in large beach home with his uncle, and the two bachelors have a doorknob code for “don’t come in now.” Noelle’s mom has a broken leg, which will confine her to the upstairs of their rental house (and Andy appears as the White Knight who carries Mom up all those steps when they arrive, which incites Mom’s matchmaking tendencies. I’ve written stories set in snowed-in cabins and isolated ranches, but the large desk in a banker’s office, a cocktail lounge on a cruise ship…places that seem too public–or too dangerous–created heat that was fun to write, too.
**Got a holiday or a theme? Christmas, Halloween, office parties…even cemeteries, offer unusual times and places to do it. When invited to write a novella, let the theme direct your naughty mind to wherever it’ll go before you write the proposal, so you can milk every opp for setting, language, season, and life circumstances to play a part in the hanky-panky.
**Write to a different kind of music: I have a CD of Yo Yo Ma playing Argentinean tangos that is just hot and passionate. I like the soundtrack from “Chocolat” (now there’s a fantasy, with Johnny Depp as a wandering gypsy-trash hero…) for playful moods. And when I was writing “Naughty Noelle,” I was surprised at how much sexy dialog lines of Christmas carols provided. The lyrics to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” inspired a lot of this story, because Noelle was pouting and crying and all of those things “ya better not” do when Andy Hathaway happened along in his Santa hat.
**Toss in some personal experience: I always smile furtively when asked if I’ve tried every sexual thing I write about! My husband, while a devoted fan and supporter, is not the model for my erotic heroes. I’m writing fantasy, after all! So the faces in my collages tend to be rugged, hot, provocative models from ads who inspire my imagination. And yes, when I close my eyes in a tub of hot bubbly bath water and let my mind wander, they always come through with fascinating flashes of do-it-to-me scenes. My cruise vacations gave me great stuff for ALL NIGHT LONG and HOT FOR IT. “Naughty Noelle” is set in the Outer Banks, NC, where I’ve spent many a wonderful week enjoying those huge, fully furnished dream homes.
**Dirty movies: Yes, I do watch the occasional porn flick to pick up on some costuming or positions or situations (certainly not for the plot or dialog! “Oh, God…oh, yeah baby…yeah, baby…(insert moan).” But it’s a lot more fun to create characters with believable personalities and conflicts!
So now it’s your turn! Briefly describe the most outrageous/daring/unexpected place or sexual situation you’ve tried–or have heard from “a friend”–and there’s a signed copy of UNWRAP ME in it for the two I like the best. WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE! Our Plot Monkey hostesses reserve the right to zap offensive remarks!
Thanks for coming out to play today! I’ve enjoyed it!
Charlotte and Melissa
By all reports, Julie Leto was a sweet child once, somewhat shy, preferring to play quietly in her room making up stories. However, being raised with three brothers in a loud, primarily Italian household did have its influences and Julie discovered her inner tough girl. That’s probably why most of her heroines kick serious butt. Writing sassy heroines has worked out, as she’s sold over forty books to four publishers featuring strong, confident women. Julie lives in Florida with her daughter, a spoiled dachshund, a haughty lynx-point Siamese and a wide range of relatives all within driving distance.
Destiny
Dirty Little Secrets
Once Upon A Valentine
Through The Night
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Hi Charlotte/Melissa, welcome to the jungle! Lots of great tips! As someone who’s newly published I haven’t gotten to the point yet where I’m thinking, “Oh, God, I’ve gotta write a love scene…again.”
But you’ve given me lots of great tips and ideas and hopefully I’ll never feel that way.
As for unique situations/places. We have friends who have been married close to 20 years so they were looking to spice things up. I don’t know what they were thinking…and I swear, this truly is a friend. I am not this brave/dumb. It was a Friday night and after dinner (around 9:00) they decided to go parking in the mall parking lot. You know, about the time the mall closes.
They crawl into the back of the mini-van. I’m assuming things were just getting going fairly well because they set off the alarm.
And, as bad luck would have it, you can’t just put the key in the ignition and start the car. Nope, he had to get dressed, crawl out of the door and put the key into the lock of the driver’s door to get the alarm to stop. 
I never asked them if they finished or not. I’m thinking that was such a major buzz-kill that things ended at that point. But the next weekend they decided to try again. And this time they went somewhere much more private. And someplace that I promise you, no one else would ever want to go.
The dump!!!!
We have another friend that owns a “landfill” and they went parking on top of one of the big hills that had been covered over!!! This time they took her hubby’s truck and tried the bed of the truck. She had a million mosquito bites but she said they were worth it.
I don’t know. I pretty much decided my old boring bed was fine after hearing all of their stories in trying to spice things up!
I can’t wait to read everyone else’s stories! Have a great weekend!
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Good morning. welcome to the plotmonkeys.. i cannot tell you how much i LOVE your books..
hmm oddest place? well hubby and i met and were married 20 years ago, while we were both in the army national guard. 2 weeks after we go t married we had to go to a 2 week training site out in Pennsylvania. To take a 20 year old woman and a 24 year old guy , 2 weeks after they were married, well we honeymooned all over that base.. on the back of a military semi trailer that was in the motorpool, but i still think my favorite was walking one night and we had the mps rounds down to a science, so once they went by we headed for the officers golf course.. nice and dark and hoping no general was out having a midnight swing like we were..lol..
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I must say that most of my encounters have been pretty run of the mill. I look forward to reading “Unwrap Me” and “The Pleasure of His Bed” . As soon as I finish here I’m going straight to Amazon and hope I can find them both. I really love erotic fiction and having just discovered Ellora’s Cave and Melissa MacNeal I think my winter nights might be a little more…inspired! :lips:
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Welcome Charlotte/Melissa! Thanks for visiting the jungle!
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G’morning, C/M! :giggle: Sorry. I had to do the whole slash thing. The
made me do it.
First, as a reader, I’m infinitely disappointed in a writer when discover that the hot scenes are simply cut and pasted from other books. This is especially true in a series. Second, as a writer, I don’t ever want to do that! Granted, there are only so many ways of describing the “down and dirty” but please! Some imagination!
As for experiences? I’ll be brave. I’ll go back to my college days. The statute of limitations has run after 35 years.
I was in school in the Seventies. Farah Fawcett hair, streaking…. A small, liberal arts college in the mid-south. I owned a horse. A white horse. I also had this thing about dares. So…my best friend dared me. (She’s still my best and oldest friend…) I bought a long blond wig and borrowed a hat with ribbon streamers that tied on. I managed to sneak Traveller onto campus – I didn’t have a horse trailer so I rode him in from the farm where I boarded him.
Once it was hard dark, I donned wig and hat, stripped down, mounted and headed for fraternity row. What I didn’t realize was that the frats had decided on an impromptu “Spring Fling” in the quadrangle (read mass streak). So…Traveller and I went dashing through the midst of two hundred students. A friend of mine jumped on behind me. He was nude. And happy to see me. He whispered in my hair, jumped off, and “Lady Godiva” vanished off into the dark. MY BFF met me with clothes on the other side of the football stadium and I dressed quickly.
I had to walk Traveller back to the barn – about three miles. He’d managed to throw a shoe and I didn’t want to ride him too hard. My best friend was to have taken my car to the farm to meet me. When I got there, just about midnight, she was nowhere to be found. Cursing and muttering, I got Traveller settled into his stall without awakening the resident watch peacocks or the tame raccoon that lived in the barn. As I was coming out of the stall, someone grabbed me and before I could scream or fight back, my mouth was covered by an amazing pair of lips and I was being kissed by an expert.
Since this a PG rated site, I won’t go into all the details. Jeans and boots hit the straw, a horse blanket cushioned the side of the stall, he was a football player and strong enough to hold me, my legs around his waist, against the wall. It was amazingly
!!!!
This guy and I never formally dated. We really were just good friends but OMG! He was…uhm…marveously equipped, shall we say? And from that night on, he was known as Hellavaman in my circle. And whenever one of us needed our “itch scratched”, relief was just a phone call away. Yeah. He was THAT good!
At the last reunion, which I didn’t attend, members of one of the fraternities wore tee-shirts commemorating the “Midnight Ride”. There was a lot of speculation by current students and members of my class as to who Lady Godiva really was. Hellavaman was there. With his wife and six kids. He winked at my best friend. She winked back. They are the only two who know for certain. I WANT one of those shirts!!!
And I should mention that I received an anonymous wedding present 25 years ago – a framed, personalized caricature of Lady Godiva. Wearing a white straw hat with ribbons. To this day, I have no clue who sent it. Luckily, my then husband-to-be had and has a wonderfully warped sense of humor. He even offered to buy me a wig and hat.
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Good morning, All!!
Mistress Melissa here– :dominatrix:
Good to see all you Monkeys swinging already this morning! I’m SO happy to be here, and already I’m enjoying your remarks about your “most unusual” encounters! In real time, I’m doing my annual marathon of cut-out sugar cookies today, but I’ll check back every now and again :dominatrix: :dominatrix:
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OMG! Silver, what a great story. I wish I had that kind of guts! Guts like that make for great memories.
Jolene – too funny about you guys being sent to training together. Everyone I know in the military has always been seperated. I bet you guys were absolutely exhausted when you returned from that training mission!
Off topic: would you mind if I contacted you via e-mail? In my current WIP I need to use the name of an army base and I was going to use yours. But I wanted to talk to you about it first and see if you’d be okay with it. If you don’t mind, please e-mail me at Alannahlynne@gmail.com and I’ll explain what I’m doing and you can tell me if you’d be okay with it or not.
I can’t wait to read more stories!!!
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Welcome!!!
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Welcome to the jungle Charlotte/Melissa!
Have a great day all,
Cher
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Hello Charlotte/Melissa!!! As for interesting or crazy… Only what I find in between the pages of some steamy novels! :flower4you:
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Unique places and situations…hmm, well this isn’t the most adventurous but it is the easiest to explain. My husband has this bonkers idea that we should not have sex when we are visiting my parents- something about our kids waking up, respect for my mum, and too many people walking around. At the time of said adventure there were 9 people at the house.
Anyways, when we visit for a couple of days I am a-okay with his idea, but when we visit for weeks at a time I just get pissy. We have been together about 15 years, have 2 kids, and I am positive my mum knows we have sex. I’ve threatened to ask for permission!
So, on one of our recent visits I accosted him- I grabbed all our luggage and headed to the laundry closet. Once inside I dumped all the luggage in the wash, turned on the machine and locked the door!! Laundry has never been so much fun!
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The men’s shower of a co-ed college dorm. Okay, it was during a school break and my honey at the time was the RA so there was little chance of being discovered. It was my first time standing. Very erotic.
Evil-Ex-Jeff’s sister liked to do it in the median of major highways. Apparently she has a few trucker fans. Her goal was to do it with a different person in all 50 states.
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Hey, Charlotte/Melissa, :wave: good to see you. These are great tips. I love your books, written by both your personalities! I have the current Melissa books already, and no stories I care to share.
Keep up the good work, so to speak. Megan
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Good morning Charlotte/Melissa,
I asked my hubby of 19+ years this question I won’t repeat his 1st answer he thinks he’s so funny!!! So, recently we camp/4-wheel at a 2500 acre park way off the paved road. Well when we camp we do so with my sister & her family so the cabin is crowded! Well if we camp for more then one night we have gotten in the habit of taking the dog for a “long” walk. Now this is all woods, no lights, pitch black, lots of wildlife, very quiet (so you can hear the night riders) but they have a grand stand overlooking the motocross race course & it’s just beautiful at night (or so I’ve been told). Tie the dog & one end & oh the positions you can try!!! It’s a running joke now between the adults on whether we are taking the dog for a walk tonight or not. It’s not so much fun when you hear the night riders coming down the long path right in the middle of what you have started though!!
Have a great weekend everybody,
Susan
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Charlotte/Melissa checking back in– :dominatrix:
And, WOW, some of you posters DO know how to kick up the heat a notch or two!
Thanks so much for sharing your stories! Anna’s laundry room story reminds me a bit of my wedding day…when we returned to my parents’ house after the ceremony/reception, to change clothes before leaving for our honeymoon, and decided to lock ourselves into my parents bedroom/master bath to shower…but maybe didn’t go directly into the shower! By the time we got dressed a few other folks were at the house–and they knew quite well what we’d been doing! 
But we just smiled and acted as though nothing were unusual!
Keep ‘em comin’! (which, now that I think about it, is sort of the mindset I have when I sit down to write as Melissa!
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Welcome to the Jungle Charlotte/Melissa,
I have to confess to never reading an erotic book! :giggle: I plan to one of these days. When I do I’ll keep your books in mind.
Can’t think of any exotic locations all mine were pretty tame & many, many years ago!! Oh, the guys office late at night!! We should have danced all night!! Long story, all in the long ago past!
Jolene thanks for sharing your “Military Honeymoon”. Ah those were the days!!
Silver, that is quite a story, will you tell your grandchildren some day?
:pumpkin: :bat: :ghost: Halloween is coming!!
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My father made me a VERY sturdy ironing board when I married(47 years ago)the first time. Sex on an ironing board has to be done very carefully—they aren’t very wide.
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Hi, Charlotte/Melissa! I’m with Colleen, pretty vanilla when it comes to what I’ve done :wink: I enjoy reading about near-public scenarios–on a balcony overlooking a parade or in the restroom at the ballpark… I also remember reading about a couple on a submarine who manage the deed with their roommates around–I guess I’ve got a bit of a closet exhibitionist streak
I’ve read some of your writing as Melissa–I didn’t know about your alter-ego and will have to go looking for those books, too!
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I have a friend whose husband likes to have sex while driving.
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sex while driving? egads.. that sounds dangerous..lol..never though to do that in a military vehicle.. although we had a ked tapped in the back seat one time..lol.. but thats another story..
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Melissa/Charlotte here again– :dominatrix:
(wow, that little whipper girl is SO me!)
SEX WHILE DRIVING???
Now, I’ve heard of guys who love to
have their passenger uh, put her head between him and the steering
wheel while the car’s in motion, but the body-to-body kind of
connection sounds even riskier than, well–watching TV, putting
on makeup, and all those other things you see folks doing in their
cars. :yikes:
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Even in my heyday, there were no hijinks for me such as those described above!
Even so, life has been good for our 47 years together!!
Pat Cochran
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Donna M., since my daughter knows, yeah, I’ll probably tell that story to the grandkids (once I have some).
Thirty-five years down range, it’s taken on somewhat “mythic” proportions.
Alanna, I’m VERY familiar with Fort Knox and Fort Sill (Kentucky and Oklahoma) if the one in Pennsylvania doesn’t work out. And FYI? Navy, Marines, and Air Force installations are bases, unless its Navel Air and then it’s a station. Army has posts. Unless things have changed since my DH got out, noses got bent out of shape if you called a fort a base. Go figure. :scratch3:
Melissa/Charlotte, thanks again for dropping by the jungle and thanks for the goodies and the advice!
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I guess my wildest/most adventurous time would be when I was in my early twenties. My man of that time and I decided we couldn’t wait until we got home and we got down and dirty in the booth at the club we were dancing at. Thankfully we were not caught by the bouncers!! However, after we finished and started to leave a girl who was sitting in a booth across from ours commented on how she wished her boyfriend would be that adventurous. Whoops, so much for not getting caught. HAHA
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Thanks, Silver, for the info. I actually just e-mailed with Jolene and she mentioned Fort Bliss. In my mind, I was thinking Fort Sill and I said, “I’d rather not use Fort Sill. I dated a guy stationed there and I’d rather not remember him!”
Thanks for the info about post vs. base. All of my experience with military has been AF. Step-dad is retired major and I dated a couple of AF guys, so I automatically used that term. Thanks for correcting me so I could get my mind in the right direction.
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Hi, Chix! Mistress Melissa back for one last check– :dominatrix:
I’m going to announce TWO winners tonight, at 8:00 Central time or
thereabouts, and once I announce names, you two winners may choose between a signed copy of PLEASURE OF HIS BED or UNWRAP ME!! Wow, we’ve heard about doing
it in a booth at a dance club, in a dorm shower, on an ironing board, locked in Mum’s laundry room–and that naked horseback/barn afterwards story! How’s THAT for Saturday entertainment?!
I’ll be back in a bit…meanwhile, this uh, phallic banana looks like he’s having wayyy too much fun to be left out of this conversation!
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Melissa/Charlotte here again…and I want to thank EVERYONE who made this such a fun place to be today! Between reading your posts and commenting, I cut out and baked 29 dozen cookies today! That in between 3 dog walks and lunch with a good friend! Next Sat. I’ll decorate those cookies, but for now–hey, I’s a little tired!
But–here it is! The moment you’ve been waiting for!
I loved all your stories and the way you so graciously shared them! SILVER–you get the prize for the hottest, coolest story….Helluvaman is the sorta guy we’d all like to meet by surprise! You win a copy of either UNWRAP ME or PLEASURE OF HIS BED!!
AND–AND– Estella! I gotta hand it to you, figuring out how to make that ironing board a fun, exciting place to be!! :happy2:
So you get your choice of books as a prize as well!
Feel free to keep posting! It’s been a great day!
Charlotte :angel7: and Melissa :dominatrix:
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Yay, to both the winners!!! I have to admit, I’ve spent a fair amount of time this afternoon thinking about Helluvaman – he is the material of heroes!!!
And I iron (with starch) all of my hubbies work shirts. I don’t think my ironing board is made of sturdy enough stuff, but it might change my attitude about standing over it sweating if I could come up with some fun, sexy memories of it. :giggle:
Congrats to the winners and thanks Charlotte/Melissa for being here with us!
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Alanna, Bliss is a good one, too! Feel free to email me at silverjames[at]swbell.net if you have any questions about military terms. I’m more than happy to help if I can.
Mistress Melissa (since that’s the alter ego who wrote the books), I’m kinda partial to that banana m’self.
And thank you for picking my Lady Godiva tail….erm…tale. :giggle: I’ve love to have a copy of Unwrap Me! Thanks so much! Should I email you with delivery details? 
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Congrats Silver and Estella!!!