Breaking Taboos in the Romance Genre & Contest Details!

One thing that I've found personally freeing about the romance genre is the wide variety of stories that you can actually tell. Starting with MIDNIGHT MEDUSA, my own series for Nocturne has been about adapting ancient Greek Myths to modern problems and that has inevitably brought me up against some taboos. Romance readers are diverse and forgiving--if you treat them right, they will be willing to take a big leap of faith. And no where has that been proved to me more effectively than in the reception to WILD, TETHERED, BOUND.

Outside of the kinkier romance fare, a foursome would be unthinkable in the genre. But in my novella, the hero splits into three different men. It seemed impossible for me to have put that gun on the mantlepiece without pulling the trigger. But oh, writing that taboo scene--what a trial!

The first time I wrote it, it was so vague and symbolic that none of my readers could actually figure out whether or not my hero and heroine were having sex. The second time I wrote it, the steamy stuff that screamed off my fingertips onto the page was nothing I could ever let my mother read, and it was also not very authentic to my own voice. It was that third magical time that I finally hit my stride--turning something difficult for me into something artistic and deeply meaningful.

Sometimes that's how sex is, even in real life. It takes the right person, and the right moment, for it to be magic. 

The story itself is a metaphor for soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Those afflicted with this disorder often become detached from the world, so as not to be hurt by the horrors that they've seen. This detachment ultimately harms their ability to live with and love their families.

In WILD, TETHERED, BOUND--Dessa is a dryad of an ancient forest. She binds nature together. She is the very embodiment of attachment. Sometimes she holds on to things too hard--something I think everyone can relate to when thinking about a relationship in our pasts that we just couldn't let go of. Because Dessa and Nick were polar opposites, they were able to connect and heal one another, and along the way I fell in love with them both...I hope you will too.

I have a contest running on my website www.stephaniedraven.com and you could win a free ARC of WILD, TETHERED, BOUND if you enter. There are still a few days before the contest ends, and I can't wait to pick a winner!

Stephanie Draven

MIDNIGHT MEDUSA -- Silhouette Nocturne Bites, April 2009
WILD, TETHERED, BOUND -- Silhouette Nocturne Bites, August 2009
stephdraven@gmail.com
www.stephaniedraven.com