Sex: How Much Is Enough -- in Erotic Fiction?

A couple months ago I interviewed Sahara Kelly, an author of erotic novels for Ellora's Cave, fifty to be precise, including the pictured Fly By Knight.

As I read Fly By Knight I recall something she, and other erotic novelists have, said about the amount of sexual content in erotic fiction. There is no enough or too much, just relevance to the plot. I agree, and I know that's why I am enjoying the book so much. It is a story first. The sex is wonderful, inventive, tantalizing, but I'm being honest when I say that if there was not another single sex scene in it, I would still keep reading. I will say more about this in the review I plan to write for That's All She Read but suffice it to say the plot and characters are every bit as or more compelling than the erotic content.

Now as I am helping Nicol Harrity write her own first erotic novel, Random Acts, i see how true it is that the amount of sex in an erotic novel is less important than whether it fits the story. In Random Acts, Nicol tells the story of the lady of the estate and the stableman, how they turn to each other for comfort when her brother dies, and how they fall in love, overcome obstacles, and at the last are together. The sex is where it should be... when it makes sense for the story. Nicol worries that she isn't putting enough in. I ask her, "But wouldn't adding more just make the book silly?"

So far I have read or am reading three erotic novels, Kelly's Sir Philip Ashton's Eyes and now Fly By Knight, planning to read her Knights Elemental next, and Dawn Hallliday's Sins of the Knight. I had little or no expectations but have been pleased that these novels are as well written as they are. I will only read historical erotica, that being just about the only kind of reading I do -- historical, I mean.

I wish every heterosexual man would read these things.. they'd learn a great deal about what women want. And I suppose that includes not more sex but sex when it means something just like in the books.