New author - advice needed!

[maddz]

Originally Posted by BookCat

The Black Lace imprint which publish erotica for women tend to be about 400 pages long. My aged mother used to read them in her late 80s/early 90s. Where most hot romantic novels are approx 90% story and 10% sex, the Black Lace novels are 10% story and 90% sex.
In my limited knowledge of the genre, 90,000 words wouldn't be too long. Maybe the ones written for men are different.

TBH, I preferred the Black Lace titles that were either collections of shorts (90% sex and worked in the short story context), or had a higher proportion of story to sex (i.e. didn't read like a fix-up). Doubt if my mum would have read them at that age though! By her mid 80s the dementia was kicking in, and she was never much of a reader in any case. My dad, on the other hand...

When my sister and I cleared his flat in Byblos, I found an enormous carton of what could politely be called erotica. We nabbed a few of the 'classic' examples, and left the rest for his aunts to deal with as they saw fit. It's possible they were purchased as a Viagra substitute and read jointly with his mistress; I don't rule anything out as I remember visiting his uncle and being startled by the B&W soft focus photographs hanging on one wall in the hall (IIRC, they were of his second wife).

Most of the rest of Dad's library we didn't bother with; he read mostly WW2 fiction with a few oddities. That's how I was introduced to Tolkein; Mum was clearing out some of his books and The Fellowship of the Ring (the Ballentine edition) was in the pile.