What The Oysters and Chocolate Editors Look for in Erotica

Thank you so much for having us on your blog, Roxanne!

We’d love to take this opportunity to write about erotica and what we look for as editors. We truly strive to publish the best stories out there. When we selected the twenty stories for our newest anthology Nice Girls, Naughty Sex, we read over 400 short stories; that means we sent out more than 380 rejections!

Writers often ask us why their story was cut. Here are the top five reasons why your story might have been passed up:

1. Not enough sex! This is genre fiction after all. You wouldn’t publish a crime novel with no crime or a science fiction story with no scientific fiction, so it stands to reason that a sex story with no sex isn’t going to make the cut.
   
   
2. Too many clichés. If you use the phrase “wave after wave of pleasure” to describe an orgasm, Jordan will scoot your story to the rejection list before you know it. While describing a cock that is “hard as steel” will have Samantha sighing and saying “next!” Other phrases to avoid include: “probed with his tongue,” “a juicy peach” (to describe a pussy), “her heaving bosom,” and “he plunged his rod into her aching cunt.” After reading thousands of erotica short stories, our tolerance level for cliché is terribly low.
   
   
3. When the character’s dialogue reads like a porno play-by-play. For example: She said, “I’m hot baby. Hot for your cock in my ass!” He said, “Oh yeah, do you like it like that? Do you like it when I fill you like that?” She said, “Oh yeah mmmm. Yeah!” This story will be cut.
   
   
4. Not enough soul. We don’t have anything against pornography or any smut that exists just for the sake of smut. But when we select erotica, it has to have soul. This means we actually want to care that the characters are having sex. What’s their motivation? What makes their relationship complex, (like in A.M. Hartnett’s “Name Your Price”), or romantic (like in Jeremy Edwards’ “Eastern Daylight Time”), or haunting (like in Sommer Marsden’s “A Technicality”), or healing (like in Sienna Conroy’s “For His Pleasure”)?
   
   
5. Just doesn’t fit. Though your story will be well crafted, have a soul, and be filled with fresh language and exciting sex, sometimes it just doesn’t fit with the emerging theme or feel of the collection, or it may not fit with the flow of the anthology as a whole. Also within the anthology, the stories may follow a similar theme, but they can’t all be the same. When selecting for our first anthology (Oysters & Chocolate) we actually had to cut out two awesome stories from the final running because they both featured lesbian bathroom sex, and we already had a lesbian bathroom sex story selected. We saved one of those(“Phoenix” by Valerie Z. Lewis), and it’s now published in Nice Girls, Naughty Sex. We had no idea that so many lesbians were having sex in the women’s room! But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

Jordan LaRousse and Samantha Sade are the co-owners of OystersandChocolate.com. They are authors of three sex advice books (Mastering Your Man from Head to Head, Penis Genius, and Clit-ology) and co-editors of two erotic anthologies (Oysters & Chocolate and Nice Girls, Naughty Sex).

An Unexpected Evening Reviewed at You Gotta Read Reviews

Review Link:

http://yougottareadreviews.blogspot.com/2011/04/review-unexpected-evening-by-roxanne.html

An Unexpected Evening

Author: Roxanne Rhoads

Publisher: Noble Romance Publishing

Buy Link: Buy An Unexpected Evening Here!

Rating: You Want to Read

Reviewed By: Wendy Mitchell

Blurb:

Samuel is a centuries-old vampire who prefers to be a recluse. He is always afraid of losing control and becoming the monster he once was. Falling in love with a young witch has pushed his boundaries and pulled him out of his comfort zone.

Katerina always encourages Samuel to be more open, to let loose, and to really "live" instead of only existing in the shadows.

One night, he finally grants her wish . . . in ways she never imagined.

Review:

Katerina is a young witch looking for more passion from Samuel, her vampire boyfriend, who is afraid of unleashing his true self. In a startling turn of events, Samuel tries to scare Katerina away by showing her exactly what she’s been asking for.

This was just a quick, saucy, little read that was quite fun. The story starts off with Kat giving Samuel a heck of a hummer in a valiant effort to loosen him up. Katerina was my kind of girl. Save the warm and sweet for s’mores, just give me the hot sauce, baby. There was a history with Samuel and Kat that was briefly touched on, and I would definitely like to follow up on these two. Samuel evidently has some authority issues that we are not privy to in this little snippet. Samuel did not however, have in issues in the bedroom, when he finally uncapped his fangs and let loose. For under 13 pages, this was quite a firecracker of a story.

Paranormal Pleasures Review from Sizzling Hot Books

Here's a partial review from Sizzling Hot Books, read the whole thing at http://www.sizzlinghotbooks.net/2011/05/paranormal-pleasures-ten-tales-of.html

Ten quick stories to satisfy almost any craving… Witches with Vampires, with humans, with Demons; Humans with witches, vamps, oh, and a ghost. And the erotic combos are just as varying: the standard m/f, a ménage f/f/m with a little f/f, a old triangle of two guys wanting the same girl but the girl wanting both guys… You get the idea that Roxanne Rhoads has written a collection of a little bit of everything here, right?

Overall, is an interesting short story collection with a wide variety of both paranormal and erotic ideas. Witches, Vamps, Demons, and even humans with paranormals are all here. And the vanilla (non-BDSM) erotic mix is represented as well: standard m/f; ménage m/f/m; ménage f/f/m with a little f/f; the old triangle of two guys wanting the same girl leading to the girl wanting the two guys in a threesome (classic ménage m/f/m); and a sex party hinting at a orgy.

The interaction between the characters and the sex scenes are well written (and hot). At times, the darker side of the paranormal comes out, but Roxanne Rhoads still brings a HEA ending to the story even if it might have a darker twist. Paranormal Pleasures has a variety of stories as well, from funny (Overkill is a unique way of dealing with relationship problems) to holiday themed.

The stories in Paranormal Pleasures are short enough to read while waiting on appointments or housework like laundry, but at around 12 to 20 pages each, these make the perfect bedtime reading, not even scary so won’t keep one awake. So for the paranormal reader looking for a quick break, here is a sexy collection to distract you from the real world.

Another Review of Paranormal Pleasures

Book Review: Paranormal Pleasures (Roxanne Rhoads)

Synopsis:

Ten tantalizing, erotic tales of vampires, witches and demons grace the pages of this short story collection by Roxanne Rhoads.

Step into the darkness and let these tales tempt and tease to satisfy your paranormal cravings.

Eight of Roxanne Rhoads’ previous eBook publications appear in this collection, along with two brand new, never before published tales of supernatural love and lust.

Reviewed at: http://secretsofabooklover.blogspot.com/2011/05/book-review-paranormal-pleasures.html

Review:

I had a lot of fun reading this collection of erotic short stories. Roxanne Rhodes pulls together a delicious, delightful and sometimes devious anthology of paranormal encounters that range from vampires to demons to witches to ghosts and from one on one encounters to multiple partners. Pick your poison because there is something here for everyone!

Rating:

This was so exciting and fun to read! Super sexy and crazy hot, I just couldn't put it down! As I finished, I couldn't help but wish there was more to read (and that my hubby had a forked tongue). ;)

Heat Factor:

Blazing! Get out your fan and run the cold shower, ladies! This one is going to make you sweat!!!

A Review of Alfresco Loving

Reviewed by Lucy Felthouse

I probably chose the wrong time of year to read this eBook, given it’s got a couple frolicking in the sun and is full of outdoorsy stories. On the other hand, what better way to bring sunshine to a grim autumn day?

Containing stories from five erotic authors, this book promises variety of the smuttiest kind. And it certainly delivered.

Containing witchy sex, surfer smut, mermaid mating, threesome titillation and dangerous dalliances, Alfresco Loving is a very hot read. I didn’t enjoy all of the stories equally, but they were all brilliantly written and veryerotic. My favourite of the five was Roxanne Rhoads’ storyWelcome Spring, a tale about a witch taking part in a ritual to welcome the beginning of spring. It starts off being a little erotic, and ends up being extremely saucy! I also really enjoyed Viva Jones’ story about a wealthy woman staying in her foreign villa. It had a different take on what could have been a cliched situation and was damn sexy.

Overall, though, this is a fab read and worth picking up, whatever you’re into.

Available from:

A Good Review of Paranormal Pleasures

Reviewed by Lucy Felthouse at Erotica for All

I’ve read and enjoyed Roxanne Rhoads’ work in the past, so I jumped at the opportunity to read this naughty paranormal collection, Paranormal Pleasures. It contains ten erotic stories involving supernatural beings.

Eight of the stories have been previously published, and two are brand new tales. I hadn’t read any of the stories before, so the book in its entirety was new to me.

There are witches, vampires, demons, nymphs, ghosts and humans in this tasty collection. And they’re all getting up to no good. The stories are of varying lengths, and some have love stories as well as lust, but the one thing they all have in common is that they’re hot!

There’s Sapphic action and threesomes galore in this collection, as well as some one on one naughtiness which is no less erotic. It’s a delicious read which I’d recommend if you like yourself some paranormal erotica.