So I was sitting outside yesterday in my asbestos two-piece, trying to get a little sun on my tummy, since everyone knows that tan fat is more attractive than fishbelly white fat. Well, I was cooking some hotdogs on the sidewalk, listening to the sizzle, and in the 2.4 seconds it took to cook each side before I had to turn, I thought about heat.

What makes a story hot?

I’ve been asking myself that almost since I started writing (bearing in mind that I started writing when I was old enough to pick up a pencil, but didn’t start thinking about heat and sexual tension until I started writing romance with a career in it in mind).  I haven’t been able to articulate a definitive answer, and in digging through my older stories and my current works in progress, I  wonder if I’m any closer to an answer than I was ten years ago.  It seems the correct answer is, like a lot that centers around sex–I’ll know it when I see it.

There seems to be a fluid standard when it comes to heat.  At least for me.  I know, for example, that what turns me on is not always what is hot.  And something that is hot doesn’t always turn me on.  Yes, I know it makes sense in my head.  It’s got everything to do with different senses of heat.  To give you a f’rex - one of the hottest scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie wasn’t in Body Heat, or 9 1/2 Weeks, or even the GBS in Basic Instinct, or anything in Boogie Nights.  No.  It was Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn in Terminator.  Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese had been on the run , she was just coming to understand how important she was to the future.  The sexiest moment isn’t filled with the usual pr0n-fare.  The shot is simple.  Two hands, intertwined, on bedsheets.  That image, more than naked, sweaty bodies, or cries of, “Oh, hell yeah, baby!” projected the sensuality of the moment.  I totally bought both the reason they climbed into the sack and the potential for happily-for-now they could have.

And yet, in other movies or books, the whole “holding-hands” thing doesn’t fly.  Even to the point of–if I don’t follow them into the bedroom and know exactly what they’re up to, I feel cheated.  It’s harder to buy the HEA (or the HFN).

The best theory as to why this is that I can come up with is that the sex is part of the relationship.  I know, news from the land of Duh there, huh?  You’d think it would be obvious–and easy.  Because who hasn’t, at some point in their lives, let or wanted to let pure physical lust make their relationship decisions, eh?  And just like the rainbow that is human sexuality, each relationship places its own weight and emphasis on sex.  Some relationships–some characters–have to have their sex lives expressed for me to understand their relationship.  If you are a writer, and you’ve gotten used to the average level of heat you find yourself putting in your stories, have you ever been struck when a character or set of characters in a particular work in progress knock you out of that zone?  It’s surprising to find yourself writing something erotica-level when you formerly wrote light romantic comedies that shut the bedroom door.  Equally surprising is to find yourself comfortably immersed in writing scenes of such frank boldness that they make dockside whores lower their eyes and blush, only to wind up with a sudden broken nose when your characters, in no uncertain terms, slam the bedroom door in your face and against your will.

Oh no.  Oh no.  Oh no they di’in’t.

Oh yes they did.

So why?  And is that where the line between erotica and erotic romance lives?  Or the other line between spicy romance and erotic romance?  Yes, I’m asking you.