It’s been a busy week!  I just finished the galleys of GODDESS OF THE HUNT last night, and I’ll give them one more quick look before mailing them, likely tomorrow.  I’m wrestling with the blurb for my Samhain novella, though the manuscript itself is all revised and copy edited and in the vault.  (This *%!$ blurb would be part of the reason I’m not blogging more about e-publishing today.  I’d like to be able to tell you what my e-pubbed book is about when I do!)  And I have a few light revisions to tackle on A LADY OF PERSUASION–a task I’m eager to cross off the list.  It’s never a chore to spend more quality time with Toby…

My other goal for the week is to add a new feature to my website, tentatively called “What to Expect in a Tessa Dare Book”.  The cool thing about having 3 novels and 1 novella releasing so close together, is that I can actually offer the reader some quantifiable data about them.  If you pick up a Tessa Dare book at random, for instance, you have a 50% chance of fish, horses, or hounds, but only a 25% chance of goats, stags, or babies.

Um, yeah…I’m going to try to draw some more useful conclusions from the data…but the main idea is to give people who might be thinking about investing their precious time and money in my books the best possible idea of what’s inside.  What general characterstics the heroes and heroines share, what the humor/angst balance is, and what the level of sensuality is like.

And here I come to a dilemma.  I’m really not sure where to classify my books, on the sensuality spectrum.  They’re certainly mainstream–nothing that would qualify as erotic romance.  But within mainstream…hm.  Quantity-wise, the love scenes are plentiful.  There are at least three full love scenes in each of my full-length novels, and usually a few more interrupted or abbreviated scenes.  Content-wise, there are some scenes that stray outside the borders of vanilla–but not too far.  Language-wise, I’m rather a traditionalist.  I don’t use “those” words.  (And if I don’t use them in my books, you know I’m not going to put them on my blog, but you all know what they are.)  I don’t have anything against “those” words–it’s just the way my style evolved, that I don’t get overly graphic about anatomy.  Don’t get me wrong, I strive to write hot.  But I want the heat of the scenes to come from the raw emotions involved and the vulnerability of the characters, not just the joining of body parts.

So…where does that put me?  Warm? Hot? Somewhere in-between?  Those of you who’ve read my books, what would you say to someone who hasn’t?

ETA: My wordpress just got updated to 2.7, and there’s something wonky with the look of the comment pages – sorry!  I’m going to try to get it fixed ASAP.