Our Guest Speaks

Welcome Summerita Rhayne.

Do you think our Indian readers are ready to open their hearts to explicit love scenes set in the Indian background? Do you think western authors find an easy acceptance then our Indian counterpart- in terms of love making scenes?

Hi Rubina, Thanks for having me on your blog which by the way looks simply striking with that stand-out crimson theme. Let me say, it’s a privilege to be hosted by someone who is tireless in her efforts to promote writers.

Romance and sensuality are so intertwined that it is sometimes impossible to differentiate between them. As Harlequin author Heidi Rice is fond of saying, the love scenes serve a romance fiction work in the same way that action scenes serve a thriller. I definitely savor the build up and execution of a sensual scene and cannot think the story would 'warm up' without it.

Romance is a versatile genre, however. There are many levels and ways of depicting sensuality depending on the readers' tastes. The risk of putting love scenes in a book, especially explicit love scenes, is that they can be gratuitous, thrown in the story much like the so called item numbers in Bollywood entertainers, or nudity in sci fi Hollywood flicks – colourful but irrelevant to the story. When that happens, a perceptive audience loses interest fast.

A love scene serves its purpose when it's truly anchored with the progression of emotional bonding of the characters as well as serves to heighten the conflict. The push and pull of physical attraction provides a simmering background to powerful emotional overplay in the romance. Love carries great risk and the sexual attraction heightens the factor of the irresistible pull. The characters fight it but lose (most of the time) and that is the catalyst to fight more, propagating the conflict.

To get directly to your question, Rubina, as far as the majority of people who enjoy romance reading and are discerning readers, are concerned, I don't think there is any difference in accepting such scenes among Indian or western readers. Mostly it's a matter of personal taste. People in India who like closed bedroom door romances are as many as in the west. Maybe a slight preponderance but no more. Similarly, readers who enjoy a sensual story can be found in all regions in the world.

However, if you step out with a book which is exploratory in character relationships and especially the sexual side of that relationship, then you are bound to come across several opinions. In them, as an author of sensual romance, definitely I’ve noted that the Indian audience shows reservations while the readers in the west didn’t have any qualms about accepting the emphasis on the physical relationship. Generally speaking, the younger audience seems to find it more relatable.

One particular point I would like to mention here. I've noticed that a few persons have a somewhat different concept of romance. For some reason they regard the role of sensuality in romance as being separate from 'love'. In my stories the sensual relationship develops in conjunction with the love relationship. Sex is a part of love – how can it be regarded as something separate? If a couple kisses, how can it be considered more loving if they don't desire to make love? Yes, I've read that point of view somewhere and it really surprised me. That is not to say, kisses can’t be platonic but to have virtue attached to them, if they are, is a bit beyond me. Passion, which is negatively connoted by these people as lust, is a human emotion, so why is it 'wrong' to write about passion? Or lust for that matter. The heroine in my books finds the hero attractive because of their chemistry and not some ticking of her biological clock. The authors who use such excuses are confusing sexual attraction with the sex drive of the character. Without overstepping the limits of this post, the difference is same as in hunger and appetite. For the latter, just anything would not do.Now while I have the microphone, I also want to emphasize that I object to the term ‘sweet romance’ defining the heat level in a romance. For me sweet is as opposed brash or bold romance where things move faster for the couple. I prefer the romance to develop subtly in my books so I use the term sweet for that.

Thanks again for inviting me to air my opinions which really are not meant to be in anyway personal towards anyone. Reading is a matter of taste and I feel everyone should respect that and bear in mind what doesn't work for you might be brilliant for someone else so try to be objective about it.

Meet the Author

Summerita Rhayne loves to write sensual and emotional romance. There's no knowing when some quirky - or sometimes even not so quirky - happening in daily life might trigger her right brain and then she's off craving a new story. She loves writing characters who learn and grow and find their way out of their troubles and emotional hang-ups. Hot, sensual heroes and sassy but sweet heroines mostly fit the bill in her stories. She also believes that a touch of humor never goes amiss in a book.

She divides her time between family, job and writing - and loves winding down with music, movies and the internet!