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Writing a romance novel can be hard.

Very hard.

Not actually hard like a slow, throbbing, erect dragon waiting to release its masculine fire inside you, but hard like difficult.

This is especially hard (and no, not stiff like the most taut muscle you have ever held in your tiny virginal hands) for a person who cannot manage to pen a grocery list without it somehow sounding cynical. Thus, the idea that there is a part of my brain that can create a male character who not only understands that farts should be silent, but who can also save me from a pack of lions and an evil 16th-century king right before he makes me orgasm twice in a row and then holds me is a difficult idea to believe. Hilarious even.

Having been in writing circles for the past four years or so, I happen to know that romance novels are big business. They are a great way to enter the writing field, and there are pretty serious returns if you can manage to produce something that is both uncomfortably graphic and embarrassingly unrealistic. I tried my hand at this for the first time in the fall of 2004, shortly after I returned from college and moved back in with my parents. Thinking that there were few places better than a Colorado Springs Barnes & Noble to have sexy thoughts about Silently Farting Men, I started to write something really, really disturbing on my laptop computer screen only to have Ben Ebbs from high school approach me to say hello. And to read my computer screen. And to tell me about all the missionary work he had been doing lately and about his newborn baby. And since we all know that there is nothing sexier than a newborn baby about to be baptized into born-again Christian doctrine, I immediately quit writing my romance novel and having sexual thoughts for that day and the following 603 days.

But now I’m back! Back to penning sexy, unrealistic endeavors between women and men or, as the guidelines said, “women and anything really…neither the supernatural or the fantastical should be out of the question. Do not hesitate to engage your main character with a vampire or a yeti...” Because yetis are so sexy. When my boyfriend’s chest hair is busting out of his polo shirt, I tend to think, “That’s it. That sexy yeti is going to get it now.” And, I’m back because I read an article the other day that stated that even though the United States economy is basically dead, a prominent romance novel publisher had their best quarter ever.

Chapter One:
Kyle Leslie touches her face while squeezing his butt cheeks together and says, “You are beautiful. More beautiful than ten sunsets.”

Something about that sounds wrong.

Chapter One:
Kyle Leslie touches her face while squeezing his butt cheeks together and says, “You are beautiful. More beautiful than twelve sunsets.”

Okay, so that novel is probably never going to make it from pen to page, nor is what I currently find sexy, because exactly no one wants to read a novel where I discuss at great length how sexy it is to be with a man who values making his own bed, admits to a man crush on John Lennon and has absolutely no debt. That is ridiculously sexy—audible farting noises or not—but that’s just not the stuff of romance novels.

And then I think about college. Try to capitalize on this. This was perhaps the “sexiest” phase of my life and involved the following recipe: four alcoholic drinks, light-hearted verbal abuse directed at potential conquest, a couple bad decisions, “interesting” conversations/moments the following morning that usually ended with an overly graphic descriptive phone call to a friend—but never any tears. Never any freaking tears.

Now I’m starting to feel annoyed. How come no one has ever penned a romance novel about a female just having sex all the time with different men and not getting all ridiculously emotional about it? Where is this book? Where is this book where there is no regret or self-loathing or an unfortunate and unplanned pregnancy? I want to read a book where the main character sleeps with everything and then doesn’t call people back because she gets bored, finds someone better or just forgets because she got sucked into an America’s Next Top Model marathon. Where is that damn book? Does the world seriously think that being Samantha from Sex and the City is a more implausible fantasy for females than having intercourse with a yeti is?

Chapter One:
Kelly Leslie is bored and not wanting to go home alone tonight. She’s pretty sure that the only qualifications for her slumber party are that he has brown hair and that he can appropriately match decently fashionable jeans or khaki shorts with a t-shirt. There are only two men who meet this standard and one looks significantly drunker than the other. Kelly moves in the opposite direction of what will surely turn into a flaccid penis and a lot of lines about how much he’s been drinking that night, and moves to her other target. “I’m Kelly.” And I like to have sex a lot, she thinks, but does not say. He introduces himself. His name is Joshua and he’s into drum circles on the weekends. She doesn’t mention that she doesn’t care, not even one little bit, but instead leans forward and says, “Let’s hear your best yeti impression.”

Erin Spradlin lives in Denver where she avoids math, traffic and laundry. The bulk of her day is spent fielding Facebook questions from her mother and unintentionally killing plants. More of her writing can be found at erindenver.blogspot.com and thebooksnob.blogspot.com.