Does HQN author Victoria Janssen know me and my people’s tastes, or what? When I invited her to do a guest blog here, I had no idea she’d manage to scare up an excerpt from the Odyssey, but she does, and she does it with aplomb. After her discussion, she’s even shared a little excerpt from her forthcoming novel, so let’s make her feel welcome.

The Lotus Eaters

by Victoria Janssen

One section of The Duke and the Pirate Queen would not exist if not for revisions.

When writing the synopsis for the novel I knew I had to visit an island, and if possible my protagonists needed to be taken captive by islanders. Since this was an erotic novel, the islanders would force them to compete in a sort of sexual display contest. It wasn’t until I’d had a little break from the manuscript, though, that I realized I’d completely missed an opportunity.

Luckily, around then I received the manuscript back with a request for some minor revisions. I checked in with my editor, told her my idea, and received permission to revamp the island scene by making it an homage to The Odyssey.

Here’s a brief excerpt from Odyssey IX, from a translation I found online: “…on the tenth day we reached the land of the Lotus-eaters, who live on a food that comes from a kind of flower. … the Lotus-Eaters gave [the crew] to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the Lotus-eaters without thinking further of their return; nevertheless, though they wept bitterly I forced them back to the ships and made them fast under the benches.”

Some historians suggest the plant meant was Ziziphus lotus, which is related to the jujube, though I suspect there’s also an element of fantasy in the description.

The idea of islanders who subsist mainly on drugging flora fit in well with an erotic novel. I could thus easily force the protagonists into the otherwise unlikely situation of a sex competition, which led to new revelations about their characters. The drugged islanders added not only an element of humor but also of dystopic fear, resulting in a chapter that was much more gripping than before the revision.

I knew my liberal arts education was good for something.

The Duke and the Pirate Queen is Victoria Janssen’s third novel for Harlequin Spice.  Her novel The Moonlight Mistress was nominated for an RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award.  She’s also written The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover.  Find out more at victoriajanssen.com

Bonus

The Duke and the Pirate Queen is set in the same world as The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom & Their Lover and features characters who appeared in that novel, Duke Maxime and Captain Imena Leung. Captain Leung is forced to abduct Duke Maxime, who is her employer, to thwart an assassination plot against him. He wants her. She wants him. Unfortunately, issues of birth, rank, and their own pasts are in conflict with their desires. And then there are the pirates, the storm, the hostile islanders…not to mention the sharks.

Excerpt:

They were forced to walk at spear-point through the forest towards an unknown destination. Imena glanced at Maxime, then indicated the man in front of them with the barest inclination of her chin. Another wary glance told her Maxime was now watching the man, too, and his slightly unsteady gait; he walked as if his feet were numb, or not attached to the ends of his legs. He smiled widely and incessantly, which she found disturbing. He still carried a spear, though; all five of the islanders did, in menacing contrast to the crowns and streamers of pink and orange flowers they wore tangled in their long hair. She wished she could see the other four men, who walked behind them and to the side, occasionally prodding her and Maxime with the butts of the spears.

Sunlight filtered down through the trees where the heat was trapped. She felt it more powerfully with her clothing on. Sweat had begun to trickle down her back, mingling with tiny fragments of bark from her tree-climbing and the sticky residue from insect repelling balm. She was going mad with the urge to scratch. Finally, she gave in. Aside from a brief poke from a spear butt, their captors allowed the movement.

Maxime eased over, his hand lifted to scratch for her, but a spear promptly shoved them apart.

She waited a few minutes, then asked, in patois, “Where are we going?”

One of the men behind her spoke. His tone was slow, measured. “Don’t worry, beautiful lady. We won’t kill you. Unless you do something we don’t want you to do.”

She and Maxime exchanged a glance, ripe with irony. She said, “What don’t you want us to do?”

Another of the men began to sing. It wasn’t any song she’d ever heard, and it didn’t seem to have any words, only vowel sounds. She didn’t think it was a language. The pitch wavered gently up and down long stair-steps. Mostly, it was loud. Soon, one of the other men joined in, and the first man, the one who’d spoken, began mumbling to himself. She couldn’t catch any individual words. Some sort of ritual?

She didn’t like not knowing who had taken them captive. She didn’t like not knowing what purpose their captivity would serve. …

She shifted her weight, so she was walking a little closer to Maxime. In a low voice she hoped the singing would cover, she said, “I don’t smell alcohol, but….”

“They do seem a bit to the wind,” Maxime agreed.

She waited to see if any of their captors would react to their conversation. None of them displayed any reaction; they continued with their strange song and mumbling. She murmured, “I don’t like unpredictable people with spears.”

“They haven’t harmed us yet.”

“Unless you count my bleeding ears,” Imena remarked.

Maxime hid his laughter in his fist.

They walked through the afternoon. When the singing finally died out, Imena didn’t risk speaking again, but she and Maxime communicated their feelings with eloquent glances, until it began to grow dark. As the stars began to be visible, Imena smelled a hint of smoke. Soon, she was sure the smoke was from campfires, some of them being used to grill fish on flat rocks. Her stomach growled. Maxime shifted closer and bumped her shoulder with his, suffering a punch from a spear butt without complaint.

The camp was substantial, with at least three hearths and numerous shelters leaning against the trunks of the towering trees. Perhaps fifteen men and women were in easy view, though she couldn’t be sure of that, outside of the flickering firelight.

An old man with matted hair came forward and, smiling broadly, gestured for them to sit. Under guard from their original five captors, plus five more who ambled forward, the old man bound Imena and Maxime, both wrists to opposite elbows across their chests and ankles to knees, and their ankles then bound to each other. He smiled all the while, his hands as swift as birds. Imena’s mood plummeted just as swiftly.

I’ve been saying for a while that I think the more inventive and creative writing in the industry is happening on the erotica end of the scale. Megan Hart, one of the most literary writers in th genre, has been pushing that envelope with deep and thoughtful novels that happen to center around sexual topics.

My editor at Berkley is quoted in this very interesting article in Publisher’s Weekly:

Relationship-centered erotica is very important at Berkley, where executive editor Cindy Hwang notes that although the imprint has only been publishing its Heat line since 2005, “In that short period of time, we’ve really seen the erotic romance take off. This isn’t to say these books aren’t as sexy as other erotica—just that there’s an emphasis on the character development and emotional connection between the characters.” Hwang cites Emma Holly’s September Fairyville as a great example of a book that combines intense emotional connections with “envelope-pushing sexuality.”

THE VIRTUOUS BRIDE is my contribution to Romance Divas Fourth Annual E-Book Challenge.

If you are my mom or anybody related to me, this story is NOT FOR YOU! This story is an experiment in transgressive erotic fiction, something that’s altogether different than what I write for HQN’s Silhouette Nocturne. It makes me really uncomfortable, and that’s usually a sign that I’m stretching myself as an artist. Hopefully it will make you a little uncomfortable too, but in a good way!

(Click on the cover art to read it now! A PDF is also available upon request.)

I hope you’ll enjoy reading the many FREE stories posted by forum members on their sites and blogs. If you enjoyed this story, please visit Romance Divas for MORE Free Stories!

This book is an unusual find–one that attempts to blend literary erotica with Regency romance and emerges as something else entirely. Fans of erotica may find it too soft. Readers of traditional Regency romance might find it too sensual. I found it to be beautifully written and thought-provoking.

The four novellas that comprise ON THESE SILKEN SHEETS all touch one another and find their premise in a naughty gentleman’s club called Harridan House. By choosing this unapologetically lurid setting in a famously prim and proper time period, the author immediately sweeps away any illusions the reader might have. Instead, she shines a light on the seedy underside of the era, and challenges readers to deny that no matter what social mores rule, our basic sexual instincts remain under the covers.

In spite of this erotic indulgence, most of the stories conform to traditional romance genre rules. At least, outwardly. What I found most edifying about Ms. Darby’s work is its fundamentally transgressive nature. In every story, she finds some element of the forbidden, and subversively weaves it along with what romance readers supposedly want and expect from a love story. We have the conventional lonely widow, the diligent parliamentarian with a broken heart, and even a single father, looking for traditional love. But alongside these expected romance tropes, we also have some unrepentantly depraved characters, and I loved them best for their utter rebellion against the society in which they lived. (And to some extent, against the society in which their desires would still raise eyebrows.)

Ms. Darby gives us self-actualized women, some of whom have rather standard fantasies and sexual urges, and some of whom would be thought as perverts, even today. Our very first heroine is a voyeur–and there was something courageous about Ms. Darby for exploring the sexuality of a young woman who wants a man she’s just seen making love to someone else. We are also given a former brothel madam as a heroine, and although her love story may have been the least erotic of the bunch, it was also presented without hysterics or histrionics about her past.

Of the four novellas in the book, the last one was my favorite. Perhaps it was because it was the bravest and I appreciate the challenges the author faced in writing it. Her hero, in this last story, was the butt of every joke in the stories preceding it. We’d already seen him through six other pairs of eyes, and the impression was not flattering. What’s more, our heroine isn’t a lady or an heiress, but a lowly maid. And when Lucy the Lady’s Maid is offered a position as a mistress to a powerful man, she does not throw up her hands, wailing dramatically about her virtue and honor–but rather, accepts willingly and happily.

Meanwhile, I eagerly await Ms. Darby’s next work and can’t wait to see what rules she decides to break next.