A science-fiction setting is popular for both writers and readers of erotic romances. The reason is simple, at least it is for me. Give me a fictional world and I can design it to meet any number of needs. The rules, regulations, and social standards we all live with can’t get in my way when I’m writing. I can make them go away.
A domineering man and submissive woman don’t require justification when the lifestyle is standard operating procedure in the world I came up with. I don’t have to justify why a man throws a woman over his knee and repeatedly applies his hand to her ass. Readers of spanking erotica accept that this is how things are done within these pages. A woman doesn’t yell “insanity” if the man in her life treats her like a child. Instead, she gets the norms of the world she finds herself in. Sometimes, it takes a while but that’s part of the fun.
Okay, that’s all well and good. A woman wears a collar and crawls on hands and knees behind the hunk who commands her to because it’s expected and she’s turned on.
But what’s their physical world like?
Setting is vital to me. I can’t start a story until I know what my characters’ world looks like. And here’s a secret: I suck at creating fictional worlds. If you’ve read some Vonna Harper erotic fiction, you may have noticed I don’t put my characters on distant, exotic planets with complex social and political structure to say nothing of blue suns and five-legged household pets. Instead, I rely on corners of the world I know.
Case in point, one of my eroticas is Midnight Touch. Much of this story about a couple with heavy loads of emotional baggage takes place in eastern Oregon. No urban center or exotic city for me because I’ve never lived there and have no desire to. Give me wide open spaces every time—spaces where the few residents live their isolated lives in private.
Sara’s dead ex-husband was a domineering SOB who got away with treating her as he wanted. She seldom saw anyone and didn’t know whether she could trust those she did. She repeatedly tried to escape but never succeeded. I didn’t need to invent a planet because I planted poor Sara in ranching country with more cattle than humans. I know what eastern Oregon’s high desert land looks and smells like. I’ve been there. No need to try to figure out where water and other necessities come from. I’ve seen the wells.
My hero Mace doesn’t belong there, but he has no choice because Sara needs him in ways only he understands. Taking him deep into that isolated setting while he grapples with the forces that brought him there was so much fun. I put that poor man through a lot. Fortunately, he’s up for the challenge.
As for why I chose a country where antelope live, it almost never rains, the nearest grocery store is fifty miles away, and two people struggle to find peace and love there.
Looks like you’ll have to read Midnight Touch to comprehend their dangerous journey, hint, hint. You might also wind up with a darn good idea what panoramic eastern Oregon is like.
Midnight Touch
Obsession. Insanity. Darkness.
The words explain why Mace Seeger has come to see a woman he should have nothing to do with. But when he finds Sara Parmenter’s photograph in her dead husband’s wallet, her haunted eyes touch his soul, distracting him from her naked bound body.
The woman he finds at the isolated ranch is no longer trapped with a cruel and violent man because Ronnie Parmenter is gone, murdered.
He’s no longer a danger.
Sara desperately wants to believe she’s free from her nightmares—and to understand why she’s willing to risk everything with Mace, a man maybe she shouldn’t trust or believe.
A lifetime ago she’d been a sexual woman. The realities of her marriage had stripped those things from her, but being near Mace has reawakened primitive needs. She’s returning to life.
But Ronnie isn’t done.
