Interviewed by Bill Noble
(3/15/00)

Robin Schone has an incisive voice, an easy laugh, and the same passionate intensity that drives the characters in her breakthrough -- and intensely erotic -- romance novels. Schone has met a storm of controversy over the explicit content of her stories. Naysayers cry "Porn!" Readers tell her she has changed their lives.

Her first book was rejected by twenty-eight agents; the twenty-nineth read it, loved it, and sold it five days later to Avon Books. Robin's third book, "The Lover", due out in April, recently harvested a $500,000 contract from Kensington Publishing Corporation..

This week's Clean Sheets fiction selection is an excerpt from her bestseller The Lady's Tutor. She spoke with fiction editor Bill Noble just after the manuscript for her next -- and most incendiary -- novel went off to the publisher.

CleanSheets: Romance? Is it really sexy? And who reads it?

Robin Schone: Let's start with the fact that half of all the paperback fiction books sold in the U.S. are romances. Half! That's an immense audience. Women read them, passionately. And, yes, you'll find some of the sexiest writing in any genre in the pages of romance. Authors have been writing explicit erotica for a long time. If that surprises you, it's because a lot of people hate the idea of erotica in romances. And because romance is written mostly by women, for women, it's always been ignored by the establishment.

CleanSheets: Why are you so controversial?

Robin Schone:Romance traditionally upholds the view that heroines are sexually ignorant, not only about anatomy, but also about desire: romance heroes must not only educate them about their bodies, but must also ignite their dormant sexuality. My heroines, on the other hand, are very aware of their sexuality. They want satisfaction just as much as my heroes do, and neither my heroes nor my heroines are afraid to experiment with oral sex, anal sex or sex toys. Though I think most of my current notoriety happened by accident.

When I was asked to write an article for the biggest romance website, All About Romance, I decided I'd address the readers and publishers who say, "You can't write about that!" In my article, called "Masturbation, Wanton Women, & Other Romance No-Nos." I raised a number of questions: "Do romance readers (masturbate)? Do romance readers want to read about a heroine who craves both emotional and physical love? Or do romance readers want a clueless virgin bathes regularly but has no idea that she has a clitoris until the hero finds the magic button?"

CleanSheets: What was the reaction?

Robin Schone: My article got the largest number of hits and reader reactions AAR had ever received. Many privately e-mailed me, supporting my views, but most readers who posted were outraged, insisting that explicit sex had no place in romance. Some even told me that "my husband wouldn't approve of (them) reading such material."

In any case, my publisher has had a hard time keeping The Lady's Tutor in print. It hit bookstores in July, went to second print the first week in August, and is now in a limited 2nd edition. In September it's going to be released in a 3rd, and hopefully final edition -- a trade paperback with a completely different cover. Many women have written, thanking me for what the book has done for their sex lives, and that their husbands thank me, too, even though they haven't read it!

CleanSheets: Tell us more about your readers.

Robin Schone: Surveys show that women who read romance have sex more than women who don't. (Why would a man object to that?!) The typical romance reader has at least two years of college and has an average household income of $40-50,000.

CleanSheets: Your writing is very graphic and uninhibited. Are there other romance writers who are that explicit?

Robin Schone: Gritty sex first appeared in romance in 1985. Sandra Brown, who started out as a Harlequin/Silhouette author, wrote a "breakout" mainstream novel, Slow Heat in Heaven in which she did the unforgivable -- she had her hero tongue-fuck the heroine. I thnk that's the first time that phrase ever appeared in a romance novel. While very erotic and explicit romance books had been published prior to that, the sex language was more euphemistic ("he tasted her honeyed depths").

But yes, there are other authors who write erotic romance, although, as my editor discovered, we all write it quite differently. Kensington made publishing history last September with its release of Captivated, the first erotic historical romance anthology. It included the industry's most established erotic romance authors: Bertrice Small, Susan Johnson and Thea Devine. I was very excited to be included in the anthology. The book immediately hit the USA Today bestseller list. My story, "A Lady's Pleasure," is about two strangers, a man and a woman, who are stranded in a storm; they explore each others sexual fantasies, including the hero's desire to have anal sex. Bertrice's story features a male sex slave; Susan's novella includes male bondage, and Thea's story has female bondage.

CleanSheets: What about men and romance?

Robin Schone: I'd like to see more men take romance writing more seriously. Part of the barrier is the way it's marketed. When I got the "gentle" cover art for my first book, I cried for three hours, got drunk, and cried for another three hours. I knew it would kill my sales, and it did hurt them -- women who wanted a "hot" romance wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, whereas women who expected a "traditional" read got the shock of their lives! Men call romances "bodice rippers" and "Fabio books." They look at the clinch covers and walk away.

There should be a stronger connection between "erotica" and "romance." Most of the best erotica right now is written by women, but men read it in large numbers. Granted, looking at romance covers, it's difficult to know which romance books are erotic as opposed to sweet or "sensual," but Kensington is going to help us out with that. They're starting a new trade paperback imprint that will debut late this summer or early fall. Their goal for 2001 is to print one erotic romance book a month--and yes, they will have "erotic romance" printed right on the front covers, so there will be no confusion as to what the reader will be getting.

CleanSheets: Maybe you have the answer to the Great Mystery of online erotica: what do women want? There are huge numbers of women online, and they certainly come to sites like Clean Sheets, but the mass market is still mostly men. What can you tell us?

Robin Schone: I don't know. I'm finding out. I only really know what turns me on. My hardest work in writing is to be sure I'm doing what my characters want and need as opposed to what I want or need. I love it that lots of women are responding to what I write, but I'm no expert.

Wait, you know what women want? Dialog. In men's erotica, characters act, they don't talk. Men are very focused on "doing it." Women want honest, uninhibited feeling and communication. And, sure, we want romance and variety, too, but we're not stupid: we know that men have a lot more to them than just cocks.

CleanSheets: Can I give you a hard time? In The Lady's Tutor Ramiel has an improbably large cock that's put to rather spectacular use. Why did you make him so huge?

Robin Schone: Much of the lovemaking in The Lady's Tutor is built around Richard Burton's 19th Century translation of a 400 year-old erotic manuscript called The Perfumed Garden. It claims that a man who is twelve fingers-width -- or three handbreaths -- in length must be a "meritorious" man. I suppose I just wanted to honor tradition [smiles].

Also, interestingly enough, in a study comparing penis lengths, Arabic men were longer than men of other nationalities. Ramiel is half-Arabic.

And let's face it, women do not fantasize about men who are no larger than their pinkie!

I confess, it was a great turn-on for me to write about Ramiel's cock. But is that what I want in real life? I think if I saw it in the flesh, I'd run. Maybe not, though -- we can only die once [smiles even more]!

CleanSheets: What have you written, and what's coming up?

Robin Schone: My first published novel was Awaken, My Love. One agent told me, "You can't start a romance story with the heroine masturbating!" But I did. [laughs]

In The Lady's Tutor, my Victorian heroine has been sexually abandoned by her soon-to-be Prime Minister husband. In the hope of winning him back, she seeks out Ramiel, the bastard son of an English Countess and an Arab Sheikh. She wants him to teach her how to pleasure a man, but she doesn't want to commit adultery, so she insists that he must teach her without touching her. Ramiel uses The Perfumed Garden as a lesson book. He combines clinical sexual instruction along with his own erotic preferences. Believe me, had I been Elizabeth, I would never have held out as long as she did! One reviewer compared The Lady's Tutor to Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence.

This April, The Lover will hit the bookstores. I was terrified when I sent it off. Even my husband was taken aback when he read it. He said, "Robin, this isn't romance! You've crossed the boundary!" I was on tenterhooks. I was sure my editor would reject it out of hand. But she loved it, and the publisher is behind it 100%!

CleanSheets: Can you give us any hints about the new book?

Robin Schone: Ann, the central character, has inherited a large estate at her parents death. If she marries, the law in Victorian England would give her husband complete control over her and her money. So Ann chooses a less traditional way of satisfying her sexual appetites [smiles again]. She buys the services of a man who is well-known for his expertise. And yes, he is very expert! And yes, historically, gigolos did exist, they just didn't call them gigolos. They were called other names...

CleanSheets: That's all you're going to tell us?!

Robin Schone: For now. A lady has to have some secrets! Well, I will add that there is mystery and psychological suspense in it, as there were in my two previous novels. My husband, who is a big Stephen King fan, says that the villian in The Lover scares him shitless. An excerpt chapter can be read on my Web site.

CleanSheets: You're a passionate advocate on issues of women's health. Can you tell us about that?

Robin Schone: I went through a traumatic medical experience a few years ago. I had fibroid tumors, and in that situation, doctors all too often just want to rip everything out of a woman. They expect us to be grateful. Gosh! No more worries about uterine or ovarian cancer, no more messy periods. I'd done a lot of research on my own, and that wasn't what I wanted. But I couldn't find a doctor who would perform a myomectomy (a surgical process that removes the fibroids while leaving the uterus and ovaries intact).

Finally, I discovered an organization called HERS (Hysterectomy and Educational Resource Services), run by an amazing woman, Nora Coffey. She had a hysterectomy in the 1970s that left her without any genital sensation whatsoever. She has devoted her life to providing doctor referrals and educational resources for women who are facing the possibility of hysterectomy, or who have had one and need help in coping with the lifelong consequences. If it had not been for her, I would never have found a doctor to provide me with the surgery of my choice. After my surgery, I thought -- what a wonderful thing it would be to get together the hottest romance authors in an anthology celebrating women's sexuality, in honor of Ms. Coffey's dedication to preserving it. And I did! I am donating 20% of my royalties from Captivated to HERS.

CleanSheets: Is there anything you want to tell us about Clean Sheets?

Robin Schone:I love this site. It's intelligent, honest, and erotic. So often I have been told that erotica and romance don't mix, but CleanSheets proves that it can. The fiction articles are very compelling; they combine men's and women's sexual and emotional needs, both real and in fantasy. And that's really all romance is about--men's and women's sexual and emotional needs. Both real and fantasy.