The Things We’ll Do to Sell a Book

Here’s some fun: I work at a university and have been invited by a professor friend, Karen, to give a presentation about writing erotic romance to a group of 150 college students in her Sexual Health [averts gaze] class next week. She has asked me to not only do a reading from my short story, “Heat of Winter,” but to participate in the reading as the narrator while two of her students read the parts of my two characters. My professor friend has even adapted the story to a script.

Not to worry. No sex scenes will be acted out. Just the lead-ups. It is a state-supported university, you see. I get to cover things like how I got into this type of writing, how reading this type of literature can contribute to a person’s sexual health and improve their sexual relationships, and that kind of thing. But I wanted to share with my NLV friends how much fun college evidently is these days. They certainly didn’t offer this kind of thing when I was in school. Here’s the email exchange:

Karen: I really need to get you to my Sexual Health class (it's huge, 150 horny 19-21 year olds) and talk to them about ROMANCE!!! I'm serious! Would you consider doing that? You could do a reading too! We meet on Monday nights from 6:30 - 8:00 and I just happen to have an opening on Monday March 28th! Say you'll come! The kids would LOVE it! :-)

Delora: Oh, what a scream! I would love to, but Karen, I don't know if you want me reading such explicit material -- and it IS explicit -- to 150 horny students. I'm afraid an orgy will ensue. You may want to read it first. I'll be glad to give a presentation about writing romance and talk about anything you want me to, though. I'm open.

Karen: That sounds GREAT! We'll figure out something wonderful. This is the next to last night of class, and trust me, by that late in the semester they are TOTALLY desensitized! This class is actually set-up so that we have a BIG class on Monday nights and then they go to a "lab" later in the week with just 25 students. They have assignments due at each of these classes and one is actually about "fantasy." (We usually do it after the Monday Night Masturbation Night.) They each write two (anonymously): one they WOULD like to do and one they would NEVER actually do. Before we read a few, we talk about the differences in girl and guy fantasy; how to use fantasy in your sex life, etc. Is your target reader mostly male or female? I’m PSYCHED...this is going to be great!!!

Delora: What a class! Never in a million years would I have guessed that my tax dollars are paying to help college students figure out their damn fantasies! We didn't need that kind of help when I was in school. We were naturally wild. This is the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life! I'll talk to you later about some sort of presentation. No matter what, we'll show them a good time!

Monday Night Masturbation Night? Folks, I feel shortchanged from my comparatively lackluster academic experience. The cool thing is that Karen wants me to present every semester and talk about my work. She also plans to feed the students’ fantasy assignments to me and tell them to read my books in case their fantasy appears in a future work. These kids will probably come up with things I can’t write about, but we’ll see. If I’d known they were offering classes like this, I might have re-enrolled.

[Special thanks to dear Tamara for posting my two previous blogs for me.]