Spicy Lit
Here’s a glass of cold milk!
FYI- If/when hear or see the words “spicy romance” I think of people with agonizing chemical burns in places no Carolina Reaper or habenero peppers ever belonged or were meant to go (unless chemical burns are your thing and then I don’t want/need to know about it please, kthxbyebye).
We’re adults, use “adult”, use “erotic”, say “mature consenting adults”, even “romance genre” but for the love of seasoning and my damn intellect, please do not say “spicy” to me!
Spicy is an adjective for flavor and not a literary genre. I am judging you.
You who say you write “spicy books”, I am thinking cookbooks. I am thinking of a replacement a new micro planer for nutmeg and mace. Finding pure asofetida and saffron. I am thinking Dune and spectrum awareness narcotics that fold space and allow limited prescience, my adoration of garum and Worchestershire. I am thinking Scoville Units, Vadham Double Spice and Twinings Ultra Spice Chai not being spicy enough ever for a cardamom and ginger lover like me (but good enough and I add more chai masala spice) and am not thinking about adult content.
I don’t want peppers assigned to a book as if I’m trying a new dish at a restaurant that uses chiles and I’m someone who orders their food “Thai hot “! I don’t want that thought, I am not wanting to think of the late Anthony Bourdain, me, and a freshly cleaned food prep table!!
My mother read trashy Harlequin Romances, the classic “Bodice Rippers”, Danielle Steele and V.C Andrew’s icky dark (modern romantasy’s grandma ) torture prawn in the 70’s and 80’s for the lols. They sat on the same shelf in the living room with the Anais Nin, D.H. Lawrence, Colette, The Story of O, de Sade, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, etc, where I got my sex education added onto from. Gen X knows quality classic smut. We called it erotica or porn, not “spicy”. We didn’t use euphemisms or hide books like guilty pleasures or read to be squicked. Erotica deserves to be privileged and be proudly on a shelf in the bookcase when it has literary merit. Modern” spicy books” lack that literary merit. Grannies know spice more than you might ever know it!
Treat readers like adults and be honest.
If your book is “spicy” and things are effected by the quality of “spiciness” but not ultimately edible/consumable/digestible and any bodily organ in a sex scene hurts/burns, someone needs medical attention and treatment.
In real life, burning, pain, discomfort, and bodily injury is a red flag! If he/she causes burning as if they were spicy during intimacy or in weeks after, you have a possibly big problem. Hopefully antibiotic responsive.
Your partner is an inconsiderate selfish twatwaffle if you were not consenting to this sensation or disease or knew you were at risk and such human (I hope) rubbish should be dismissed from your life posthaste, if not summarily executed (and you have a an airtight alibi, a foolproof way to hide the body and no one would report them missing, etc. Choose better and use someone else’s devices for your research. Writers should should always know better.)
If you like the Trigger and Content Warnings because you use them as a book requirement/book recommendation shopping list to pick books from and have trope requirements and get off on and romanticize abuse and trauma, get therapy!
What about Old Bay?