Last month, our theme was sex and romance. I was talking about the 12 Steps to Intimacy which romance author Linda Howard adapted from Desmond Morris's book, Intimate Behaviour . There wasn't enough room for all 12 steps in that post, so I'm continuing them here. If you missed that first post, you can find it here . However, if you missed that post, then you missed the link to the foundations for human sexual behavior, so you might want to start here . A quick recap of the steps, for those who simply want a refresher without the details: 1. Eye to Body 2. Eye to Eye 3. Voice to Voice 4. Hand to Hand 5. Arm to Shoulder 6. Arm to Waist Moving on to the last 6 steps: 7. Mouth to mouth Kissing. The first kiss is a milestone in any romance novel. Both parties are vulnerable. Look at the romance books you've read and see how many of these 'first kiss' encounters are cut short. The author is creating tension by pulling the characters apart. How is the...

To continue February’s romance/sex theme here at The Blood Red Pencil, I was asked to discuss the 12 Steps to Intimacy. Although in romance circles, Linda Howard is known for her presentation on the topic, in fact, she gives appropriate credit to Desmond Morris for presenting them in Intimate Behaviour: A Zoologist's Classic Study of Human Intimacy by Desmond Morris (originally published in 1971). Bottom line: human beings are hard-wired to establish relationships, because without them, child-rearing probably wouldn’t happen. Unlike most other animals that can fend for themselves early on, human infants require a lot of time, effort, and teaching before they can survive on their own. There had to be a strong mechanism in place to bond a man and a woman so that they’d stick around to raise their offspring. For those of you who'd like to know more about how the survival of our species revolves around sex, you can find more in a post I wrote for my own blog . Studies have sh...

This post first ran on Tuesday, February 21, 2012 A while back, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop given by best selling romance author, Linda Howard . While the focus of the workshop was the Twelve Steps to Intimacy, I've already done a number of blog posts on that topic, (you can read a summary here ) Most of my books are romantic suspense, which puts them under the romance umbrella, which means the majority of my audience is female. I know there's an XY reader contingent of this blog, so any feedback from them is welcome. I write books from the points of view of both men and women. Obviously, it's easier to write "female" but I do try very hard to make sure my men are actually "men" and, as the title of this blog suggests, not women with chest hair. One of the topics Linda Howard covered was writing details. She pointed out that this was one place where men are really different from women. Women write detail in sex scenes, while men...