Dirty Girls Book Club

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BEHIND THE SCENES

Years ago, I started a book club. We’ve gone through a few evolutions, but we’re still going strong. I love my book club! We take turns choosing books and there are NO RULES!! The books can be literary fiction, commercial fiction, non-fiction.

From what I’ve heard about other clubs, many seem to be quite stuffy and pretentious. If a book isn’t literary fiction � preferably a prize winner or, in the old days, an Opra Book Club selection (and maybe in the new days too, since that club’s had a rebirth) � then it’s beneath consideration.

Nothing against literary fiction, but it’s not always a lot of fun. And we deserve to have fun sometimes, right? That’s the idea that got me thinking about the Dirty Girls Book Club. Imagine a group of women sitting around, discussing the latest weighty, yawn-worthy tome, and one asks, “Is there a rule that says a book club can’t ever read anything fun?” Another chimes in with, “Or sexy? What’s wrong with sexy?”

That’s my premise, and of course the club in my book votes to read a sexy book, in this case The Sexual Education of Lady Emma Whitehead.

Now comes the second part of my premise. Each time the club chooses a sexy book, one of the members has a personal sexual � and romantic! � journey that in some ways parallels that in the book.

In the first book, The Dirty Girls Book Club, Georgia Malone is a widow like the heroine the club is reading about, Lady Emma. Emma was in an arranged marriage to a much older man who, to put it bluntly, sucked in bed. She has no idea that sex could be the least bit pleasurable.

Georgia’s marriage was a love match and she and her husband adored each other. For her, sex was transcendent because it was a joining of bodies and souls � and yet, she never actually has an orgasm.

Lady Emma allows herself to be seduced by a suave, sexy French count. The only new man in Georgia’s life is the figurehead for her new marketing campaign � hockey star, Woody Hanrahan. He’s totally masculine and very rough around the edges, and somehow she has to transform him, to make him more suave without erasing his sexy masculine edge.

Complicating matters is the fact that she has an inexplicable, unprecedented reaction to him: arousal. Though he’s certainly no sophisticated seducer like Lady Emma’s count, Georgia can’t resist the opportunity to experience the kind of physical pleasure she never believed she was capable of. And Woody is more than happy to take on her sexual education!

But of course, it’s never that easy, is it? It turns out, there’s more to Woody than meets the eye, and soon it’s not only Georgia’s body that’s turned on, it’s her heart. Do they get their happy ending? Well, I do write romance, after all!

If you’ve read my books before, you know that my mind tends to work in series, and so of course I conceived of the Dirty Girls Book Club as continuing on past Georgia’s book, so that each time the club chooses another erotic selection, another of the members will have her own sexy, romantic journey.

Also, as the club reads more books and discusses the issues they raise � such as issues about relationships and sexuality � the members become closer friends. You’ve probably noticed that I love writing about women’s relationships as well as the core romantic relationship in each book, so I’m having fun with that aspect of the Dirty Girls Book Club as well.

And, with these books, I set myself a new challenge: to write excerpts from the (made-up) books the club is reading. The Sexual Education of Lady Emma Whitehead is historical erotica, and that’s definitely not my normal genre, so it was interesting to put those excerpts together, and think not only about Woody and Georgia’s story, but about Emma’s “education” in the skilled hands of her French count!

If you wonder which club member is up next, it will be Kim, in a book that’s scheduled for July 2013. And her hero, Ty Ronan, is a cowboy.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy keeping company with Georgia and Woody!