No, they don't. (Easy for me to say. I’m a woman.)Due to my writing and interest in sex positive representation in the genre, I've been lucky to connect with many sex experts and therapists. Recently, I was talking with one and she said a lot of couples come into her office and the male partner claims he needs sex. "Sex is not a need. It's a want," she said.A need is something you must have to survive. Water, food, shelter. These are things …

I was a busy mom. I had a stressful job in tech. My husband did too. We had two kids we were trying to raise in a culture of pressure and affluence. Spoiler: It’s not as fun as it sounds. My days were filled with hustle at work, transporting people from here to there, cheering at youth sporting events, squeezing in time for a workout as I fruitlessly tried to match the thinner moms, and …

I spend a lot of time thinking about people’s sexual fantasies. As a steamy romance writer, understanding common sexual fantasies is a key part of writing intimate relationships that resonate with readers. Some of us have perfectly vanilla mainstream fantasies. Others of us do not. Just because we have a fantasy about something doesn’t mean we want to live it out in real life. If you fantasize about toxic men, it doesn’t mean you want …

Let's give today's men some credit. They can handle the truth if their female partner just isn't getting there this time. They experience combat. They run big businesses. They lift heavy things and so much more. Men are capable adult human beings exactly like women. So why do we women feel the need to protect them in the bedroom, even to our own detriment? Faking it is about caretaking Researcher Debby Herbenick and colleagues published …

One of my books, "Your Heart", is set at a resort loosely based on a place I travel to with my family and close friends every summer. One year, I gave the resort owner a couple of copies of the book, and they placed them in their library. Awesome. Then my 17-year-old daughter and her friends found said novel in the library. Unknowingly, I stumbled into our cabin to find about 10 of them between …

One summer morning, I was on my deck sipping coffee and feverishly studying the book "Passionista: The Empowered Woman's Guide to Pleasuring a Man" by Dr. Ian Kerner, researching for the novel I was writing. In my periphery, I heard an alarm. Not a rare occurrence in my close-knit neighborhood, but this one was unfamiliar (not a fire or car alarm). It was some distance away, so I didn't get too concerned, but concentrated on …

In part one of this article, I mentioned how romance novels have evolved to be more diverse than the standard hero-on-a-horse/damsel-in-distress trope. Though we still love a good alpha male/ingenue story. "Fifty Shades of Grey" anyone? But modern romance novels are not all about alphas and ingenues. From including diverse characters to safe sex practices to confronting genuine issues with intimacy, these novels have become much more. There are best-sellers featuring same-sex couples, racial diversity, …