Someone told me that they found my book, Witch’s Knight, on a shelf of a bookstore under the erotica section. It’s not the first time Witch’s Knight has been classified as erotica, though I personally don’t consider it as such. Honestly, I was just thrilled they found my book in the wild on real bookstore shelves! But, to me, erotica has to be focused primarily on the sex to qualify as erotica. Like, cover to cover, the whole point is sex. I’ve read some books like that, where every other page is another sexual scene. I like some books like that and support authors who write them. 

But… my books aren’t like that.

Witch’s Knight (The Bloodline Chronicles 1) has one sex scene. I’m proud of it, absolutely, and I love it, but it’s just one.

One. Uno. Achat. Yi. Hana. Une. Eins.

ONE.

It is a single chapter lasting 12 pages in a print book of 296 pages. For those inclined to do the math, that’s 4.05% of the book.

That means that 95.95% of Witch’s Knight has to do with vampire and witch politics, uncovering the secrets hidden by vampires, working against witch/vampire hunters, rival witch clans, violence, dealing with bad vampires, learning about the secret vampire kingdom, learning tragic/dramatic backstories, and building up tension romantic and otherwise between characters… but that 4.05% of my book negates everything else I wrote. Now it’s “just” smut. 

In my second book, Midnight Fear (The Bloodline Chronicles 2) it gets a little more intense. In the print copy, there’s about 27 pages of sexual content. The book is 348 pages long. So, because of 7.76% of my book’s content, the whole book is smut. 92.24% of Midnight Fear is about international vampire politics, a coronation and associated grand ball, violence, dangerous vampire/witch hunters, a ghost haunting, a neo-nazi witch clan, summoning an extra-planar demon/spirit thing, sibling rivalry, vampires learning to work with witches and the reverse, building tension between characters… but that doesn’t matter. 7.76% of the book has to do with kink or sex. So, the whole book is smut.

Do you have any idea how much fucking research I have to do to write a character taken from ancient Irish mythology and do him justice?

How much research I need to do to write a main character who is a vampire originating from a brothel in Paris, France in the early 1500s?

How much research I need to do to write a side character who is a Mi’kmaq Native American and not screw it up?

A side-character couple who are an interfaith Jewish-Muslim lesbian couple with a daughter? (Believe me, that one is a doozy to navigate right now, even more than usual)

An international cast of ancient vampires that are represented well?

But sure, all I write is silly little smut stories for people to get off on.

It drives me nuts that I put all this effort into crafting these storylines, creating intrigue, researching historical events and time periods, learning about all these little things I need to build a comprehensive story… and then get the entire book labeled erotica over 4-7% of its content. That’s not to say that outside that 4-7% there isn’t romantic build up and tension… after all, that’s what makes that 4-7% so satisfying. But that’s all the real ‘smut’ there is. And because of that, my friends and family jokingly refer to my writing as smut. Which, sometimes I join in with the joke, I know it’s good natured, but… it simply isn’t true, from my point of view.

I like to say that my book isn’t erotica, but it has elements of erotica. It also isn’t horror, but it has some elements of horror. It’s bisexual adult paranormal romance. And there’s so much going on in it that I even have heterosexual, monogamous fans who have messaged me that they’re invested in what happens next despite not being the target audience.

This isn’t a critique of books that are super smutty, by the way, don’t misunderstand me. I like silly little smut stories that exist just for pleasure. I think they need to exist. I like those stories that are cover to cover sex because why shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves? It’s worth noting that men never have to reach far to access material catering to their sexual desires, but once women and other non-men have even a sliver of something they claim for their pleasure, that gets demonized. Why shouldn’t we prioritize pleasure in a narrative without punishing the characters who experience it? That’s all part of why I include the sex scenes in the first place. Why can’t we have a genre where women and femmes having sex isn’t a likely death sentence? But then… any book that has a HEA (Happily Ever After) and a single sex scene is written off as ‘porn’, ‘smut’, or ‘silly’ by far too many people.

Why do we do that? It’s simply inaccurate, and it reduces all the hard work that goes into building these intricate worlds and characters to… just sex. But there is so much more.

Even the big-name popular books get this treatment. Fourth Wing? Dragon rider smut. A Court of Thornes and Roses? Fairy smut. Bride? Vampire/Werewolf smut. The percentage of smut to the rest of the narrative in these books is so slim, yet… those few scenes make it smut. Never mind the expansive fantasy maps, the intricate worldbuilding, the political intrigue, the wars… No, the main characters have sex and focus on some romance, and the books’ target audience is women and they’re written by women, and that makes it “silly little smut books”.

I really want you to think about those percentages in my books again. 

Witch’s Knight: 4.05% sexual, 95.95% not sex = smut

Midnight Fear: 7.76% sexual, 92.24% not sex = smut

Make it make sense. 

If you enjoyed this post, give a like and follow for more content, and leave a comment with your thoughts. Be sure to check me out on Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, YouTube, or Facebook and check out information on my adult paranormal romance novel series, The Bloodline Chronicles. 

Stay tuned for updates regarding the upcoming third and final installment of my series, Vampire’s Queens (The Bloodline Chronicles 3)!

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