Vanessa Kelly: Sex sells, Regency style

It's no secret that sex is a fabulous sales tool, promoting everything from lingerie to beer, chocolate, and cars. You name it and sex has probably been used to sell it. But sometimes, sex literally sells, as in the transaction of one person purchasing sexual congress from another person. I'm talking about what Rudyard Kipling termed the oldest profession: prostitution.

In Confessions of a Royal Bridegroom, book two in my Renegade Royals historical romance series, the hero, Griffin Steele, owns a brothel. That little tidbit, as you can imagine, gave my editor heartburn. He politely but firmly requested that I make Griffin a really nice brothel owner, because how could a man who peddles human flesh possibly be a sympathetic hero? Even more to the point, why the heck would I want to create a hero (or heroine, for that matter) who moved in the world of prostitution and whorehouses in the first place?

Part of the answer is that sex for sale was very much an element of life in the Regency era. Many aristocrats — the heroic fodder for most historical romances — availed themselves of the services of prostitutes and courtesans. Paste BN bestselling romance author Sharon Page has written several books that include Regency brothels as settings. She points out that there was even a guidebook to London prostitutes called Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies.

"Women needed to keep a roof over their heads, and for many, work in a brothel was the only way. The negative side lets the reader see the harsh reality of a time when women faced real destitution. But I've also used the sensual side of brothels. Why? This world allows a heroine to see a side of sexuality she's never seen before. In the Regency, heroines are often gently bred and uninformed, or are living or dying by their reputations. I've been able to use the brothel setting to push my heroines into very sensual environments and let them get in touch with their sexual side. In books, I've used everything from an erotic scavenger hunt to a club with a dark side. Brothels are morally ambiguous — good or bad, or both. That keeps readers intrigued."

I also find that kind of moral ambiguity intriguing, and I enjoyed creating a hero who had to come to grips with the fact that he loathed the sex trade but also made a living from it. That kind of challenge appealed to historical romance author Maggie Robinson, too. Maggie really upped the game when she created Andrew Rossiter, a male prostitute who is the hero of Master of Sin. He was written to be the villain of a previous book. Maggie explains her fascination with his character:

"He'd made his fortune as a male prostitute, becoming all things to all people, but as I wrote him, I kept asking myself why. When I finished Mistress by Marriage, I couldn't get him out of my head. In fact, he turned up in the last chapter begging a favor from the couple he'd almost wrecked. If anyone was irredeemable, it was Andrew. Being the stubborn sort, I decided if I broke him, I could fix him, and I hope I did! His backstory was one of abuse and poverty, quite common amongst people who choose to exchange sexual favors for money. His heroine, Gemma, had a devil of a time convincing him of his intrinsic worth, but writing their HEA was one of the most satisfying authorial experiences I've had so far."

My hero, Griffin Steele, also comes from a background of poverty and abuse, which partly explains the choices he's made.

But how does an author create stories that feature these types of characters in a way that doesn't alienate the reader? Theme and setting are certainly part of it, but so is language. Pam Christie writes critically acclaimed historical mysteries (Death and the Courtesan) featuring a heroine who is the most-sought-after courtesan in London. For Pam, a big part of the challenge has to do with the language of sex.

"You, the English language author, cannot write a sex scene in the same way that you write everything else, because sex has its own special sublanguages. You must choose between clinical or pornographic. What to do? If you take the high road, you'll come off sounding like a manual for constructing box girder bridges. Take the low road and your readers will think you've suddenly suffered an episode of Tourette Syndrome."

The problem for me, however, was not so much language or setting but the hero, himself. Why would Griffin choose this profession in the first place? Did he truly see himself as a whoremaster (a term he hates), or was something else going on?

Historical romance writer Shana Galen took this approach in her bestselling Jewels of the Ton series, featuring British spies who masquerade as courtesans.

"My editor was a little wary of me writing a book with courtesans as the heroines. She asked if there was a way they could just be masquerading as courtesans, and the more I thought about that idea, the more I liked it. After all, it's more interesting to write a character with something to hide or a secret to keep … the few jobs that were open to women — governess, servant, etc. required the lady's character to be spotless. So what was a 'fallen' woman to do? What other choice did she have but prostitution? My heroines are actually fortunate to live in the world of the demimonde, the world of courtesans, because it was much better than being out on the streets. But a gilded cage is still a cage, and my heroines long to be free of their secrets and lies."

In Confessions of a Royal Bridegroom, I created a hero who both likes and respects women and yet also owns a brothel, an institution that treats women as nothing more than commodities. That's a hell of a contradiction for a hero to live with — at least the hero of a romance novel — and the challenge was in forcing Griffin to resolve this contradiction in a way that made him sympathetic and appealing to the reader. One of the ways I did that was by giving him a heroine who was more Mary Poppins than Victoria's Secret, and whose steadfast love upended many of his assumptions about the kind of life he deserved.

Sex may be great for selling chocolate, lingerie, or beer, but when it comes to romance novels — and life — nothing is more powerful than love.

Vanessa Kelly is a best-selling author whose sensual, Regency-set historical romances have been nominated for awards in a number of contests. Her second book, Sex and the Single Earl, won the prestigious Maggie Medallion for Best Historical Romance. Secrets for Seducing a Royal Bodyguard, the first book in her new Renegade Royals series, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and spent several weeks on BookScan's romance bestseller list. You can find her on the web at www.vanessakellyauthor.com.