Allison Brennan, who writes very intense romantic suspense (not of the erotic kind, but her books are good reading if you're interested in suspense novels), has written a great article about genre blending that got me to thinking about erotic romance.

Erotic Romance is one of those genres that's a distinct blend of romance with erotica, but often with lots of other genres thrown in there. I particularly think erotic romance has a large following of science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal readers and that's my own preference too.

I first noticed a mainstream trend toward the erotic in historical romance novels, but that quickly spread to science fiction and paranormal romance as many web based book sellers put out lots of hot romance to a market who'd never had the nerve to go into a brick and mortar bookstore and ask to have “those kinds” of books ordered. I went through this myself once, back when I first started this website. At the time, I couldn't even get the Secrets books without special ordering them in the bookstore, and when a few erotic romance novels did make it onto the shelves, there were put in the “sex” aisle.

These days, I can find a great many erotic romance novels in stores as common as Wal-Mart. The blending of romance and erotica has continued to flow through the romance genre, creating a deluge of hot and spicy reading for those of us who enjoy it, and we can find books of almost any genre within erotic romance.

What's your favorite blend of erotic romance? Romance/erotica/paranormal is mine, in just that order of importance!