What is clean romance anyway?
Clean and Wholesome was a category designated on Amazon. The term clean came from them and those of us who write “no-spice” romance wanted a way to better communicate what was in our books and better meet readers’ expectations. “Clean” can mean a whole lot of things, but let’s start with this. Clean romance is not the opposite of dirty --or imply that intimacy is dirty or smuty. I see the definition as more of “free from” like I had a clean performance, free from mistakes. I went to a conference once where a very popular author said that talking about sex on page through metaphor was considered clean. I want to say this, no one in the clean author community that I’ve talked to agreed with that statement. Most clean authors will say no sex on page--not even in metaphor. But even if we say clean doesn’t have sex on page, there is still a large variation from a chaste kiss to implied sex through closed-door. So what can you expect from a clean author? First, let’s define a few words: Clos...