Silly question. If Taking Chances gets published, will the sex have to be toned down atall? It is very graphic as we know, (not that we mind or anything) but a potential publisher might. Just a thought.
The bias is alive and well unfortunately.
One of my favorite bodice-ripper but very historical writers took one of her minor characters and started a side series with him as the main character. He's a homosexual English noble/soldier in the 18th century.
In her first short story about him, there was no sex, only hints.
Her first novella about him had a kiss and very genteel references to masturbation and fantasy about sex.
Her first full novel about him, there was one sex scene and it was fade-to-black.
And now in her 2nd novel, the sex is actually full blown, but not as descriptive.
(and you should read the complaints about it on Amazon's reader reviews, though I wonder if these critics complained as loudly - or indeed at all - about the explicit heterosexual sex in her other novels
In a way, it could be seen as literary cowardice. In the author's bodice-ripper novels, the scenes of heterosexual sex are all but surgically described, but with gay characters, perhaps not wanting to squick her fans who might have come over to the new series to try it out, decided to be very low-key with the gay sex.
Or, giving the author credit, the hero of her bodice-ripper novels is a blunt, brash, emotive, feeling modern woman. In her new series, the hero is an Old World gentleman, more cirumspect and less effusive due to his upbringing, social status, military ranking and sexual preference about which he must be secretive under pain of death lest he and his family be destroyed, socially, financially and personally.
I just find it ironically maddening, that novels with graphic sex - euphemistically called 'romance' novels - can be mainstream, but something similar where the sex is between members of the same sex is construed as 'erotic' and thus relegated to the not-so-respectable section of the bookstore.