It's common knowledge that as far as arousal triggers, males are hardwired to respond to the visual. Not that women can't appreciate a handsome face or a toned body, but when it comes to seeking a mate, women want more than a pretty face. It's all a throwback to primordial days, when the world was primitive and the survival of the species depended on very basic principles. Men needed healthy, genetically sound partners for childbearing, and therefore could make a good assessment with just a look. Women, on the other hand, needed strong providers who were competitive and competent. Such things cannot be determined from physical appearance alone.

To this day, even if human society has advanced well beyond that, our basic brains still work the same. Men, at least initially, still respond to the physical cues of beauty and health. Women need to be moved on a more emotional or cerebral level. I theorize that the nature of female sexuality has permitted women to develop very interesting and varied standards for good mating material as human culture has evolved. In "caveman days," an aggressive male who was good at fighting no doubt turned on his female neighbors. Today, his equivalent could be anything from a guy who is good at football, to one who can dance well, to one who knows how to make a killing in the stock market.

This is why it is much more fun writing erotic fiction for women than for men. Men would simply rather look at pictures. But with women, there are all kinds of fascinating subtleties involved, giving the writer a vast range of approaches. The fun of it is knowing that it is your design of the character--his personality, the way he speaks, his conduct--that will do the seducing. Of course you still describe him, and of course he is always good-looking, but in order to do your job you have to convey who is really is.

I never tire of exploring and contemplating the thousands of ways men are sexy. (I would hate to be a guy and have such limited choices: breasts, eyes, legs, hair, and that's about it.) It's endlessly amusing to be suddenly attracted to someone and then trying to figure out why. For example, I recently found myself crushing on three different men who appear on shows on the Discovery Channel. Mike Rowe (of "Dirty Jobs") is funny and has a terrific voice. Grant Imahara (of "MythBusters") is ingenious as only a geeky mechanical engineer can be. Les Stroud (of "Survivorman") is brave, resourceful, and master of just about any domain. These guys have three very distinct types of appeal, but they each move me quite effectively and would make a great character in an erotic romance story. (For more on the Discovery Channel trio, visit http://eroticawithsoul.blogspot.com/2006/07/hot-guys-on-discovery-channel-mike.html.)

I've written over thirty erotic romance tales to date, and the protagonists in these stories have certainly employed a vast array of seduction techniques. I have a guy who used gemstone beads as his lead-in, one who turned a girl on by saving her life, one who composed an epic ballad, one who played great hockey and spoke French (there's a dream combination), and one who simply demonstrated for his lady the differences between male and female. I could go on and on, and there's plenty more where that came from.

Ah, it's wonderful being a woman.

Now what fun would writing my books be, if all I had to work with was what these guys looked like? Don't get me wrong, it's amusing enough figuring that out too. That's why I do portraits of all my characters (see www.dianalaurence.com/charactergallery.html). But the nice face only gets you so far, whereas it's the personality that can make you rip off your clothes and go nuts. That's why my Character Gallery also provides a verbal thumbnail sketch. The best selling point my stories have is the personalities of the heroes (and secondarily, the heroines). It's what they say and do that packs the punch.

So, what's my take on the use by so many erotica books of employing scantily-clad, hot guys on their covers? After all, my covers typically use classic paintings and make no effort to be overtly seductive. Well, I totally understand why the typical covers do what they do: You can't put a writing sample on the cover of a book--it's a picture. And it's not like a lot of women don't respond to these pictures--many do. I myself was temporarily obsessed with a gorgeous cover done by Trace Edward Zaber of an extremely hot guy's face with mesmerizing eyes. But at the same time, women don't buy books for their covers.

To further illustrate my point: My husband and I over the years have occasionally rented DVDs of what we affectionately term "movies for mommies and daddies who love each other." It was so amusing wandering the Naughty But Nice store with David. He invariably picked out movies on the basis of how attracted he was to the woman on the DVD case. Meanwhile, I looked for ones done by directors we had enjoyed before, who we knew did decent work. Well, eventually David just started letting me pick out the movies, as his choices were almost always bad and mine usually good. It's just another reason to be glad to be female: better objectivity when choosing adult films!

Well, I was born a writer and not an artist, and for a woman who likes to express things about sex, that's probably a fortunate thing. I wonder if I had been born a guy, what sort of quandary would I be in today? Male authors don't write about sex nearly as often as females do--if you're dealing in the world of words, they'd rather talk about something else. Even Playboy doesn't spend very many words on fiction about sex--that's what the photos are for. No, it just wouldn't work at all.

So let me just thank my lucky stars everything worked out as it did. I'll keep having fun writing words about sex...and at this point, I have a lot more than a thousand pictures' worth left in me.

Diana Laurence is the author of the Soulful Sex anthologies published by Living Beyond Reality Press (www.livingbeyondreality.com). Visit her at www.dianalaurence.com, and read her blog at www.eroticawithsoul.blogspot.com. Download her free fiction from the LBR Press READ FREE Project at www.livingbeyondreality.com/readfree.html