shamelessly pleading for fiction recs

[truepenny]

Because I have so few books to read. *g*

Actually, because I'm setting myself up to do some difficult things in The Project, and I'd like to see how others have done them. I believe firmly in learning from examples, which is why I've been gnawing on A Civil Campaign like a dog with a bone for the past, oh, month. So I'm looking for stories--any length, but, please, original fiction because of my ethical Issues--y'all would particularly recommend (either as good models or Horrible Examples) which have either or both of the following:

1. a blind protagonist/narrator

2. explicit m/m or f/f sex (R to NC-17) written by actual practitioners of same, because I don't want to fall into the het woman trap of writing the sex scenes like it all assimilates to my experience. Vanilla, BDSM, various flavors of kink, it's all good. N.b., I am NOT looking for erotica; I'm looking specifically for stories in which the sex, while steamy, is part of the plot, rather than the raison d'etre. Actually, come to think of it, if you know any het fictions which use their steamy sex scenes for more than just steamy sex, stick them in, too.

And because--despite my brain the size of a planet--I am sadly lacking in intellectual staying power, the more sfnal the story the better.

*looks at post*
This will be interesting.

Comments

[marith.livejournal.com]

Ow. My brain hurts, because of all things what comes to mind is an old
Darkover novel called _The World Wreckers_. Which ought to meet
your second criterion; steamy m/m sex central to plot and character development...
oh my, MZB was writing yaoi, wasn't she? (Whether it was any *good* or not
is another matter; my little teenage hormone-driven brain thought so at the
time, but that was many years ago.)

There aren't too many other examples I can think of and that just seems wrong. Again going back to ACC and GN - in each of them the heroine who has deliberately locked sensuality away for years becomes aware of it again, and it is important. But...that's because of who those particular people are. (Snork. Suddenly reminded of the very silly scene in GN where Peter is giving Harriet rudimentary self-defense lessons, and it occurs to her that _her_ fictional characters would most certainly turn this into sex.)

How much reason does one need for a sex scene, as an author? If two of your characters become romantically involved over the course of the story then showing how that develops is important; but if that were enough reason in itself you wouldn't be needing to ask for recommendations.

(It's been interesting to work on the question from the opposite direction, in writing smut; one starts with the sex as a given, and tries to build characters and story that flow naturally around and through it. If the reader isn't genuinely interested in who these people are and why they're making out on a blanket with Kurdish yak herders or whatever, then they're going to lose interest after a couple of rereads, and that's a failure.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Another way round to put my question, I suppose, is: how many different things can a sex scene be used for? Because there's nothing wrong with erotica, but I have noticed that it doesn't matter how graphic the sex is--if it's pulse-pounding, it's because there's something more than an orgasm at stake. (Which I think is the same thing you're saying with your Kurdish yak-herders. *g*)

See, I've got Things for these (at the moment sadly hypothetical) sex scenes to accomplish; what I'm looking for are models of how to go about integrating the sex and the Things. I mean, yes, I have my own ideas, and probably that's how the scenes will turn out anyhow, but I'd really like to see other people taking a swing at it.