My good friend USA Today Best Selling Author Pauline Baird Jones has started an interesting new endeavor – Blush Free Books. From her website, here’s a portion of the explanation of what the site is about:

“…a website and newsletter dedicated to building a community of readers who love exciting, action-filled, and well-written books that are hotter than the clean and sweet, but close the door on the steamy scenes. 

There are communities aplenty for steamy and inspirational books, but there is an underserved group in the middle: readers who crave well-written books with all the action, suspense, excitement, and romance without the graphic sex. These stories have the edge-of-your-seat action with a hint of spicy language and some of the sexual tension not found in the cleaner-sweeter stories. 

There is no cost to readers or authors, just a willingness to share their favorite blush-free reads and the authors who write them. I will be sharing reader recommendations on Blush Free Book’s social media and in the newsletter when it launches in January.

Are you ready to give your Blush Free Books the platform they need to stand out and say ‘Come read me!’ to the millions of readers who love a great read without the unnecessary heat? Join me and other Blush Free Authors today by adding your voice and your books to #BlushFreeBooks!

(What is a blush-free book? Well, you’ll know it by what you don’t see in there!)”

As an author and reader, I personally have no problem writing and reading those steamy open door bedroom scenes but I think Pauline may be in the forefront of a developing trend, for readers who are growing tired of all the spice and heat and skip those sections anyway. There’s room for everyone in our vast reading universe these days, thank goodness!

Out of my 52+ book backlog, I have only two or three with no bedroom scenes, mostly because the way the plot unfolds in those particular books there’s no time to have a meaningful such encounter, so I’ll be listing those on her site (and maybe I can entice a few readers to come and read my other, hotter books too).

Best wishes to Pauline on her project!