Karen Robards is a bestselling author of romance novels who’s written books with titles such as Obsession, Scandalous, Forbidden Love, and Desire in the Sun. Desire in the Sun is the story of Lilah and Joss – two star-crossed lovers sometime in the 1800s who struggle against the social mores of their time for the right to spend the rest of their lives having torrid sex. This book was recommended to me by one of the girls in my office, who told me she preferred Karen Robards’ books over other romance authors’ because Karen Robards’ books had more “detail.”

Hmmm ... “detail” ... “maybe it’s like a James Michener novel,” I thought.

Any of you who are familiar with Michener’s novels know the kind of detail he packed into his historical novels. Most of his books, like Alaska and Hawaii, begin at the time of the creation of earth – billions of years ago – when life first originated in an ancient organic sea, which scientists commonly refer to as  “primordial soup.”

At that time, only primitive life forms, similar to what we know now as noodles, existed in this primordial soup. Then, one pivotal day on the evolutionary calendar, one of the noodles slithered out of the primordial soup onto land – presumably in search of chicken. The rest is history.

Desire in the Sun did not start at the beginning of time, so in that sense, it didn’t have the kind of detail you’d expect to find in a James Michener novel. But I did discover on page 48 what kind of “detail” the girl in my office was talking about – it was when Lilah and Joss were stranded alone together on a desert island and they ... well, you know what can happen when a man and a woman are stranded alone on a tropical island with nothing else to do, so I won’t bore you with all the details.

(If you are a real “detail” person yourself, you may also want to check out pages 72-74 and 97-99. Whew! That Karen Robards is a real stickler when it comes to detail!)

After reading Karen’s book, I wondered what it would be like to place Lilah and Joss in a modern setting:

Summer of Prickly Heat
(Excerpts from a trashy romance novel by Antonio Winnebago)

Four billions years ago, when the earth was nothing but a sea of primordial soup, one brave noodle ventured out on land in search of a chicken...

Now let’s fast forward to 2009...

Lilah lounged on the keeping room sofa, drinking her coffee, trying to figure out the quirky man she had moved in with two weeks ago. Joss had gotten up early that day to pick up a few things at the grocery store. Lilah had pretended to be asleep – she would do anything to get out of going grocery shopping with Joss – he could spend a whole morning there, reading labels for saturated fats and artificial ingredients.

Finally, she heard the sound of his Jeep coming up the driveway. Joss walked through the door and dumped the groceries on the kitchen table. He immediately pulled his shirt off – he rarely wore a shirt around the house.

Lilah feasted her eyes on that six-pack ... it was Heineken – Lilah’s favorite. She could almost taste that cold lager! By the size of Joss’ stomach, Lilah could tell that he had put away quite a few six-packs in his time.

He put the beer in the freezer where it could get nice and cold. He paused for a moment, rubbing his chin. He had studied the reflection of his face in the bathroom mirror that morning, and now he was convinced of what he had suspected days ago – although he was striving for the seven-day stubble look, it looked more like six-day. Tomorrow he was going to adjust his beard trimmer.

Lilah’s eyes next feasted on Joss’ furry chest. She enjoyed running her hands through that thick pelt of virile black fur. But she now found herself wondering if that hairy chest was worth all the trouble.

Joss had been shedding a lot lately, and there was chest hair all over the house. Lilah had been having to Dust Bust the bed and the furniture every day now for the last two weeks. This was getting old.

What was the deal with all this chest-hair shedding? Was he going through some sort of molting season? What good did it do to keep the dogs and cats out of the house if this gorilla was shedding all over the place?

Joss had obviously made one stop other than the grocery store. He had something in a black plastic bag. When he saw Lilah, his face broke into a smile. He walked up to her and caressed her face.

“Lilah,” he said, looking dreamingly at her, “has anyone ever told you that I have beautiful eyes?”

“Yes, Joss, but I still like to hear things like that.”

“Oh,” Joss said, “of course, you have beautiful eyes, Lilah, but I was talking about my eyes. Has anyone ever told you that I have beautiful eyes?”

Lilah looked at him, puzzled.

“Oh, never mind,” Joss said. “I bought something for you … other than the beer, I mean.” He handed Lilah a bag full of toys from the XXX store.

“Oh, good, Joss! We can use this to spice up our sex life! I mean, once we start having sex.”

“Well, Lilah, actually, I got them for you to use by yourself.”

The smile on Joss’ face quickly faded. “You don’t know what it’s like to be a man, Lilah!” Joss sobbed. “Always under pressure to perform! Night after night! You women spend all your time reading Cosmopolitan, Redbook … learning hundreds of positions, moves, strategies! Hundreds of dos and don’ts! It’s very intimidating!

“I just want to make sure I get a little break every once and a while, that’s all! Besides, I’m not ready yet. You know I’ve been hurt! We need to take things slow, until it feels right.”

Lilah was an attractive woman and she knew it. She could not remember a time when she did not have a bevy of men vying for her affections. She was barely four-foot-ten, but her 42-inch bosom on that petite frame made a lasting impression on every man she met. She was ripe fruit – ready to be harvested.

But lately, as she neared her 35th birthday, she was beginning to worry – was the fruit becoming overripe? Was the fruit going to go bad on the tree and fall to the ground – to rot and be eaten by birds and other wild animals?

When Joss first saw that striking figure, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He would lie in bed at night, unable to sleep, thinking: “How does she keep from falling over from the weight of those boobs! They’re so huge, and she’s so small!”

When Lilah had made up her mind to get a boob job, she had decided to get the biggest bang for her buck. “Triple-D Barbie Deluxe costs the same as C,” she thought. “Why not?”

Joss was unlike any man Lilah had ever met. He was tall, with broad, hairy shoulders and a dashingly handsome face. His body – what you could see of it through all that body hair – was firmly muscled.

And those beautiful green eyes! Even the nervous twitch he had developed since Lilah had moved in couldn’t detract from those gorgeous eyes!

And beautiful white teeth! Almost perfect, except for the two crooked ones at the bottom! He had obviously had braces, but what happened to the two crooked ones?

One day, Lilah finally got up enough nerve to ask him.

“Joss?”

“Yes, Lilah.”

“Did I ever tell you that you have beautiful teeth?”

“Yes, Lilah.”

“You had braces, didn’t you?” Lilah could feel Joss’ rippling muscles start to tense.

“Yes, I had braces.” Joss could sense where this was leading. Old wounds, lying dormant all these years – about to be torn open!

“Well, like I said, you have beautiful teeth, except for those two on the bottom. What happened to them?”

Joss suddenly flew into a wild rage. He was like a stranger – a wild man! Someone Lilah had never known before, screaming at the top of his lungs!

“I didn’t always wear my retainers when I got my braces off, OK! I was young! Just a kid! Kids can make mistakes! Those two teeth went crooked after I got my braces off! Why do you have to harp on that!”

Joss was a great guy – other than the violent reaction he had whenever Lilah made the least suggestion that any part of his body was, in any way, less than perfect.

He had a sizable beer belly, to be sure, but Lilah had never dared mention anything to him about it. How many times, with every fiber in her being, had she yearned to cry out, “The stomach, Joss! The stomach! You can pump iron all day, but what good does it do you if you don’t work the stomach!”

One of those low-carb diets might help, too – that and sex! If they could just have sex! She had read that sex burned off calories!