Each story in the anthology will have a skull rating. This rating denotes the level of steam each story contains, along with elements or tropes that you will find within the story itself. While all the stories will have a rating of three skulls or more, this will better help you choose which story you might want to read on any given day.
Skull Rating:
One Skull - Expect any stories rated this way to be sweet and chaste. A few kisses, nothing more. Most of these stories, aside from plot and character development, are centered around the will-they-won’t-they dynamic before the smexy times ensue.
Two Skulls - These stories are taking things a bit further but any intimate scenes will end with a fade-to-black or a closed door before our characters get too far into the action.
Three Skulls - Expect the steam in our intimate scenes to rise. In these stories, the descriptions will contain some smexy bits, but they won’t yet be going into profuse graphic detail.
Four Skulls - Okay, this is where it’s going to get hot and heavy. The sex scenes in these stories will be described in graphic terms and are much more explicitly sensual than the first three levels. But you can also expect there to be plenty of plot and character development along the way.
Five Skulls - This is the no holds barred, verging on erotica or complete erotica section. Erotica is defined as being a story completely centered around the sexual encounters between characters and has very little plot and character development to speak of.
Now, your definitions of steam may well vary from ours. For those of us who read a lot of ménage and RH, we know there are a lot of shades of grey in polyamorous relationships. Some romances—MF or otherwise—will also include elements of BDSM which will cause the steam levels and their Skull Rating to rise.
On that note, we do want to reassure you that all sexual relationships and encounters showcased in this collection are consensual and written with an adult audience in mind. So, regardless of the Skull Rating, please ensure all readers enjoying Booktober are 18 years or older.
In addition to the Skull Rating, we have also included a blurb, tropes, and keywords to help you pick what to read next. While we hope that you will choose to read each and every story (as they are all quite spectacular), we do know that not everything is for everyone.
XOXO,
Miri, Kat & Mariah