Nan Comargue | Nerds and the Woman Who Love Them

I can’t be the only one who finds Sheldon Cooper from the hit show The Big Bang Theory kinda sexy, can I? While I generally find the behavior of the sitcom’s genius main character infuriating, his social ineptitude—particularly in the romance department—is also endearing. We forgive him the irritating speeches because we know he just doesn’t get it (‘it’ often meaning other people). Viewers can relate because all of us have been guilty of doing or saying the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time. The geniuses just seem to do it on a grander scale. After publishing more than a dozen erotic romance stories, I was getting a little tired of the dominating maverick rich guy hero (don’t worry, I’m mostly recovered now). Still, restless writer me was saying at that time, there had to be more than that guy to make a woman’s heart race. So I started thinking about sorta hot, still pretty nerdy, Sheldon when I created the hero for my newest erotic romance short novel, HOT FOR THE PROFESSOR. Like Sheldon, Logan Sterne has been a misfit his whole life, a science whiz kid who became a professor in his teens. No one in his life can relate to Logan, not even the heroine Avery, who grew up next door, never imagining that the genius kid next door was seriously falling for her. So where does a misfit genius find out about romance? For Logan, it’s in romance novels. He treats them as textbooks. He even talks like a textbook when he first lets Avery know about his feelings, going on about her ‘estrogen features’ and the unmistakable physical signs that she’s actually a little bit into him. Estrogen features are a real thing but I first heard the phrase on the only two minutes I’ve ever watched of Next Top Model so I had to research it. Just like Logan would do. Some of Logan’s ridiculous social miscues are what make him memorable to Avery. The genius-hero has a way of sticking in your head, especially when he proposes to you on his eighteenth birthday, as Logan does to Avery in the story. I like writing the ‘return’ stories so the real action in HOT FOR THE PROFESSOR takes place years after that awkward romance story-inspired proposal. Logan has grown up, filled out and turned into an incredibly sexy man who wears glasses and academic sweaters which Avery finds nearly irresistible. Because who’s hotter than a man who isn’t afraid to show his smarts, right? Maturity has given Logan confidence in every area that matters…except for romance. He’s still fixated on Avery but she thinks their living (and sleeping) together is nothing more than convenience and a strong chemical reaction. After numerous setbacks in her personal life and career, she’s got her own baggage to deal with and she could do without the challenges Logan offers to her stereotypical view of who and what he should be.

Is part of what keeps my characters apart those clichés about nerds? It seems to
be a subtext in the story. God knows Avery’s faced her own battles against
stereotypes—being an artist, everyone expects her to be wild and promiscuous.
Oddly enough, because of his lifelong status as a misfit, it’s Logan who manages
to see past those easy assumptions and look at her as a whole, rounded person.
But the clichés can be overwhelming, can’t they? And they’re so very convenient
because they make thinking unnecessary. The challenge are those people who don’t
fit into categories. The hot nerd. The cautious artist. When you think about it,
no one truly fits into a neat box…except, of course, on television.