Porn or Romance?

Some of you may enjoy Monopoly or online Risk, or Words With Friends, or that damned Angry Birds, but I have the newest, bestest game around, invented during a good many years of bookselling and book shelving.  It’s….

ROMANCE WRITER OR PORN STAR???!!!

Listed below are twenty names. Ten are current romance writers, actually collected at a local bookstore. Ten are active porn stars, or so I’ve been told.  I suspect none are real names, but I could be wrong about that.

1. Lora Leigh

2. Lorelai James

3. Addison Fox

4. Regan Hastings

5. Danielle Steel

6. Riley Steele

7. Raven Alexis

8. Alektra Blue

9. Sophia Santi

10. Chanel Preston

11. Roxanne St. Clair

12. Teagan Presley

13. Cherry Adair

14. Lexie Belle

15. Amanda Quick

16. Kristina Rose

17. Kady Cross

18. Kayden Kross

19. Jeaniene Frost

20. Alexis Ford

All kidding aside, I was taken by how most romance novelists and most porn stars try to utilize names which evoke luxury or iciness or vibrant youth or combinations thereof, yet one is selling a product to males and the other to females, for the most part.  Plyers of both trades usually, but not always, go by fake names so as not to interfere with their “real” or future careers (be it acting/modeling/bartending or writing “serious” fiction or pharmaceutical sales or teaching or whatever).  And, honestly, even with a gimme or two up there, aren’t those names basically interchangeable?  Unless you were a diehard romance reader or an avid watcher of hardcore adult cinema, you’d probably need me to tell you that the first five names are romance writers, the next five porn stars, then the odd numbers are romance writers and the even porn stars. I don’t know if there’s a great lesson to be learned, other than selling sex requires a great deal of obfuscation.