Sugary and Sweet or Trashy and Cheap -- a Novella Goes Online

Her name is Diana; she's 37, pretty, perky…and frustrated. While she dispenses advice to the lovelorn and libidinous in the sex columns she pens, she can't seem to get her own erotic house in order. Her boyfriend Holger might well be climbing the career ladder, but all that time at the office has deflated his interest in the sensual side of things.

What's a healthy, sex-loving girl to do?

Well, those who want to know can find out if Diana, a fictional creation of a journalist and real-life sex columnist, indeed finds a way out of her erotic desert and resparks the romance or if she has to dump Holger and find satisfaction elsewhere can surf on over to www.rettet-die-liebe.de.

Sponsored by the Bayer Healthcare, Saving Love, Germany's first online novella, offers a whole smorgasbord of romance about as cheesy as its name. It features the ongoing adventures of Diana and her attractive, mid-30s to mid-40s friends and siblings, to books of romance, romantic music, greeting cards, horoscopes, even romantic recipes (whatever those might be).

It's hard-core real soap opera though, with, so far, little of the adultery, backstabbing, amnesia and various terminal diseases, which make up so much of traditional soap opera fare. Saving Love recounts, like most telenovelas, the struggles of a good-hearted woman who fights to keep or win her man despite all the obstacles in her way.

Therapy lite?

It's pretty treacly stuff, kind of like a Harlequin romance online with less bodice ripping. But according to the site, the storyline is not just meant for teenage girls dreaming of their prince or retirees who want to remember their earlier loves and lusts. Rather, it says it hopes to address real-life relationship and sexual problems couples experience by presenting them in a realistic way.

In one of the sex scenes, Diana is tired of the fact that lovemaking has been reduced to one act involving a few body parts. She needs love, romance, caresses and foreplay. Slam bam, thank ya ma'am is not her idea of a good time. She tells her boyfriend that, but he doesn't quite get it.

Hasn't she been wanting more sex, he asks? Well yeah, she counters, but she needs a little TLC in the bedroom along with all the bump and grind.

Have you been in this situation before, girls?

What's Bayer's role in all this, one wonders? It's unclear, although Bayer is one of the companies behind Levitra, an erectile dysfunction drug along the lines of Viagra.

If you click on the Bayer logo at the bottom of the Web site, you're directed to a site for professional sex coaching. So, if Diana and her erotic travails don't provide the solution to your sexual frustration, the site tells you how to bring in the heavy hitters.