You're Writing What, Now?

First, allow me to confess that the holidays are eating my brain. It was as I was stepping into the shower so I could rush off to an appointment that some more aware portion of my mind shouted, "Hey, dummy! Blog post!" So here I am on a borrowed laptop, feeling like a moron with a hangover - that last part is from staying up until the wee hours of the morning reading through the last novel I wrote prior to being published. Wow, that book sucked. It is notable, however, as the first book wherein I'd managed to write a detailed sex scene.

No one but the critique group got to read that. It wasn't until Enemy Within and Enemy Games were published that I had to face the notion of anyone in my family reading the sex scenes I'd written. I'll be frank. I do my best not to think about it. My folks haven't said a word about the sex scenes. There have been a few comments about how often my heroines swear...but the sex? Not a word. Not a word about the bloody, horrific (to me) torture scene at the end of book one, either. At least not from my parents. I've had a few 'concerned about how you came up with all that' comments from extended family.

The two novels have been relatively easy because the sex scenes are pretty pedestrian as far as sex scenes go. Writing them is no big deal. Reading them aloud to the critique group? Damn, I hate that. I do it anyway. Or - I did. But this summer, I switched gears briefly. I wrote an erotica novella. Never had to read that one aloud, which is good. I do not know that I could have...That piece was critiqued via email. Now, Berkley is publishing it as an e-special in April of 2012. It'll be called Enemy Mine. It is set in the same universe as the novels.

I can be blase about that story because neither of my parents owns an e-reader. Yet. I'm not quite sure how I'll handle it if Mom or Dad decides to get one just so they can download and read the story. True. All my life, my folks have tried to be very open about sex. They wanted to make sure that their kids could talk to them about anything. They did a good job. "It's a natural part of life," they liked to say about love and sex. "It's just a body, everybody has one," they'd say about nudity. So I have some hope that if either of them reads the erotica, they'll just nod and go on. I mean, this IS fiction we're writing. I try not to get hung up on the notion that someone will think I actually do the things I write about - but I don't wander around shooting bad guys or flying spaceships. I'm comfortably certain my audience knows that. It naturally follows that I'm not necessarily into the BDSM elements that may have snuck into that erotica. Right? Right?