Writing Sex -- Or Not?

I've been struggling to write recently, and once again someone brought up the "writing sex for the sake of sex" thing in conversation.

I don't know about other authors, but I would never write sex for the sake of sex. To sell more books to those who read M/M books for smut. Nope. Not my thing.

If my characters have sex in my stories, they do it for a reason. But the reason is never because I, the writer, thought "well this is a good spot to insert some smexin'". Even in Technically Dead, in which there's more sex than in say, By Any Other Name, the sex scenes are there to demonstrate the characters'... well, character. The relationships they have.

Let's take Bran, for example. He has sex with several people who are not the love of his life. He has sex to feel connected, for comfort, for control. And because it's fun as hell to have sex with either people you don't know at all or people who know exactly which of your buttons you might want pushed at any given occasion. No, not my personal opinions, but Bran's.

Whenever I see a book reviewed as "PWP" or "PWPish" yet I find the blurb interesting, I give the book a chance. I might actually skim some sex scenes if they're CLEARLY there for the sake of it. But there are plenty of ways to write sex and not all of the "innecessant" sex annoys me. Most of it does, though, I'll tell you that right now.

I want sex in the books I read if it belongs in them. Same with my writing. I've written stories with next to no sex compared to page count (By Any Other Name, Something New) stories where there's a lot of sex compared to page count (Technically Dead, Lucky, Unwind) and something in between. All this is relative, by the way, what is a lot of sex for my stories, might be peanuts for other writers.

This is exactly why I don't believe all the reviews I see that say the story has too much sex. I'd rather take a look myself, because the reviewer might be wrong, they might not agree with the kind of sex the characters are having, or they might just feel like there shouldn't be sex at all or it shouldn't be as graphic as it is. Everything is relative.


For example, not everyone finds handcuffs sexy. That's their quirk, not mine. ;)

Countdown to Technically Dead, Day 4

Alrighty then!

It's time for the next countdown post for Technically Dead.

I promised this would be about places and faces, so let's start with the less exciting, the places, eh?

While there are mentions of the characters' pasts in Chicago, the story itself takes place in Atlanta. Because Technically Dead is a "contemporary vampire fantasy," most of the places I describe in detail are actually real places. There are a few that I made up, like say Gianna's, or the club the boys frequent (but even the club is something I have looked up location-wise).

The combination of made up and real places makes very little sense, but I can tell you that if you go to Google Maps and zoom into downtown Atlanta, there are buildings there I've used. Yes, I was that anal about this story.... Bran and Tony's houses are from real estate sites, the Shelter is on Trinity Ave and you can probably find the building if you follow the description and are interested to find it.

Why Atlanta? Well... honestly I don't know. I went through a mental list of places I've thought of using in my stories, and figured why not! I was also seriously lucky to have help with Atlanta-knowledge. Shae Connor, a fellow Dreamspinner author, has all the knowledge. ;)

Now okay, let's go to the part that REALLY interests you, the faces.

I'm one of those writers who likes to find a face for a character. Either the faces find me or the other way around, but I really did know who Bran looked like quite early.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Jon Kortajarena. He's a model and an actor, and you might have seen him in A Single Man. Now, this is what he looks like without his shirt on...

If you add the ink that's described in the book, you have yourself my dear boy Bran. :)

So what does Heath look like? This is actually a funny story... You might know this actor from Hawaii Five-0 or some of his movie roles, but he's also done a vampire show that lasted for one season, I think.

His name is Alex O'Loughlin, and he's an Aussie (yes, please do add the accent to your mental image for a moment. Now, take it off and replace it with a British accent. That's what Heath sounds like.)
 

To me, Alex is one of the most handsome men on TV at the moment. That said, when I realized Heath looked awfully lot like him, I honestly didn't remember that Alex had been on Moonlight, the vampire show. There are photos of him with fangs out there *points at the internet* but the hair is wrong... Yeah, Heath is a bit particular about the short hair.

Anyway, that's the main couple. I do have photos of guys (and girls) who make up the secondary characters. In case you want to see them and maybe get a little excerpt from the story, please do join me tomorrow for countdown day 3!