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. ;)

I'm a wordy bitch, release date, and editing

For a while now, I've tried to find a home for two short stories of mine. I submitted them both to a certain publisher, because my usual publisher, Dreamspinner Press, doesn't take short stories at the moment.

It turns out their house style clashes really badly with my writing style. While I know I'm wordy, oh so wordy, it's how I write. The people who like my stories know this and they accept it. The publisher would have wanted me to make significant changes, which--especially with the shorter story--would have even changed the tone of the story.

There is such thing as artist's integrity. I know that if I'd changed the stories and offered them to this publisher again, they would sell a lot better than if I'd self-publish them. But I just can't do it. I can't butcher the stories I love just to get the published. I have an active schedule, plenty of longer stories, novellas and novels, coming out this year. I don't necessarily need these short stories to be published.

So I decided to self-publish them instead. I'll let you know when I do. They won't cost much, three or four bucks total, so don't worry. ;)

Secondly, the first part of my shifter series, Finnshifters, will be released tomorrow! I'll do a proper post tomorrow, and at some point soon I'll tell more about the series at Sue Brown's blog. The next two parts should come out this year too, so there will be plenty of these "cats and dogs" for you to love soon!

Third thing I thought I'd mention, is my next novel, Technically Dead, I'm editing right now. It's set to be released in July-August, I don't know the date yet. As the name suggests, it's a vampire story. As I edit it, I keep getting to parts that make me remember why I loved to write this book last November.

There's a soundtrack for the book, I'll release it as a whole at some point when it's been published. But the general main theme of the book is Lost In You by Three Days Grace. I'll attach the video for an acoustic version of it below.

Until I ramble at you, in my usual wordy style, again, see ya!

Finnshifters book one, Chuffed -- Coming Soon!

And here it is, on the Coming Soon page. :)

Finnshifters 1 - Chuffed.

I should be writing, but...

Okay, a proper status update is in order, I think. Not right now, but I was writing and my brain got shuffled like a deck of cards and here I am, updating my blog. Praise the ADHD.

Anyway. My first novel, By Any Other Name has been out for almost a month now. It's doing really well, better than I expected, actually. So I'm quite happy. I know the issues the book has and some reader reviews have stated those, so I don't really disagree with the "not-so-good" reviews this time.

I have two submissions in at Dreamspinner right at this moment. They're both contemporary and I like both of the stories. Not too angsty, but still not too fluffy romance either. I like both of them and we'll see if DSP picks them up or if someone else might.

There are two release dates you might want to know about. The first is a Halloween-story for Summerhouse publishing. It's called Finding Eternity, and it's a F/F-short story with vampires and blood and angst and all the good stuff. The release date is October 28th.

The second one is a short story with a trans-theme. It's called Lucky and it will be published by Dreamspinner Press in January 2012. I'll keep you posted for the exact date when I get it.

I'm working on a short story for one of the DSP's anthology calls, who knows if it will end up there or not, but I'm working on it anyways. It's about men and...trout. Don't ask. ;)

There's also another, longer story in my WIP-folder, it's BDSMey and good, I hope. This story is on hold right now though. We'll see when I get back to it.

Aaand then last but not least, I'm going for two new things soon-ish. One is a three story-series about shifters, and we'll see about what happens with it. It would have M/M, F/F and M/F/M-stories in it.

The second new thing is my plans for this year's NaNoWriMo. That one is a vampire story, very dark and angsty. At least that's my plan for NaNo anyways. Who knows where the muses will go...

Oh, and on yet another piece of news, my swag is ready and will get to me at some point in the next few weeks I think. So then I'll be sending them to some contest winners etc. And I might just hold another contest eventually. :)

That's about it. Back to the writing now!