about sex scenes...

In addition to what you may read here…

Almost all of my novels have cishet/heteroromantic elements that may be:

  • at the focus of the novel (like if it’s a straight-out ‘romance’)

  • essential to the story or its message(s)

  • essential to understand characters’ motivations and/or personalities

  • some or all of the above

So, there’s romance, sometimes taking its time, or maybe hitting the affected parties without warning and the force of a hurricane; occasionally inevitable; possibly reluctant and against experientially induced resistance, or maybe even outright fear; against circumstance or active forces attempting to pull potential lovers apart; at times, as in Continuity Slip and even more so in Seeking Emily, subject to vagaries of an indifferent multiverse (ultimately meaning physics); and of course social pressures, as in Keaen, the first of the Tethys novels, as well as the deliberately provocative novella The Crime of Love.

Where there’s romance between healthy red-blooded adults with beating hearts, emotions, erogenous zones and the bits that fit together as evolution has developed them, there almost inevitably is sex. Pretending there isn’t would not just be a copout but inauthentic. In my stories the sex, once the protagonists have decided to engage in it, tends to be ‘friendly’. Also, when people start up a seriously romantic-sexual relationship, they’re unlikely to skimp on their sexual activities, unless forced to do so by circumstances. In the beginning, it’s usually a matter of using every opportunity offering itself to get together for some more very-close-up-and-personal.

Sex also is messy; the aftermath especially if condoms are not fitted in the right place. Why ignore that? In some cases it’s not just justified but necessary to dwell on it, especially if the love story is at the heart of it all. Seeking Emily, Louisa and Rick and The Ultimate Adventure are examples. Oddly enough, it’s still possible to make it tasteful and romantically very sexy; if only because it adds to intimacy for loving partners. Said intimacy usually is ruined when the writer is too lazy to avoid coarse vernacular to describe genitalia or the sexual act. In my novels, characters using said ‘coarse vernacular’—be it in the context of historical, future or contemporary novels—thereby implicitly reveal themselves as non-protagonists of some kind, especially when they apply the descriptions to women.

If sex figures in my novels I usually flag as listed below. For example, Antoine’s Revenge is ‘mild sexual elements’, because while there eventually is sex, the description discreetly turns away from the actual act and leaves it to the reader’s imagination. Seeking Emily on the other hand is as explicit as I’m going to get, starting right at the beginning and continuing all the way through the long and complex—initially universe and then multiverse—story, making it ‘explicit sex’.

The various classifications you find at the bottom of the pages on this website are meant to reflect the following:

  • Mild sexual elements: reference to activities such as kissing, non-invasive touching and implied impending sexual activity'; sometimes out of the view of the reader.

  • Mildly explicit sexual elements: the above, but added deep kissing; clothes are or come partially or completely off; things getting seriously hot; with possibly extended descriptions, but going reasonably easy on the final crescendo.

  • Explicit sexual elements: all of the above plus extended descriptions of the act or acts, including the messy aftermath; if there is one and its inclusion in the scene is important to the story.

  • Explicit sex: all of the above, taking it as far as it has to.

Note: Whatever the classification may be, I loathe crudity and will do my best, even in the hottest scenes, to stick to ‘tasteful’.