That warning might seem unnecessary: After all, it's a romance novel, even if I prefer to call it a romantic comedy just to be more specific. But romance writing has diversified quite a bit over the years: Some is heavy with the sexy stuff, some "sweet" with no sex at all. They're humorous, tragic, Christian, gothic, Amish, and every sub-genre imaginable. (Sometimes it's even written by men.) All of mine have some degree of mystery in them, but "romantic-comedy-mystery" was a bit too clunky. So being in the romance genre doesn't mean it has to fit expected conventions.
My first romantic comedy, Storm Chaser, had one brief almost-sex scene in it, kind of a second base thing. Its sequel, The Notorious Ian Grant, had no sex at all, which is kind of strange considering Ian is a celebrity bad boy. My other fiction, The No-Campfire Girls, is a young adult novel, and I am not going to tackle sex in a book about teenage girls. Nor is there any sex in my Storm Chaser related short story collection, although in the final story a person could jump to that conclusion.
On the other side, none of our non-fiction books have anything to do with sex. Maybe they'd sell better if I added some ... hm ... I'd like to announce that my next book will be Sex in Indiana.
Anyway, some of my readers might not like to read sex scenes, so I thought I should throw in the warning. Who knows? Maybe it'll attract new readers. But it fit with the characters and the story, which for me is the important part.What do you think about sex? I mean, in fiction?
There's Amish romance?
ReplyDeleteI know, right? It's a popular subgenre, often involving a young Amish woman who falls for an "English" outsider. No sex, of course.
DeleteSex in a novel is like in life: It happens. There was one review on one of my novels that said, "Skip this one. Too much graphic sex." That puzzled me as there wasn't that much sex let alone what the Erotic defines as graphic sex. Unfortunately, it didn't help sales any that I could tell.
ReplyDeleteOne man's graphic sex is another man's PG-13, I suppose.
DeleteMan. I deleted my comment five times after realizing how it sounded. I'll just say your novel sounds nice. I remember a couple distinct views regarding my novel--where someone was shocked at the sex and someone else said there should have been more.Can't please all the people all the time.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that was my point, in a way. I figured some of the people around here, who read me because I'm a local writer, wouldn't like it, while others elsewhere might think it's not enough. In the end I should really only write what I want to write.
Delete