Wednesday, March 04, 2009

A LOT ABOUT SEX


So I’ve been thinking about sex. I recently received comments back from my editor about my next Stallion book. Her advice was that I needed to seriously ramp up the sex. I had to step back and evaluate that for a minute because in this particular book, I thought I had ramped up the sex. In fact, I’d ramped it up so much that in my esteemed opinion it was reading more like soft porn with a tiny bit of romance tossed in. Until I read her letter I was very excited about the sex I had written about ‘cause I seriously thought it was really good sex! If I remember correctly, I even blogged about it I was so excited.

The character, baby brother Luke Stallion is young, just shy of 26. He’s a young man I imagined would be having a lot of sex and a lot of very good sex. I mean, he has that whole 26-year old, energizer bunny, stamina thing going on. If he were 46 or 56 I think I would have been less inclined to have him getting his groove on as often, but hey, that’s based on what I think I know about older men and their abilities. As well, young Luke is exceptionally athletic and limber. A man with acrobatic skills who can bend and twist without something hurting has an advantage over a man who can’t. We all know that with age what we could do at 26 might not be feasible at 46 or 56 if we want to function the next day and some men acknowledge that in their old age their desire might require a little blue pill assistance every now and again. Now, I know I'm generalizing and there are exceptions to all the rules so don't email me about how you're pushing 75, still able to get your leg behind your head and how you have no problems getting it up every other hour with no medical assistance.

Back in the day, when I was young and dumb, sex was much overrated. It sounded romantic, seemed necessary to maintain a relationship and when you tossed in surging hormones, it seemed to fit the bill. But really, most times, no one ever knew what the hell they were doing. It was awkward and quick and the aftermath left one contemplating what the fuss was all about. Marriage didn’t help the matter much when you tossed in small children who consumed all my energy and time and a horrific partner who was…well…I won’t even go there. I waited over half my adult life to experience really great sex and now that I know what that’s like I figured I was better informed to write about it.

So now I’m in a quandary. Realistically, how much is too much or not enough sex in a relationship? What’s normal? And how do you translate that into fiction without it feeling unrealistic or just too farfetched? How do you make it believable and have it read well? And how do you figure out how much is too much or not enough?

I’m at a loss here and it has me thinking a lot about sex.

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