[repost from 2008]
Okay, let’s have this conversation.
Sandy, one of the Danamaniacs managers, just forwarded me an email from a fan which read, in part:
“I love the Kate Shugak and Liam Campbell books. I just hope that Ms. Stabenow takes into consideration that some things are best left to a person’s imagination… having the characters smile, kiss, and close the bedroom door is enough information for me.”
Contrast this to a fan who said at one of my bookstore appearances, in a clear, carrying voice in front of fifty people, “Please could you let Kate and Jim have more sex?”
Between such Scyllan and Charibdisian rocks do I sail my little literary dinghy.
Sex is a part of life, and it’s fun, or it’s supposed to be. Love and laughter make life worth living, and there will always be plenty of both in my novels. It happens that I write sex well. If I didn’t, this topic wouldn’t, er, arise. My characters are healthy, red-blooded human beings with all the natural instincts flesh is heir to. Unless they are monks or nuns or charter members of Chaste by Choice, they are going to have sex, dammit.
So, I put it to you. How much sex is too little? How much sex is too much? Have the Kate Shugak novels crossed the line or are they way back in the novel pack? Or the Liams, if you can remember back that far? Go to page 53 of Prepared for Rage and tell me true, would you have been okay if that scene ended with, “I don’t have time to dance”?