This sounds like a silly question to me, but our puritanical society is so much more comfortable with the immorality of violence than the natural (usually) biological urge to procreate, that I do get asked that question on occasion. I will attempt to answer it. I will be blushing while I type.

The simpler answer is because I like to write about people having sex. It’s fun. It’s a guilty pleasure for me, just like it’s probably a guilty pleasure for my readers. Unlike the scary dark places I have to go to in my head to create cunning killers and creepy crime scenes, I get to imagine attractive (at least in my head; you have your own fetishes) people and their naked body parts in all their glory.

We are blessed as homosapians to come in so many varieties and still be the same species. The human body itself is a vast pallet of colors and textures, volumes and masses, and when it’s aroused, everything changes in preparation for intercourse. I find it fascinating to describe those changes and the emotional buildup to the climax. If you think that’s dirty, you’re reading the wrong book.

I also write about sex because I like adding a romantic aspect to my characters. Sexual tension is exciting, but the relationship is really the meat of the story. It’s the glue that holds the series together from case to case, murder to murder if you will.

Will the characters ever be happy? Will they ever be able to get together? Especially in the case of my main characters, their entire relationship is built on the addictive passion they feel toward each other. My readers want them to be together. They want them to get to that happy ending, and the more difficult I make that goal to attain, the hotter the sex gets. Supply and demand.

And I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge just a little bit that sex does sell, but I refuse to believe it is the end all to be all of my stories. There is no formula in my head as to when people have sex; I don’t have some sort of Boinking Quota in mind. The characters have sex when it seems right to me. There’s a time for body count and a time for orgasms. In my books, you get both. What more could you ask for? Zombies? No! I have to draw the line somewhere.

Comments are closed.