The Challenges of Having Sexually Active Characters

Here’s the truth: if your characters engage in any type of sexual activity, if they even have a vaguely sexual thought, your readers are going to think it all comes directly from your own personal experience. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

In my first novel, Chemical Pink, there is a male character that likes to masturbate while playing with, and talking to, his vegetable dolls.

I have never found these dolls even remotely exciting but Charles Worthington does. The vegetable doll scene was generated from deep within the character’s mind. It was behavior that only he would understand based on a complicated maternal relationship. The details of his life in no way mirror my own. Nevertheless, many of my readers believed they knew a little secret something about me after they read about Charles and his dolls. And there was nothing I could do about it.

The Wentworths is filled with sex because sex drives interesting behavior and I believe most people are either running towards or away from it for a good portion of their lives. Again in this novel, I have a male character, Norman Wentworth, who thinks and does some unusual things. HE’S A GAY MAN. I am a heterosexual woman. But as with Chemical Pink, many of my readers thought they were joining me in my bedroom when they read about Norman’s escapades. No point in arguing.

Yep, Point Dume has got sex. Of course it does. And one of the main characters resembles me. She’s a woman who shares many of my beliefs; she does stuff. Those readers who are looking for clues into my personal life are going to think they’ve hit the jackpot with this new novel. I can just see the smug, knowing expressions right now.

So how do I handle this? I laugh–because it is pretty funny, if you think about it. For every reader who believes I put on a silkworm costume and writhe around on the floor while someone tries to squash me, I say, “Oh, you’re so clever. You figured me out.” And for those who feel they can confess their deepest darkest fantasies to me because they think that I’ll understand now that they’ve read a particularly lurid spanking scene? Well, I plead with them to please NOT SHARE. The reader can think they know my secrets but really, I absolutely don’t want to know their secrets. I’ve already got enough stuff in my head and I try and keep a very firm line between fiction and nonfiction.