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I Won’t Write Sex Scenes

Thursday, October 13, 2011
... don't expect to read sex scenes in my novels...
H
ere’s the first indie-book linked with my novel. The link? Someone bought my book and the novel Fifth Avenue by Christopher Smith. I read some of the reviews because I wasn’t familiar with either the book or author. No surprise with a self-published author.
It’s hard to know what to think about a book when I see such wide variety in opinion, but one theme of the criticism centred on the author’s sex scenes. It disturbed some. I haven’t read the book so I can’t comment on the content, but I can make a general statement on sex scenes in novels and specifically thrillers. As a reader, it’s not why I read and don’t want to read them. I will skip over them. Call me a prig, fine, but I’m not interested.
Since I don’t want to read such scenes, I don’t write them. You won’t find any sex scenes in The Protectors. None. Nor is there any coy romance going on between our hero Baird Carr and his sidekick Sarah Bishop. Why? Because they are professionals. Because they are wrapped up in dealing with the crisis they face. Because The Protectors is a thriller not an action-adventure story.
Here are some links to Fifth Avenue and The Protectors.
And a blurb on his novel.
Look beneath all the power and all the wealth that represents New York City's Fifth Avenue, and you'll find greed, blood, revenge. In the international best-selling thriller "Fifth Avenue," each intermingles within a revered society that is unprepared for what's in store for it when one man finally strikes in an effort to destroy another man for murdering his wife thirty-one years ago.
Louis Ryan is that man. George Redman, his wife, two daughters and their close friends are his targets. Both men are self-made billionaires who came from nothing to stake their claim to Fifth Avenue. But when Louis Ryan hires an international assassin to literally rip the Redman family apart, a series of events that can't be stopped catapults them all through a fast-paced, hard-edged thriller in which nobody is safe.
Secrets are revealed. Sex lives are exposed. The Mafia get involved. And George's two daughters, Celina and Leana Redman, come to the forefront. More than anyone, it's they who are caught in the throes of their father's past as Louis Ryan's blind desire to kill them all takes surprising turns in his all-out effort to see them dead.
Posted 2011/10/13 at 20h58ET in Writing, The Protectors (A Thriller).
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