Recently I listened to a short story, Slingshot by Souvankham Thammavongsa , being read on the podcast Selected Shorts too hot for Radio . The story centers around a 70-year-old woman who meets a 32-year-old man, her neighbor, Richard, and they start a short, but intense, relationship. The woman has been a widow for 30 years and in her words, “I hadn't had sex for such a long time that I could consider myself a virgin. I couldn't remember how it all happens."  That story, originally published in Harper's magazine in 2018 , made me wonder how many other stories are now being written about older characters being in love and having sex. That's not something we tend to acknowledge very often. It's as if we don't think older people have those desires. But they do. Recent studies, such as this one in Prevention Magazine , indicate that people well into their 80s and 90s still want romance and physical intimacy. "Sex isn't like a carton of milk that goes ...

The earlier posts this month focusing on romance have been quite interesting, and one thing that I have been getting from them, and the comments, is that there is room for any kind of romance novel you want to write, or read, from sweet to sexy. Many moons ago when I had a top NY agent, Denise Marcil, I had just completed my first mystery, Doubletake, which I wrote with a coauthor, Margaret Sutton. Denise worked hard to market the book, but this was the late 70s when romance was trumping all other genres and mysteries were a hard sell. So Denise suggested I try my hand at writing a romance. She suggested some titles to read in a new contemporary line that Harlequin was launching that featured modern women who were strong and spunky and had interesting jobs. The editors were also looking for smart, sassy dialogue and lots of humor. I could do that. What I couldn't do was meet the guidelines that called for intimacy by a certain page and a requisite number of sex scenes. No...

Back in 2010 I wrote a piece for this blog on The Evolution of E-Books , and it amazes me how much has changed since. New publishers. New technology. New outlets for sales. I was an early pioneer in the e-book evolution. My first e-book was published in 1997 with The Fiction Works , just one of a handful of companies doing e-books at the time. The publisher was sure that there would soon be kiosks in shopping malls where people would be able to buy electronic or print-on-demand copies of books and we would all get rich. That did not happen. There wasn't even a dedicated reading device until a year later when The Rocket eBook came out in 1998, so orders were fulfilled by sending disks to customers so they could read the book on a computer. Not a convenient or pleasant way to read a book. Now that handful of publishers has grown to hundreds, and I have had good business relationships with  Books We Love , Uncial Press , Venture Galleries, and now Untreed Reads.   ...

 First of all, let me say I have nothing against a well-written love scene, and I do mean love scene, not sex scene. However, I draw the line at gratuitous sex and don't care for erotica. I just don't see what titillation has to do with story. Like every other element of writing a story, sex, violence, or colorful language should serve a purpose. For example, in Play It Again, Sam, I have a love scene that is a very important part of the story and the growth of the character. Sam is single after 25 years of marriage and the whole dating scene has changed. She is not sure about recreational sex. So when the love scene happens it is because she has worked though many issues. It's not just there because romance readers expect it. When One Small Victory was first published by Five Star, my editor there kept wanting me to let the central character, Jenny, do more than kiss the man she was attracted to. Problem was, Steve was the detective she was working for as a confidenti...