by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
If I ever needed a clear sign that, in general, no one takes me seriously, it’s my overall failure to get anyone from my past life with the press industry to answer my call for help about something. (I finally got one person, but that’s really not very many given how many people I reached out to.)
The issue is, I really want to make the situation I’ve come up with for my heroine — that she owns both a strip club (where she occasionally strips to relax) and an alternative weekly — as real as possible. Like, how would that REALLY work out, especially in mid-1990s Richmond, VA?
I’m WELL AWARE that because of human nature and the needs of marketing, that there is a real risk that this novel would be reduced down to two tropes being fused together — “hooker (or sex worker) with a heart of gold” and “sexy slutty assassin” solves a murder mystery.
I think about this even more given how many men my heroine beds in the first act for the purposes of the plot. All the sexxy time is not gratuitous and definitely serves the overall plot. And, in general, I don’t even really show the spicy stuff that much. I do show it some, but it’s hopefully not so much that people get turned off.
And, what’s more, I’ve cut back the sex in the second act. I don’t know, but I think that best practices for storytelling is you delay sexxy time as much as possible. But, lulz, I never do anything the right way.
But the story is getting much, much better in general. I’m really pleased. But I have to prepare for people to attack me for how much sexxy time there is in the novel. While I’m very sex-positive and don’t see my heroine’s sexual activity as “slutty” I’m afraid there will be some people who think I’m replicating Debby Does Dallas with how my heroine seems to have so much sex on the fly.
Ugh. Anyway. Wish me luck.
