WARNING: Today’s blog contains material that may not be suitable for children or grown adults who run around wearing a Zorro mask.

Hey! Let’s talk about sex!

Sex is an issue that writers have to deal with all the time. In our novels, I mean. Different genres have different standards. Each publishing house has its own rules. Different imprints within the same house have different requirements regarding sex – more of it, less of it, none at all.

Readers are sensitive about it, too. I don’t know how many times sweet little old ladies at signings have asked me if there is any s.e.x. in my books. I never know how to answer. Does this particular little old lady actually want a lot of it? So I come right out and ask them, and if they say, “Oh, no, I don’t like that kind of stuff,” then I say, “No, there’s none of that in my books.”

Which is a lie. But, hey, I need to sell books. And I figure they’ll probably enjoy it anyway.

The Morgue Mama series technically fits into the cozy category, which is guided by the rules that Agatha Christie set forth several thousand years ago: No explicit violence, no explicit sex, no cussing, no harming children or pets, everyone must constantly be drinking tea and nibbling on biscuits.

Unlike Don, Casey, Jeff and Judy – whose books are stuffed to the gills with one ribaldry after another — my Morgue Mama books walk a much finer line. I do indeed write about sex. In just three books I’ve dealt with adultery, homosexuality, prostitution, incest, biracial sex, transgender sex, sex change operations, and, most shocking all, sex between people over fifty.

Yet, I have never written an explicit sex scene. And do not intend to.

In my three non-mystery novels I have written about sex more frankly, but still no real-time sexual encounters. I came pretty close in Serendipity Green, giving the two characters’ impression of the lovemaking session just finished. And I had a bit of sex in Fresh Eggs, but it was primarily between the chickens.

In the non-mystery I’m writing now, I have a somewhat explicit sex scene between – how should I put this – fewer than two characters. And it is anything but erotic.

Well, there you have it – my thoughts on writing sex scenes. Talk amongst yourselves while I wash out my mouse with soap.

(I had a much better closer, but it was a little too suggestive.)