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“Do you smoke after sex?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never looked.”

An old joke, but one that pretty much sums it up for most of us. Sex is fun. Reading about sex is fun. Therefore, writing sex is fun. Right?

Well … not always, and not for everybody. When a new writer sidles up to me to ask a question in a low tone, I can almost tell you what it’s going to be. “How did you write your first sex scene? I tried and I didn’t know what words to use, and it was embarrassing, and I kept thinking, ‘What if my mother reads this?’ Help me.”

I do remember the first time I wrote sex. I was struggling my way through the opening chapters of my very first manuscript, a hundred chapter, overblown, throw-everything-in-the-plot, I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing-historical. In between having a smallpox epidemic, an earthquake which devastated an entire city, and oppressed native Americans struggling to be free, my hero (a guilt-ridden Spanish landowning Guatemalan aristocrat) catches the heroine (an innocent Irish American pretending to be a man so she could be a doctor) bathing under a waterfall. (I know what you’re thinking — you’re thinking: Christina Dodd will never get published, or — I feel better about my own manuscript already, or — hey, I’d read that story! My replies: That shows what you know — I live to make you feel better about your manuscript, and — no way, I’m never letting anyone read it.)

What was I talking about?

Oh, the first time I wrote sex. I was struggling through the opening chapters of my first book, my baby daughter went down for a nap, and so did I. I was thinking about my hero, who was hot, and my heroine, who was innocent, and I started planning her deflowering.

What can I say? It was a lot more fun than the smallpox epidemic.

So I’m thinking, he’s mad because he’s discovered she’s a girl and she’s defiant because she’s a fiery beauty, and pretty soon they’re rolling around on the ground, and he’s baring her virgin breast and she’s struggling and saying stuff like, “Don’t! Stop! Don’t! Stop! Don’t stop!” And all of a sudden I sit up, grab a tablet and a pen, and I’m off and running. So to speak. I wrote that sex scene in a frenzy, and I want to assure you right now, never once did my mother and her reaction enter my mind.

(Actually, my mother lived a long life, and she grew older, she looked more and more like a little old lady, which is why people were always shocked when she displayed a lively and bawdy sense of humor. So I never had a reason to be concerned about my mom and her reaction to my sex scenes. She thought they were great.)

My daughters … that was a whole different ballgame. These were kids who were in grade school when I was published. At the time, they were overjoyed (“We’re going to DisneyWorld!”) But later, they had to attend middle school and high school … and their mother was a romance writer. Their mother was occasionally profiled in the paper. The other obnoxious adolescents read their mother’s sex scenes aloud in school. Once when I was in the living room being interviewed by the Houston Chronicle, a teenage daughter wandered in, and when asked by the reporter if she read my books, she said, “Would you like to know what your mother knows about sex?”

The reporter looked horrified at the idea. As far as I know, she’s still hiding somewhere curled in the fetal position.

However, as with all things, this too shall pass. Somewhere about the time my daughters became seniors, I suddenly (very very suddenly) became cool again. They do read my books; they don’t read my sex scenes (see above — “Would you like to know what your mother knows about sex?”) My daughters have become used to getting my emails asking questions like, “What slang words do you use for penis? Vagina? Having sex? Do all the girls these days remove all their pubic hair?” As I understand it, they read these messages to their friends, laugh uproariously, and answer me. Thank God, because doing the research online results in the kind of spam I don’t want.

So you’re wondering — what are the technicalities of writing sex? What problems do romance writers encounter while writing sex? Do I like writing sex? Do other romance writers enjoy writing sex? How do we do it over and over and over, the same old motions, the same old positions, the same old man and woman doing the same old dance since the beginning of time, and keep it fresh?

Unfortunately, this blog is already too long, so ask your questions, then check in Thursday (when I blog again) for the answers to your throbbing questions.

And really, what are you doing reading my blog? Today TONGUE IN CHIC (“Romeo and Juliet as performed by Dharma and Greg”) hits the bookshelves! You should be at the bookstore, buying your copy, settling down to read, enjoying the sex scenes. And don’t forget to report in — do you smoke after sex?
Visit Christina’s website to read a TONGUE IN CHIC excerpt!