Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 125

Sometimes Less is More

How do you handle sex in your books? Or, if you don’t, why not?
by Paul D. Marks

Well, there’s sex and there’s sex. No, I don’t write really steamy sex scenes. If people want that they can go to Fifty Shades of Arousal, romance novels or porn, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t sex in my stories.
I’d say I approach it more obliquely. We know the characters have or have had sex, but we don’t get the play by play like from the Howard Cosell scene at the end of Woody Allen’s Bananas (see lin...

Every Title I Thought Up For This Post Was Filthy (I'll put them in the comments.)

Q:  How do you handle sex in your books? Or, if you don’t, why not?

by Catriona

On Tuesday, Frank talked about a Left Coast Crime panel where winners and honourable mentions from that year's Bad Sex Awards were read out.

Minds, I was on that panel. And the excerpts were an astonishingly effective vaccination against ever writing a sex scene, let me tell you.

One had a bit about a dog with a penguin its mouth climbing to the top of a sand dune. (Oh God how I wish all but one of the panellists had got ...

Keep your hand on your ha'penny! by Cathy Ace

 Q: How do you handle sex in your books? Or, if you don’t, why not?

A. The title of this piece might suggest I do write about sex in my books, and that, when I do, my advice to those concerned would be to abstain. But...I don't write about the act of sex at all. 
Across three short works and nine novels, Cait Morgan and Bud Anderson have met, dated, got engaged, married, honeymooned, and now have a happy - if somewhat peripatetic - marriage. I'm certain they also enjoy whatever they consider to be...

Is Dad Reading This?

How do you handle sex in your books? Or, if you don’t, why not?

From Frank

Okay, full disclosure here - this question was posed to the group by Jim Ziskin, whose opinion I know from personal conversation. He essentially told me (and this might've been when he was on my podcast) that the way he likes to handle sex in fiction (and his advice to other writers) is to approach it as if his mother was going to read it.

In my case, it's my dad. But given Dad's attitude toward this subject, I think the end...

Q: How do you handle sex in your books? Or, if you don’t...

 Q: How do you handle sex in your books? Or, if you don’t, why not?

 

-from Susan

 

A: The same way I do in life, with discretion.  

 

There was a question like this at a Bouchercon panel this weekend and everyone had pretty much the same response. Unless you write hot romance novels or the male-fantasy versions of thrillers, in which women have orgasms just thinking about the hero…

 

 

A Lone Star State

by Abir Mukherjee 

Discuss the worst/funniest/most ridiculous review you’ve ever received on Amazon or Goodreads. This is your chance to defend yourself and blow off some steam, since we know we can’t engage with reviewers.

 

 

Man, what a topic! 

 

It's my kryptonite, 

the stone in my shoe, 

t he bane of my life, 

the one-star review, 

as Dolly Parton might have sung, is a right of passage. Like a childhood fear of injections, you dread it, and then you get your first one, and you feel crap, but then real...

How Bad Must a Book Be to Deserve a One-star Rating? by James W. Ziskin

Discuss the worst/funniest/most ridiculous review you’ve ever received on Amazon or Goodreads. This is your chance to defend yourself and blow off some steam, since we know we can’t engage with reviewers.

From Jim

Full disclosure: I was the one who came up with this week’s question. At first, I thought it would be fun to answer. But, then, as I looked back at some of the bad reviews I’ve received on Goodreads, it made me sad. Not at all because some people didn’t like my books—that’s inevitable an...

Okay, let’s get the knives out

Discuss the worst/funniest/most ridiculous review you’ve ever received on Amazon or Goodreads. This is your chance to defend yourself and blow off some steam, since we know we can’t engage with reviewers.

by Dietrich

What every writer wants to ask a critic, “How many books have you written?”

“Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts.” — Jeffrey Robinson

A two-bit comment, a one-star review, a hatchet job. Here’s my rule: if they’re nasty I ignore them; if they’re nice I appreciate them. Wh...

How Did You Like It?

Terry Shames here. This week we are discussing the worst/funniest/most ridiculous review we’ve ever received on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews are a fact of life for writers—it’s one of the best ways to introduce readers to our work. Whenever we come out with a new book, we writers hold our breath, worried that reviewers will say that the books don’t work, or worse. But I suppose even a bad review is better than none at all. Because reader reviews are what alerts other readers that we’ve written...

You Think What?

Post and discuss the worst/funniest/most ridiculous review you’ve ever received on Amazon or Goodreads. This is your chance to defend yourself and blow off some steam, since we know we can’t engage with reviewers.

What a provocative question this week! 

Brenda Chapman posting today.

As authors, we know to never engage with reviewers who slam our book. There's that infamous cautionary tale of the author who got into it with one reviewer and did not fare well. We're warned that those readers who woul...