March 29 – The last panel today, Burning Love: The Sex Panel, played to a full house…as you might expect. Panelists included Holly West (moderator), Lou Berney, Rhys Bowen, James Ziskin, and Lori Rader-Day. The questions focused on whether sex scenes are needed in books, writing fight scenes, writing implied sex scenes, and writing erotic fan fiction. There was lots…and lots…and lots of laughter. The conversation was a bit scattered, so any errors are due to faulty notetaking and/or memory on my part.
Lou
- Has all women on his editorial/publishing/marketing team, none questioned putting a hot sex scene in the first chapter of November Road, the rest of the book is not like this (much laughter here)
- Would rather write fight scenes or sex scenes, and get through the fight scenes as quickly as the sex scenes
- If you were to write erotic fan fiction about an existing character or series, who would it be? – a female chef from Top Chef (food after sex) (hysterical laughter here)
- Favorite euphemism for sex – just use the word, much less distracting
- More attracted to goodies or baddies as a reader or writer
- Attracted to bad but not evil
- If it’s not necessary it shouldn’t go in the book, but the famous sex scene was in his first draft
- Megan Abbott does sex scenes well
Rhys
- Writes sex scenes in her books, and hasn’t had to tone them down
- She is not known for her sex scenes (again, much laughter
- Writes some fight scenes
- In her books, the middle class is straight-laced, the upper class is involved in drugs and sex all the time
- Most sex scenes in her books are funny, uses sex scenes to add humor
- Uses hints of danger and unpredictability
Jim
- Doesn’t try to put sex on the page, but if he does he tries to make light of it
- Not too many fight scenes in his books
- Writes about the 1960s, there were plenty of naughty people in the 1960s
- No sex scenes or bathroom scenes in his books
Lori
- Doesn’t include sex scenes in her books, but one book has a consummated sex scene in it
- The mechanics of sex are not made for words (laughter)
- Doesn’t have a lot of fight scenes in her books
- Fight scenes are fun to write, so she must like fight scenes better than sex scenes (more laughter)
- If you were to write erotic fan fiction about an existing character or series, who would it be? – Sherlock Holmes
- A little bad is good, it’s complicated
- No sex scenes in her books, but the sex scene in Lou’s book is necessary for the character