I was recently hanging out with a friend, and she said this: “I want to read your books, but I feel like it’s weird because I don’t want to know about your sex life…”
Totally get that! Let’s talk about that today, because I think this is a very common frame of mind for friends and family of romance authors...
IN THIS EPISODE, I share several important things to keep in mind if you're wondering about this, too, plus a few different options for you!
WIN BOOKMARKS featuring Sagan’s novels when you publish a review of any of her books between now and April 30, 2023!
All you need to do is write and publish a review of any of her books on Amazon, Goodreads, Kobo, etc (any book platforms of your choice), and then email hello[at]saganmorrow[dot]com with the link and your mailing address — and then Sagan will mail you bookmarks!
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Hello and welcome to the indie author weekly podcast, where you get to hear about the behind the scenes journey of my adventures as an indie author. I'm your host Sagan Morrow, and since 2016, I have written and published seven rom rom coms in the polyamorous passion series, plus several business books for solopreneurs.
Now, last month, I was hanging out with a friend and she said this, Sagan, I want to read your books, but I feel like it's weird because I don't want to know about your sex life.
I totally get that. Let's talk about this today for today's episode because I think that this is a very common frame of mind for friends and family of romance authors. So if you yourself know someone who's a romance author, hello, you do you are listening to this podcast episode right now.
It's me, I'm your friend who is a romance author. Or if you yourself are an author or you're thinking about writing romance novels and that kind of thing. And you're kind of wondering about this question, if it feels kind of like, weird to you to read novels. That includes sex by people who you know, in real life and that kind of thing. If any of this sort of comes up for you and you're like, I don't know it feels kind of weird. Then let's talk about that. Okay. So, there are really there really like three, three sort of things that I want to go over today. First of all, my books are fiction. All novels are fiction, okay? It's not real life at all. Now, you might think, okay, but things are based in real life. Right? A lot of stuff that happens in novels might be based on it or inspired by life. And sure, that can be the case. Things can be inspired from real life. But again, it's all still fiction, the characters, the plot points, all of it is fiction. And so are the sex scenes. It's no different than the conversations that the characters have. It's no different than the storylines that are happening in the novels. It just feels different because it's about sex. Right?
I want you to remember, you know, I and every other author and maybe you as well if you're a writers, as well. We all have a variety of different characters in our novels.
It's not like I make my art my I create my characters with my own personal tastes in mind. My characters are all their own individual people. They are not me. their likes and their dislikes are not necessarily my own. Their opinions are not necessarily my own. And therefore you really don't need to worry about the sex lives that my characters have because that does not necessarily mean it has anything to do with my sex life. sexual preferences that my characters have and the sexual practices that they participate on. Really don't have anything to do with me as the author.
My characters are entirely different from me, right? They are their own people.
So that's the first thing. The second thing that I want to mention are that my books are, for the most part pretty tame. So if you are a reader of romance novels, then you'll probably find that when you read my novels, they're, they're fairly light, I would say when it comes to the steamy side of things.
It's always tricky from an author perspective, at least in my case, I'm curious for the rest of you who are authors, but I find it really tricky to view my books objectively or be able to position my books in comparison with other people's books. So I'm curious if you have read my novels if you would agree with me that the sex scenes scenes are team and they're like, you know, mostly fade to black and that kind of thing. I'm curious if you agree with me or if you're going to reach out and say, Sagan, you're wrong. They're not tame. I'm curious. So let me know. But I think that they're fairly tame compared to, you know, a lot of other romance novels, I don't know.
But a lot of them are sort of that fade to black type of situation. And you could fairly easily I would think, skip over any of the sex in my novels, if you're just not interested in reading them. So you could do that that is an option.
The third thing that I want to mention is that my books aren't about sex. So sex scenes can be fun to write and to read. But that's not what my books are about. And it's really the themes that interest me and I think that this comes out in my books. I think that when you read my novels, you can see that I as the author, I'm very interested in the different themes and what's going on in my character's heads and that kind of thing.
If I wanted to focus on sex, I would write erotica, which I will probably very likely do at some point because I do think it's a lot of fun, right? But the novels that I have written so far, they kind of just happen to have sex in them. And the sex that they have is used to underscore their personalities, right. So it contributes to the themes of the novels. Helen is one character in my polyamorous passion series. That's a really good example of this. Okay, she's a total type A, and one of the things that with her character we see happening is that she has a lot of discomfort around embracing different aspects of her sexuality. And you know, then she starts to explore things that she never would have thought about right.
So I think that she's a really interesting character, where you can see how the sex just all the sex scenes related to her underscore her personality. Right.
And just an FYI, I personally, I am not a type A. Right, Helen is I also personally don't have any qualms about embracing what I do, or or, you know, completely sane aside, but I don't like I know what I like and what I don't like and I'm also very private about that. So even though I write about sex, I actually have no interest in sharing my sex life with the world.
So just just want to like kind of share that with you that Helen is very different from me, right in in those novels, her character is a very different type of person than I am. So you can kind of see that because her personality is different that indicates that she and her sex life has nothing to do with me and my sex life, right.
So if you kind of want to read my books, but you also feel some discomfort around the sex aspect of it, then here are a few things to ease that discomfort around it or, or just another way to kind of think about it.
First of all, you simply do not need to read my books. That's okay. I totally understand if you're still like, Oh, I feel some discomfort around it. I get it. That's absolutely fine. I'm not offended. I will not hold that against you. I totally get it. The second option is you could just skip over those scenes, right? It won't change too much about the story it does help to you know, like sort of underscore the personalities and it does contribute to the themes, but it's not going to dramatically change your reading of the story by just skipping over them. So that's an option.
The third thing is you know, again, keep in mind everything I've said in this episode that my novels are fiction, not real life, so that in and of itself might help you feel more comfortable about it. And the fourth thing that I want to mention is that my next novel, small town stilettos is entirely Fade to black. So there are zero sex scenes in it. All of the sex that happens in the book happens off the page completely.
There's some kissing in small town stilettos, but even that I don't get descriptive about it. So they're, they're very, very PG.
So that is another option. You can always read small town stilettos when it is published, rather than the polyamorous passions series. And if you are curious about learning more about any of my books, or if you are now like okay, Sagan, I do want to read them. They're available. The polyamorous passion series is available on all major eBook store platforms, or you can visit Sagan morrow.com/books. And small town stilettos will be published at some point this year. The publisher the publishing date will be released sometime within the next couple of months. Hopefully I'll have some kind of a a date in mind for you.
So there you have it. Now before we close out our episode for today, a quick reminder about our bookmark giveaway I mentioned in the last couple of episodes, I have a lot of bookmarks for my books, and I would love to give them away to you. So if you post a review of any of my books, between now and April 30 2023 And you can post the review on Goodreads or Kobo or Amazon whichever platforms you prefer. Once you once you post that review between now and April 30 Email me hello at Sagan morrow.com With your review and your mailing address and I will mail you some bookmark some bookmarks from my books. This is available until supplies last but I do have a lot of bookmarks. So I don't think that we're going to run out.
So just be sure to do that before April 30. And again, my books are available in all ebook store platforms or you can visit Sagan morrow.com/books to grab your copies, read them and then post those reviews. All right, that my friend is a wrap for today's episode of indie author weekly access for show notes for this episode, including all links and additional resources at Sagan morrow.com/podcast. And share your thoughts on this episode on Twitter and Instagram. My handle is at Sagan lives. Please take two minutes to rate and review indie author weekly on Apple podcasts or if you're watching this episode on YouTube, subscribe to my channel and give this video the thumbs up. Thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you next week for another episode of indie author weekly