*Insert Sex Scene Here* By Poppy Gee

 Love is in the air. How do you feel about writing sex scenes in crime fiction? Give a sample of your favourite love or romance scene from your own work and tell us your method for handling these relationships.

I hate writing sex scenes. They’re so embarrassing to write, especially since my sisters told me that whenever they read a sex scene in my books, they can’t help imagining I’m the character. That gives me writer's block.

In general, I feel like Australian writers are tentative in their approach to writing sexy sex scenes. In Australian films, for example, sex scenes are usually more comical than erotic. I struggle to think of an Australian movie where the sex scenes match the romance, seductiveness and alluring nature of those portrayed in American movies. 

I pinched the title for my blog post from a workshop run by bestselling author Alessandra Torre. The title *insert sex scene here* made me laugh because that’s what I do – I postpone the awkwardness.

In my debut novel Bay of Fires, the main characters are drunk the first time they have sex, and they do it in a guest house bedroom. It’s a rickety old bed and their enthusiasm makes the bed bang against the wall. They worry they’ll wake everyone up. I thought it was funny. I was also aware, as I wrote it, that I was taking the easy way out of writing the sex scene.

Feminist writer Kate Millett published Sexual Politics in 1969. The book was a sensation – it sold 80,000 copies and she was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. Millett talks about how the way that characters have sex, says something important about them and about the cultural politics and history of the time. She examined misogyny and rape in the novels of Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence, drawing conclusions about what that says about patriarchal culture. A simple example of her theory, is how in the Victorian-era bodice rippers, the heroine is shy, reluctant, perhaps begging the hero to halt his seduction. He persists, and eventually she succumbs demurely to his efforts. The interaction reveals something interesting about feminine ideals in the nineteenth century.

Reading Sexual Politics was my writerly awakening. It showed me the potential that sex scenes offer a narrative. Of course, a good sex scene can simply be about the pure physicality of sex, but it’s interesting to consider what else it might do for your story.  

In my second novel, Vanishing Falls, my protagonist and her husband have a loving relationship, and their sex life is healthy, romantic and respectful. It was important to their character development to show this. Another character, Jack, a wealthy farmer and lawyer, visits a decrepit farmhouse where he pays to have sex with a woman while her husband watches on. And then there’s Cliff, a methamphetamine addict who watches porn in his back shed and fantasises about his wife’s best friend. When friends tells me they’ve gifted my book to a loved one, I think of these scenes and cringe. But these scenes do reveal something about wealth, class, and addiction in Tasmania. 

Patricia Highsmith writes sexual tension beautifully, without too much detail. May Cobbs writes fantastic lusty scenes. The sex scenes in Stone Cold Fox by Rachel Coller Croft are really fun and crucial to the plot. SA Cosby’s writes sexual interactions that are sharply atmospheric. Some of the most graphic sex scenes I’ve read in a crime novel are in the excellent novel My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent. If I was critiquing sexual relationships in fiction, I’d include No Country For Old Men. The otherwise brilliant novel by Cormac McCarthy has Llewellyn Moss, aged 36, married to the 19-year-old Carla Jean. I loved that novel, but that relationship made me think the author was fantasising for himself. As a reader, you want to be lost in the story, not jarred out of it.

It's interesting that the raunchiest sex scenes in mainstream films, are often not in romantic movies, but in thrillers. This could be due to classification reasons. However, it also makes me think that I need to try harder with sex scenes. Maybe I don’t read enough of them. Feel free to recommend the best crime-fiction-sex-scene-depicting-books you’ve found...