Bondi Beach: Blog

Diana Gabaldon's sex scenes in her "Outlander" series are strong and effective and hot. Her "I Give You My Body" essay is excellent. She has excerpts on her web site.

This passage caught my eye:

"Everything in fiction writing comes down to character, and sex scenes are no exception. If you can replace your characters’ names with Dick and Jane (or Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, say*) without substantially altering your scene—you need to think again. In good sex-scene writing, this particular scene could only have happened to these two people."

*Ed. note: Just to make this balanced you may substitute "Donald Trump and [whoever]"

~ JBB



Gabaldon, Diana. "I Give You My Body...": How I Write Sex Scenes (Kindle Single) (p. 8). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I posted "Separation Fantasy" at the request of its author and under her pen name, S Badger. The text is from a very close friend who lived in Sydney about the same time as I did.

A Tolkien fanatic, Badger cast her fantasy partly in Middle Earth. It's fan fiction with real people, an erotic romp, and a story of separation with its attendant sorrows. In the end, it's a love story, albeit bittersweet and very short.

Thank-you to readers who've checked in to see if I'm still writing. I'm trying to beat into shape a manuscript I have, plus a few other ideas, so there's hope.

That said, pesky RL issues have taken up too much of my life in the past year, so I cannot promise a date for the next story yet.

No one has asked me, but I offer this: "Station 11" and "My Brilliant Friend" on HBO are excellent. The HBO adaption for "Station 11" is tighter and better-told than the book, which itself isn't bad, and "Friend" is the equal of Ferrante's novels.

Cheers,
~ JBB

I've queued for posting revisions and formatting corrections to California Central Valley Summer Heat. There's always more to improve, so if you see anything that requires attention please let me know.

Thank you for taking the time to let me know what you thought.

Best wishes,

~ JBB

As I read now through the text as posted I see a few glitches because I didn't format the text quite right. For example, Jim's sister is (now) Ana María, which prints as Ana Mar'a. I'll fix those and others in the coming days.

Thank you to those who've read it and shared their thoughts about it.
~ JBB