So I mentioned last time that I gave the galley copy of Silver Blade to my husband to help me look for errors, well I also gave it to my mom. Now it’s not polite to ask a woman her age and I don’t really want to tell it either, but lets just say that I’m in my 40s and my mom is in her 60s. No one would ever describe my mother as shy, quiet or easily embarrassed, so I have to say I was a little surprised at today’s conversation. (No mom, this wasn’t the exact wording, but close enough.)

“So I read parts of your book,” she said.

“Parts? Why didn’t you read the whole thing?”

“Well…”

“Well, what?”

“I couldn’t read the sex stuff. I started to but then I just couldn’t.”

I could actually hear the embarrassment in my mom’s voice coming through the phone line.

“I kept wondering how you knew some of that stuff.”

OMG MOM!! My book is not erotica; my book didn’t even make it to the HOT rating. My book made it to the SPICY rating which is “at least one full sex scene with description of foreplay, intercourse and climax”

Add to this that I’m in my forties, been married twice, read lots of books (of all ratings), and have seen my share of explicit movies. I wanted to laugh. In fact, I think I did. Then she threw the line out that many mothers use: “Well what if your daughter…”

I thought back to the Toronto Romance Writers’ meeting the other weekend where we sat in a circle discussing different words for penis. It was a small (no pun intended) meeting due to the snow storm, and I think a third of the writers there wrote erotica.

What would my mom do if I wrote erotica?
What would she do if I wrote murder mysteries?
And what about Stephen King’s mother? The poor woman.