by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’ve had to make some difficult decisions with this newest version of the novel and among them is how much of the sex stuff I wrote for the previous version to keep in. I’ve lopped off a lot — A LOT — of text but because the old version had so much sex in it, I’m still stuck with some fairly spicy sex scenes.
The only reason why this bothers me is I have a little circle of people (very small group) who read my stuff and some of them have been turned off by how much sex the previous version of the novel had. So, I’m a little nervous.
And the sex happens in the first few chapters, which also bothers me. And, yet, while I’ll admit its rather lurid, it actually does serve some sort of purpose. At least, I believe it does.
I have said repeatedly that this novel is meant to be an homage to Stieg Larsson’s works and, as such, if people can handle some of those eye-popping scenes that he wrote, they can definitely handle the raunchy scenes I’ve written. And almost all of my scenes are between consenting adults, so that should give me some points.
But you just can’t please everyone. That’s why this is a passion project. I have a vision, a truth north and I’m going to follow it, no matter what.
