WRITING

Oh My God, What If People Read What I Wrote?

My kids, my neighbor, my spouse’s colleagues and everybody else is going to find out I know about sex and stuff

Photo by on

There’s a stripper in my book, , who gets a sugar daddy, and while there aren’t any graphic sex scenes, there are a fair number of edgy details about her life.

I was worried people would wonder how I came up with all those details, but so far, my most-asked question has to do with her shenanigans at a convenience store. People have asked me if I ever had such a job and if that’s how I ended up with that level of detail.

I never worked in a convenience store, but back in the day I knew people who did, and some of them bragged about how they snitched cigarettes, which my character does. I did work several restaurant jobs as a student, and I know about being hungry and quickly popping a few bites of food that you know won’t be missed into your mouth, another thing that happens in the book.

Most of the things that happen in the book are things I’ve never experienced — thank goodness. The exception is Jonesy, the struggling newspaper reporter. I had a job very much like his.

The judge who married my husband and me…