I’ve been doing some writing on Colin Pearce’s follow-on adventure, “The Cabo Contract,” and I’m finding the sex content a little higher than I’d like necessarily. Let me give you a little background. The first several versions of the “The Viper Contract” which I wrote had A LOT of sex in them. It was a lot like “Penthouse Forum” meets aviation thriller – all we needed was for Colin Pearce to say: “I never thought this would happen to me, but one day . . . ” I had the manuscript professionally edited twice. The first editor said “Guys like sex, leave it in there.” The second editor said, “The flying scenes are fantastic, but you’ve got WAY too much sex in this book.” So through the course of several more revisions, I reduced the sex level and the story actually got a lot better. If I had to characterize the process in terms of movie ratings, I’d say initially I was solidly into NC-17 territory and it ended up somewhere between light “R” and heavy PG-13.
So now I’m writing “The Cabo Contract” which is, in some ways, a much different book than “The Viper Contract.” We’re going to get inside Pearce’s head a lot more and explore Pearce’s relationship with Sarah Morton, the first woman Pearce ever met who got under his skin. But along the way, Pearce will have to play a role to accomplish the mission the CIA and FBI have in mind for him and that role will require some VERY realistic encounters with one or two members of the opposite sex. The question becomes how much detail should I provide and how necessary/realistic are the encounters themselves? I’m going to have to give this some serious thought and bounce it off a few people along the way.
As an aside, the reactions to Pearce’s sexual exploits have been decidedly mixed. I actually had one guy who reviewed “The Viper Contract” say “He gets way too much action for this to be realistic,” but the context of the rest of the review indicated the reviewer was more jealous than objective. I don’t know how you feel, but I want my heroes to be larger than life – no pun intended! I’ve had other reviewers say, “It’s hard to route for a guy who is that lucky with the ladies,” and to that I say two words: “James Bond.” Does anyone not route for James Bond? I don’t think so. Most of the other reviewers, male and female, thought the mix was optimum.
Here’s the bottom line. Colin Pearce is who he is. He’s probably got a stronger than average libido for a guy his age and thanks to his single status he can take advantage of it. He also has a “warrior mentality” which tends to bring out the need to express his libido more often than someone who does not possess that mentality. (In a future blog, I’ll give you my thoughts on warrior mentality versus political correctness). Pearce also has a performance enhancement cocktail coursing through his veins in this book which adds both to his libido and his physical ability to act on it. It’s also been my experience that men and women who have type-A personalities and work very closely together in high stress situations often wind up together if they’re not married or committed elsewhere and sometimes even when they are committed elsewhere – often with devastating results. Biology can be powerful. Pearce is essentially an average guy who finds himself in these sorts of situations more often than the rest of us – and he acts on it. Lucky bastard.
