I wrote this post for author Susan Roebuck’s blog. Eh, I felt it was too much fun not to have it on mine.

Of course, there’s sex in my new mystery, Chasing the Case. It’s a given because I wrote about people and what they do. Sex is a part of that.

But writing about something so personal without being vulgar is a bit tricky. I believe I give enough, so readers can use their imagination.

There are no descriptions of body parts. Nothing is throbbing. The sex scenes aren’t icky or embarrassing.

By the way, my characters are consenting adults who are having a good old time in the sack, and in Chasing the Case, actually mature consenting adults.

This is my third book out. In the first, Peace, Love, and You Know What, a group of hippie friends have a three-day bash. This is the early seventies, so there is nudity, free love, and dirty professors. Lenora, the main character has sex with three guys in two days, including a ménage à trois — her instigation by the way.

My second novel, The Sweet Spot, is a more serious novel. Edie St. Claire has a rather hot and heavy relationship with her married brother-in-law until that ends tragically. Then she has to pay for it when the town turns against her.

Things are a more light-hearted for Isabel Long in Chasing the Case. After all, she tells the story. She’s a long-time journalist who becomes an amateur P.I. after she gets canned from the newspaper she was running. She decides to solve a mystery of a woman who went missing in her town of a thousand people 28 years earlier. It was her first big story as a rookie reporter.

It’s also a big change in another way for Isabel. Her husband died and after giving herself a year to grieve, she’s ready to move on. How did she put it? It’s time to do something foolish or at least, have fun.

That’s what she does. And she doesn’t have to look far to find it.

I’m not going to spoil the plot by giving away who Isabel has sex with in Chasing the Case. It had been some time since the man was in a relationship that included sex.

As he warns her on their first night, “I may come awfully fast. It’s been a while.”

Isabel’s response? “That’s okay, I’m a little nervous, too. It’s been a while for me, too.”

She removes the photo of her dead husband to another room. And during their first romp she lights candles on the bureau and nightstand beside the bed. She tells herself: “I believe there’s just enough light for me to be firm and beautiful in his eyes. Maybe.”

I will say there’s a lot of playful banter about sex between Isabel and her lover in this book, but then again she is a bit on the sassy side.

Besides being an amateur P.I., Isabel takes a part-time job tending bar at the local watering hole called the Rooster. Her plan is to get up close and personal with people connected to the mystery.

Here is her observation about the bar’s customers on the night a band is playing. “The Rooster is jumping and bumping tonight, and from my vantage point at the bar, I can tell a lot of the customers will be humping later on. Yeah, I’m being a bit crude, but I’ve seen more men and women getting felt up here tonight than by the TSA at the airport in Hartford.”

Finally, one last thing about sex, at least for this post: an anecdote about my 94-year-old mother, an avid reader of romance novels. (She is the inspiration for Isabel’s mother, who is her Watson in this series.)

I will admit a few of my adult kids were uncomfortable about the sex scenes in my first book. So, when I gave my mother a copy, I added this warning, “Mom, there’s a bit of sex in it.”

Here’s what she told me after reading it: “Oh, I’ve read a lot worse than that.”

Really, Mom?

Chasing the Case is available in paperback and Kindle. Thanks for all who have bought and read it. Here’s the link for those who don’t have their copy: http://mybook.to/chasingthecase

ABOUT THE PHOTO ABOVE: This was the view last night from the porch of the Blue Rock in Shelburne Falls where we ate dinner. That village is our new home.