Mary Roach on Writing Her Own Sex Scene

Photo by David Paul Morris

Photo by David Paul Morris

Jason at the GalleyCat blog had a chance to catch up with Mary Roach (bestselling author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, as well as Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex) after a recent reading and chat with her.

This video is a snippet, and sees Mary talking about the awkwardness and logistics of writing about her own sex scene (she and her husband, Ed, actively participated in a sex study – in a laboratory), and trying to please both her agent and editor while simultaneously attempting to not gross out her stepdaughters.

I did an interview with Mary Roach a few months back, and found her to be really funny, personable and interesting. Of her books, I’ve only read Stiff so far, but it was excellent – funny, fascinating, and while often touching, much less dark than one might expect from a book about corpses – and this has just reminded me to pick up the others.

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