I'm interested in sex, and have always been. Beginning when I was a young adolescent and I discovered sex. I didn't know much about it but I... I was, like most of the young adolescent boys I knew, I was terrifically engaged by the idea of it, even if I couldn't actually practice it. And I've... I... I look back on my own sexual life with women with terrific gratitude. Some of the happiest and most intense moments of my life are associated with sex or sex play, serious sexual activity. So I have had reason to think about it. And thought early on, I guess, why shouldn't it be in literature, in fiction, in a novel? I'm not the first person to... to think that, but in the 20^th century, writers were given permission that they never had before to write about sex, beginning perhaps with Henry Miller in America, DH Lawrence in England, you could be open and graphic.

Now, you're not just open and graphic, you're trying to write a work of fiction so you're not advertising those moments, but sex should be integral to the story you're telling.