Writing Sex Honestly: Balancing Romance, Transaction, and Abuse in The Alpha Flame
Why I refused to fade to black, and how writing all kinds of sex scenes was necessary to tell the truth.
Writing Sex Honestly: Balancing Romance, Transaction, and Abuse in The Alpha Flame
I thought long and hard about the sex in The Alpha Flame. It’s not the kind of book where you can just sprinkle in some tastefully vague romance and fade to crashing waves. That would have been dishonest. And it would have failed the story, and the readers I most wanted to reach.
There’s a scene everyone asks about. The one where Rick tries to force himself on Maggie and Beth, and they fight back, attacking his genitals. That scene was always going to be in the book. It had to be. Because Rick isn’t just a “bad guy” in an abstract sense, he’s a violent predator. Sanitising him would have been a lie. It had to be brutal, humiliating, frightening. Because that’s the truth of what someone like him is.
But if I’d left the rest of the book soft and gentle, if all the other sexual content was coy and romantic, that scene would have felt like an ambush. Readers would have been lulled into safety and then punched in the face with it. That wouldn’t just have been artistically dishonest. It would have been cruel.
Romance, Transaction, and Abuse: All Three Had to Be There
There’s romantic sex in the book. Maggie and Rob on the beach. It’s tender, a little messy, completely human. I wanted that there because people don’t stop being people just because they’re traumatised. They still want connection. Comfort. Pleasure. Hope.
But there’s also transactional sex. Beth is a sex worker, not exactly by choice, but by circumstance. Her work isn’t something I could just skip over. Pretending it didn’t exist would be erasing part of who she is and what she’s surviving. Even Maggie tries it once, in a moment of desperation and self-loathing. That’s not romantic. It’s sad, raw, and real. Because in that world, sex is also currency. Survival.
And yes, there’s abusive sex. Rick’s violence isn’t just a plot device. It’s the ultimate threat hanging over the girls. It’s power and domination at its worst. To leave that out would be to lie about the danger they’re in, and to avoid confronting what women face at the hands of men like him.
Why All of It Matters
If I left any of those aspects out, the book would be unbalanced. If it was all romantic sex, then Rick’s attack would feel unearned and out of place. If it was only violent sex, it would feel gratuitous and hopeless. If I ignored the transactional side, I’d be refusing to look at what Beth’s life actually is, and why she’s in danger.
I didn’t want to write porn. I didn’t want to write torture porn either. I wanted to write something that felt true. That didn’t lie about what sex can be: tender, necessary, transactional, violent, healing, humiliating, empowering. Sometimes all at once.
That’s why those scenes are in The Alpha Flame. Not to titillate. Not to shock for shock’s sake. But to tell the truth about these women, their world, and the choices they’re forced to make. Even when those truths are hard to read.
Read more about The Alpha Flame: Discovery here if you’re ready for a story that doesn’t flinch from the hardest parts of being human.