Tracy told me apologetically that she read Pretty Is As Pretty Does and she could hardly put it down. She said she didn't usually read trashy novels.
I beg your pardon.
Writing about sex isn’t as easy as you might think.
Everyone already knows what happens. You have to describe
it in such a way that, even though everyone already knows
what happens, they'll want to read it anyway. You have to
write it in such a way that people will both recognize what
you’re describing and also find something new. The thing
that makes sex interesting isn’t what happens, but what
happens this time. What the protagonist is thinking, what’s
she’s noticing. What’s interesting is what makes sex this
time different and specific.
Is my book a trashy novel? When people ask about it, I say
it's a story about character and place. It's about families
and about what people want or think they want. It's about
bigotry and small towns, about desire and love and figuring
out what matters. It's about what happens to someone whose
desires are at odds with her own self interest, someone
whose most authentic act is infidelity. It's about the way
in which good and evil are intertwined-- how they can sit
side by side in a person or in a community.
The story is set in a town somewhat like Beardstown,
Illinois, a town I moved to when I was 17. When we moved to
Beardstown from South Carolina the first thing that struck
me was the fact that everyone was white. Everyone in the
town and everyone in the county. The novel is, in part,
about racism. It’s about fear of the other. It’s about
wanting to be better than the next guy. The story is told
from the point of view of a young woman who is a
narcissist. So while it’s commenting on race, it’s also
commenting on our own private desire to think of ourselves
as more important, or in some way better, than others.
Pretty Is As Pretty Does was my first published novel. It
was a Barnes&Noble Great New Writers award winner and
also a BookSense book.
My mother, bless her heart, tells people that my publisher
made me put the sex in there.