The Surprise of Sexy Characters

Good morning, Readers!

I painted one of my characters once. This is him. Commander Bennejin "Skylark" Skye; military prodigy and traitor?

So, as most of you know, roughly four years ago, I wrote a military science fiction that I adore.  I think it was four years ago, now.  It was a long time ago in any case.

This story was one of the easiest writes I've ever had.  It poured from me like a damned flood.  I skipped training several times in order to write more of this story.  That's some serious shizz, right there.

It goes without saying that I love this particular novel.  I love the characters, the setting, every heartbreak...

The trouble is getting a publisher to love it as much as I do, but that's a different matter entirely.  And not what this blog post is about.  Focus, Sonia!  Focus!

In an effort to get this manuscript as good as it could possibly be before I continue the trials of submitting for another however many years I feel like submitting before I self-publish, I decided to hire an editor.  Cait Gordon is an author with Renaissance Press and has been a technical writer for many years.  She's starting her own editing business (which you can check out via her website here), and because she's trying to build her client list, I got a pretty awesome discount.  It's still expensive for a broke-ass person like me, but hopefully worth it.

Thus far, it has been worth it in the number of giggles Cait has given me over the course of the few weeks she's had the manuscript.  Not a week in, I received this message from her on facebook:

She then posted this, which I shared to my wall:

It got me thinking, because it's kinda weird.  When writing, I don't really have any idea whether a character I create is sexy, because sexy really isn't something I ever think about or experience much at all.  I do joke about it often, as you can see in my reply to Cait on her message, which makes me laugh harder than anyone else because the idea is so absurd to me.

I amuse myself.

Anyway, it's very rare that any thought goes into a character's sexual attractiveness when I'm writing.  The exception to that was Aleksandar from my vampire novel Human.  Even still, I was writing blind, just hoping that he would resonate with my readers.  According to Cait (again) I hit the mark there.  Phew!

But sexy wasn't really what I was going for with Commander Skye.  I was going for protective, abrasive, and a little broken (seriously, though, he's got problems, yo.... you see it later in the novel).  I mean... is that what makes sexy?  I DON'T KNOW!

I didn't even really think about it until Cait mentioned it.  I was honestly just writing what I find interesting - and I don't mean sexually.  'Cause that's the thing with asexuals.  Sexual interest isn't really part of the equation.

Think of it like this:

You can view a painting and find it breathtakingly beautiful.  You want to be around it, observe it, study all its strokes, the flaws, the colours and how they interplay.  You might even love it deeply.

You don't want to fuck it.

Unless you do.  In which case... therapy?

That's what people are to asexuals; beautiful, intensely interesting, won't-fuck-you-though, sentient paintings.

(Now, being demi-sexual, there is the possibility that my platonic interest might turn to sexual interest, but experience has told me that that is an extremely rare occurrence.)

Incidentally, Cait has been very lovely about the manuscript in general.  She writes me very sweet notes every so often.

Like this one:

And from today, which made me laugh once again:

Anyway, because I didn't really think about it, it struck me as so odd that someone would point out that a character I wrote was dead sexy, because it was a) entirely unknown to me, and b) completely unintentional.  Commander Skye is, to me, intensely interesting.  So I suppose that's something to measure sexiness by.  If I find them interesting, other people will find them sexy.  Or something?

I don't know.

For research purposes, tell me below what you find sexy.  It could be anything from physical features to personality traits.  If it's a painting, get some therapy.  Seriously.

​Ciao!