Sex and death are bestsellers.

The statistics are overwhelming. Year after year… no century after century… Shakespeare to E.L. James…stiff stuff sells.

Why?

Because of taboo.

You’re not supposed to like sex. Nor enjoy death. But you can’t help it. It’s because you’re an adventuresome creature. You want to pick the forbidden fruit. Taste the poison. Lay the stranger. Then cut his pretty throat.But it goes deeper. You’re programmed to recognize danger and you have a need to get screwed. It’s your adrenaline rush.

The 3-F’s. You fight, flight, or fuck. If you’re not a Bond girl then you must experience in your mind things that you can’t with your body. So you watch YouTube videos of sharks ripping humans apart and you read 50 Shades of Grey – your inner thoughts are flamed by outer smut. No one knows what you do privately and I’m sure that you do things in private.

This produces endorphin. Nature’s crack. It keeps you on your toes and striving to get bred. You’re hardwired to survive and reproduce.

Here’s an eye opener. I just stumbled on the Man Booker Longlist awards for novels. All 13 finalists had death as their common theme. That says something. Not only did the writers know this – the readers endorsed death and the judges did too.

But it’s even more interesting that sex is not front & center in these novels – it’s silently embedded in the writing.

I choose to write about death, because I know more about death than about sex.

And sex usually lasts only minutes.

Whereas death is forever.