Several months ago, when The Name and the Key was being prepared for publication, I had a talk with my publisher and we decided The Darkening Gate was no longer going to be a YA trilogy due to the darkness of its content. I wrote a blog article about it, mentioning that this now gave me the freedom to go into more adult territory with The Fear and the Flame, the last book in the trilogy.

I made a social media post months later because there are places on the web that refer to the trilogy as YA that I can’t edit, so I tried to put the word out there that the trilogy is New Adult to counteract some of the past messaging. In the post, I mentioned that there would be an open door scene in The Fear and the Flame.

Well, dear readers, now that I’m writing it, I’m not so sure anymore. I can’t quite figure out where to squeeze it in, and I think tacking it on at the end feels a little…cheap. The series does get a happy ending, I promise you. But I think including some spice there might not actually work anymore.

I think part of my issue is that I’ve had it ingrained in my head that romantasy must include spice. I don’t know where I got this from. However, there are articles like this one that mention that “None of the top-selling romantasy books are closed-door (taking place off the page or “fading to black”).” Which means the more popular romantasy books, the more financially successful, have spice in them.

But I don’t want to add spice for the sake of adding spice. I think readers can tell when you’re just calling it in.

Plus, sexual scenes are a challenge for me to write. I freaked out setting up my closed-door scene in Son of the Siren forever ago, and that writing process was harrowing. I’m a little afraid of what a full-blown sex scene would be like for me to depict on-page.

I’ve been researching, and while part of me thinks it might be a great emotional payoff for my leads to finally experience that kind of intimacy together after everything that’s kept them apart, the other part of me can’t figure out where to put that in without it seeming tacked-on at the end.

Of course, I’m nowhere near writing the end on the book, but usually I can tell pretty quickly how things will wrap before it’s written (I tend to know how my books are going to end pretty immediately). And my gut is telling me a full-on spicy scene isn’t going to happen.

I may surprise you. I may surprise myself. It may appear after all that’s said and done here.

But I’m not holding my breath.