While it’s not a hard and fast rule with me, I don’t usually write stories with virgin leads.
There are a couple of reasons for this. First off, I tend to train my
writer’s ear on who my character tells me they are, and I don’t have a lot of
characters reveal themselves as virgins to me. Every now and then I have a
character whose background makes it sensible—a member of a religious order, for
example—and sometimes I have a character who, for whatever reasons, simply hasn’t
engaged in sexual relations prior to the story I’m writing. As I work on Rhiannon’s
third Blood and Fire title, it took
me some time to determine the sexual background of Sascha, the Russian
sorceress/thief, and it finally seemed to me that, for her own reasons, Sascha
hasn’t had any relationships in her past.
