From my camera roll: I am proud of what I wrote.
I heard the term “naughty” used to describe some of the sections in my novel, and I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I was somewhat taken aback by the term, and it doesn’t sit right with me, so I’ve sat with it for a while, because I wanted to go deeper on this, and so I decided to document my thoughts.
Why is it that when a woman writes about desire—elegant, consensual, emotionally rooted, deeply human desire—we immediately reach for a word that makes it less than what it is? Why do we wrap adult intimacy in a wink and a whisper, turning it into something to be embarrassed about, giggled over, or apologized for?
I have been pondering this question for a while now after a very dear friend called the intimate scenes in my novel naughty.
She meant it kindly, of course. She was excited, happy for me, and genuinely proud of my debut novel. But in the middle of a group conversation, she leaned in, lowered her voice, and smiled. “Oh, but you haven’t gotten to the naughty parts yet.”
I paused before I responded: “That’s not true. I didn’t write anything naughty.”
She held her ground, so I let it go. Everyone is entitled to their own perception, and I certainly wasn’t offended. But as I sat with it later on the verandah, I realized there was a heavy, generational weight in that word that I couldn’t ignore.
Naughty.
I think it goes back to a long, complicated history of women being conditioned to minimize themselves, especially as we get older, even when it comes to making love, and particularly Black women, Caribbean women, grown women, mothers, and widows.
For generations, the unwritten rule has been clear: You may imply desire. You may soften it. You may joke about it in a way that lets the room off the hook and performs modest discomfort to keep everyone else comfortable.
What you are not supposed to do is own it. You are not supposed to write it with full physical and emotional honesty, design a gorgeous cover, and put your name on it.
And because we have absorbed this conditioning so deeply, a strange thing happens the moment an author breaks the mold. As the brilliant novelist Jojo Moyes once noted, the second you write an intimate scene, everyone automatically assumes it is a literal transcription of your own life. People stop looking at your work as craft and start looking at it as a diary entry. They play detective, getting uncomfortable because they cannot separate the writer from the writing.
When I first faced that anxiety, wondering what friends, family, or old schoolmates would think, I had to lean heavily into Mel Robbins’ “Let Them” theory, where even before her book, she leaned in heavily into this theory. This helped to guide me to make the conscious choice to protect my artistic integrity. Let them think what they want. Let them be uncomfortable. I refuse to compromise my vision.
I did not want to write a superficial romance. I wanted to write a love story that honors real depth.
I wrote a character, Maris Duval. She is accomplished, emotionally intelligent, and she built her beach club from the ground up. She has loved deeply, lost profoundly, and carried herself through it all with grace.
She built her beach club from the ground up.
But she also has desires.
She has a body that remembers her past: André Rousseau. So when he resurfaced and they crossed that threshold, I wrote that it was completely on her terms. I had no intentions to dim her light. I was not going to soften their connection to being polite, sanitized, and entirely forgettable.
Completely on her terms.
Maris Duval is not naughty. She is a woman who knows what she wants and refuses to make herself smaller in business, in life, or in love.
A beautifully written love scene between two consenting adults who found their way back to each other is not scandalous. It is character development. It is realism. It is art.
A woman can desire deeply and enjoy sex fully while remaining elegant, brilliant, feminine, and profoundly worthy of respect.
That shouldn’t be a controversial statement, but the silence and whispers of onlookers prove how far we still have to go.
Somewhere in the process of writing Maris, I realized I wasn’t only giving her permission. I also gave myself permission.
Permission to explore sensuality without an apology attached.
Permission to treat pleasure with careful, literary attention.
Permission to place a grown Black woman at the absolute center of a sweeping, international love story and let her be unapologetically alive.
That is the true gift of Webs, Love & Fireworks. It is an invitation to turn your audacity up a notch, step into your own power, and refuse to compromise on the depth of the love and pleasure you deserve.
I did not realize how much I needed to write this until it was written.
That is what Maris gave me. And perhaps that is what she will give you too. Not only romance or an escape. But the quiet, powerful, page-turning permission to take up space in your own desire.
Webs, Love & Fireworks is waiting for you at aubriea.com, and the full essay lives on The Internal Verandah.
My verandah is open, and I welcome your comments and/or feedback. Let’s pour a glass, leave ‘naughty’ behind, and finally talk about real depth.
With love and light,
xo, Marcia 🌹
Marcia M. Allen
Founder, AUBRIEA
Author of Webs, Love & Fireworks and Heart is Home
From My Verandah
The book at the heart of this piece, and the one that made it possible — plus something to wear the feeling in.
Webs, Love & Fireworks: the novel that grew from it. Maris and André’s love story, with Jamaica in its bones.
Heart is Home: the 7-day self-love journey where my honesty on the pages began.
GRATEFUL Sweatshirt: from AUBRIEA.