Quote:
Originally Posted by MmavisO
I seem to recall reading somewhere years ago that the reason why the explicit sex scenes increase as the series progress is that when Auel first went to a publisher with her books, she had book 1 complete with little explicit sex, book 2 in rough draft (still little explicit sex, but rough drafts get edited/rewritten, right?) and outlines for at least book 3, and possibly book 4. She didn't really want so many sex scenes, but the deal she made with her publisher was that she could leave them out of book 1 since it was already complete, but she had to add them to book 2 and ongoing so the books would sell better.
Or something along those lines, anyway. I don't recall when or where I read this as it was about 15 years ago or more, but it's likely out there somewhere.
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I heard the opposite -- that the first book sold so shockingly well, Auel's second, third, and fourth books were left entirely up to her and saw little editing.
We'll never know for sure, but I remember a mistake in book two that seemed to indicate little editing (highlight to see the spoiler) :
A Huge Deal is made of the fact that Ayla doesn't understand the word "love" when Jondalar tells her he loves her. But about 40 pages prior to that scene, Ayla uses the word "love" herself when talking about his brother: "It's hard to lose someone you love that much."