Shark Porn

It's "shark week" on various TV channels, and last night I saw a program that could only be described as "shark porn," literally. There even was a warning label during the commercials. During the mating scenes, I averted my eyes just as I did with the feeding frenzies. I've only had one shark in my novels, but I can see why sharks get their own week. Cats get the rest of the internet, but that's another blog.

Ironically, my favorite shark reference in literature was in a Woody Allen film, Annie Hall. Woody told Diane Keeton's Annie, that a relationship was like a shark, it had to constantly keep moving in order to survive. "What we have here is a dead shark," he said.  He won an Academy award for writing that scene.

As for the shark scene in my book, it was based on a real experience. Several years ago I was dating someone and we had dinner at the restaurant inside the Albuquerque aquarium. There was a pregnant shark, however I don't know if the little shark was still born or just got stuck coming out of the womb. The mother shark kept swimming, and I was tilting my head trying to focus on the baby shark. This was literally a once in a lifetime experience-- birth of a predator or perhaps death. I think a TV crew was on the way . . .

I wasn't able to learn what happened to the baby shark because my date kept telling me to look at her. "Look at me, don't look at the shark! We need to talk about our relationship!"  I think men are genetically wired to look at sharks as opposed to having in depth talks about relationships. Our own shark, well our potential relationship, died that day.

I don't remember the name of the woman, I still can picture the shark's eyes however, and the eyes of the pup.  I've never seen a shark photographer get a wedding announcement on the New York Times Weddings and Celebrations page.

I put a version of that real life encounter in my novel, Conflict Contract, where Dan breaks up with Jen Song. It's a cute scene, and the pregnant shark makes a cameo.

I hope to set an upcoming novel in Hawaii and bring some of my existing characters back . . . including the pregnant shark. I'm not saying how that shark got pregnant as I'm not going to write a shark sex scene. I will leave shark porn to the professionals . . . and the sharks.