Introducing Daphne, My Lead Character in "Seducing the Gardener"

So in my last post, I talked about the most famous example of a "hot gardener" story - "Lady Chatterley's Lover", by D.H. Lawrence - and I how unenthused I am about Lady Chatterley as a character, and especially about Mellors, the gardener.

In Daphne Everson, my lead female, I have decided to rectify Lady Chatterley's listless, tedious, valueless existence. I wanted a woman with a modicum of can-do verve and a bit of self-respect. Nevertheless, I give her a background story, where her family home is not too far away, in central Summerville, South Carolina, USA. Yet she has done reasonably OK with her life so far - she's in her thirties, has moved to the suburbs to start a new life, has a humdrum but steady job in the local area, and is doing well for herself as a single woman, with a few friends she can have coffees with, plus a boyfriend that she met through work, who is quite a dynamic person.

So far, so good - yet, when she breaks up with her boyfriend for his controlling behaviour, he threatens her with violence, and her self-made existence is now endangered. When her ex attempts to carry out his threat, he is interrupted in his endeavour by the hired gardener, and the two men have a face-off.

When writing this short story, I tried to temper a realistic portrayal of an intelligent woman who believes in herself (so necessary for hot sex scenes), with the sleepy, small-time suburban setting of Summerville. I couldn't go all out with the glamorous, hard-hitting, super-ambitious, over-achieving, mega-lawyer/fashion model/corporate executive "my-pussy's-so-thirsty-I'm-gonna-ride-his-face-to-oblivion" type of horny female character I would usually write. Daphne needed to be a little softer, yet still be a well of frustrated sexual desire that the gardener decides to fill with some much-needed water.

So I decided that some gratitude to the gardener for saving her from a potentially violent incident would be the spark that lights the tinder of her hidden passion.