![\"Book](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/jacqueline-wilson-sex-has-replaced-food-in-my-book-for-adults.jpg\")
(Bantam\/PA)<\/p>\nFormer children\u2019s laureate Jacqueline Wilson confesses that the passionate sex scenes in her second book for adults have left her wondering how friends and family will react.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to forget that everybody who is a friend of mine or family might be going to read it, because otherwise you get tremendously hot under the collar and embarrassed about it,\u201d the sprightly bestselling author of more than 100 books and creator of Tracy Beaker admits. \u201cI just live in the moment of my characters.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 79, she has written Picture Imperfect, a follow-up to her children\u2019s book The Illustrated Mum (adapted into a TV movie in 2003 starring Michelle Collins), which introduced the eponymous mum, tattoo-adorned Marigold, and her two daughters, Dolphin and Star as they try to come to terms with their mother\u2019s depression and instability.<\/p>\n
(Bantam\/PA)<\/p>\n
Fast forward two decades, and Picture Imperfect finds Dolphin, 33, now a talented tattoo artist, struggling to move on, living in a bedsit and trying to look after Marigold who has bipolar disorder and is hospitalised, while her sister Star is a doctor, and is seemingly not putting in enough effort to help, as she lives in Scotland with her family.<\/p>\n
Dolphin hopes romance will save her and is torn between dependable but boring gardener Lee and his daughter Ava or exciting Lothario actor Joel. The sex scenes in the book range from functional to frantic, in tandem with the characters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought about this carefully because, well, if Beatrix Potter had suddenly started writing some steamy adult novel, because you get identified with your childhood characters, it would seem a little strange.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I thought, if I\u2019m writing for adults, generally people do have sex lives, or want to have sex lives, or are quite happy not to have sex lives, but aware they are not having them. So I thought, this is part of life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my children\u2019s books, there\u2019s an awful lot about food, the picnic meals, the treats, and somebody said that in children\u2019s books the place of sex is taken by food,\u201d she continues. \u201cSo I\u2019ve lots of food in the children\u2019s books and a little bit of sex in the adult books.\u201d<\/p>\n
Septuagenarian Wilson writes as the 33-year-old narrator, Dolphin, and says it was difficult to find a contemporary voice of a woman 45 years her junior.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do remember quite vividly when I was 33, although my circumstances were very difficult (she was then married to Millar Wilson with a young daughter, Emma, who is now a Cambridge professor), difficult marriage, difficult circumstances, but I think basically people still have the same emotions inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tattoos feature heavily in the story, yet the lively, contemporary-thinking author confesses she\u2019s never had one for fear that whatever was inscribed on the skin in youth would become less relevant with age.<\/p>\n
\u201cI meet many lovely young women whose legs contain many Taylor Swift tattoos. And when they\u2019re my age, they might think, \u2018Why do I have all these Taylor Swift tattoos amongst my varicose veins?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Mental health issues are also prevalent in the story, as Marigold has bipolar disorder and Dolphin is worried she may have inherited that gene.<\/p>\n
Wilson has known people with bipolar disorder and researched the subject thoroughly, reading great medical tomes on it, and although she doesn\u2019t want to romanticise the condition, she says that the right medication and a degree of self-care can help.<\/p>\n
Famed for penning children\u2019s stories with real-life gritty backdrops, whether it be care homes or council estates, dysfunctional families, illness, unemployment or mental health, she herself grew up in a fractious environment, the daughter of warring parents who ended up getting divorced, which affected her own mental wellbeing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think deep inside I have a very anxious personality and I do catastrophise because often things did go wrong, even on holiday which was when my parents had their worst rows. It was a very turbulent childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her parents had met during the war, in an era when the template for women was to get married and have children.<\/p>\n
\u201cTowards the end of the war, my mother charmlessly said, \u2018I didn\u2019t think much of your father, but he was the best of a bad bunch.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the time I was born, they really would much sooner have not ever met, but in those days divorce seemed to be a much more uncomfortable thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suppose I\u2019ve got a steely bit in me because I left home at 17 which was quite a challenge, and got this offer of being a journalist in Dundee. It was the making of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her upbringing affected how she approached relationships in adulthood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted someone to love me and I got that by marrying early (at 19), because I had my daughter and I loved her immensely. She did return all that love and we\u2019re still very close.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut by the time I got to middle age and my marriage had broken up, I had a much more jaundiced idea about finding the right person.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she was in her 50s, her husband of 38 years, printer Millar Wilson, left her for another woman. They divorced in 2004.<\/p>\n
By then she was a bestselling author \u2013 The Story Of Tracy Beaker, published in 1991, catapulted her to literary success \u2013 and later met Trish Beswick, a bookseller, on a literary weekend, and fell in love. They have been together for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n
Five years ago, she wrote a same-sex fictional love story, Love Frankie, aimed at aged 10-plus, which drew attention to her own personal circumstances, although she said at the time it wasn\u2019t a grand \u201ccoming out\u201d as anyone who knew her was aware of their relationship.<\/p>\n
She has since been described as a \u2018gay icon\u2019, a label she feels delighted about.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very proud of this. I\u2019ve always had lovely gay friends without ever really thinking, \u2018Am I gay?\u2019 So I really feel very comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s first novel for adults, Think Again, published last year as a sequel to the Girls series, marked a significant LGBTQ+ storyline for the author.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I have written about gay characters \u2013 in Think Again, Ellie discovers that she is gay, or falls in love with another woman \u2013 I\u2019m just charmed by this new element in my life and very proud too.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has had major illnesses \u2013 heart failure, kidney failure (she had a kidney transplant a decade ago) but she is still keen to live life to the full.<\/p>\n
There are no plans to bring back Tracy Beaker in a book for adults, although she\u2019s written about Tracy as an adult in a book for children, narrated by Tracy\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I\u2019ve written about Tracy in that way, I would have serious problems about suddenly writing about Tracy as Tracy herself and it would be weird getting right inside the adult Tracy\u2019s head. I\u2019m not even sure if I could cope with writing about Tracy\u2019s love life. But I have learned, never say never.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, she\u2019s going on a book tour, has writing to keep her busy \u2013 and no thoughts of retirement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to try to do one adult novel and one children\u2019s book a year,\u201d she enthuses. \u201cI\u2019ll keep going on as long as I possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Picture Imperfect by Jacqueline Wilson is published by Bantam, priced \u00a322. Available now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former children\u2019s laureate Jacqueline Wilson confesses that the passionate sex scenes in her second book for adults have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[457,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-108857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}