Adult colouring books have become a popular trend lately, and thanks to one local illustrator, you can now own an adult adult colouring book.

It’s that exact play on words that inadvertently set Denise Gow-Morse, a freelance illustrator, down the path to self-publishing her own X-rated colouring book, Colour In Sexy, earlier this year.

“I have a friend who loves them, so I gave her one for Christmas,” says Gow-Morse. When she told another friend, she was asked if “adult” was in the “mature audiences” sense of the word.

“That’s the best idea I’ve ever heard,” says Gow-Morse. She couldn’t find much in the way of x-rated colouring books online, though, and the ones she did find portrayed sex pretty distastefully.

“It was depicted very violently, and I wasn’t happy with that,” says Gow-Morse. “I’ll make my own.”

Gow-Morse crafted Colour In Sexy carefully to ensure that all sorts of different sexual relationships were featured, but that they were always depicted consensually. She hopes that her book can help others discover healthier ways to express their sexuality.

“I wanted this to kind of show that there’s a way that [sex] can be in our society and not be something that we should be ashamed of,” says Gow-Morse. “You don’t have to be ashamed of your body. In a consensual, healthy sexual relationship, no matter who it’s with, there’s nothing shameful about that.”

Colour In Sexy is available at Venus Envy and Plan B for $20, or $15 if you order through Gow-Morse’s website. The book is doing well online, according to Gow-Morse.

And she hopes it’s just the start. “I would love to do Colour In Sexier,” she says.