As the year comes to an end, I wonder where did 2019 go? It seems every year is shorter and shorter; I’m tempted to check the calendar to count the number of months and make sure it is still twelve. Did it use to have more, maybe?
As a writer of erotica, I see myself sometimes as a male version of Sybil, the woman with multiple personalities. Typically, our author’s side is hidden from the world as your neighbors and co-workers would be aghast at learning the fact you write stuff for people to jerk off to.
Now certainly, we can wrap ourselves in the guise of literary license, somewhat like our President wraps himself in the American flag, but let’s not kid each other, most people think we are perverts.
Are we perverts or just being honest with ourselves? In my lifetime, I’ve seen gays go from being people rednecks would beat up after leaving the bar to people who are your neighbors and friends who borrow your turkey baster.
Maybe in another thirty years, when people say what do you do to keep the wolf away from the door, we can say, “I write erotica!” Well, I’m not holding my breath!
Leading secret lives is something that Wifey and I had done long before I started writing with one hand. Being in “The Lifestyle” means that you have two separate and distinct lives.
One of the first things we learned was you have two sets of friends, straights, and swingers. In effect, we have two little black books and they are seldom joined. Initially, you may think that you can keep them straight but it has been a struggle for us.
When we lived in the mid-west, I had a photography studio in my basement. One wall was devoted to pictures I’d shot that I liked. One day, my sister-in-law commented that she’d recognized a nude woman on my photo wall as a swinger friend of ours. One of our closest couples, we partied with, lived about ten minutes away and we did a lot of things together that didn’t always involve the bedroom.
Consequently, they had met our in-laws, and while my sister-in-law never voiced the obvious question, “Why do you have naked pictures of some other guy’s wife?” I’m sure that the thought was there.
Likewise, we have huge New Year’s Eve Pajama Parties, and deflecting the questions about why they weren’t invited was always problematic. In fact, a story I recently published, Crashing the Swinger’s Pajama Party, was an adaptation of what actually happened when a neighborhood couple showed up at midnight to a hundred people, who were mostly naked and doing the nasty!
All things considered, we’ve been lucky to escape having our secret life exposed and none of our neighbors have shown up with torches and pitchforks. It hasn’t been easy to live a double life, but at least until now, doable. Relocating to Las Vegas has made that aspect of our life, easier to deal with.
Throwing your house keys in a bowl often results in wildly exciting and often humorous consequences that you are unable to share with your straight friends. This is one of the reasons that I got started writing smut, this time seven years ago.
Writing erotic stories allows me to talk about things we’ve seen and done while maintaining the anonymity of the guilty parties and being able to get it off my chest, so to speak. Even before we got into the Lifestyle, Foxy and I lived a questionable lifestyle (lower case).
I always encouraged her to dress sexy, and being an ex-model and exhibitionist wasn’t much of a challenge for her. For me, I love having the woman that everyone in the room wants but can’t have, and that’s a real turn-on. While I don’t consider myself a cuckold, it is a thrill to see everyone’s tongue hanging out when she stalks into the room.
Writing adventures has added another separate side to our lives, straight, swinger, and now an erotic author. When I started this, I promised her that I would keep my author’s life completely separate and have managed to do so, although it’s been a struggle at times.
As my seventh year of writing smut comes to an end, I feel that I’ve been relatively successful at it. I write what is colloquially known as “stroke erotica,” or stories you masturbate to.
A lot of my fellow writers look down their noses at stroke, but I don’t care and enjoy writing stuff basically aimed at getting my readers off. Stroke stories are typically short, yet mine are often novel or novella length. So I like to think my readers are getting their money’s worth.
Heading into the new year, I have over thirty published stories under my belt and am averaging about four per year. Should I be more prolific? Certainly, but life often gets in the way and writing smut is only one part of our sometimes hectic life.
Having a real day job means that I don’t have to publish but it does nag at me when I see my sales figures drop as the days since my last story pile up. Amazon, the company we love to hate, factors time between releases as a major component in whether they suggest your story or not to a prospective reader with his/her pants unzipped.
Luckily, I also publish through SmashWords which goes more by popularity and rating than when it was published. SmashWords also pushes out my stories to other outlets such as Apple iBooks or Barnes and Noble without have to do anything. My sales through iBooks generally match what I sell through SmashWords, so I get twice the bang for my buck.
I also need to give a shout out to Kinky Literature, who promotes my porn and other popular writers. If you write erotica, you need to set up an account with Kinky Literature. Your reader pays the same price and you get the satisfaction of knowing Richie and Randi doesn’t look down upon you, unlike the blue-haired lady who hands you the dirty magazine in a brown paper bag as she sprays you with Lysol.
And of course, the Erotic Readers and Writers Association (ERWA) offers a place for writers to get together and discuss the finer points of writing smut stories as well as letting me opine on life in general once a month.
In closing, I’ll reiterate my singular goal for 2019, “Focus on one thing at a time!” Once again, I’ve failed at this goal. I will be writing some story, and out of the blue comes a thought for another story, which I can’t seem to get out of my head. Often, I will tell myself, “I’ll just write enough to flesh out the storyline.” Then what typically happens is that I’ll end up writing 20,000 words or so before going back to the story I’m trying to finish.
If I look at my draft folder, it contains over one-hundred partially finished stories that I really should do something about. I just can’t seem to turn my mind off, but maybe one day?
Well, I’m off like a prom dress! Until this time next month, stay kinky, and for more from my feeble mind, check out my blog, LarryArcher.blog.
