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erotica

Does Size Matter? The Final Showdown (According to One Man)

by | May 24, 2022 | , | 2 Comments

Photo by: https://www.pexels.com/@dainis-graveris/

Does size matter? It’s a question which has stumped philosophers, philanderers, and horn-balls for centuries. Historically, there’s been very little middle ground involved in the debate. People tend to break down into one of two camps. Those who say it doesn’t matter at all, and those who stridently shout that it matters a whole bunch, while pointedly shaking their heads at those in the first camp.

Even the very question itself is brimming with anxiety (at least, for men) because along with the question comes the implication that we’re afraid we won’t measure up. Personally, I have never known a man who hasn’t broken out a ruler at some point in his life. But while this may be one man’s opinion (and it totally is), one thing I’ve learned after years of listening to both camps, is that the real answer to this age old question lies somewhere in the middle.

Does size really matter? Answer: It depends on the person.

It may seem odd to consider this, but one of the greatest determining factor which often gets overlooked when it comes to the measure of a man, is the measure of a woman. Because just as every man’s endowment is as unique as his fingerprints, so too is a woman’s.

Some women (and it should go without saying that I am speaking of straight women here, but there is always someone who thinks lesbians are nothing but cold fish who never had their ashes hauled properly) would absolutely love to have a man with a shlong like a Pringles can. Others would run a mile rather than go near him because it would hurt too much.

Unfortunately for many of us, this debate has long been one-sided because our culture is obsessed with size. It influences everything from the cars we drive to the drinks we order, to how we feel when we look in the mirror. It is an obsession which is especially entrenched in porn, which does absolutely nothing to resolve the matter.

Now, please don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against porn. Porn is fantasy, pure and simple, and one of the most prominent fantasies is the idea that all a well-endowed man needs to do is drop his pants to make every woman within drooling distance say, “Oh, I must touch it.”

But it is the prevalence of this fantasy, and our own inability to distinguish it from reality, which drives so many men to send unsolicited dick pics, getting them into far more trouble than they are capable of dealing with.

We rarely, if ever, discuss penis size when it comes to body image, but the fact remains that having an unhealthy image of ourselves is detrimental to our way of life. There is no cream, device or (God help me) One Weird Trick pop-up ad which can permanently adjust the human anatomy. Whether we like it or not, our body is our body, and there is only so much we can do with it.

So if there is one lesson we can take away from all of this, it is that we need to be focusing less on size and more on skill, because just as there is only a small percentage of women who are capable of climaxing from vaginal sex alone (25%), I’d imagine that there is an equally small number of women who would be happy if you did absolutely nothing but lie there like a fleshy bump on a log.

Performance is a real thing. Just because a man may happen to have a large package, it does not in any way, shape, or form guarantee that he will be good in bed. Even those who have a natural talent for something, still need lessons to become great at it, and true masters never stop learning. Sex is like any physical activity you do for the first time. You will not be phenomenal at it, and any man who says he was, is either lying, or left the woman to do the lion’s share of the work.

The debate around size, for all its shouting and blushing, fears and body dysmorphia, teaches us to think more about “the box,” rather than outside of it. It tells us to apply our fingers, our tongues, and the myriad toys available on the market. Because the truth is, if you are attentive, if you care about her pleasure, and if you are willing to be taught, then odds are good that most women will be perfectly happy with whatever size you are. And if what you have is enough for her, then brother, it should be more than enough for you too.

Kinky Grammar

by | March 28, 2022 | | 5 Comments

                            ( . . . ).  ! ?  ”  ”  ‘  ‘  [**]. .    :   ;  , @. #. %. & — 

As a teacher of literature and composition classes, as well as creative writing (non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and drama), I am sometimes attacked by Imposter Syndrome (What am I doing here? What do I have to teach anyone?).

As a writer, I know that the writing process is not completely straightforward. It requires input from the left side of the brain (supposedly the logical side) as well as the right side (supposedly the creative, intuitive side). As a writing teacher, I encourage students to keep journals of various kinds, including dream journals, and mine them for material.

The editing process involves imposing some order on the sometimes-incoherent messages from the inner Oracle. Some knowledge of grammar and punctuation is required, but students sometimes complain that traditional rulebooks on such things tend to be: 1. intimidating, 2. confusing, and 3. boring.

Would erotic writers be interested in an appropriate (i.e. inappropriate for the classroom) grammar workshop? At the Erotic Authors conference in Las Vegas in 2011, Shar Azade and I presented this event, complete with handouts to take away. It seemed to be a success.

Ever since then, I have considered writing an erotic guide to the parts of speech, sentence construction, verb conjugation, and the use of punctuation as accessories. It lends itself to being written in brief sections, so various charts and exercises in this Work-in-Progress litter the Documents on my home computer.

I offer for your consideration a discussion of two different but related verbs. You can’t afford not to make their acquaintance.

****************************


Two verbs that are often confused are “to lay” and “to lie.” Many people don’t even know they are not the same!

Here is a brief introduction:

Hello, I am TO LAY. I am a transitive verb, which means that I always have a direct object. To put it more bluntly, I am always Dominant. I need someone or something to work on.

I (to lay). O (object)


Here are some examples:

I lay a lace tablecloth on the table when I’m expecting company.

My assistant lays out the implements ahead of time.

My guests lay their clothing on the guest bed before presenting themselves for inspection.

**********************


I am TO LIE. I am intransitive, meaning that I perform actions alone. This really means I am a solitary masturbator. I don’t need anyone or anything.


I (to lie, a solitary verb). (I don’t need a thing.)

Here are some examples:

I lie down when I am tired.

My Bonnie lies over the ocean, and my love letters lie to her in her ebony chest with the lock.

What secrets lie in her heart?

***********************


Here is TO LAY conjugated in first-person singular:

I laid (simple past), I lay (simple present), I will lay (simple future).

I was laying (past progressive), I am laying (present progressive), I will be laying (future progressive)

I had laid (past perfect), I have laid (present perfect), I will have laid (future perfect).

************************

Simple, right?

Now, here is the confusing part: “lay” can be used as a past-tense form of “to lie.”


Here is TO LIE conjugated in different tenses.

I lay (simple past), I lie (simple present), I will lie (simple future)

I was lying (past progressive), I am lying (present progressive), I will be lying (future progressive)

I had lain (past perfect), I have lain (present perfect), I will have lain (future perfect)

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These examples should lay all the confusion to rest!



Covering Your Assets

by | February 21, 2022 | | 5 Comments

All things considered, I much prefer self-publishing to working with a publisher. I like being able to put out books that don’t fit neatly into someone else’s genre pigeon holes. I appreciate not having to fight with an editor, especially about whether the sex I write is too raw or explicit, or whether I can include LGBTQ interactions in what is primarily a heterosexual romance. Given my busy real world schedule, I’m glad I don’t have to write to someone else’s deadlines. That might make me more productive, but at this point, I really don’t need or want the stress. And of course, I’m happy to get a bigger slice of the pie for each book I sell.

For the most part, in my view, self-publishing is a big win. There’s one area, however, where there are pros and cons: the question of covers.

Every book, self-published or not, needs a cover. And both marketing research and personal intuition suggest that the quality of the cover does affect sales. With all the books available, you need a cover that will grab a potential reader’s attention and communicate the essential qualities of your book – all in a fraction of a second before her eyes flit to the next book on the page.

Having a publisher responsible for your covers is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it relieves you of a lot of work and/or expense. On the other, sometimes you have to accept a cover you really don’t like. Most publishers do solicit author input on cover art, but they may have considerations other than the story, related to branding, imprints, series, etc. And I’ve observed (unsurprisingly) that the covers coming out of a particular publisher have some tendency to look alike.

When you self-publish, you have much more control, but you must either purchase a cover (pre-made or custom) or create one yourself. I’ve done both, but I have a pretty limited budget for third-party art. I don’t expect to make a lot of money on my writing (which is more of a beloved avocation than a career), but I don’t want to go into the red. A couple of covers can easily eat up my royalties for a month.

So I’ve been making many of my covers. And I admit, it can be a painful process. I think I have the necessary imagination and artistic perspective, but my practical skills are extremely basic. I also seem to have the devil’s time finding stock photos that satisfy my needs.

Still, I’ve learned a lot in the past few years. Here are a few rules of thumb, based on my observations and experience.

Readability is critical

E-publishing platforms require you to submit a high resolution cover (for instance, 2000×3000 at 300 dpi), but in fact most readers will see your cover as a thumbnail 200 to 300 pixels wide or even smaller. It is essential that they can read the title and the author name, even at this very coarse resolution. It should also be possible to identify the primary images in the cover.

Just for the heck of it, I grabbed the “Trending” covers from the Smashwords home page today.

These thumbnails are only 125 pixels wide (click on the plus at the upper right to see actual size) – and some of the titles are close to illegible. (What’s the title of the middle book? The only really clear words are “in the”! And forget about figuring out who wrote it.)

Readability is influenced by font style, font size, font and background color and contrast. The “busyness” of the cover also has an impact; if there’s too much graphical detail the text can get lost.

You want a cover that’s dramatic, arresting, attention-getting – but readability is more important than any of these. The best way to insure readability is to examine your covers at very low resolution. If you can make out the title and author in an image 200 pixels wide, you’re probably doing okay.

Visually signal genre and story content

Most of us at ERWA write what would be considered “genre fiction”: erotica, erotic romance, romcom, horror, science fiction. Every genre has cover conventions, typical styles and image content used by many books. Chick lit, for instance, tends to use cartoonish drawings in bright colors rather than photo-realistic imagery. This is often true of cozy mysteries as well (though the image content will be different), but not more serious mysteries. Romance covers usually feature photos of the protagonists, often though not always in an embrace. Naked, muscled, headless male torsos are also ubiquitous.

Here’s a quick screen capture from my romance publisher, Totally Bound.

The color schemes often signal the sub-genre, with darker shades for suspense or paranormal. For some reason romance covers also often have a lot of background detail as well. It’s very common to have an image of the setting, whether it’s a city skyline or a windswept prairie, behind the central figures.

Erotica covers, of course, tend to push the envelope, focusing in on seductive body parts as much as on faces. The covers are intended to arouse the reader, hopefully without attracting the scrutiny of the censors.

If you are creating your own covers, you need to decide how closely you will follow the current trends. You want readers to be able to identify what sort of story you’ve written, but you don’t want your cover to blend into the crowd.

This is a tough guideline for me to follow. First, many of my books don’t fit neatly into a single genre. A lot of my work straddles the fuzzy line between erotic romance and erotica. I also work in many secondary genres: sci fi, steam punk, paranormal, and so on. I struggle to create covers that capture the essence of my titles.

Sometimes it may be more important to you to convey the tone of the book than the genre. I recently published a new edition of my M/M paranormal erotic romance Necessary Madness. Although this novel is definitely romance, in the sense that it focuses on a single developing relationship (and even ends with a wedding), its a rather dark book that includes some very intense episodes: horrific visions of disasters, scenes set in a psychiatric hospital, and satanic rituals.

Here is the original cover, from Totally Bound, a very traditional romance cover, without much indication of the paranormal sub-genre. (I should say that I was able to choose the images of the heroes as part of this design.)

Here’s the new cover I created. I’ve focused much more on the paranormal aspect here. There’s even an echo of horror, which in fact is fitting to the story. I don’t even include an image of the second hero.

I don’t know which cover is better, but they definitely send out different signals.

Be distinctive and original – but not too subtle

Those of you who’ve known me for a while are quite familiar with my contrarian tendencies. Hence I’m more likely than not to stray away from the genre norms in choosing or creating my covers. Sometimes, though, it’s possible to be too subtle.

Here’s a cover I adore, for the first edition (2016) of The Gazillionaire and the Virgin, created for me by Willsin Rowe.

This is pure BDSM romance, sweet as well as hot, which turns the Fifty Shades of Grey stereotype on its head. Willsin deliberately designed this to visually echo the original Fifty Shades cover, with the gray necktie.

I thought this idea was brilliant. However, in retrospect, I doubt anyone else noticed.

In contrast, here’s the cover I did for the second edition, which was released on Valentine’s Day.

This cover screams erotic romance (at least to me). Furthermore, even though there’s not a handcuff or riding crop to be seen, I think (or at least hope) that the positions of the man and woman, and their expressions, suggest a power exchange relationship.

Series covers need a visual theme

For most of my writing career, I wrote standalone titles. I honestly couldn’t imagine writing a series; when I finished a story, it felt complete and I didn’t have any ideas for follow-on books.

A few years ago, that somehow changed. I found myself typing “The End”, then almost immediately starting to dream up new situations and characters in the same fictional world. My longest series so far, Vegas Babes, includes five books (and I have some rough ideas for a sixth, if I can ever find the time to write it).

If possible, the covers in a series should have some similar elements, to communicate the fact that this is somehow a connected set of titles. However, when I wrote the first Vegas Babes book, Hot Brides in Vegas, I didn’t realize this would be a series. Hence I had to adapt the later covers to the mood and visual theme of the first book cover: mostly blank background, beautiful women, and a specific set of fonts.

Of course, one advantage of self-publishing is that you’re never stuck with a particular cover. It’s fast and easy to change the cover on Amazon or Smashwords. (Good thing, too, because sometimes the censors will force you to make a switch!) Still, retrofitting a cover to match a series theme isn’t a trivial effort.

When I started The Toymakers Guild, I had a three-book series in mind. Here are the first two covers. Much more similar than the Vegas Babes, but I’ve actually had considerable difficulty finding appropriate foreground figures. I still haven’t located a woman for the third cover (though that won’t be an issue for a while!)

For erotica, expression is more important than bodies

Since most of you write erotica, I’ll end with this guideline. This is purely a personal belief. I do not have any evidence to support it. However, for me, sexy bodies or poses do nothing to excite my interest unless they’re accompanied by a genuinely provocative or aroused expression on the part of the models.

Here are a couple of my favorite covers by other members of ERWA.

I love both of these because of the emotions I read in the women’s faces. In the Hired Help cover, the woman is believably transported by lust. At the same time, there’s an aloofness that matches the character in the story.

The main character in the Nina cover has a more ambiguous look. She’s not sure what she’s getting into – but she thinks she likes it!

In my view, if your cover characters look aroused, your readers will be, too.

 

It is Not Just Sex

by | December 24, 2021 | | 4 Comments

Sex is exactly like magic, except for one very important difference. Both have an air of mystery about them, and practitioners who speak in hushed tones. Both have their rituals, their Words of Power, and both traffic in what some would consider to be dark secrets.

But the biggest, the most important difference between sex and magic is that the wizard who learns every conceivable spell known to man, becomes exalted. More often than not, they are elevated to the rank of grandmaster.

Nobody gets elevated for knowing everything about sex.

At least, not in the way that gets talked about at parties.

You see, while wizards are allowed to experiment, to test the bounds of human experience, the sex mage who screams, ‘I’ve mastered the reverse-cowgirl levitation technique!’ gets buried beneath Azkaban without a ceremony.

It’s not fair. It’s not even really funny, but…there you have it.

The ironic part about all of this is that sex is at its best when it is discussed openly, but even that open discussion can be twisted so easily.

I for one, have always been leery of those who speak of sex in metaphysical terms. Who talk of souls meeting, or celestial bodies, as though by speaking frankly about what they want, they might somehow sully themselves.

But equally as bad, if not worse are those who simply shrug and say ‘It’s just sex,” as though they can’t possibly understand what all the fuss is about.

Telling a devout Catholic newlywed who has to go from demure protector to wild, kinky sex-kitten in one night that it’s just sex, doesn’t do anything except undermine her faith and her identity.

For a woman who has never had a pleasurable experience in bed due to vaginismus, the words do nothing to alleviate her pain.

And for the guy who was so nervous the first several times he tried to have sex that he couldn’t perform, (unashamedly raises his hand) the phrase doesn’t eliminate the nerves. Because by that logic, sex is just a matter of ‘get up and go’ and if he can’t, then he’s left with the exact same fear as the newlywed who can’t turn on a dime, or the woman who can’t ‘just relax.’

The fear that there’s something wrong with me.

Sex, in a lot of ways, is actually better than magic, because it’s defined by the people who take part in it, which means its impact or relevancy changes depending upon the person. Whether it’s to fill a void, relieve stress or forge a connection (however celestial) sex is a pillar of any relationship. Not the most important pillar. Far from it. But neither dressing up sex, nor trivializing it will help those who dread being bad at something that society says they shouldn’t know too much about anyway.

Honest, awkward, flush-faced conversations are easy to talk about, not easy to affect.

(We can all be hypocrites, deep in our hearts. Let’s be honest here.)

But what problems these conversations come with are immediate and often fade just as quickly. The alternatives however, the shame and hushed tones and fear we’ve all lived with for far too long, those effects can last a lifetime.

And that, to me, is the real shame.

The Plot Thickens

by | December 21, 2021 | | 9 Comments

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

Does erotica need to have a plot?

Some people will answer with a resounding negative. If it gets me off, they’ll argue, then I don’t care whether there’s a story – a plot would just distract me from the dirty details.

I respect those whose opinions differ from mine, but as far as I’m concerned, erotica sans story is just sex, without anything at stake – and that, to me, is boring. To keep me interested – and aroused – the sexual activities in an erotic tale need to have some kind of impact on the characters involved. The characters don’t have to be in love; indeed, some of the most fascinating erotica I’ve read involves people who detest one another. There doesn’t need to be any sort of commitment; a one-night stand can offer the most luminous, intense sex you’ve ever experienced. But somehow, the sex has to matter. At least one of the characters needs to be changed by the erotic encounter. They need to feel something new, want something that’s different from what they wanted before – often something wilder or kinkier or more extreme. Without this, sex becomes repetitious, mechanical and uninspiring.

Plot is essentially a set of events that causes characters to change. In erotica, those events often (though not always or exclusively) involve sex.

All plots are driven by conflict, which in the simplest case can simply be a discrepancy between the current situation and the desired situation. Jim is a virgin consumed with hopeless lust for his voluptuous next door neighbor. Jenny has discovered her boss’s stash of femdom porn, but doesn’t know how to let him know she’s ready to be his mistress. Maria and Marilyn have been best friends for years, but neither dares to take the next step toward intimacy.

Erotica can also involve external conflicts, for instance a kidnapping by a cruel but horny villain, or a plane crash in the middle of the jungle that leaves the characters struggling for survival. In many cases, though, erotica plots focus on the sexual trajectories of the protagonists.

One common and effective erotic plot pattern is initiation. The main character is gradually introduced to new activities or desires that at first seem shocking or scary, but which soon become central to her sexual identity. My first novel Raw Silk falls into this category (as do many other BDSM-themed books). It’s a journey of discovery as the heroine Kate comes to understand her submissive side and learns to surrender to her Master. One of my favorite erotic novels is K.D. Grace’s The Initiation of Ms Holly, about a seemingly ordinary young woman who’s sucked into the twisted world of a secret sex society, only to find that their outrageous behaviors unexpectedly match her natural inclinations.

A related plot outline is seduction (or perhaps, “corruption”), in which an innocent character is, in Larry Archer’s words, “brought over to the dark side”. Sometimes the innocent is actually a virgin, but often he or she is sexually experienced but “vanilla”: a married and monogamous couple turned on to swinging; a straight man or woman lured into a same-sex relationship; an all-American male tempted into donning lingerie and high heels. My Sin City Sweethearts is a classic seduction tale. Eighteen year old twins Marcella and Madelynn move away from their small-town, overprotective family to attend college in Las Vegas. Annie and Ted, their polymorphously-perverse upstairs neighbors, take it upon themselves to give the inexperienced co-eds a true education.

A third familiar erotica plot might be labeled liberation. After divorcing her cheating husband, a woman blossoms into a sexually insatiable MILF. A shy, nerdy IT guy gets a new roommate who’s irresistible to women – and who’s happy to share. I’ve used this plot pattern in The Slut Strikes Back, among other tales. Lauren is a faithful wife, until her husband complains about her powerful libido. He tells her to find someone else to satisfy her, setting her free. Before long, she’s getting it on with the pool guy, the UPS delivery man, a pair of strangers she picks up in a bar, even her son’s wrestling team.

One aspect shared by all these patterns is escalation. All three provide motivation for increasingly intense, extreme or taboo sex scenes. As I’ve argued in another post, escalation is an essential ingredient for effective erotica. Readers continually want more. They also want variety. Hence you need to lead both your characters and your readers deeper into depravity, step by step. If you start off with a double penetration or a severe caning, what will you do for an encore? The patterns I’ve mentioned naturally lend themselves to increasing levels of intensity – both physical and emotional.

Sometimes, of course, plot can get out of hand. I have a feeling that’s what happened in my steam punk series The Toymakers Guild. There are aspects of all three patterns – initiation, seduction and liberation – in the two novels I’ve written so far, but there are many other plot elements, including mind-control, recalcitrant sex toys, cut-throat competitors, romance, murder and revenge.

I may have gone overboard. On the other hand, there’s one advantage to not sticking to the patterns: unpredictability. There are thousands of erotic initiation tales; readers know what to expect. I like to think that my readers will be continually – and pleasurably – surprised.

I really don’t think that would be possible without plot.

A Low-Key Book Launch

by | November 27, 2021 | | 1 Comment

Today I officially launched my erotic novel, Prairie Gothic: A Tale of the Old Millennium.

A local independent bookstore, the Penny University Bookstore, in the main street in the Cathedral Neighbourhood (the “Greenwich Village” of my small prairie city) offers local authors a chance to hang out on Saturday afternoons and interact with customers, or to plan a more formal event in the evening, which carries a fee because the store owner has to pay her staff extra to work outside of normal business hours. I chose the Saturday-afternoon slot, and I was delighted when a few of my friends showed up. My loyal spouse was there too.

The bookstore owner, who previously ran a downtown coffee shop which occasionally hosted a pop-up bookstore, offered us free tea or coffee. I sat in the comfortable green armchair that I thought of as Author’s Seat, having attended someone else’s book launch several weeks ago. My friends bought copies of Prairie Gothic, I autographed them, and I read the opening scene in Chapter One, which is relatively work-safe. The owner made a video of my reading, and I hope I won’t find it cringe-worthy when I see it.

I really hope that such small, cozy independent bookstores never die out completely, although their numbers have been shrinking for a long time. The convenience of shopping for books (including digital and audio versions) on-line has almost eclipsed the pleasure of shopping for actual books on shelves in stores that host author events and book club meetings. This trend seems parallel to the gradual disappearance of the kind of community-based LGBT bars that I describe in my novel. Now, in the 2020s, people of all sexual flavours seem to find dates on-line, despite the danger involved in meeting total strangers outside a social context of shared work, shared hobbies, political causes, or friends. I’m not sure if recurring lockdowns due to the pandemic have accelerated this process, but I know that many human transactions have been moving on-line since the era of my novel (1999), when communication usually took place in-person.

I hope all you writers here can find a welcoming real-life place to share your writing with actual readers.

It’s Still a Mystery

by | July 26, 2021 | | 2 Comments

The connections—and the differences—between lust and love are an ancient puzzle. In some ways, sexual desire is the exact opposite of emotional attraction, especially when considered from a writer’s viewpoint. Desire leads to sex, which is a sensual experience involving sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Emotional attraction can be expressed in words and actions, but the thing itself is intangible. Love can be faked much more easily than physical arousal.

Novel-length erotic narratives tend to become boring if they are just lists of couplings with no plot arc. Even if all the major characters are enjoying sex with each other, something has to change. The most logical development is that some of the characters become more to each other than casual playmates. They learn each other’s personal histories and take an interest in each other’s current problems, including those that have no direct connection with sex. They are privileged to learn each other’s secrets, and this knowledge increases their sense of connection.

Writers of erotic romances can create intrigue and suspense by the same means that have worked for centuries in non-erotic romances. A misunderstanding can set a developing relationship back and make the major characters miserable until a crucial conversation and an epiphany resolve the problem. There can be rivals on both sides, and the reader can be shown how the rivals threaten the primary relationship, and why the rivals would not be suitable partners for the major characters. One lover’s devotion to the other can be tested by circumstances. Each major character can ask the other: would you risk death for me?

Like most readers, I like happy endings (even if they are just happy-for-now), especially if they aren’t overly predictable. Happy endings in a work of fiction raise the question of whether they can be arranged in real life. How do we navigate sexual attraction vs. Emotional attraction? When should we declare our feelings, even to someone who doesn’t seem to be available, and when should we leave well enough alone?

Speaking for myself, sexual desire has been a very unreliable indicator of whether I could live happily with a particular person of any gender, age, physical appearance, or social class. The “opposites attract” trope which works in romance stories seems more likely to result in a nasty breakup in the real world when the two participants discover that they also have clashing expectations. I’ve mentioned here before that the credibility gap between cisgendered men and cisgendered women still seems to be as wide as ever, despite improvements in the status of women over the past fifty years, and the huge quantity of words that have been written on gendered experience. Why do so many men still seem surprised that women resent doing the lion’s share of cooking and cleaning when they also have demanding paid jobs? Why do some women still believe whatever their divorced boyfriends say about their ex-wives?

My spouse Mirtha and I recently discussed our past relationships which didn’t last long. She told me that before her first marriage, she often got bored with the young men she dated. I couldn’t remember ever feeling bored with another person. I definitely remember feeling dismayed when I learned something that shattered my illusions: the boy I was dating in high school thought college professors like my father were all evil Communists who belonged in prison, or the man who had already spent a night with me was married with children. Or the woman I had met in the local “gay” bar had a drinking problem which impaired her ability to think clearly about anything else. What had I seen in any of these people? I had seen them through a haze of sexual attraction, and I had assumed that anyone that appealing on the outside must have good inner qualities too. Anything else was unimaginable until the truth came out.

Stories about human interaction are almost guaranteed to be more satisfying than many real-life experiences because stories have shape, they rise to a climax, and they reach closure of some kind. Miraculously, characters who look attractive are usually revealed to have inner depth and surprising talents. Even the villains tend to be shrewd. Delectable bodies are usually the outward representation of interesting personalities. This is a major reason why all of us here like to read fiction, and most of us like to write it.

Should realism be included in a plot about sexual or emotional attraction? Some degree of plausibility seems needed to persuade a reader to willingly enter into a fictional universe. On the other hand, readers (and writers) looking for escape from the disappointments of the real world don’t want to be confronted by them in a work that promises a better deal. Comments welcome.
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Awkward Conversations are Life

by | June 25, 2021 | | 2 Comments

The first story I ever self-published, Carnal Theory, began as a comedic scenario where a woman, bluntly and in great detail, informs her lover that he is terrible in bed. That was it. That was all I had. I didn’t even have character names yet. I just loved the idea of a woman tearing down a man, not maliciously, but as a genuine attempt to tell him he sucked between the sheets (and not in a good way).

Slowly, and in fits and starts, details came to me, but so did many questions. Who was the woman? Who was the man? Could there be anything behind the comedy? And more importantly…could I build an entire story around awkward conversations?

It took time, which is a statement I think any writer will understand. But soon enough, the woman became Dr. Elizabeth Spencer, a brilliant behavioral researcher who’d spent years being disappointed by her lovers, until she encountered the one man who flummoxed her enough to make her fall in love.

Self-publishing was a long and arduous process, (I have all the computer savvy of a brazil nut) but in the end, it was one of my greatest achievements. I felt extremely proud, despite the fact that the story did not make a great splash. But the most interesting thing is what it taught me about awkward conversations.

For all the comedy and sex and heat, (of which there is a lot) I learned that awkward conversations are life in a way.

Think about it. What do you like? What makes you feel beautiful? What makes you feel safe? How do you like to be fucked?

Writing Carnal Theory taught me that whether you want it all the time, or never (yes, asexuality is a thing, fight me) awkward conversations about sex are going to come up at some point. We are human. We bang. It happens. But having awkward conversations is what leads us to discovering not only more about ourselves but what we can expect of other people.

I’m a mild-mannered office manager who loves to leave the windows open while we fuck.

I’m a tall, strapping man who loves to have his ass slapped while he is bent over a desk.

I’m a beautiful, self-contained woman and you know what? Sex really isn’t my thing. I just want to hold your hand. I hope that is enough.

Awkward conversations are awkward for a reason. They leave us vulnerable to another person. They make us turn red in the face. But the alternative is a kind of hell in its own right.

Now, I am by no means an expert at this. I have stuttered and ‘ummmed’ my way through several awkward conversations and I’m not going to lie and say that things always got better afterwards. All I’m saying is that the topic of spanking is unlikely to come up naturally around the dinner table and waiting around, hoping that one day your lover will just ‘get it,’ is akin to a cold day in Hell.

Talking hurts. Talking is scary. Sometimes, talking fucks things up.

But um…in the end…we um…I mean you and I should…you know, if you’re up for it…um…I think we should, um…talk?

Insta-Culture and the Demise of Desire

by | June 21, 2021 | | 7 Comments

Image by lounis production from Pixabay

You’re probably familiar with the old joke about humor in the penitentiary. The convicts are taking their daily exercise in the prison yard under the watchful eye of the warden, when someone shouts out “Twenty two”. Everyone convulses with laughter. A few minutes later, another guy calls “Sixteen”. More hilarity ensues. Someone else counters with “Thirty seven”. Guffaws and catcalls ring out through the yard.

The punch line doesn’t matter. The point is that everyone is so familiar with all the funny stories, it’s not even necessary to spell them out anymore. Just the number, the label, is enough.

Erotica these days reminds me of that joke. Cuckold. Hot-wife. M-preg. MILF. First-timers. Hu-cow. Futa. Swinging. Femdom. Reverse harem. Billionaire. Breeding. Wolf-shifter. Bear-shifter. Polar-bear shifter. (Just saw one of those today…) Everything’s explicitly labeled. Titles leave nothing to the imagination, and just in case there’s some ambiguity about exactly the box in which a book belongs, there’s the always the subtitle to make things crystal clear.

Tell me the label, and I can predict what you’ll find in the story. Indeed, that’s the purpose of all these kink and genre categories. Given that thousands of erotica titles are published daily, people want a fast way to find the reads that will push their particular buttons. In today’s world of instant communication and information overload, it seems that readers don’t have the time or the patience to browse or to experiment. They think they already know what they want. Labels and keywords are intended to make sure they get it. In fact I know from painful personal experience that if a book doesn’t fulfill the expectations associated with its labels, readers will voice their displeasure.

Erotica has become predictable, compartmentalized and homogenized. Today’s insta-culture tags on-line stories with phrases like “10 minute read”, as well as the inevitable keywords. Erotica is something to consume, like gossip or popcorn. (See my post last month about serialized fiction for more about this.) And orgasms are absolutely required. A story in which the characters have some sexual interactions but don’t climax violates the requirements of today’s readers.

Most erotica I encounter now barely revs my engines. It’s too obvious, too stereotyped, too manufactured. I like my sex veiled in a bit of mystery. I appreciate a tale that keeps me in suspense. The build-up of erotic tension can be as pleasurable as its release, and an unexpected twist can be deeply satisfying, even when that tension is unresolved by orgasm.

When I started writing and publishing erotica, more than twenty years ago, things were very different. Variety was given far more emphasis. A single erotic novel could include all sorts of sexual scenarios: ménage, BDSM, exhibitionism, cross-dressing, same-sex interactions, toys and taboos. You couldn’t sum it up in a couple of keywords. Cleis published themed anthologies, but within the flexible boundaries of the theme, the challenge was to write the most original, surprising and arousing tale one could manage.

If you’d like a glimpse of the amazing richness available in erotica ten to fifteen years ago, grab one of the volumes from Maxim Jakubowski’s Mammoth Book of Best Erotica series. Or take a look at Cream (https://www.amazon.com/Cream-Erotica-Readers-Writers-Association/dp/1560259256), the anthology of ERWA authors I edited in 2006. (The reviews of this book on Amazon show a lot of disparity; the more recent the review, the lower the rating!) Or if you’re looking for arousing novels, consider K.D. Grace’s The Initiation of Ms Holly (2011) or Portia da Costa’s Gemini Heat (1995/2008).

It seems that thematic complexity, narrative sophistication and sexual creativity have gone out of style. I mourn their loss. I miss the stories that inspired me to tell my own, full of yearning, dripping with desire.

At the same time, I try to adapt to the current market of meticulously enumerated genres and key phrases. Every book I’ve published recently has a sub-title. What else can I do, if I want anyone to read my lascivious imaginings?

I’m not very good at it, though. I keep wanting to tear down the walls, shatter the boxes, break the rules. I long for the sensuousness and subtlety of two decades ago. Which is probably why my stories don’t sell nearly as well as Hot Erotica Short Stories – 32 Explicit and Forbidden Erotic Taboo Hot Sex Stories Naughty Adult Women: Filthy Milfs, First Time Lesbian, Dirty Talking Position for Couples, Horny Bisexual Threesomes (Amazon rank 11 in erotica anthologies today) or Erotic Sex-Story: Daddy Dom, Menage Explicit Adult Couple: Wife Ganged Bi-Strangers Hard Husband Forced Watching Gay (Amazon rank 237 in bisexual erotica) or our own Larry Archer’s House Party 4: Swingers Swap More Than Their Partners at Hot Erotica Sex Parties with cuckolds and Hotwives.

No surprises here. But I guess that’s what today’s readers want.

In Search of “Bad Words”

by | January 26, 2021 | | 2 Comments

Now that a duly-elected government has been installed in the U.S., there is an ongoing debate about how to define the protest or insurrection or badly-organized invasion of the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6. The most reasonable explanations of that event include the four years of Trump’s presidency, which led to a climax that was both bizarre and horrifying, but completely predictable.

Most labels only make sense in their context, and that especially applies to vague terms such as “abuse” and “disloyalty.” These words have meaning, but since they can be used as weapons by people on opposite sides of a conflict, they need to be explained.

This is why I don’t keep a list of “obscene” words to avoid, as distinct from safely “erotic” words. I’ve heard men use terms of endearment, such as “baby” and “sweetheart,” on women they clearly despise, and no observer could be left in doubt about what these words signify at the time.

Many years ago, I had a husband who often reminded me that I was his wife. “Wife” sounded threatening when he used it. True wifedom, in Husband’s world-view, was a saintly, submissive condition I could never reach because I was an Olympic-level slut. He was careful not to use such words, even while he accused me of having sex with random men whenever I was out of our home: at work, at school, at social events, or en route between any of those places. The man seemed convinced that I kept spare lovers under the bed, but he took pride in being too decent to use “coarse language.”

For centuries, “wife,” previously spelled “wyf,” just meant woman. Out of context, the word is morally and emotionally neutral, so banning it wouldn’t serve any good purpose. Now that I am legally married to a woman, I enjoy the sense of belonging implied by the word “wife” in the context of an equal relationship: she is mine, and I am hers.

Here at ERWA, attempts have sometimes been made to compile a list of words that are guaranteed to heat up the person who hears them, and other terms that should never be used because, supposedly, they are always degrading. I realize that these divisions usually come from good intentions, but they just don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Consider this: in a previous relationship, my Significant Other sometimes called me a “bitch in heat.” I didn’t take offence because it seemed intended as a description of my current state of arousal, not as a negative definition of my personality. It was used by someone who never harmed me, and who had no real power to harm me. Her drinking (like that of my ex-husband) concerned me, but in this case, I noticed how her drinking harmed her more than it did me. I was free to leave, and eventually, I did.

When reading an erotic story, I like to get a sense of the characters before they or the narrative voice use any terms for body parts or sexual activities. Would a particular female character think of her vagina as “pussy,” a “cunt,” a “snatch,” a “beaver,” a “vajayjay,” or a “spoon?” (That’s some local slang.) Would a male character refer to his “member,” his “johnson,” his “cock,” or his “dick?” All these terms deserve a blog post apiece.

For example, let’s consider “dick.” It always sounds to me like the punch line in a joke, especially since it can also mean a detective, or it can be the nickname for a lot of men named Richard. I imagine a “dick” as a cartoon character with a face, or (and here is some serious incongruity) an innocent boy in simple stories about Dick, Jane and Sally, the books I first encountered in grade school.

What you imagine may well be completely different.

The exact terms for body parts and sexual activities depend on the culture and the historical period, as well as the character’s background. I can’t even guess the implications of a word if the scene doesn’t give them away. Clearly, “cunt” is not a compliment if one person hurls it at another before slamming the door. “I just love your beautiful cunt” conveys a whole other tone.

This is one reason why censorship has never appealed to me as a strategy for making bad things go away. For one thing, history has shown that simply outlawing a thing or an activity, and even applying drastic legal penalties, do not make anything disappear. A hundred years ago, alcohol was banned throughout the U.S. and Canada, and it continued to be wildly popular. People drank home-made hooch instead of more palatable stuff with known ingredients.

On the subject of sexual harm, it’s simply impossible to determine which words should be considered unacceptable. This doesn’t mean that words can never be used to wound, especially if someone has developed an allergy to certain terms because of previous experience. When in doubt about the emotional tone, flavour or nuance of a word or a phrase, the hearer or reader shouldn’t hesitate to ask.

Words used in bad faith (e.g. sexual terms used as insults, which are then dishonestly explained away) are always part of a toxic interpersonal context. In the long run, it just doesn’t matter what Person A called Person B in a context of manipulation and control. Behaviour speaks louder than words.

On the other hand, a good-faith discussion of the uses of language can be erotic in itself. We need to have more conversations about words that tickle the ears.
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