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Garden Variety

by | June 30, 2013 | | 3 Comments

By K D Grace

Some people write in coffee shops, some people write in
libraries, some people write in their studies. But how much does where we write
matter? I’ve always prided myself in being able to write anywhere, but the
allotment is in full-swing right now. There aren’t really enough hours in the
day to be out there and do what I’d like to do to make our veg plot live up to the Gardener’s
World veg plot that exists only in my fantasies. It was only a couple of
days ago – one of those few sunny days in the UK of which a gardener absolutely
HAS to take advantage. With sweat dripping down my back and more than a potted
plant’s worth of good rich soil beneath my fingernails, I sat myself down on
the grass near our allotment garden shed, pulled out my notebook and pen and
began to write. We have a delicious spot of movable shade that works its way
along the back of our plot during the course of the day, so on those few days
when the weather is roasting –ish, we can sit and have a break in the shade.

I’d brought biscuits and cheese and for my lunch and a
bottle of iced tea I’d frozen in the freezer earlier. I seldom mind eating with
the allotment all over my hands. It’s just good, clean earth. As I sat down to
scribble a few paragraphs for The
Exhibition, my WIP, the resident black bird was already busy hunting worms and
unfortunate invertebrates in the patch I’d just dug. By the time I was on the
second slice of cheese, he was sitting in the tree above the garden shed
singing at the top of his lungs. Just a little reminder that this was his patch – especially now with the
birdie feast I’d uncovered and with the hungry mouths he, no doubt, had to
feed.

I listened, I watched and I wrote. I seldom write long-hand
anymore. I’m way more comfortable at the keyboard of a laptop, which allows me
the luxury of editing as I work, and insures me that I never have trouble
reading my own handwriting. But in the allotment, low tech’s the way forward.
It doesn’t matter to me if there are smudges of compost on the pristine page.
It doesn’t even matter to me if a spider decided to make a path across the
centre of the page I’m working on as long as he doesn’t linger where I want to
write.

Paper and ink, or even more to the point, writing down
words, though not quite as old as agriculture, is certainly not too far behind.
I mean if you think about it, the two go hand in hand really. Once feeding
ourselves became a little less of a crap shoot and a little less of a full-time
job and leisure became, at least occasionally a possibility, then it would seem
natural for story-telling to evolve to a way of permanently preserving those
stories. And once that happened, writing couldn’t be too far behind.

Okay, so that’s K D’s version of pre-history, something
you’ll not find on the History Channel, but definitely something I feel a little
bit closer too when I’m sitting comfortably on the grass listening to the birds
and the buzz of the insects, when I’m taking a break from the arduous efforts
of the veg plot to record events straight from my imagination. It feels pretty
primal when the young sweet corn plants and the words unfolding on the page are
linked by the callous and the earth on my hands.

Does the fact that I’m writing in my veg patch change what I
write? Does that particular location make what I write any more powerful, even
any more earthy? I suppose there’s no real way of knowing, no double blind test
I can do. And really, what difference does it make? The words were flowing that
day, and I was sitting in the sunshine listening to the bird song, and the
slightest whisper of a breeze in the trees. Does it make a difference to be
writing in a place where something more concrete than ideas has been planted,
where there’s the promise of more to come than just food for thought, along with
the reminder that life doesn’t always come sanitized and shrink-wrapped; that sometimes
being off-line and well-earthed is just the right place to be. And of course
I’m writing sex. Al fresco. I’d say it’s a win-win for the black bird, for the veg
plants and for the writer. Next sunny warmish day, I’m SO doing this again! 

The Story Behind Pen Names

by | June 28, 2013 | | 10 Comments

Elizabeth Black writes in a wide variety of
genres including erotica, erotic romance, and dark fiction. She lives on the
Massachusetts coast with her husband, son, and four cats.

Pseudonyms, pen
names, noms de plume. Regardless of what you wish to call them, writers have
chosen fake names for as long as they’ve been transferring their thoughts to the
written word. I interviewed some of my writer friends to learn why they chose
the pen names they chose. Everyone gave sensible and even fascinating answers.

I’ll start with
myself. Elizabeth Black is not my real name. It is one of my pen names. I chose
Elizabeth Black for my erotic fiction to differentiate it from the political
and feminist non-fiction I had written under my real name. Elizabeth is
my favorite woman’s name. I chose “Black” because the “Bs”
would be at eye level or above in a bookstore. Black is also a classy name and
it’s one of my favorite colors. My horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction pen
name is E. A. Black, and I created it to separate those works from my erotic
works. I liked the idea of using initials and a surname because I thought it
was cool. “E” for Elizabeth, obviously. Black is already my fake
surname. “A” is my fake middle name – Alexia. I first saw that name
on the game “Resident Evil: Code Veronica”. I’m a fan. I later learned
that “alexia” is the name of an acquired reading disability. That
didn’t cause me to waver in my choice at all, but it did make me giggle.

Authors choose pen
names for a wide variety of mundane and interesting reasons. Here are a few
examples of famous pen names:

J. K. Rowling –
Joanne Rowling’s publishers feared that pre-adolescent boys (her target market
for her Harry Potter books) would not want to read stories about a boy wizard
written by a woman. So, they asked her to use her initials. She has no middle
name so she used the initial of her grandmother Kathleen. The interesting thing
about this is that these days, it’s largely assumed that anyone whose pen name
includes initials is a woman.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
was born Nathaniel Hathorne. He was a direct descendent of one of the hanging
judges of the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne may have added the “W” to
his last name as a means of distancing himself from his personal history.

George Orwell – Eric
Arthur Blair chose a pen name so his family wouldn’t be embarrassed by his time
living in poverty. He chose the name George after the patron saint of England.
He chose the name Orwell from the River Orwell, a popular sailing spot he loved
to visit.

Stan Lee – Stanley
Martin Lieber wanted to save his real name for the more serious literary work
he hoped to someday write. He got his start writing comic books, so he chose
the name Stan Lee. He legally changed his name to Stan Lee after making it big
in the kid’s market as a comic book writer.

Lewis Carroll –
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson wanted a simpler, less snooty name and he wanted to
keep his privacy. He changed Charles Ludwidge into Carolus Lusovicus, changed
that to Carroll Lewis, and then switched the words, resulting in Lewis Carroll.

William Makepeace
Thackeray – He wrote under pen names that were just plain silly, since he was a
satirist. His pen names included C. J. Yellowplush, Esq., George Savage
Fitz-Boodle, and Théophile Wagstaff.

Harry Turtledove –
(from Dear
Readers: A Letter From Harry Turtledove) “When
I sold my first fantasy novel, the publisher renamed me Eric Iverson. 
They said no one would believe Harry Turtledove, which is my real name.  I
decided to live with it, though I gave myself a middle initial, G., which stood
for Goddam.  The pen name had certain uses:  I could use it for my
fiction and my own name for academic nonfiction, which I still published
then.  But when Lester bought The Videssos Cycle, he named me Turtledove
again–people would remember it, he declared.  I objected that I was just
starting to get known as Iverson.  He said he wouldn’t buy the books if I
wanted to stay Scandinavian.  I stopped objecting.  But I may be the
only writer in captivity who’s had both his pen-name and his own name imposed
on him by force!  I hope you will remember my name–that’s Harry
Turtledove–and look for the reprint of The Videssos Cycle (and maybe even some
other things I’ve done).”

My
friends who write erotic fiction had many sensible reasons for choosing their
pen names. Here are the most common reasons:

Some
writers simply wanted to create a new identity for their writing, and the way
they chose their pen names was rather creative. Julez S. Morbius told me:
“The first two initials are
my real name initials and Morbius because of my love for vampires and Marvel
Comics.” Angelica Dawson’s pen name is derived from Angelica dawsonii, a
yellow flower in the carrot family native to her province. She’s a botanist and
environmental consultant in her day job.

Dawson also gives
another reason for her pen name: she writes Young Adult fiction under her real
name, Kimberly Gould. Many erotic writers like to differentiate their erotic
works from their other works by use of multiple pen names.

Writers
like Jacques Gerard chose pen names to protect their privacy, especially when
it comes to disapproval from family and religious people. Gemma Parkes also
wanted to protect herself from familial disapproval and she wanted to protect
her children from negative comments from her family in case any of them read
her books, hence her pen name. Vanessa de Sade feared her family would discover her erotic writing so she chose her pen name to protect her privacy. Obviously, de Sade is based on the Marquis de Sade. She wrote: “So I thought, well I don’t want to be Fluffy von Kitten, or Sweetcakes McGhee or anything like that. And then I thought about the Marquis de Sade, and all his weird shit, and I thought, yeah, that’s more like me.” She’s not sure where Vanessa came from. Might be an old girlfriend from years ago.

Kara
Huntington works with children in a very small town. She figured she’d save the
locals the trouble of running her out of town with pitchforks. Her concern over
small-minded townspeople lead her to create her pen name. Alysha Ellis voiced a
similar concern. She is also a teacher. Any connection between her real name
and erotica or even erotic romance would result in instant dismissal. Even if
it didn’t, the knowledge would be very disruptive to her ability to teach very
curious 15 – 18 year olds who would probably make a big deal of it.

Sometimes
having more than one pen name makes decisions difficult, even if you started
out creating them for good reasons. Sacchi Green said: I started out writing
science fiction and fantasy short stories under my real name, Connie Wilkins.
Eventually I published work in a couple of anthologies for kids, and enjoyed it
so much (plus it paid pretty well) that I thought that was the direction I’d
mostly go. When I wrote a lesbian erotica story and had it accepted at Best
Lesbian Erotica, I thought I should use a pen name in case I wrote so much for
kids that they might look me up online. Things didn’t work out that way,
though, and my pen name got a whole lot more mileage than my real one. I’ve
still used the real one sometimes for speculative fiction, and in cases where I
have more than one story in an anthology, but it gets to be hard to decide when
it comes to erotic speculative fiction. Right now I’m in the process of having
a mini-ebook published by Circlet Press, consisting of three stories I wrote
for their books previously and one more that’s about one of the same group of
characters. The problem is that two of the stories are under my real name, and
two under my pen name, so we’re having a hard time deciding which name to use
on the cover.

Some
writers chose pen names to keep them safe. Phoenix Johnson had an online
stalker and she didn’t want that person following her and hurting her writing
career in any way. Phoenix to her means rebirth, and it represents her darker,
wilder side. Her surname was luck of the draw.

Lynn
Townsend (real name K. T. Hicks) wanted a name that sounded more appropriate
for erotic romances. Her real name to her sounded like someone who should write
Tractor Romances, which were what her Russian Studies professor called “a
series of Stalin-era propaganda novels that were about farmers and farmers’
daughters who would sneak off to talk about Comrade Stalin behind haystacks.”

So
there you have it. Writers create pen names for a wide variety of very
interesting reasons. If you use a pen name, what’s your story behind it?

ABOUT ELIZABETH BLACK

Elizabeth Black
writes erotica, erotic romance, speculative fiction, fantasy, and dark fiction.
She also enjoys writing erotic retellings of classic fairy tales. Born and bred
in Baltimore, she grew up under the influence of Edgar Allan Poe. Her erotic
fiction has been published by Xcite Books (U. K.), Circlet Press, Ravenous
Romance, Scarlet Magazine (U. K.), and other publishers. Her dark fiction has
appeared in “Kizuna: Fiction For Japan”, “Stupefying
Stories”, “Midnight Movie Creature Feature 2”, “Zippered
Flesh 2: More Tales Of Body Enhancements Gone Bad”, and “Mirages:
Tales From Authors Of The Macabre”. An accomplished essayist, she was the
sex columnist for the pop culture e-zine nuts4chic (also U. K.) until it folded
in 2008. Her articles about sex, erotica, and relationships have appeared in
Good Vibrations Magazine, Alternet, CarnalNation, the Ms. Magazine Blog, Sexis
Magazine, On The Issues, Sexy Mama Magazine, and Circlet blog. She also writes
sex toys reviews for several sex toys companies.

In addition to
writing, she has also worked as a gaffer (lighting), scenic artist, and make-up
artist (including prosthetics) for movies, television, stage, and concerts. She
worked as a gaffer for “Die Hard With A Vengeance” and “12
Monkeys”. She did make-up, including prosthetics, for “Homicide: Life
On The Street”. She is especially proud of the gunshot wound to the head
she had created with makeup for that particular episode. She also worked as a
prosthetic makeup artist specializing in cyanotic blue, bruises, and buckets of
blood for a test of Maryland’s fire departments at the Baltimore/Washington
International Airport plane crash simulation test. Yes, her jobs are fun.
 😉

She lives in
Lovecraft country on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son, and four
cats. The ocean calls her every day, and she always listens. She has yet to run
into Cthulhu.

Visit her web
site at http://elizabethablack.blogspot.com/

Her Facebook
page is https://www.facebook.com/elizabethablack

Follow her at
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ElizabethABlack

Growing More Adventurous (In My Writing)

by | June 23, 2013 | | 2 Comments

by Lucy Felthouse

The first ever erotic story I wrote was about a young man and his teacher. But that was because I’d been dared to write an erotic story, and the “darer” gave me names and a plot. So I don’t include that one because  the plot was from my friend’s imagination, not me.

After that, though, I wrote a story fully from my own head, which was about a couple that end up getting down to it on a balcony in the pouring rain. So, pretty vanilla by some standards, but still, outdoor sex! Following that, I penned military erotica, more outdoor erotica, rubenesque, classroom sex (between consenting adults), vampire sex and first-time lesbian sex. Which, thinking about it, isn’t too bad for a beginner. Looking at my past publications, alfresco sex and military sex is a recurring theme… I can’t think why 😉

Now, though, I’ve definitely branched out. For a long time, I wouldn’t even attempt to write BDSM. There was no particular reason behind it, other than I didn’t fancy writing it. But I eventually caved in and answered a call for submissions for sex toy erotica, which also ended up including bondage and spanking. That seemed to open the floodgates. I’ve now had between ten and fifteen BDSM stories published, with lots more written, submitted, contracted and waiting for release dates. I’m not quite sure how it happened. It certainly hasn’t been a conscious decision (except when answering calls for submission, of course), but I find it much easier to write BDSM now, to the extent that I’m coming up with some seriously wild and wacky scenes (see one of my future releases!) that even make me wonder where it’s coming from as I’m writing.

I’m definitely glad I’ve branched out. My author tagline is “Erotic and Romantic Fiction… Whatever Your Fancy!” because there’s so much variety in my work. From straight, to lesbian, to gay. Vanilla to medium and hardcore kink, indoors, outdoors, military, at home, abroad, second chances, paranormal… the list goes on. I love that there are so many topics, likes, dislikes and kinks I can write about as I’ve gotten over my fear and always push myself to write something new, something that may involve lots of research, or even something I don’t agree with. There are quite a lot more things on my mental list that I want to cover, but hopefully I’ve got plenty of time yet.

*****

Lucy Felthouse is a very busy woman! She writes erotica and
erotic romance in a variety of subgenres and pairings, and has over seventy
publications to her name, with many more in the pipeline. These include Best
Bondage Erotica 2012 and 2013, and Best Women’s Erotica 2013. Another string to
her bow is editing, and she has edited and co-edited a number of anthologies.
She owns Erotica For All, and is book
editor for Cliterati. Find out more at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk. Join
her on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to her
newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9

Kill Your Darlings

by | May 13, 2013 | | 14 Comments

“I’m beautiful, I’m literary, please don’t hurt me.”

It was William Faulkner who said it. The venerable Samuel Johnson said something very similar. It really refers to lines or phrases, but can sometimes involve whole scenes.  Received wisdom is that, if you come across a line or a phrase that makes you puff up your chest at your own literary or poetic brilliance, many accomplished writers and editors believe it probably needs to die.

First, I want to own up to the fact that I have not always followed this piece of writerly advice and I still don’t. But I think I’ve come to understand the rationale behind it a little better, and I have killed my fair share of darlings more recently, and shifted others.

I’m concerned with the ‘literariness’ of my writing.  I care a great deal about the poetics of my work. I spend time frantically trying to avoid the many cliches to which it is so easy to resort when writing erotica. When I write sex scenes, I obsess about approaching them from at least a slightly fresher angle than most of the erotica I’ve read. I don’t believe my reader needs to be given a blow-by-blow description of intercourse, and I have a deep faith that language itself can evoke eroticism, and that you can brew metaphors that become new sites of eroticism for your reader.

But pride comes before the fall. I’m going to sound utterly arrogant when I say that I have forged erotic imagery that felt like it shone on the page, that made me think, ‘wow, you’re a fucking good writer’. The problem is that a lot of readers thought so too.

How can that be bad?

Well, it can. Because the moment you’ve forced a reader to look away from the story and think, ‘fuck, what a brilliant writer I’m reading, how poetic, how eloquent!’ is the moment you just kicked them out of the story. You’ve just interfered with your reader’s engagement with the fictional world in order to show off.   It’s literary narcissism and it means you’re more concerned with literary bukkake than telling a good story.

Let me give you a brilliant example of a darling that sorely required execution. It’s from Rowan Sommerville’s “The Shape of Her.”

“He grasped the side of her hips, pushed her away and pulled her to him with a slap. Again and again with more force and velocity. Tine pressed her face deeper into the cushion grunting into the foam at each thrust.

The wet friction of her, tight around him, the sight of her open, stretched around him, the cleft of her body, it tore a climax out of him with a final lunge. Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.”

After being awarded the Bad Sex Award for this passage, Sommerville defended himself by saying it was a literary allusion, an homage to Vladimir Nabokov, who had been an avid amateur butterfly collector.

At this point, I hope you’re saying ‘who gives a fuck about your literary allusions?’ because you have every right to. Readers deserve better than literary in-jokes and canonical masturbation. The last line is both literary and fucking awful.  If you were anywhere near being aroused by the passage, that line killed your mind erection stone dead, unless you happen to be one of the very few entomology fetishists out there.

Admittedly, I’ve never written anything quite so eloquent or out of place as that. But I once described an orgasm thusly:

“I can feel my orgasm long before it arrives, a plane in the distance and my body the control tower. The landing lights in my belly light up to guide it in. Gary’s cock has grown huge inside me and there’s a pleasant dull pain each time he thrusts upwards.”

Oh, good god, what possessed me? Landing lights? Control tower? What was I thinking? And yet, at the time, I thought it was a wonderful metaphor. It just felt so ‘right’.

Another problematic darling is the encapsulating and eminently quotable line. Rather than kill it, consider shifting it to either the beginning of the story, chapter or scene, or the end of one of those. It probably is a great line but if you impress your reader so deeply with your pithy, perfectly worded brilliance, same deal. You impress the reader with your linguistic abilities, but you interrupt their relationship with the story.

And this is not about you or how brilliant you are; it’s about the story. So, when it comes to your edits, read through your piece and find those lines, phrases or passages which make you want to give yourself a manly, Hemmingway-style pat on the back. Ask yourself who is truly served by that line or phrase. Is it serving the story or  your own writerly ego?

Permission to Write Badly

by | March 30, 2013 | | 5 Comments

By K D Grace

I’ve been thinking a lot about the process of writing
lately and what makes it work. Why is it that sometimes it flows and other
times it just doesn’t? The first time I realised I might be able to exert some
control over that flow, that I might be able to do more than sit in front of a
keyboard and hope the Muse would take pity on me, was when I read Natalie
Goldberg’s classic book, WritingDown the Bones. There I discovered the timed writing. It’s simple
really. You write non-stop for a given amount of time. You write against the
clock, and you don’t stop writing until time runs out. No matter what! You
write whatever comes without fretting over whether it’ll be good. And when
you’re done, some of the end result – even a good bit of the end result – might
be crap. But mixed in with that crap might just be the seeds of something wonderful.

At the time I felt like I’d been asked to write with
my left hand. Even writing for five minutes seemed like a daunting task when I
made my first attempts. But Natalie Goldberg knew what she was talking about. I
was amazed at what came out of the abyss between my ears! It was only after I
read Writing Down the Bones that I
began to write real stories. So why did one book make such a difference?

I finally had something I lacked in the past, something
very important. I had permission to write badly. Every writer needs permission
to write badly. Later Julia Cameron, in her book, The Artist’s Way, called those off-the-cuff, devil-may-care writings morning pages, and she prescribed three
morning pages every day – written without forethought; written in haste. From a
fiction writer’s perspective, she didn’t give them the weight that Natalie
Goldberg did. They were only a part of a plan to open the reader to the artist
within. To her, they were more about venting, sort of a daily house-cleaning
for the brain. In addition to morning pages, Cameron insisted that every creative
person should give themselves what she called an artist date once a week. An artist date was a date with oneself
away from writing.

I can’t count the number of times I stood myself up
for my artist dates. I would have broken up with me long ago if I were actually
dating me. But then I realised that an artist date didn’t have to be dinner and
dancing or shopping or even visiting a museum. An artist date was a change of
pace. It could even be ironing or weeding the garden. In fact the whole point
of the artist date was to create space in which I could disengage the internal
editor and give myself permission to write badly.

So many of us are under the impression that every
word we write must be precious and worth its weight in gold. What I’ve learned since
I discovered the pleasure of writing badly is that on the first draft, every
word is most definitely not precious. On the first draft, every word is a crazy
frivolous experiment. Every word is a chance to test the waters, to play in the
mud, to let my hair loose and run dancing and screaming through the literary
streets. Every word is a game and an adventure. Every word is eating ice cream
with sprinkles for the main course. Every word is shit; every word is compost, and
every word is the ground out of which the next draft will grow. I never know what’ll
work until I try it. I never know what my unconscious will come up with while
I’m writing like a wild crazy person, grabbing words and cramming them in and
rushing on to the next ones – just after I’ve pulled the weeds in the garden.
Without that bold and daring first draft, without opening the floodgates and
letting the words spill onto the page, there’s nothing to work with when the
next draft comes. And when the next draft comes, the words do get precious. Every single one becomes weighty and irritable and
reluctant to fit anywhere but the place it belongs, the place where I feel it
just below my sternum like the point of an accusing finger.

But by the time I get to the second draft, by the
time I get to that place where every word has to be perfect, I’m up for it. I’m
ready to slow down and feel what every word means. I’m ready to find all the
nuance and all the cracks and crevices of meaning in between the words. I’m
ready for it because I’ve been playing up until now, and I’ve been allowing the
words to play. And now, recess is over!

The longer I write, the more I realise what else, besides
Natalie Goldberg’s timed writings and Julia Cameron’s reluctant artist dates,
get me there. And what gets me there is often totally being somewhere else,
somewhere other than writing. Sometimes it’s playing the piano badly, or sweating
at the gym, or weeding the veg patch. Sometimes it’s walking through the
woodland not thinking about anything, Sometimes it’s reading something frivolous.
Sometimes it’s reading something profound. All the space that taking time not to write opens up inside me makes
room for that wild ride of the first draft. And when that first draft is
finished, I have what I need to pick and choose, to sort through and sift, to
change and rearrange until I find the best way to tell my tale. But up until
then, it’s child’s play. It’s dancing naked. It’s shameless abandon and multiple
verbal orgasms.

Writing badly? Permission granted.

Resisting Homogenization

by | November 21, 2012 | | 20 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

At the moment I’m in the throes of
editing stories for my upcoming charity anthology Coming
Together: In Vein. Despite my hatred of all things Microsoft,
I’ve decided that using Word’s Track Changes functionality (as all my
publishers do) is the most efficient way to communicate my suggested
modifications to my authors. Anyway, last week I was working on a
submission from a well-known and respected writer and found myself
breaking up her sentences: deleting conjunctions, inserting periods,
and adding initial caps. My intuition (which I rely on at least as
much as more analytical processes when I’m editing) told me her
sentences were too long. Paragraph after paragraph, she would string
three or four or even five independent clauses together with various
conjunctions.

Her sentences weren’t exactly what I’d
label “run-on”. Normally there was a close logical relationship
among the clauses. However, they were certainly much longer than what
I’d write, especially lately. (My earlier work tends to be a good
deal more prolix.) Before long the pages of her story were a mess of
red and blue, cross-outs and insertions.

I worked at this for a while, then went
back to read over the edited text. When I did so, I realized my
changes had done some violence to the rhythm of the author’s prose.
Much as the long sentences bothered me, they were part of her
personal style. If she followed my suggestions and hacked the long
sentences into pieces, that might make the story “better” in some
formal, grammatical sense, or at least more readable. However, it
would be less distinctive – more like my own work, and probably
more like the other stories in the collection.

I went back and used “undo” to
reverse most of the edits. In my opinion, variety as one of the most
critical attributes of a successful anthology.

The experience started me thinking
about all the other pressures toward homogenization we authors face.
Genre conventions, for instance. Readers select a book in a
particular genre with strong expectations about its plot, characters,
and even its style. A murder mystery that ended without revealing the
identity of the killer would generate a lot of reader complaints.
Indeed, one could question whether the genre label even applied.

The conventions for erotic romance are
equally if not more stringent, as I’ve discovered over the past six
years writing in the genre. The main characters must be appealing
individuals who are at least somewhat attractive physically. The
narrative must focus on their relationship; the protagonists should
not have emotional or sexual attachments to other parties. The story
must hinge on some barrier, internal or external, to the characters’
mutual love, and ultimately that barrier must be removed, so that the
story ends happily.

I’ve got nothing against love, but I
don’t read many romance books, because honestly, I find too little
diversity for my taste. (There are, of course, exceptions.)

Unfortunately, I feel that erotica has
also become more homogenized over the past half decade. Genre
conventions aren’t so strict for erotica, but there are other forces
reducing originality and variety in the genre. One problem is the
fact that relatively few publishers command most of the market.
Several of the more adventurous and controversial erotica publishing
companies (e.g. Freaky Fountain, Republica) have folded. To the
extent that new companies have arisen, they seem to be trying to
imitate the few imprints that have remained solvent. I suppose this
is a rational business decision, but it reduces the diversity of the
erotica gene pool.

Naturally a particular publisher will
produce books with commonalities of style and content. Thus, a
limited set of publishers tends to push the genre in the direction of
sameness.

Now, you may be jumping up and down
right now, because it seems as though a new epublisher opens its
virtual doors every week. So how can I say that the number of erotica
publishers is limited? If you check the fine print, you’ll discover
that about ninety percent of these new companies publish exclusively
or primarily erotic romance, with all the attendant literary strings.

Furthermore, rather ironically, this
flood of new publishers seems to reduce rather than enhance
diversity. Many are founded by refugees from other publishing houses.
They bring with them the preferences, assumptions and house styles of
their former companies, and tend to be rather heavy-handed in
enforcing these styles, sometimes with limited understanding. I’ve
had editors strike out every single use of “that” to introduce a
subordinate clause; replace every single one of my semi-colons with
an em-dash; insist on the total elimination of passive voice; require
that I rewrite a first-person story in third-person. Sometimes I
resist these changes, but many authors will not, especially the
thousands of brand new writers who are joining the authorial ranks
every month to feed the public’s massive hunger for romance.

Market forces are perhaps the most
powerful homogenizing agent. When a particular book succeeds, for
whatever reason, publishers (naturally, I suppose) look for other,
similar works. I remember the first couple of spanking anthologies,
which were wildly popular. How many spanking collections have hit the
shelves since then? I don’t even bother to pick them up anymore,
unless I’m working on a review. Give me something different!

But instead we see a flood of vampire
books, or a slew of BDSM romances featuring naïve heroines and
sadistic, damaged heroes. I encounter volume after volume of gay
erotic romance, featuring well-hung young hunks who seem to live in a
world where there are no heterosexuals and there’s always lube close
at hand. The same well-thumbed plots and characters appear again and
again. I started posting a shape-shifter romance serial on my web
site last year. After a couple of chapters, as an experiment, I asked
my readers to tell me what should happen next. Reader after reader
outlined essentially the same plot – the same story they’ve read in
a hundred other books about were-wolves, were-tigers, were-bears,
were-stallions…

Do I sound like I’m whining? If you
think you detect a note of frustration, you’re correct. I don’t want
to read the same thing over and over. And I don’t want to write it,
either. These days, though, sameness sells.

I know my work has some distinctive
stylistic properties, but I consciously try to produce something new
every time I sit down in front of my keyboard. I’ve written a lot of
BDSM, yes – because that’s what interests and arouses me – but
I’ve also written gay and lesbian stories, menage and polyamory,
science fiction, paranormal, historical, steampunk, fairy tales, even
a bit of horror. I’ve never written a sequel or tried a series, at
least partly because I don’t want to revisit the same
characters, setting or theme. I want to try something different.

Originality lies close to the top in my
hierarchy of literary values. Nothing thrills me like a story with an
uncommon premise or an unusual point of view. My favorite authors are
the ones who surprise me, with their fertile and outrageous
imaginations. And I dream that there are at least a few readers out
there who pick up my books because they’re looking for
something new and different.

I’ll continue to resist the pressures
toward homogeneity to the extent that I can.

It’s certainly a good thing I don’t
dream about being rich and famous.

Cocaine Love

by | November 15, 2012 | | 4 Comments

By: Craig J. Sorensen

Recently, a good friend has been going through the sort of
relationship that has more pivot points than a double jointed hand with six
fingers.  It started before I left
Pennsylvania in June.  It ended before I
left in June.  Started again after I
left, ended again.  Started, ended… well,
you get the idea.

She’s a beautiful young woman, highly intelligent, very
creative, and successful in a field that is not easy to be successful in.  They have a lot in common, and just one or
two things where they differ.

But they are big things.

Each time relationship 2.0 and 3.0 and etc. ended, he gave
me a post mortem of how wonderful it felt when the relationship started, how
she was so understanding about his want to take it slow.  He described how quickly it changed toward
the end.  As he described the cycles in the most recent
release, it occurred to me what he was describing.  And maybe you’ve seen or felt it too:

Cocaine love.

When I described it in those terms to him, he practically screamed it out:  “That’s exactly what it is!”

Cocaine love:  Quick on the uptake, full of chemistry and biology and
euphoria.  More often than not this kind
of relationships end with an equally resounding crash.

Ultimately, each time this cocaine love began with her
accepting his position on a fundamental point. 
By the end, the actions spoke louder than words, and this flexibility fell away like a mask.  And the principle he
is operating on is one that really shouldn’t be asked to change.  Each time the relationship finished, he said how stupid he was, how he won’t get caught in that trap again.

Ahem.

It comes down to a person who will “give everything” if he
just “change one thing.”

But the essence of true love is not asking one to
change their fundamental principles, especially when they are the same core
values that make that person special. 
And that is the case here.

There are many things that can lead to a cocaine love, but
the bottom line is that it is hard to live on a steady diet of cocaine.  Maybe cocaine love can work, if both partners
are committed after the high wears off. 
And sometimes that means enduring the withdrawal.  Together.

The great relationships are like a fine meal.  Invigorating, and can be exciting, but
sustaining as well.  A good meal doesn’t
have the potential to emaciate the way that narcotics can.

Usually one person is the narcotic in a
cocaine love, while the other is deep in the high.

Again, this is not to say that a couple truly in love cannot
have an intense sort of desire, but there is a certain false-front that defines
cocaine love.  And the essence of being
able to see past it, is being willing to take a look at the relationship in
profile.

The essence is seeing the difference between being high and
being nourished.

I’ve used the dynamic of cocaine love in stories.  It makes great material, especially in erotica, but a lot better explored in fiction than lived through in life.

Just ask my friend.

A Novel Journey

by | October 26, 2012 | | 2 Comments

By Lucy Felthouse

A while ago, I posted about breaking out of my comfort zone. What I meant was that I’ve been so used to writing short stories that penning anything longer scared me. I broke out of this by writing a novella, which was published earlier this year. I’ve now broken out of it again by starting to write a novel, something I’ve been talking about for a very long time, but hadn’t gotten around to.

Well now I have. I’m almost halfway through Stately Pleasures (working title) and so far I’m enjoying it very much. I have someone reading it chapter by chapter, and they’re enjoying it too – so hopefully I’m writing a good book! I keep taking breaks here and there to write short stories for calls for submissions, or for ones I’m contracted to do, but I’m still adding onto the word count whenever I can.

Before I started writing, I planned the book out, chapter by chapter, and wrote mini biographies for each of the main characters. The characters have stayed pretty much the same, but chapters have altered. I’m finding that I surprise myself as I write – something one of the characters says or does, or something that happens. But providing it fits in with the story and where it’s going, I just roll with it. I was worried about sticking to the plan, but novelists I’ve spoken to have said that they rarely stick to the plan, it’s just there to keep them on track. So I figure it’s not a problem.

So, I’m on my novel journey, finally! I have no doubt in my mind that I’ll finish it, I’m very stubborn and I like to finish things. But whether it’ll get published is another matter altogether. I’ll keep you posted…

*****

Lucy is a graduate of the University of Derby, where she studied Creative Writing. During her first year, she was dared to write an erotic story – so she did. It went down a storm and she’s never looked back. Lucy has had stories published by Cleis Press, Constable and Robinson, Decadent Publishing, Ellora’s Cave, Evernight Publishing, House of Erotica, Ravenous Romance, Resplendence Publishing, Sweetmeats Press and Xcite Books. She is also the editor of Uniform Behaviour, Seducing the Myth, Smut by the Sea and Smut in the City. Find out more at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk. Join her on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to her newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9.

Her latest release is Raising the Bar, from Decadent Publishing.

Inspiration

by | August 30, 2012 | | 10 Comments

I’m very excited to be blogging for ERWA.
Back in the early days when I was just getting started as an erotic author,
ERWA was not only the go-to site for all of the latest calls for submissions,
but it was also a place to go for inspiration and encouragement. Now, here I am
writing what I hope will be inspiring and encouraging.

Today, I want to talk about inspiration,
because like most writers, I think about it all the time, and crave it
constantly. I want to talk about one of my favourite stories from Greek
Mythology, one that made me think more about inspiration than any other, and
that’s the story of Daphne and Apollo. In a nutshell, Apollo, the God of Light,
falls in love with Daphne, a woodland nymph. But Daphne flees his advances, and
when it becomes clear to her that she can’t escape him, she calls upon her
father to help her, and he turns her into a laurel tree to save her from
Apollo’s lust.

Perhaps it’s my naughty nature, but I’ve
always thought to myself, if I were Daphne, I would not only have let Apollo
catch me, I would have pursued him.
After all, he is the god of poetry
and music and art and wisdom and all those wonderful things that we writers
long for. A good fuck for a little wisdom and inspiration – a fair exchange,
I’d say. For some reason, I could never quite get my own private version of
that myth out of my head, nor the idea of that masterful exchange of power,
becoming the lover of the divine in exchange for divine gifts.

That got me to thinking about other lovers
of the gods, lovers who hadn’t been turned into trees before they were ravished
by the divine. Most of them got knocked up, true enough, and since the Greeks
were pretty misogynistic, that was the end of the story for the women-folk. In
short, they were pretty, some god took a fancy to them, knocked them up, and
there ya go! But, the result of their ‘inspiration’ was a child that was more
than human, a child with special powers, a child that was a savior or a hero.
Of course, Psyche didn’t get knocked up. She just married a god, bested her
mother-in-law at her own game and was made a goddess for her troubles.

But it’s when I started thinking beyond the
misogyny of the day to the archetypal message of the story that it hit me.
Daphne is really a tragic character because at the end of the tale, she misses
out on divine inspiration. She becomes rooted in one place, unmoving, never
able to do more than passively endure the changes of the world around her. All
she’s left with is her chastity. But Danae, when seduced by Zeus, gives birth
to Perseus, and Leda, also seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan, gives birth
to Helen of Troy and Pollux.  And the
stories of the children they give birth to are larger than life, exciting
adventures, stories that cause the rise and fall of empires, and all are the
result of divine and human coupling. Granted there was often no choice for the
women, or the men, the gods took a fancy to. Who could really argue with a god?
But the result was no less amazing.

Inspiration is like that, I think. We can
bargain for it. All of us writers have our techniques, the things that we do,
the rituals that work to get us to the story we need to tell. I walk and grow
vegetables. Some people listen to music, some people cook. I love hearing the
stories of how people get their inspiration, how people open themselves to the
Muse in an effort to get knocked up creatively. But I also love those times
when inspiration broadsides us, comes in a form we least expect and ravishes us
until we’re full and overflowing and we give birth to a story that we didn’t
see coming, a story that has a life all its own far more than we could have given
it if we’d simply sat down and planned it out.

Even leaving the Garden of Eden is a story about
seeking inspiration, about seeking to discover more, about becoming more than
ourselves, and about the price we pay when we’re willing to take that risk – powerful
stuff, all of it. And because the creative force will not be controlled, it
often doesn’t work out the way we planned it. It’s often expansive, explosive
and dangerous. It’s hardly any wonder that Daphne is seen as virtuous, and
chastity is the surface message for the rule of the properly behaved. But the
subversive message, now that’s another matter. The subversive message launched
a thousand ships, killed the sea monster, grabbed divinity and claimed it in
mortal hands, and wow! Writers do that every day, every time we yield to
inspiration, or grab it by the hem of its toga and refuse to let go until it
ravishes us, we re-create that archetypal story all over again.

Writing in Several Genres – Help or Hindrance? By Lucy Felthouse

by | July 26, 2012 | | 9 Comments

Today I’d really like to ask a question – is writing
in several different genres a help or a hindrance to a writer’s career?

Personally, I’ve always written whatever comes to
mind. I don’t  just write in a single
genre, and I’ve often surprised myself by going out of my comfort zone and
writing something that I’d never imagined I would want to write. But here I am,
six years into my writing career and I’ve penned m/f, f/f, ménage, contemporary,
paranormal, BDSM, fem-dom, rubenesque, modern fairy tales, voyeurism, romance,
bisexual and uniform fetish stuff.

I know many
writers pick a genre, for example, straight paranormal erotic romance, and
stick to it. Others, like me, write all kinds of things.

I can see the
good and bad points of both sides. Sticking to a single genre means that your
fans know what to expect, and that it’s incredibly likely that if they liked
one of your books, they’ll like them all. However, on the down side, you may
not be gaining new fans who wouldn’t necessarily look for books in the genre
you write within.

Writing in multi genres means that you run the risk of losing fans. They may
read something of yours and really enjoy it, then check something else out
that’s in a different genre, and not like it. (This is why, on my website, I
clearly state what genres my books are). On the other hand, though, someone may
have found your writing while looking for a lesbian piece, for example, then
gone on to read your books within other genres.

So, now I’m
putting the question to everyone else. I’d love to hear your experiences – from
both sides. It’s a little too late for me to change anything now—plus I love
writing in several different genres—but I’m just curious to hear the opinions
of others. I look forward to reading your comments!

*****

Lucy is a graduate of the University of Derby, where she studied Creative Writing. During her first year, she was dared to write an erotic story – so she did. It went down a storm and she’s never looked back. Lucy has had stories published by Cleis Press, Constable and Robinson, Decadent Publishing, Evernight Publishing, House of Erotica, Noble Romance, Ravenous Romance, Resplendence Publishing, Sweetmeats Press and Xcite Books. She is also the editor of Uniform Behaviour, Seducing the Myth, Smut by the Sea and Smut in the City. Find out more at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk. Join her on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to her newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9 

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