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Lisabet Sarai

Is There a Man in the House?

by | May 25, 2014 | | 22 Comments

By Spencer Dryden (Guest Blogger)

Why
don’t more men write erotic romance?

I’m
very new to writing fiction. I’m also an old guy. I just turned 64. I
was 16 when Paul McCartney immortalized that age. At 16 I though 64
was much older and decrepit than it has turned out to be.
Nevertheless I am past the peak of my sexual prime and clearly headed
into the sunset.

One
immediate benefit of writing erotica is that I can make love to any
woman I want. In fact, she craves my sexual attention and my wife
could care less. How good is that? As my awareness of the field of
writing has expanded I have wondered why more men don’t write
erotica, or more specifically M/F vanilla erotic romance. It’s a
blast.

It’s
fair to say, since I’m saying it about myself, that I have been
subject to female allure since the first time I felt that stirring in
my pants when I saw pictures of naked women. Yes, I am pussy
whipped. I love women. I love female sexuality. I have been easily led by
the nose (actually by my cock) anywhere any woman has wanted me to
go. I have made disastrous choices because of it.

Luckily,
I found a woman who has been my wife and soul mate for 25 years, but
she too, can get me to do anything she wants. She’s so goddamn smart.
She knows that the secret to moving men is that we crave to have two
things stroked, our egos and our cocks. If she wants anything, all
she has to do is make me think its my idea, praise me for it and then
reward me. It’s like leading a lamb to the slaughter.

Guys,
does your wife brag about you? Mine brags about me—not for the
tremendous screaming orgasm I bring her (right)— it’s the handyman
work I do around the house. When my wife is bragging about me to friends, in guy code she is saying, ‘my husband’s dick is bigger than
yours’.

So
by now I’m sure your asking, ‘what does all this nonsense have to do
with men writing M/F erotica’. The answer is: EVERYTHING.

To
answer my own question about men writing M/F erotica, my thesis is:
It’s not that men don’t have sexual fantasies or that men aren’t good
writers, it’s that the standard, acceptable expression of erotica is
passed thought the lens of the female experience. So yes, guys, we
are subject to a kind of deeply rooted discrimination. INCOMING!

When
I say deeply rooted, I am talking about all the way back to the dawn
of mankind. It was sex that brought us out of the trees. Something
happened back when we were two feet tall that caused an explosion in
our species almost like a virus. I believe that explosion was
triggered by several changes that happened relatively quickly but
proved very successful. One of the most important changes was the shift
from seasonal estrus to monthly fertility—females became fertile and sexually
available on a year round basis. The other was the anterior migration
of the vagina—males and females could face each other during
copulation.

Prior
to the change in the fertility cycle, a female signaled availability
by broadcasting pheromones. It drove all the males crazy, we wailed
and beat on each other, bringing gifts, building stuff and generally
making fools of ourselves for the chance of a little nookie. The big
alpha male swept us all away and banged everyone. The pheromones died
down and we all went back to living separate lives, eating grapes and
picking ticks off each other. That strategy is still working
successfully for the other primates we left behind.

Somewhere
along the way females got the idea that if they were sexually
available all year long, males would be constantly seeking their
favor, bringing them stuff, building shit and so on. Then to break
the alpha male thing, they realized that if they could face their
partner, visual cues could replace pheromones and allow them to have
more choice in the selection of mates. The great migration of the
vagina began.

The
strategy was ingenious. Guys had to keep bringing more and better
stuff in order to get laid, but we all had a chance if we could just
bring the right stuff. The phenomenon we call civilization was born.
It’s why I am pussy whipped. I keep bringing stuff and building stuff
in order to get laid. (You didn’t think I was going to get back to
that, did you?)

The
only place females fucked up was in selecting big hunky guys (think
Romance) as mates, which promoted sexual dimorphism—males much
larger and stronger than females. They should have selected more of
us regular guys. The slaves they bred became their physical masters.

When
the language thing came around, women proved much more facile with
this tool. Guys stuck to expressing themselves with clubs and spears.
Moreover since females harbored life, they had to develop much more
internal sensory awareness than men who merely needed to sense when to
eat, shit and fuck.

Then
there was writing. At first we wouldn’t let females learn this
communication tool. When they did, they focused on internal sensory
experience. Eventually, completely frustrated by the lack of
emotional bonds with their mates, they invented Romance Novels as a
means of escape from their dreary enslaved lives. They specified that
the standard story trope must be one that focuses on internal sensory
and emotional experiences and hold the more physical, visual male
fantasy to be an invalid expression.

And
that’s why we don’t have more men writing erotic romance.

About Spencer Dryden

Some men are born great, others strive
for greatness; still others have greatness thrust upon them. Spencer
Dryden is none of these men. In fact, he’s so unimpressive he leaves no
footprints on newly fallen snow. He was trained in fiction writing on
the job with the many sales reports he produced for his managers,
winning the coveted ‘Keep Your Job Contest’ three years running. His
expense reports are still considered masterpieces of forgery by the
bankruptcy trustee of his former employer. He lives an unremarkable life
in a suburb of a northern city. His friends and family would drop dead
in horror if they knew of his secret life as a writer of erotica. He
hates the family cat, but still loves to pet his wife.

http://www.fictionbyspencer.com

Negotiation

by | May 21, 2014 | | 13 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

A word to readers: this blog post has nothing to do with BDSM. However, it does feature some pain.

A few months ago, inspired by one of my blog posts here, Donna George Storey challenged ERWA followers to take the NWWTHYW challenge. “NWWTHYW” stands for “National Write Whatever The Hell You Want”. We declared March to be NWWTHYW month at ERWA and even established a special blog page for people to share their experiences.

I was pretty quiet during that month. I felt like a hypocrite. Because even as my fellow authors were crowing about setting their muses free and flying high on the currents of their personal visions, I was laboriously twisting and reshaping my most recent novel, trying to fit it into the pigeon hole established by my publisher. While other blog commenters basked in the glow of their creative fervor, I was agonizing about just how much I’d have to cut and rewrite in order to satisfy the submissions editor.

A bit of history is required to understand the situation. Late in 2013 I responded to a call for short erotic romance works (15-20K) on a particular theme. This theme was supposed to provide the foundation for a new imprint with this (highly successful) publisher. They planned to put lots of energy into marketing the series, as it was part of a major rebranding effort.

The publisher was quite specific about what type of story was required: light, humorous, romantic, with a bit of a chick lit flavor. BDSM and ménage were okay as long as things didn’t get too intense. The first few ideas I had didn’t get the editor’s approval, but then I hit on a winning concept and went on to write Her Secret Ingredient. This is a slightly silly story about an ambitious female chef who tries to seduce the devastatingly handsome but authoritarian Frenchman running the cooking network where she’s been hired as a special guest. Instead she snags the rumpled but attractive producer, who turns out to be a closet Dom.

After this book came out, in late 2013, the publisher asked if I would be interested in writing a novel-length sequel. After a bit of wavering, I decided to give it a try. I wrote a blurb and sent it to the editor. She loved it. So I plunged in, making steady progress. I submitted the book on Valentine’s Day, and waited for a response. I thought the book was pretty good. I’d managed to broaden and deepen the characterization, focusing on a BDSM triangle in which my heroine dominates the French chef but submits to the producer. The plot premise of a series of on-location cooking shows in France gave me lots of opportunities for local color. (Since I took a three week vacation to France in 2013, I had plenty of material!)

This publisher usually turns submissions from their established authors around in a few days to a week. In this case, though, several weeks went by without my hearing anything. Finally I inquired about the status of the book.

Well (the editor said), The Ingredients of Bliss was well-written (a sop to my pride?) but the dark, raw tone didn’t fit well with the imprint. And wasn’t the plot a bit too elaborate for a romance? (In a case of mistaken identity, the heroes are kidnapped by a Hong Kong drug cartel and the heroine must figure out how to save them.) Meanwhile, could I make this be a true ménage, with Emily be equally in love with both of the men (producer Harry and chef Etienne), rather than having her feelings portrayed as ambiguous? Or else could I tone down her relationship with Etienne and focus more strongly on the fact that she and Harry are in love? Readers won’t like her if they think she’s fickle. And while we’re talking about fickle, the fact that she’s attracted to and considering having sex with the villain (who happens to be a dead-ringer for Etienne) is just not acceptable. Oh, and the little hints about F/F attraction to the police officer who’s helping her? Our readers don’t really like F/F interactions in a heterosexual book.

Dark, raw tone? She should read some of my other stuff! Bangkok Noir, or Exposure, for instance. Okay, the book includes a bloody gun battle and an attempted rape (by the villain) with some strong language, as well as a gory but erotic nightmare, but none of this is gratuitous. It all advances the plot and helps develop the heroine’s character.

As for Emily’s “fickleness”, her uncertainty about her true feelings, I see this as the core emotional conflict in the story. While she fights for her lovers’ lives, she’s also trying to come to terms with her dual attraction and to decide which, if either, of the men she Loves. (I deliberately capitalize the word, since I mean “love” in the romance sense of soul-mate/long-term commitment.)

Sure, she’s not in love with the gangster Jean Le Requin, but the plot requires her to seduce him in order to achieve her goals. Given that he looks and even smells like one of her lovers, wouldn’t she react to him physically, even if her emotions weren’t involved?

Meanwhile, what’s with the “too much plot” issue? This is, after all, a novel. Sixty five thousand words. I can’t just fill that up with one love scene after another, no matter how creative the BDSM! I’d get bored, even if my readers wouldn’t.

My first reaction was to pull the book and submit it elsewhere. “This is National Write Whatever The Hell You Want Month”, I told myself. “Why should I compromise my artistic vision to fit the expectations of somebody else?”

I soon realized, though, that the novel would lose a lot if it were not associated with the original short story. So I bit the bullet and did a revision, trying to address at least some of the editor’s concerns. This was pretty tough. My work has a lot of inertia. I revise continually while I am working, but once I write “The End”, the book starts to fossilize. I don’t have trouble modifying a few sentences or paragraphs, but for better or worse, my stories tend resist major structural changes.

In this first round of edits, I removed the part where the villain fingers Emily to orgasm at the Grand Prix races, destroying her fancy lingerie in the process (though I was really fond of that scene). I took out a passage where she’s guiltily contemplating the pleasures of screwing him. I added more declarations of love between Emily and Harry. I streamlined the plot a bit and tried to make the details more coherent.

The modifications were not substantial enough to satisfy the editor.

I tried again, completely removing any hint of attraction between Emily and Jean. I softened the attempted rape scene quite a lot, removing both the most extreme epithets and much of the physical violence. Without being asked, I excised the terrifying erotic dream, which had an extremely dark tone.

Better. Can you try one more time, please? And while you’re at it, could you edit the blurb? It’s a bit long and elaborate and gives the plot away. Can you take out some of the details, to help build suspense? Oh, and it would be good to focus more on Harry and less on Etienne. Don’t want to give potential readers false impressions.

I sent in a third revision. As far as the blurb was concerned, I made some minor changes, but I told the editor that I disagreed with many of her comments. The suspense in this book (I wrote) does not revolve around the kidnap plot but rather around Emily’s ambivalence regarding her two lovers and the roles of dominant and submissive.

Finally, the book was accepted. I suspect that the editor may have been tired of all the negotiation. Or who knows, maybe they really do like it.

Other authors I’ve talked to have told me this is a normal process that they’ve been through many times. However, being asked to do multiple rounds of substantive edits like this was a new experience for me, an experience that I found quite unpleasant. At several points I was tempted to throw down my toys and walk away in a huff.

I kept at it for several reasons. First, this publisher has always treated me very well (and I don’t want to imply that they were anything less than professional and courteous during this process, either). Part of me (the part that always tried to get straight A’s) felt guilty and embarrassed that I hadn’t met their expectations. Second, I knew it would be hard to sell this book elsewhere. I could find a publisher – that wouldn’t be a problem – but despite my relative lack of success, I had targeted this specific imprint and the book would be something of an orphan otherwise.

Still, I feel a bit sheepish after championing NWWTHYW and blogging about “writing commando”. After all is said and done, I guess I’m just another pussy-whipped author, meekly adapting my work to fit the market. (Okay, maybe not “meekly”!) Was this a matter of principle? Should I have stood my ground? Did I betray my Art?

When I get to this point, I have to laugh at myself. I don’t view my words as sacred. I write to entertain myself and my readers, and to explore certain ideas and scenarios I find intriguing. And of course, to make a bit of money, if I can. Yes, these edits skewed the book away from my original vision, but so what? The revised book probably will be more popular than the original would have been. I don’t doubt that it’s closer to what this publisher’s readers want.

After all, this is just one book. I can always go dark, deep and raw in the next.

Sexy Snippets for the Lusty Month of May!

by | May 19, 2014 | | 6 Comments

It’s the 19th of May. Do you know what that means? It’s time to post your Sexy Snippets!

The ERWA blog is not primarily intended for author promotion.
However, we’ve decided we should give our author/members an occasional
opportunity to expose themselves (so to speak) to the reading public.
Hence, we have declared the 19th of every month at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association blog Sexy Snippet Day.

On Sexy Snippet day, any author can post a tiny excerpt (200 words or less) in a comment
on the day’s post. Include the title from with the snippet was
extracted, your name or pseudonym, and one buy link, if you’d like.

Please
follow the rules. If you post more than 200 words or more than one
link, I’ll remove your comment and ban you from participating in further
Sexy Snippet days. So play nice!

After
you’ve posted your snippet, feel free to share the post as a whole to
Facebook, Twitter, or wherever else you think your readers hang out.

Have fun!

~ Lisabet

In Defense of Bad Sex

by | May 11, 2014 | | 11 Comments

By Corvidae (Guest Blogger)

A few months ago I attended a local
science fiction and fantasy writing conference, FOGcon, held here in
the Bay Area on the first weekend of March. Although it is a
conference primarily about

speculative fiction, all sorts of
avenues within that genre come up, including erotica. I was attending
a panel whose discussion drifted toward themes in erotic writing when
someone made an interesting

point:

Why isn’t there more bad sex in
erotica?

Some people chuckled, of course, but
the speaker was serious. Her argument came primarily from a
sex-positive standpoint: she pointed out how many people build
expectations of normal sexual behavior on the erotic material they
consume, so for the sake of healthy development, it would be fair for
erotica to include “bad sex” sometimes.

But no one wants to have bad sex, the
audience murmured, so who would want to read about bad sex?

The conversation moved on, but that
question has stuck with me. The more I’ve thought about it, the
more I’ve come around to an intriguing idea: not only could bad sex
be abstractly beneficial, but it might actively improve the story.

How? Well consider the following.

Take, for example, the science fiction
and fantasy genres. We enjoy these stories for their hero/ines
overcoming larger-than-life challenges in worlds beyond our
imagination; in other words, achievements we yearn for. But how many
of these stories have everything happening magically-perfect all the
time? Where every battle is fought with top-score perfection and
every villain brought immediately to their knees?

You can write such a story, sure, but
odds are the reader won’t be as engaged as you’d like them to be.
The reason for that is so simple it’s stressed in every book on
writing-theory: Conflict = Plot. Without any conflict or build-up of
tension, there isn’t really a plot.

I just learned recently (better late
than never, really) about the old writers’ trick of adding conflict
by Making Things Go Wrong. Don’t just have your characters jump
from Point A to Point B, give them progressively larger obstacles to
overcome along the way. A fun practice technique is to take a
character and make her situation progressively worse and worse and
see how she deals with things to keep moving forward. These obstacles
make the story interesting, but they also help define your
characters, in that your reader will get a deeper sense of who the
character is based on how she deals with the challenge presented to
her.

How does this apply to erotica? Well,
quite simply, “bad sex” could be an interesting tool to Make
Things Go Wrong. Don’t just have your characters jump straight to
putting Tab A in Slot B. Instead, try incorporating unusual
occurrences–physical challenges, emotional blocks, sudden
introspection, maybe even things as prosaic people barging into fix
the cable–and see how that affects not only the details of the
sexual encounter, but the internal facets of the characters
themselves.

For example: the other day I was
reading a story by a friend of mine, Reyna Todd. Her upcoming
novella, Ghuulden Girls, is an erotic fantasy novella that plays
around with issues of gender identification in a few scenes. Though
it is an erotic story, one of the highlights for me was a scene where
two of the characters were engaged in much-lusted-for sex but decided
halfway through that it just…wasn’t…working. The aftermath of
this “bad sex” scene was some deeper introspection that led to
them both evolving as characters, as well as playing a major role in
advancing the overall plot.

Now, one could argue that these
characters could have gotten hot and heavy in that scene and also
developed through other, clothes-on methods. There’s nothing wrong
with that approach in and of itself, but I argue that, as erotica
writers, we can do better. Erotica already shows the scenes other
stories don’t, so why not take things even further and show how
those scenes–good, bad, and yes even

ugly–are inexorably tied up in the
stories of normal human lives?

***

About the Author

Corvidae is a biologist, a writer, and
a near-lifelong fan of scandalous storytelling. She is an active
proponent of sex-positivity, polyamory, and BDSM, both in her work
and in real life. When not writing, what spare time she has is
usually filled with yoga, dancing, and table-top gaming. Her first
published work can be found in the Big Book of Submission  coming out this July from Cleis Press.

Visit her blog at
http://corvidaedream.wordpress.com

She tweets at @CorvidaeDream

Going There

by | April 25, 2014 | | 14 Comments

By Big Ed Magusson (Guest Blogger)

“She never mentions the word addiction in certain company.”–Black Crowes, She Talks to Angels

In 1991, I drove into Tucson a mental wreck. I was returning to an academic career in shambles. I’d driven 900 miles to propose to the love of my life only to have her first tell me about kissing a new guy. It was over a hundred degrees in my tiny apartment, I had no friends in town, and precious few anywhere else. I went looking for a place that was dark and cool and wouldn’t mind if I just sat for hours without doing much.

I found Temptations.

It was an appropriate name for a strip club and for what it offered. For a few dollars, I could sit quietly in the dark and have beautiful naked women pay attention to me. I had the cash. I had free afternoons. And after a while, I had more.

Solace. Comfort. Escape.

And then, over time, a life that narrowed to my trips to the club.

My story The Fix (on my site here and also in the ERWA Treasure Chest here) captures this slice of my past. There’s a pleasure that only the obsessed can understand—that pleasure of final attainment. At the same time, the obsession itself is an inward knife’s blade—constant stabs of nerves and fears and self-loathing.

There’s a saying in the twelve step world: the addiction is not the problem. The addiction is the crappy solution to the problem. Fix the underlying problems as I did (or become more mature), and the addiction either disappears or drops back to a manageable craving. There’s even some scientific backing to this (here).

But try explaining that to people.

All too often, our culture forces a black or white model onto addiction. On the one hand, addicts are terrible people with destroyed lives. On the other, we celebrate the overindulgence of addictive acts—”we were so wasted” describes a good time on too many college campuses.

This is particularly true in erotica and porn. One of Marilyn Chambers’ big hits was Insatiable, about a nymphomaniac; an archetype regularly celebrated in male-oriented porn. Scores of erotica conventions and tropes draw on the power of sex and the human attraction toward it.  We’ve “gotta have it.” Mainstream literary fiction is left to dwell on the question of whether that’s truly a good thing, even though mainstream fiction all too often portrays sex negatively or unerotically, as Remittance Girl discusses here.

So, do we dare go there? Do we dare portray sexual addiction in erotica in a realistic nuanced fashion?

There’s only one way I know to find out—write the stories and see. It promises to be an interesting experiment.

Bio

Big Ed Magusson has been writing erotica for the past decade. More of his work can be found at www.besplace.com and www.besplacebooks.com, including some of his Addictive Desires stories. He plans to release an anthology of the Addictive Desires stories later this year.

When Sex Was Fun

by | April 21, 2014 | | 2 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

[This blog is a repost from a 2010 item at my personal blog, but I thought ERWA denizens would also enjoy it. Certainly I think you’d enjoy the films! ~ Lisabet]

Last night my husband and I watched Radley Metzger’s 1972 film “Score”. We’d seen it before, in the nineties, when we first discovered a collection of Metzger’s work on VHS (remember VHS?) at our local independent video store (remember independent video stores?). The film was as lively and erotic as I had remembered, though some of the more dated references evoked a laugh or two.

Many of you are probably not familiar with Metzger. He began making sexually-oriented films in the late sixties and is responsible for ground-breaking efforts such as “I, a Woman” and “Therese and Isabelle”, one of the first films to concern itself with lesbian love. Later in his career, under the name of Henry Paris, he directed hard-core features including the classic “The Opening of Misty Beethoven”. The movies that initially made his name, however, skirt the edge between art and porn. They include nudity and simulated intercourse, but the attention to characterization and dialogue, not to mention the elegant cinematography and breathtaking locales (many of Metzger’s films were shot in Europe), move these films into a category all their own.

I don’t know how many of you watch modern “adult” movies. Based on my experience, most contemporary porn is pretty boring. The characters are primarily presented as bodies, who are largely interchangeable. They have no connection with one another beyond the physical tab-A into slot-B. There’s little or no conversation, no buildup of tension, no sense of transgression. One has no sense of any of the participants as individuals. Furthermore the sexual interactions tend to be annoyingly stereotyped and predictable. There is zero suspense.

Metzger’s work, in contrast, and “Score” in particular, focuses on the development of sexual attraction and the lure of the forbidden. Some of his films are more serious than others, but all are concerned with the experience of desire as much as with its fulfillment.


“Score” is one of his more light-hearted offerings. Jack and Elvira are a sophisticated, swinging couple who compete in their seductions. They set their sights on Eddie and Betsy, a pair of apparently innocent newlyweds. However, this is swinging with a twist. Elvira lays her snares to attract and corrupt angelic-looking Betsy, while Jack is determined to fulfill Eddie’s barely-suppressed homoerotic fantasies.

Neither Betsy nor Eddie falls immediately into bed with their pursuers. Elvira and Jack are gradual and subtle in their seductions. The characters are naked by the middle of the film, but it takes many sensual touches and intense, smoldering stares before the victims actually fall. Metzger vividly communicates the embarrassment and fear that mixes with Betsy’s and Eddie’s burgeoning lust. When they finally succumb to their hosts, the viewer feels a release of tension that goes far beyond the physical.

Metzger’s characters live in a permissive world where any sort of sexual activity might occur, including same-sex interactions. “Score” is cheerfully kinky in its acceptance of homosexuality, orgies, voyeurism, even a touch of S&M. It aims to arouse but not particularly to shock. Watching the film brought me back to the days when sex was fun, when it was relatively safe to surrender to desire.

Modern porn has much to learn from Metzger’s work. Even if you find porn offensive, you might well appreciate Metzger’s films. He has a healthy respect for his characters and their sexuality. In his world, sex is made to be enjoyed—and the chase is as exciting as the consummation.

Sexy Snippets for April

by | April 19, 2014 | | 6 Comments

It’s the 19th of April – the wettest month of the year in many locations. Today’s your chance to add to the general soaked state of the world by posting your Sexy Snippets!

The ERWA blog is not primarily intended for author promotion.
However, we’ve decided we should give our author/members an occasional
opportunity to expose themselves (so to speak) to the reading public.
Hence, we have declared the 19th of every month at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association blog Sexy Snippet Day.

On Sexy Snippet day, any author can post a tiny excerpt (200 words or less) in a comment
on the day’s post. Include the title from with the snippet was
extracted, your name or pseudonym, and one buy link, if you’d like.

Please
follow the rules. If you post more than 200 words or more than one
link, I’ll remove your comment and ban you from participating in further
Sexy Snippet days. So play nice!

After
you’ve posted your snippet, feel free to share the post as a whole to
Facebook, Twitter, or wherever else you think your readers hang out.

Have fun!

~ Lisabet

Write What You Do Not Know

by | April 11, 2014 | | 3 Comments

By Robin Juliet (Guest Blogger)

“She fired me because of my writing. She was worried about her reputation.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. I thought you were a serious writer. What do you write, porn?”

Fear coursed through me when I read my mother’s best friend’s words. Do I write porn? Is that what I do? How do I explain my decision to write erotica?

In many ways, erotica books chose me.

Unlike many, I did not come to this genre through reading. I have never been one to devour smut as a consumer. This is not to say I judge the genre harshly, it’s just never been on my radar screen as a reader.

Rather, I came to erotica through my writing.

Like most aspiring writers, I was told to “write what you know.” I get that. Start with a situation with which you have some familiarity so it rings true and isn’t based entirely on stereotypes and cliché. I still agree with the adage and work with it to a degree.

But, the fact of the matter is, the reason I write erotica is because of what I don’t know. And, what I still don’t understand is how and why and who and what we all do for sex. What makes sex interesting for me is when the physical sensation mingles with the emotional (or sometimes even spiritual) piece of who we are.

Human sexuality, and all of the psychological aftermath that comes along with sex, has me stumped:

  • How can you have amazing chemistry with someone you don’t even like?
  • Why do some people go POOF?
  • What makes someone a great lover? A terrible lover?
  • Is it ever possible to have ongoing casual sex with a favorite lover without getting attached?

Instead of claiming to know the answers to these questions, I prefer to write fiction where I place characters in these situations and find out what happens to them.

I don’t know the answers.

Neither do my characters.

Do erotica readers?

Not knowing is what makes erotica interesting. Not knowing is the difference between erotica and porn. Not knowing is why I write it. And, not knowing is why they come back for more.

“Are you saying your writing is considered porn?”

“By some people. You wouldn’t like them.”

“Good grief.”

“It’s what I gravitate to as a writer. I’m into the psychological play more than the sex, but people focus on the sex. It’s nothing worse than what you might find on HBO.”

Silence.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I told her.

“Oh my dear, the disappointment is certainly not with you but with the idiots who have stupidly labeled your writing. One day, hopefully sooner rather than later, you can shove it down their . . . you know what I mean.”

About Robin
We cannot help but rubberneck when erotic romance author Robin Juliet explores the psychological train wreck that occurs when lust and love collide.

Never one to shy away from breaking out the lube, Ms. Juliet writes contemporary erotic romances where lust trumps love and happily ever after gets twisted beyond recognition.
Ms. Juliet lives and writes in Denver, Colorado with her dog Bennett. You can reach her at robinjulietwrites [at] gmail [dot] com

Links
Robin Juliet’s newest novella, Involuntary Reflex, is now available in paperback at: https://www.createspace.com/4742348
Website: http://authorrobinjuliet.wordpress.com
Twitter @robin_juliet
Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/AuthorRobinJuliet

How Porn Made Me a Better Person

by | March 25, 2014 | | 8 Comments

By J.T. Benjamin (Guest Blogger)

I’ll never forget my first real exposure to pornography. The June, 1979 issue of Playboy Magazine featured Monique St. Pierre as Playmate of the Year, and Louann Fernald as Playmate of the Month. The former was European, Nordic, sleek, sultry, and exotic. She wore a glamorous, shimmering evening gown on the cover of the magazine. The latter was homegrown, olive-skinned, buxom and as wholesome as the sundress-wearing college student-girl next door she was. 

 

And I was hypnotized by both. The magazine had been “borrowed” by a friend of mine from his older brother, the same way I “borrowed” it from my friend. (My shameful introduction into a life of crime and debauchery). 

 

To this point, my Catholic upbringing had induced me to fear sexuality; any sexual image, any sexual concept, any sexual thought meant the hellfire of eternal damnation. And yet, when I gazed upon those gorgeous, nude, sensual images, a little voice in the back of my head told me that when considering the opportunity to see more full frontal female nudity versus the risk of eternal damnation,, I decided to take my chances. The flames of Hell? Nothing compared to Playmate of the Month. 

 

So began my descent into Hell. I masturbated. I fantasized. I procured more porn. More Playboys. Penthouse. Hustler. Then came the movies. The first few were in the company of others, at which I laughed and pretended to be more amused than aroused, but after a while, I stopped pretending and I simply watched the movies alone. Then I started reading porn. Oh, sure. Some people called it “erotica,”, but I knew that if I read it or watched it and I got a hard-on, it was porn. And I embraced it. And watching it or reading it made me a better person. 

 

How? I’m so glad you asked.

First, as the saying goes, “Once you’ve seen one woman naked, you want to see them all naked.” My exposure to the sultry Monique St. Pierre and the charmingly homespun Louann Fernald only made me want to pursue examination of the female form in every way possible. I examined naked women in every way, shape and form Pale skin, dark skin, olive skin, blonde, brunette, redhead, large breasts, little boy breasts, firm ass, long legs, short legs, buxom figure, petite figure, every possible configuration, and every possible way to look beautiful. I gained an appreciation for the female form that can only come from considering all the possibilities. Through pornography, I saw beauty and sensuality in everyone.

Then, came the exploration of alternative sexualities. At first, like most ignorant adolescents, I initially saw homosexuality or bisexuality as some sort of aberration or deviation. Once I started exploring pornography, I saw these alternative sexualities as something as normal as my fascination with girls with glasses, 140 IQs and fishnet stockings. Lesbian sex? Okay. Bondage? Sure, why not. Leather? You bet. Homosexuality? Okay with me. Not my bag, but still. 

Ultimately, I figured out that what (or who) turned other people on wasn’t my problem or even my business, because, as the saying goes, “Different strokes for different folks.”

Thirdly, I have turn-ons, kinks, and depravities. Thanks to my exposure to porn, I realized everyone else does, too. It’s no more appropriate for me to cast judgment on the kinks of others as it would be for those others to cast judgment on my kinks. So, when the issue of same-sex marriage came up, it was easy for me to decide which side to choose. Everyone’s entitled to their own pursuit of happiness. I wouldn’t have come to this realization without exposure (through porn) to this notion.

Finally, ultimately, in my opinion, the goal of porn is arousal. Either the arousal of one’s partner, one’s own arousal, or even the arousal of total strangers. For myself, porn isn’t fun if someone else isn’t having fun. I take pride in the fact that when I’ve been intimate with others, I’ve exerted the utmost effort in giving as much pleasure as possible to my partner or partners. For the most part, as far as I’ve been led to believe, I’ve been successful in that effort more often than not. I wouldn’t be so diligent in those efforts if not for the exposure to porn I’ve had over the years.

In short, thanks to my exploration of pornography I’ve learned how to be curious about sex, adventurous about sex, tolerant about concepts of arousal divergent from my own, and I’ve acquired a general notion that someone else’s idea of pleasure is simply none of my business. 

 

So, why do I write about porn? Well, I just want to give something back. 


About the Author

J.T. Benjamin, latter-day hippie, writer, philosopher, and porn pundit, has been a member of ERWA since 1998.  These days he’s working on the Great American Sex Novel when he’s not a cubicle slave for The Man and being devoted to his Lovely Wife, children, five dogs, three cats, and his mortgage.

 

The Gatekeeper

by | March 21, 2014 | | 14 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

I’m currently reading a book that should never have been published. Unfortunately, I’m committed to reviewing this three hundred fifty page novel, so I can’t just erase it from my e-reader and breathe a sigh of relief. I have to endure the run-on sentences, misspellings and incorrect vocabulary; the point of view that does a random walk from one character’s head to another’s; the verb tenses that shift from present to past and back again in the same paragraph.

I have to wonder about an author who sends a book in this sorry state out to the world. Did she really not know any better? Like many first erotica novels (including my own), the story (a moderately intense tale of extreme submission) feels like personal fantasy. I appreciate, from my own experience, the thrill that comes from baring your sexual soul, the rush one feels being brave enough to bring those filthy imagined scenarios into the light. It’s easy to get carried away. Still, even when writing for one’s own satisfaction, doesn’t an author have at least some responsibility to her readers? Shouldn’t there be some minimum criterion an author must satisfy, in terms of language skills, before he or she is entitled to ask other people to actually pay for privilege of reading?

Unfortunately, this book is far from unique. At least twenty percent of the ebooks I read appear to have never been examined by a (competent) editor. Some have dreadful formatting problems as well – text that switches from one font to another in the middle of sentences, negative leading between lines so that one overlaps another, and so on. Furthermore, these issues don’t appear just in self-published books.

Now, I’m a bit of a geek. You may or may not be aware of the fact that text processing software capabilities have become extremely sophisticated. Programs can analyze text in order to determine whether it was likely to have been written by a male or female; whether it was plagiarized; what emotions were experienced by the author; even whether it has linguistic characteristics shared by best-sellers. Software exists to grade essay questions in college entrance exams and make suggestions for how the author can get a better score. It recently occurred to me that someone (not me – text processing isn’t my specialty) could write a program to screen out books with egregious grammatical and lexical problems.

I have no doubt that Amazon has the resources to commission this sort of computerized gatekeeper. Think about it. Before an individual, or a publisher, could finalize submission of a book for sale, they would have to run it through the Automated Editor. The program would flag potential problems for attention. If the number of dangling participles or sentence fragments or run-on constructions exceeded a threshold, the book would be rejected. In other words, it would become impossible to publish a book like the one I’m wading through at the moment. The base level quality of available books would improve dramatically.

(Of course, Amazon would never do this voluntarily, only under pressure from readers. The company has zero incentive to reduce the number of books it offers for sale.)

But then, an artificially intelligent text analyst could do a great deal more than simply check for basic grammar. It could flag repeated words, phrases or figures of speech. (How many references to an “inner goddess” should be allowed before a book was rejected?) I believe that existing linguistic analysis software could also be trained to detect clichés, simply by providing an extensive database of example phrases. Purple prose would also be sufficiently distinctive, I think, to be identified with some level of accuracy.

I’m starting to imagine a multi-level application that could analyze a wide range of textual and stylistic characteristics in order to assign a “publishability” score to each manuscript. Why stop with the superficial problems, though? Automated language understanding systems have made great progress in the past decade, due to faster hardware and new algorithms. So why not look not just for clichéd language, but clichéd plot elements as well? That may be beyond the capabilities of today’s software, but not tomorrow’s. Using tired, overused story lines as models, the program could decide that the world did not in fact need yet another vampire-turning-his-lover-to-save-her-from-death or billionaire-seduces-virgin tale.

We could also use our gatekeeper software to determine how well a book purporting to belong to a certain genre in fact fit the conventions of that genre. If the program found evidence of lesbian interaction in a heterosexual erotic romance, for instance, it could reject the book as inappropriate for the targeted readers.

In the brave new world I am imagining, almost any aspect of a book’s content or presentation could be quantified and used to make publishing decisions. Sentences too short or too long. Overuse or underuse of adjectives. Too many characters of particular ethnicities. Focus on uncomfortable, politically incorrect or otherwise controversial topics. Mention of specific individuals, events, places, companies, products… the possibilities are limitless.

Think of how much more pleasant reading would become when you didn’t have to worry about ever encountering run-on sentences – or depictions of rape. You’d be shielded from both bad grammar and bad ideas.

Sure, this might homogenize the reading experience a bit, but that’s happening anyway, isn’t it? You’re right, Hemingway and Pynchon and Palahniuk and Joyce might not make the grade with our gatekeeper, unless they were grandfathered in as previously published. I’ll admit that some promising new authors would be prevented from making their work available to the world, but that happens with human editors too. At least our computerized literary gatekeepers would be objective and impartial.

Right?

Hmm… Maybe this needs some more thought

Meanwhile, I’ve got to go read a few more painful chapters and then figure out how to write this review without totally demoralizing this poor, benighted author.

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