Coming Out as a Writer of Smut

When I first started erotic writing years ago, I kept everything on the down-low.

I did tell my mom that I was embarking on some erotic romance writing and that I wouldn’t divulge my pen name or any details. The only person who knew anything more than that was my husband (then-boyfriend), as we do nearly everything as a team. It didn’t take long before I divulged this to our writing group, but for years, word of what I wrote didn’t spread beyond that select group of people.

Part of it was due to embarrassment of writing erotic fiction and part of it was due to not wanting to be out as gay to everyone. (Oh, I should mention, it’s gay erotic romance and erotica I write.)

For example, at the time my day job was accounts payable and receivable at a battery warehouse. The boss was rather forward thinking, I think, but my co-workers and the delivery drivers were all very, hmm, redneck. I didn’t want any of them know I like dick, so that meant never telling them about what I write (not that I had anything close to a conversation with 95% of them).

When I moved onto my next job, a desk job at an office, I soon went on a trip to a writing convention in Calgary (just a few hours’ flight from here) where I had agreed to do a few author-type things, like a public reading of a smut scene. I told my boss what I was up to — my workplace is very gay, so liking dick is normal — but asked him to keep it secret.

In Calgary, I did that public reading of a smut scene. I was more comfortable there than I was back in my home city because I knew almost no one there. It was also a genre-focussed convention, so smut was fairly common there. I read the opening scene of Autumn Fire to a room full of middle-age and senior women. The opening scene is an anonymous bathroom blowjob. I was so uncomfortable. Afterward, a kindly older woman came up to me and gave me suggestions on how to make the scene even sexier, to really root the reader in the blowjob.

I managed to put aside the awkwardness for the rest of the weekend. I made some conference friends there — you know, the kind you hang out with for the weekend and never see again after that. A couple of them read my book over the weekend and told me they loved it.

Also at the conference was a female friend and her ex-boyfriend, and the ex fell in love with my bathroom blowjob scene and literally followed me around for the whole weekend. It was during that weekend that my friend found out her ex was bi and had kissed guys before. He was cute.

I was starting to get used to the idea that the world wasn’t going to end if people knew I wrote sexy fiction.

Still, though, I was happy to leave it all in Calgary.

However, when I returned to work the following Monday, a co-worker came up to me and asked me how my weekend in Calgary was. He wasn’t discreet. From his body language, I could tell he was trying to draw a secret out of me — a secret he already knew.

On the one day of work that I was absent — the Friday — apparently the whole staff had found out what I write. While some co-workers had that awkward “I’m uncomfortable that you write about sex” attitude that can be expected, the rest of my co-workers were surprisingly cool with it, to the point that they seemed almost proud of me.

Over the years since then, it’s been an interesting journey. Some folks are still of the “I’m uncomfortable that you write about sex” category and they try to cover it up by making jokes about sex writing that don’t really hide their discomfort. The rest, though, continue to think it’s very cool, especially the business aspect as I start up and grow a publisher, expand into podcasts, and somehow continue to write.

Since then, I’ve been slowly coming out to friends and family about what I do. A handful of those friends have gone on to read some of my books — which is a whole new level of awkwardness for me as a writer — and loved them.

Recently, I think I passed the final level of smut-writing awkwardness and exposing my smutty self. I published my latest novel, New York Heat, through my publishing company and needed it proofread. I had recently taken on a couple family members as proofreaders at the publisher to help us get through a glut of work and there was only one proofreader available and able to read my mammoth smut book (186K words, with 27 filthy gay sex scenes)… my mom.

She took it on with little hesitation, powered through it, and told me she loved it. She’s not eager to read another smut book by me right away — but she’s up for reading more if they appear in the production queue.

It’s kind of odd.

Six and a half years ago, I ventured into smut writing as a mental break from the crushing workload of my masters degree and the epic sci-fi trilogy I was trying to perfect. I landed a publisher for the first smut book and a year later that book was out, along with my first self-published short story.

I entered into a world of secrecy, not unlike a steamy and dimly-lit bathhouse. Little encounters happen here and there, names are not exchanged, and secrets are kept.

And over the five and a half years since that first publication, my confidence in who I am and what I do has grown. Shame and stigma have been cast aside. As I let people in on my secrets — sometimes not of my own choosing — I found that I didn’t face the rejection or ridicule that I had expected.

It’s like emerging from that dark and claustrophobic bathhouse and walking into the middle of a pride parade. Honestly, coming out as an author of erotic fiction was as hard, if not harder, then coming out as gay.

When I figured out what was going on with me — that I was gay — it took less than a year to come out. I wasn’t ready to fully admit it to myself until that fateful day I met the man who would become my husband. After meeting him, I came out a week later.

Coming out as an erotic author? Man, that took years.

But I’m glad I did. Just like being gay, I found being a closeted erotic author to be stifling, restrictive. And to be out about it was freeing, thrilling.

My name is Cameron D. James and I write erotic fiction — and I’m proud of it.

Cameron D. James is a writer of gay smut. His most recent publication is New York Heat.

Being Known

As Sacchi wrote on Monday, I hung out with her and Jeremy Edwards over the weekend, and, inspired by the current topic at The Grip, we spent some time recording a conversation about friendship. Jeremy heroically provided the equipment and processed the audio from that, and I'll share a few snippets here.

I want to make this post worthwhile even for those who aren't set up to listen to audio, so I'm going to riff on some of things that came up, then embed the clips (and link to where they're hosted).

Do You Know Me?

I tend to assume that people don't remember me. Unless I am certain it isn't necessary, I usually remind people of my name and where we've met when I encounter them in person. In cover letters, I'll usually tag previous interactions (such as, "You've published my work in four of your books") up to, perhaps, a ridiculous point. After all, if the editor has published my stories in four of their books, I would hope my name would at least ring a bell...

Similarly, I don't assume readers know who I am, though at this point there are a pretty large number of places where they could have encountered me.

There's a downside to this assumption, though. What seems like prudence to me can lead to impostor syndrome or a tendency to miss out on opportunities to interact with the larger community. If I had a dollar for every time I've wondered if I'm "allowed to" interact with someone on Twitter, I'd have at least a month's rent.

And to become friends with people, I have to allow it. My behavior can lean formal in a way that I think holds people at arm's length. I want to relax that at least a little.

I brought up this point in the conversation with Jeremy and Sacchi, and we discussed becoming friends with others in the erotica business.



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Do You Really Know Me If You Don't Know I'm Annabeth?

I keep my ego shelf in the living room, which is the first room a person walks into when entering my apartment. I've questioned the wisdom of this many times, because it's been awkward once in a while. For example, my priest came over once and was sitting not three feet from my vast collection of smutty books. I will probably forever wonder if he noticed or not.

There's a reason I put the books there, though. In a small way, it's an effort to avoid feeling ashamed of something that's a huge part of my life. I would like to believe that anyone who's close enough to come into my apartment is close enough to see the books. When I do get asked about them, I answer honestly, and this only gets weird some of the time.

The thing is, if you don't know that I write erotica, then you're missing a big part of my life. For me, the question of letting real life friends know what I'm up to as Annabeth is still active and difficult.

Jeremy, Sacchi and I talked about our experiences in this respect.



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Do You Really Know Me If You Know That I'm Annabeth?

I try very hard to be real in conversations in person or over e-mail—in private conversation, really. I try to tell the truth on this blog, as well. On The Grip, I've discussed some really difficult issues that I don't usually talk about, and I have the same ideals for my Annabeth Leong blog.

For me, that's come as the result of becoming bolder and braver. I have seen so many exhortations to never discuss politics on social media sites (you don't want to alienate your customers...). Here's the thing I've finally realized. If you don't like my politics, you won't like my writing. I craft my writing to be inclusive of people of all genders, races, orientations, etc. Accurately representing the world is one of my deepest passions as a writer. I also believe in questioning stereotypes wherever I can—and for me that's good both as politics and as strong characterization and plotting. I've had places where I've fallen short, of course, but I've been trying to make my voice stronger lately.

That said, the way I'm Annabeth in public does still conceal some things. I don't generally post about what discourages me, what business practices I think are nonsense, and so on. This touches a bit on what Giselle brought up, in my mind anyway. I need a little privacy to myself. I am as present as possible in all my writing—whether that's stories, blog posts, or brief things on Twitter. It's not the whole picture, though.

That's where writer friends come in. I've been making an effort lately to have at least a few friends who know what I, as Annabeth, am struggling with. And I think it makes all the difference in the world.

Jeremy, Sacchi, and I talked about discouragements as a writer, particularly about moving on from erotica.



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There are five more snippets than the ones I included with this post.

If you're interested in the entire conversation, I've got it all posted here, along with descriptions of what we cover in each section. If anyone has trouble getting the clips, shoot me an e-mail and I'll happily send them to you that way.

And thanks again to Jeremy and Sacchi for a lovely conversation.