Uncensored Fantasy

By Lisabet Sarai

Quite a lot happened to me in the nineties. I turned forty. After more than a decade of considering ourselves married, my husband and I overcame our distaste of government meddling in our personal affairs, went to a Justice of the Peace, and legalized our relationship. The company he and I founded together received a federal research grant. We traveled in Italy, in Indonesia and in the Philippines. We lived for a lovely year in the historic Boston district of Beacon Hill.

However, from Lisabet's perspective, the last decade of the twentieth century was most significant because that was when I wrote and published my first novel. And like many major turning points in our lives, a minor incident was responsible for triggering the chain of events that led to the 1999 release of Raw Silk.

After years of my enjoying my husband's tales of Hagia Sofia and the Grand Bazaar, we'd finally managed to make it to Turkey. We stayed in a tiny boutique hotel in the heart of old Istanbul, two narrow houses that had been converted to serve a handful of guests. The hotel, which adjoined an ruined haman (bathhouse), featured a boulder-strewn, cat-filled garden and a view of minarets and the Sea of Marmara from the window of our fourth floor room. In the white-washed stone lobby, above a divan spread with rich embroidery, I found a book swap shelf, a common feature in traveler's locales around the world. Leave a book, take a book – we cycle our reading and share our passions. Having run low on reading material, I picked up a slim black and gray volume. The cover featured a moderately discreet image of a couple in an ecstatic embrace. Gemini Heat was the title, authored by Portia da Costa.

The novel was published by a UK imprint called Black Lace, whose slogan was “Erotic fiction for women”. A benighted American, I'd never heard of Black Lace. At the time, I hadn't read much erotica. My master had “assigned” me The Story of O and Anne Rice's Beauty trilogy, and I'd sampled a few bawdy Victorian titles, but for the most part I was innocent, from a literary perspective at least. I'd been penning my own D/s erotic fantasies for a while, copying them by hand into greeting cards and sending them across the country for my master to savor (following in Pauline Réage's footsteps, though I didn't know it at the time). However, I'd never considered sharing those fantasies with the world.

Gemini Heat astonished and aroused me, with its intelligence, its erotic diversity and its unabashed heat. Identical twins Deanna and Delia Ferraro look enough alike to fool most people, although their styles and personalities could not be more different. Deanna is brash, bold, even a bit wild, a freelance artist with a penchant for hippie-style clothing and a taste for adventure. Delia is shyer and less experienced sexually, but more polished and organized, as accomplished at her job in corporate middle management as she is in cooking or home repair. One evening, with busy Delia's blessing, Deanna attends an art opening using an invitation intended for her twin. The paintings on show turn out to be of the erotic variety, stirring her hot blood to the point that she allows a seductive stranger to fuck her on a balcony overlooking the crowd. Only the morning after do she and Delia realize that her partner was Jackson Kazuto de Guile – millionaire businessman, unabashed sybarite, and Delia's boss – and that he'd thought Deanna was in fact his employee Delia. And now, despite her more cautious personality, Delia wants her turn with the delicious and demanding Jake.

The story piles one erotic episode on top of another, as Deanna and Delia pretend they are the same woman, alternating in the role of “Dee” and discovering new dimensions of their sexuality. There are sex clubs and opulent mansions, Jacuzzis and massages, exhibitionism and voyeurism, lesbian and gay male interactions, bondage and beatings, lovely fetishistic articles of clothing that get torn to shreds in the throes of lust, and lots of intense orgasms. Jake involves a cast of co-conspirators (especially the notorious red-headed author Vida Mistry) in his education and sexual conquest of the twins.

The book was a perfect fit to my own erotic inclinations. It pushed all my personal buttons. I was delighted to discover the existence of Black Lace (though the other Black Lace authors I sampled did not come close to Ms. Da Costa in their ability to excite me). And after I'd calmed down a bit, I began to think, “I'll bet I could write a book something like that.”

I sent away for the Black Lace author guidelines. (Nobody had websites then, remember.) The document I received was unbelievably intimidating – ten pages long at least, written with severe precision, and focusing far more on what they didn't want than what they did. Nevertheless, still inspired by Gemini Heat, I started working on a novel about a woman's sexual odyssey, set against the sensual backdrop of exotic Thailand. In a matter of weeks I'd penned three chapters. I sent the chapters off with a synopsis (by snail mail – no email submissions in those days!) to editor Kerry Sharp. Then I more or less forced myself to forgot about the matter. Although I'd had great fun writing those chapters, the chances of being accepted seemed totally remote.

About four weeks down the road, I received a post card acknowledging my submission and warning me that due to the volume of manuscripts Black Lace received, I might not hear anything further for several months. I shrugged and filed the card with the guidelines. I was not surprised or disappointed.

Three days later, Kerry Sharp emailed me, enthusiastically declaring that Raw Silk was just what they were looking for, offering me a contract and asking me when I could deliver the full book.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. When could I deliver the full book? I didn't have the foggiest idea.

I've written elsewhere about the process of writing Raw Silk, how easy it was, how I poured all my fantasies uncensored onto the page, most especially my cravings for submission and surrender. I've also talked about how naïve I was concerning the publishing business, how I imagined imminent glamor, fame and fortune, press conferences and release parties, book tours and free trips to London. I didn't realize how most publishers, even back then, operated on a shoestring. I learned, though. When Raw Silk went out of print, I reclaimed the rights and placed the book with another publisher. The novel is on its third publisher now, but I still sell at least a few copies a month.

I should mention that this whole incident was totally beginner's luck. Kerry Sharp flatly rejected the next two proposals I sent her.

I'm reprising this now because I just finished rereading Gemini Heat. (Yes, the same dog-earned black and gray paperback!) I wanted to know if it could still move me now, after I've published more than fifty single author erotic titles of my own and read at least three times that many by others. Would it seem clichéed or silly? Would I find it tame?

I'm pleased to say that I still would place this novel among my top ten or top twenty erotic books. Ms. da Costa excels at describing the internal state of her characters. The sexual encounters that occur in Gemini Heat are far less extreme or outrageous than they seemed upon my first reading, but their impacts upon the characters (which is really what counts in my view) remain intense.

Meanwhile, in these days of sub-genre tyranny, I value the diversity in Gemini Heat more than ever. These days, erotic romance reigns. (Black Lace officially rebranded itself that way a few years before it folded.) The thrillingly sensual lesbian interactions in Gemini Heat would probably get the book rejected now – not to mention the description of the M/M sex show at Club Seventeen. Then there's the hero's decidedly non-alpha appearance and behavior. Sure, Jake is a Dom, but he is not tall, gruff and muscle bound. He's slender, graceful, elegant, as one might expect from someone who is part Japanese, with long, silky hair and smooth, mostly hairless skin. Ms. da Costa is perfectly comfortable with a hero who shows some feminine characteristics, but I suspect that many of today's readers might reject such ambiguity. In fact, despite his adeptness at power games, Jake is a switch – that becomes quite clear in the final chapter of the novel. I loved the breadth of the author's sexual imagination, but I'm willing to bet that if she submitted this novel today, the publisher would want to attach all sorts of Reader Advisories.

I didn't realize when I first encountered Gemini Heat that it was one of Portia da Costa's very first erotic novels. Now I suspect that her experience writing the book must have been similar to mine – that the book is an uncensored outpouring of her personal favorite fantasies. I've read and enjoyed a lot of her later work, but with the exception of the brilliant Entertaining Mr. Stone, none of these novels has made the same impression on me as her tale of the horny twins and their diabolical seducer. Her writing has become smoother and more controlled, technically more accomplished, but rarely reaches the same level of raw heat.

People sometimes say the same thing about my work. Raw Silk has many flaws that are all too visible now to my more experienced eyes: excessively verbose descriptions, repeating words and phrases, horribly stilted dialogue. Nevertheless, I've received more praise from readers for that book than for anything else I've written. I know why. It's the pure emotion I poured into the pages. The novel is my personal journey, mostly imagined though studded with bits and pieces of my real life. In a sense, Kate is me – not in terms of her personality but in her desires and her reactions. And readers sense this.

At the same time that first book, released at the very end of the nineties, was just the start of my journey, the first steps on the road to becoming Lisabet Sarai. Now, fifteen years later, I still have no idea where that road will ultimately lead me.

Authorly Delusions

By Lisabet Sarai

What would I wear? That was what was on my mind as the publication date for my first novel grew closer, 'way back in 1999.

I'd somehow hit the karma jackpot. My first attempt at a novel had been accepted by the illustrious Black Lace imprint - the people who published my idol and inspiration Portia da Costa! I'd been corresponding with Kerri Sharp, the editor, a seriously no-nonsense sort of person. I imagined the numerous staff of Black Lace, all toiling away on the season's titles, including mine. And I wondered whether the publisher might throw some sort of sexy, glamorous release party for all the authors.

Black Lace's address at that time was “Thames Wharf”. I thought that sounded incredibly exotic and British. I could picture the place, a converted warehouse with a glassed-in ceiling and recessed lighting. I could imagine my fellow erotica authors, all decked out in leather or velvet, short skirts or long ones with provocative slits showing plenty of thigh, wearing boots or maybe even masks. I pictured myself among my peers, sipping champagne from crystal goblets and chatting about sex and writing. I fantasized about meeting Portia in person (I saw her as an elegant, curvy brunette) and telling her how she was responsible for my success.

I had no idea how I'd afford the trip to London. On the other hand, my book had been accepted, despite the incredibly tiny odds. Who could predict what the universe might hand me next? Maybe I could finance the trip out of my advance.

Did I really expect the party? Probably not. It was just fun to think about. I had no idea, though, how wildly unrealistic my fantasy was. Looking back now, I'm pretty sure that Kerri Sharp was more or the less the whole Black Lace staff all on her own. Like most publishers, Black Lace was undoubtedly scraping by, the margins on books getting smaller and smaller each year. Money to organize a party for the authors? I'm sure the notion would have evoked incredulous laughter.

A few years later, I visited the Blue Moon Books offices in lower Manhattan. I was a bit shocked by how small and grungy they seemed. I had imagined that publishers – New York publishers – had spacious office suites, luxurious conference rooms, sophisticated, erudite, well-paid editors who decided the fate of poor authors like me. Instead, Blue Moon was crammed into half the tenth floor of a hundred year old building with water stains on the ceiling and a tiny elevator that creaked like it was going to expire on the way up. My editor was disheveled and a bit shy, almost embarrassed by the fact that he published explicit sexual fiction.

Sigh. Welcome to the real world.

Since then, I've learned that erotica authors are not necessarily all that glamorous, either. I've gotten to know Portia fairly well in the cyber-sphere. She's a lovely middle aged lady with silver-blond hair who lives in a small town with her cats, pouring her fantasies out onto the page. I've been fortunate enough to actually meet some of my colleagues from the Erotica Readers and Writers Association and the Erotic Authors Association. With one or two exceptions, there's nothing about these people that would indicate they write fiction hot enough to scorch the page. They don't wear dog collars or stiletto heels. They have bad hair days and wear glasses, just like me.

I will admit, though, that it's always a high to meet another member of the inner circle. The excitement is palpable. It doesn't matter what we look like. Deep down, each of us knows we're in the presence of a fellow outlaw, and that's intoxicating.

By the time you read this, though, I hope to have fulfilled an authorly fantasy. As luck would have it, the huge Romantic Times conference is happening in LA during the time I'm going to be visiting my sister. I can't go to the conference – don't have the time or the money – but one of my publishers is hosting a dinner for all their authors who happen to be in town, and I'm planning to attend. I can't wait to meet the writers whom I've gotten to know over the past four years of writing erotic romance. And it sounds like it's going to be quite an event.

In fact, it's not all that different from my original fantasy. It's just that it's taken a dozen years to come true.

And yes, I'm agonizing over what I'm going to wear.

Inspirational Erotica

By Lisabet Sarai

Charlotte's topic for this week, “Inspirational Erotica”, took me aback for a moment. I mean, is that like “Inspirational Romance” (aka “Christian Romance”)? Are we talking about finding God in the process of finding one's soul mate? That actually sounded a bit like an extension of last week's topic.

However, it soon became clear that our dear Ms. Stein was talking about literary inspiration—what authors or books inspired us to write erotica or erotic romance. That's a particularly easy topic for me since it was an encounter with a single novel and novelist that set me on the erotica publishing path.

I've always loved to write. I had written private sexual fantasies as gifts for several lovers. However, I never really thought about trying to publish my nasty little tales until I read Portia da Costa's Black Lace title, Gemini Heat. That book was re-released this year in a “15^th Anniversary Edition”, labeled as “erotic romance”, but back then Black Lace called what they published “erotica for women, written by women”.

Gemini Heat follows the sexual adventures of identical twin sisters Deanna and Delia as they are led along ever more perverted paths by mysterious dominant Jackson de Guile. The story begins with a bang (so to speak) at an erotic art exhibition, attended by Deanna who is pretending to be Delia. Jake (as he calls himself) comes up behind her as she is contemplating (and reacting to) an explicit painting, and soon has her wet and ready to agree to pretty much anything. Although she's an assertive, modern woman, she finds herself unable to disobey the salacious suggestions of the mysterious stranger. When Delia meets Jake, she has a similar reaction. The two sisters alternate in increasingly intense encounters, breaking taboo after taboo. It's never clear whether Jake realizes there are two women named “Dee”, though he's sufficiently devious, not to mention sexually expert, that he must suspect something.

Portia da Costa's book was one of the sexiest things I'd ever read. It was intelligent, imaginative and wonderfully varied—just what I enjoy. Although the D/s subtext persists throughout the story, the novel is a delicious smorgasbord of sexual delights. It includes group sex, lesbian sex, public sex, anal sex, bondage, flogging...pretty much anything that I could imagine (back then, at least!) But it was the focus on the emotions of the twins that ultimately made the book effective. Ms. da Costa really excels at bringing her readers into the minds of her characters. Having experienced a D/s initiation myself, I strongly identified with Deanna and Delia.

After I'd finished reading Gemini Heat (and my pulse rate had settled back to normal), I started thinking. I'll bet I could write a book like that. An American, I'd never heard of the British Black Lace imprint before. In those days, they included a questionnaire at the back of each book, asking readers what kind of settings, themes and activities they'd like to see in their erotic reading. Just perusing the survey gave me ideas.

So I began working on my first novel, Raw Silk, with Gemini Heat as a model and Black Lace as my target publisher. I plumbed my own fantasies and experiences with D/s in creating Kate O'Neill, Gregory Marshall and Somtow Rajchitraprasong. When I had three chapters and a synopsis, I submitted a proposal to Black Lace. (In those days, that meant printing out the manuscript and sending it airmail from the U.S. to the U.K.) Then I put the book aside while I waited for a response.

Three to four weeks later I received a postcard from Black Lace, basically a form letter confirming receipt of my manuscript. The card warned that due to the number of submissions to the imprint, I should not expect to hear anything for at least two to three months. I shrugged, filed the card, and moved on to other things. I'd sent the proposal as something of a lark anyway.

Exactly two days after I got the postal acknowledgment, I received an email from the editor of the Black Lace imprint, offering me a contract and wanting to know when the book would be finished. Despite my confidence that I could write something like Gemini Heat, I was overwhelmed. When would I be able to submit the full novel? I had no idea. I'd never written a novel before.

Just look at what Portia da Costa got me into! Twelve years, six novels and dozens of short stories later, I'm still astonished at how a chance encounter with a book steered my life in such a different direction.

I still love her writing, by the way. If you've never read any of her work, I recommend Gemini Heat first, and then the more recent Entertaining Mr. Stone. One of the thrills of becoming a published author has been getting to know Portia, at least electronically. We share a variety of interests including a deep love of felines. We send each other Christmas cards every year, and I've vowed that someday, I'm going to meet her in person (and hopefully, on the same trip, my esteemed colleague and co-Gripper Ashley Lister).

Until then, all I can say is: thanks! It's difficult for me to imagine how different my life might have been if I hadn't picked up that dog-eared copy of her book from the book swap shelf at our Istanbul hotel. I'm sure that the world could have survived very well had Lisabet Sarai never been “born”. But I'd sure miss her.

Happily, Ever?

by Lisabet Sarai

Gloriana DeMarco is used to getting what she wants. The outrageously beautiful daughter of a U.S. Senator, she lives in a Beverly Hills mansion, drives a red Porsche, and dances her nights away at the hottest, most exclusive clubs in town. The fact that she also happens to be a vampire makes her even more persuasive.

Hank Storm is a rowdy punk who uses his fists and his wits to survive on the mean streets of South LA. He's also a lycan, the sworn enemy of the blood drinkers who control the city.

When Hank's battered Harley rams into Gloriana's 911 Carrera, sparks fly as well as glass. The mutual attraction is incandescent and irresistible. But Hank and Glori are literally from different worlds. Will they manage bridge the huge gulf between them, the differences in wealth, class, and monster-species, to find true love?

Of course they will, silly. It's a romance.

A happy ending is the sine qua non of the romance genre. Readers crave the satisfaction that comes from seeing the protagonists overcome all obstacles in order to end up, mutually devoted and sexually fulfilled, in each other's arms. Personally, I get that. Readers identify with the characters (at least if the author has done his or her job). Of course readers want characters to be happy by the end of the tale, to enjoy the vicarious experience. Hey, I like a happy ending as much as the next reader.

For an author, though, the ultimate romance commandment, “Thou shalt have a happy ending”, poses some problems. A story is propelled by conflict. Conflict generates suspense, that is, pleasurable uncertainty as to how and whether the conflict will be resolved. Suspense draws the reader further into the narrative. The reader continues in order to discover what will happen next. A “real page turner”, such as we all aspire to write, keeps the reader involved by keeping her off-balance, constantly creating new tension that can only be relieved by reading further.

When an author is constrained to provide a happy ending, generating suspense becomes more difficult. There's no uncertainty about how the story will conclude. The author must find another way to keep the reader turning pages. Authors vary in how successful they are in meeting this challenge. My main complaint about much of the romance that I read is that it is distressingly predictable.

One solution is to create a conflict so intense that the reader will really have a hard time guessing how it could be resolved. Here's the blurb from my upcoming MFM ménage release, Truce of Trust, due out from Total-E-Bound on May 19th:

Some women might think Leah’s existence heavenly. She shares her home with two sexy men who both adore her. Ten years married to lusty, artistic Daniel, she still enjoys the discipline and release offered by Greg. But her lovers’ jealousy and possessiveness have made Leah’s life a hell. Unable to bear the continuous conflict, she flees to an idyllic seaside resort to ponder her future. Gradually she realises that she cannot live without either of her lovers. If the two men can’t settle their differences, though, then how can she bear to live with them?

Obviously, somehow, the differences will be settled, because this is a romance, a ménage romance, and the ultimate commandment must be obeyed. In writing this blurb, though, I hoped to produce at least mild curiosity as to just how these two alpha males vying to possess the female of the species will manage to find an accommodation.

Another solution is to focus the suspense not on the relationship but on another aspect of the plot. In Raw Silk, Kate explores her sexuality with three different lovers. The questions I pose for my readers are, first, will she choose one man or continue her hedonistic experimentation with all three? Second, if she does choose one of them, who will it be?

I originally conceived of Raw Silk as erotica rather than romance. (When I wrote it, 'way back in 1999, explicit romance was not as accepted or as popular as it is today.) The book fictionalizes my own awakening to BDSM and channels my fantasies about a serious, committed BDSM relationship. Of course it has a happy ending (as long as you consider being bound in public by your Master, wearing labia clips and a butt plug, to be happy...). Fantasies always do. I hope, though, that it is not too predictable. In any case, the book is now being marketed as romance. But then, so is Portia da Costa's Black Lace classic Gemini Heat, which first inspired me to try publishing my erotic writings.

The erotica genre is less strict about requiring HEAs. Of the twenty stories in Fire, my single-author erotic short story collection, eleven have happy endings, five are ambiguous and four are definitely unhappy. Even for the stories I've classified as happy, the endings tend to be more equivocal than in romance. In “Twentieth Century”, the heroine loses her lover but experiences a sexual and artistic awakening. In “Perception”, the hero disappears after making love to the heroine and she's not sure whether she'll ever see him again. The “ambiguous” category includes one story (“Higher Power”) in which the heroine ends up with a broken neck and another (“Communion”) where she's burned at the stake as a witch. Not your average romance scenarios!

Even in the world of erotica, I see some tendency for editors to prefer happy stories over darker ones. One of my absolute favorite stories, “Trespass”, has been rejected for at least four anthologies, mostly because it ends with the death of both protagonists. On the other hand, I think that it's intensely romantic, a story of forbidden love that crosses societal boundaries.

I'm not going to turn this post into another diatribe railing against the constraints of genre. If you want to write romance, you adapt. You try keep the reader wondering just how your characters are going to get out of their predicament and get together. One of the most skillful examples of maintaining suspense in romance that I've encountered is Erastes' M/M historical romance Standish. As I was reading, I was acutely aware of the genre. I knew that the book had to have a happy ending. Yet the author kept me on edge until the last chapter; it really did seem that her characters were doomed to separation.

Bravo. I only hope that I can do as well. I've tried to pull off a similar trick in my upcoming novella Serpent's Kiss (coming from Total-E-Bound on May 4th). At one point it appears that heroine, Elena, has lost her love forever, sacrificed for a greater good. I won't say any more for fear of giving things away. But at that juncture, I want my readers to be shocked, desperate, to ask themselves, Is it possible that this might not end happily after all?

If I can manage that, then it will be a very happy ending for me!