This is a No Kink-Shaming Zone #taboofiction

By Morticia Knight

Wow. There have already been some great posts on taboo this month, so I’m not sure how I can top it *wink*. The timing is ironic, since this month also included an Author Behaving Badly saga where an author kink-shamed someone publicly. On Twitter. With screenshots from a private group. I’m not going to name and shame this author, but rather discuss the fallout from this person’s actions and how others—both readers and authors—responded to them. I’ll give you enough of an outline of events so that if you weren’t a witness to it in social media, you can understand what went down.

It all began when said author took offense to someone asking for some erotic romance books that included incest. The reader’s request was in a closed group on Facebook specifically meant for people to share recommendations of M/M books. The reader became curious about this kink after watching Game of Thrones. Since this rec group has always been a safe space, the reader felt comfortable posting that question, and indeed, many people jumped in with books they thought she might like (I myself have read a few of them!). But this author took a screenshot of the post and shared it on Twitter with commentary that amounted to how awful this person was and that kink is. The reader was justifiably upset, since if her identity were to somehow be discovered, it could hurt her professionally or personally. There are plenty of us who don’t share the type of books we enjoy with our boss or grandmothers!

The outcry against the author was immediate, and she eventually had the good sense to take down the tweet and acknowledge it was ‘a shitty thing to do’. But she continued to double-down on Facebook and defend her position—explaining that it made her embarrassed to be associated with the M/M genre and thought we should all be taking the higher road and not fetishizing gay men by writing about such disgusting taboo subjects. Several gay men chimed in at this point and reminded her that they enjoy writing/reading about several of the subjects she decried, and that even if they didn’t, the gay men of the world had never appointed her their champion. Others commented that it seemed as if she was internalizing a bit of homophobia based on her claim of being embarrassed that gay romance wasn’t more like het romance. Hmm...

I could go on for quite a while citing all the reasons why readers and authors were upset by her actions and words. But did she have a point? Is writing/reading about taboo subjects something we should be concerned about, something we should stop? Where would we draw the line?

In my opinion, we draw the line at pedophilia if we’re talking romance or erotica. Anything involving a child is a hard no. It’s illegal for a reason. But then, so is incest, right? Yeah, it is. And it’s super triggery for some and can destroy people’s lives. At the same time, it was also a big plot point in a bestselling, classic YA novel. I’m of course referring to Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews. Mainstream fiction, people. Pubbed in the seventies with several movie adaptations to follow—including on television—and the incest aspect was never glossed over. I read it when I was twelve, as did many of my friends. I’ll also add at this point that I know people who have been in incestuous relationships and that there are countries where marrying first cousins or an aunt or uncle is legal. But right now, what I’m really discussing is fictional taboos.

We all have our own personal boundaries when it comes to taboo subjects. Rape is very controversial as well, and CNC (consensual non-consent) in the BDSM community can sometimes divide kinksters. I wrote a CNC scene in my book Role Play (Play Series 1) and had some pushback from a few readers who weren’t expecting it and the scene upset them. Then there were readers who didn’t think the scene was all that taboo or extreme. In erotic romance, there will always be those who will point the finger at a kink and say, ‘for shame!’. We can’t squash our creativity to try and please everyone. As an author, I write what I want to read. I figure, hey, if I want to read it, then there are probably plenty of others out there who do too!

Dirty Laundry, Filthy Books, #Taboo #Erotica by @GiselleRenarde

I've been spending a lot of time in my building's laundry room lately. It's recently renovated, bright and shiny, bustling with activity and, best of all, humming day and night.

Depression and anxiety have been keeping me locked up a lot, lately. That's why I'm making a concerted effort to get out of my apartment, even if I'm not quite leaving my building. I've been using the gym, the pool, and the lovely laundry room. I find the hum of those washers and dryers incredibly soothing. Highly recommended! Be the creep who hangs out in laundromats!

Anyway, people leave books in my laundry room, for other tenants to read. I was pleasantly surprised when I came across this little beauty:

(like my pink pyjamas?)

I haven't started reading it yet, but a friend was over the other day. When he spotted it on my table, I told him the one most salient point I'm aware of with regard to Anais Nin: that she had an affair with her father. A few years ago, there was a play staged about their relationship. Or was it an opera? I didn't see it, but the fact stood out in my mind.

It led me to write my story "Two Complete Strangers," which is incest erotica about a father and daughter meeting as adults... and fucking like bunnies. ("Fucking like bunnies" sounds so much cuter than "fucking like father and daughter," doesn't it?)

I always really liked that story, and you can read it in a collection called Forbidden Family Erotica:

Remember Smut Smackdown? Lexi Wood challenged me to write the dirtiest incest sex story possible. Or I challenged her. I don't really remember. Anyway, we wrote three stories each and asked readers to vote on whose stories were filthier.

I don't remember who won. Probably Lexi. Taboo smut is her bread and butter. That said, my stories were pretty damn good. The one that stands out, in my mind, is "Two Complete Strangers." There's a bicycle trip in there too. And some public sex. Because if you're going to have sex en plein air, it might as well be with a blood relative.

Anyhoozle, all six Smut Smackdown stories are now available in one collection.

Because of a recent crackdown, you won't find this book for sale at many retailers.  You may or may not be aware that Barnes and Noble, a bookseller that used to sell every kind of erotica you can imagine, has cleaned up shop. They used to sell incest smut. Now they don't. So you won't find this there. Or at Amazon. Or pretty much anywhere else you might shop.

You can buy Forbidden Family Erotica from Smashwords and eXcessica Eden. And I hope you will!

Forbidden Family Erotica
Six Shocking Sex Stories
Taboo Erotica by Giselle Renarde and Lexi Wood

Daddies and daughters, brothers and sisters, twins, cousins and more! Nobody’s off-limits in this taboo collection of illicit incest erotica. Six sexy stories certain to satisfy!

In this collection you’ll find the following family erotica: Talk Dirty to me, Daddy!, Spying on the Twins, Daddy’s Wet Little Virgin, Two Complete Strangers, The Family Bed, and Taken by Vicky’s Daddy… and Mine!

Buy Now from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/750860?ref=GiselleRenardeErotica

Or Buy from the Publisher, eXcessica Eden: http://www.excessica.com/eden/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=30&products_id=333&zenid=d9c78c23088f2f2e029055042e1a5940

Seduced By My Best Friend's Dad

by Cameron D. James

While perhaps not my most taboo title (as the definition of what's taboo will vary from person to person), Seduced By My Best Friend's Dad is my most popular taboo title.

When I started writing this, I was catching on that incest and pseudo-incest (step-relations) were hot taboo topics, but also very problematic as books featuring those themes often got banned on Amazon. With that in mind, I took it one step back to what I decided was pseudo-pseudo-incest. There's no relation between the two males leads (biological or legal), but due to circumstances, Jay has always looked up to his best friend's dad "like a father figure".

Here's the blurb:

Jay has a crush on Richard, his best friend’s dad. Richard is older, very masculine, cares about Jay, and is extremely sexy. There are just the problems of Richard being straight, married, and the father of Jay’s life-long best friend.

When Richard takes his son and Jay on a camping trip to celebrate turning eighteen, becoming men, and taking their first steps into the adult world, Jay struggles to contain his lust. Hitting on Richard would ruin the camping trip and destroy his friendship.

But when his friend takes ill and Jay and Richard enjoy some bonding time alone, it becomes clear that Jay isn’t the only one in the thrall of forbidden desires. A relaxing camping trip soon turns into a series of sweaty, erotic encounters, as Jay and Richard stoke this fire burning between them.

And here's an excerpt:

Still not breaking eye contact with Richard, Jay willed his fingers back to life, massaging Richard’s upper thigh. With every squeeze of his fingers, he moved his hand half an inch closer to that patch of ball skin. With every passing moment, he felt the tension build in both of them, like he was waiting for Richard to call him a pervert or Richard was waiting for Jay to burst out laughing at the prank. But then his fingertips brushed against that warm, soft, wrinkled, hairy skin, and the tension deflated from both of them.

“Jay...” Richard said, his voice a mere whisper. It was filled with lust and need, happiness and contentment. He wanted this — needed this.

Jay brushed the skin, rubbing his fingers back and forth, then carefully worked his hand under Richard’s shorts and boxers. Soon he had one meaty ball rolling between his fingers. It was almost plum-sized, firm and round. He squeezed the ball lightly, tugged it gently, and Richard let out a low moan, falling back on his elbows on the rock, head cast back. Jay eased his other hand in the other pant leg and grabbed Richard’s other ball, giving it the same massage treatment. He rubbed both balls, smoothing out the skin, holding them firm in his grasp. The long bulge in the middle of the pile of fabric at Richard’s crotch twitched.

Shifting to grasp both balls in one hand, Jay slid his fingers reverently up the length of Richard’s cock, watching the man’s face for any reaction that this was going too far. But Richard was too far gone, too lost in the heat of the moment to ever say no — Jay knew he had Richard, that the man was putty in his hands, but that he had willingly and knowingly put himself there.

He still didn’t understand it — Richard was straight and married and the very fact that Jay was his son’s best friend should have put up some immediate boundaries, placed him off limits. But those boundaries were obviously being ignored. The almost father-son relationship they’d developed over the years also wasn’t a boundary that could stop them. If anything, that closeness only added to the intimacy of the moment. Jay was giving pleasure to the man he’d looked up to all these years.

And if you'd like to read more, here are the buy links!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Kobo | Smashwords

Taboo for Everyone

by Cameron D. James

I sometimes feel a bit strange writing a post on taboo desires and other general kink and fetish topics. It’s certainly a comfortable space — you can’t escape these sorts of things when you’re an erotica writer, so you make yourself comfortable and enjoy the discussion — but it’s not really a space where I fit as an author.

My main purpose, at least under this pen name, is erotic romance, which generally leaves a lot less space for the taboo, the forbidden, and the kinky. I do have a series I co-wrote called “Forbidden Desires”, in which each of the three novellas explores a different taboo relationship. (The first is a huge age gap with a young guy falling in love with a father figure, the second is a Catholic priest giving into his desire for dick, and the third features an eerily-familiar bombastic President who subsequently falls in love with a Mexican rent boy.)

While these might be taboo and kinky to some, they are flat-out vanilla to others. Indeed, this is my most vanilla pen name. I’ve mentioned previously that I have a pen name that explores much more taboo kink, but even that is still mild compared to what some other authors write.

I used to feel bad about it, like I should, as a writer of sexy smut, be exploring much more extreme kinks. Like, it comes with the job, right? But eventually I realized that there’s a place for everyone in this sexy workplace — there’s room for the plain and vanilla and there’s room for fiction about stuff that’s illegal to do in real life. And there’s plenty of room for everything in between.

And just like there’s room for all levels of smut and taboo in this wonderful space of writing, there’s a wealth of perspectives that come from our readers. For some, my priest/parishioner erotic romance would be shockingly taboo and would really get a reader’s gears going, whereas for others they would put it down when the boredom sets in on the second page. And for some readers, the very fact that two men are kissing (never mind what they do after that kiss) is taboo.

To me, it doesn’t really matter where a reader’s taboo level is. If just two men kissing gets a reader going, then I hope they enjoy my books and don’t get too overwhelmed when the pants come off. If a reader has a higher taboo threshold, hopefully one of my slightly-kinkier titles does it for them. And if a reader’s taboo threshold is far beyond anything I write, well, I might not be the right author for them and I’m okay with that. (Or I may serve as a refreshing pit stop between super taboo kink stories. Like a water break or something.)

Taboo should be something that is self-defined. After all, my beliefs of what is taboo will be completely different than someone who is new to reading sexy smut, and also very different from someone who is heavy into BDSM and looking for fiction that explores the most extreme depths of smut. My perception of taboo changes over time, too, as I’m sure it does for readers and other authors.

When I first started writing smut, I was all about vanilla smut because it was so new and hot to me — but I couldn’t do the more extreme stuff because it was beyond my comfort level. Now, though, that definition of taboo has changed and while I still do plain vanilla stuff (because I do enjoy it), I also explore some other areas. And under my kinky name I explore even more taboo areas. As time goes on, I’ll probably explore a little further, a little deeper. Maybe then I’ll have more experience in taboo desires for a more titillating post. :)

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

Banned Books #AgePlay #Taboo #Erotica, a post by @GiselleRenarde

Quality erotica can be hard to find—especially now that many booksellers are banning adult fiction they deem obscene. The Banned Books Box Set showcases three censored stories in which consenting adults explore ageplay and taboo sex.

I wrote that book blurb in 2013, when I released the Banned Books Box Set. It was true then. It's even truer now.

When I released that book at Amazon, I decided not to take any chances. Rather than calling it Banned Books Box Set, I called it Pushing Boundaries--which is what brought it to mind today.

Before setting out to write this post, I opened the document where I keep all my metadata and buy links for the book. When I pulled up the Amazon link, guess what?

My Banned Books Box Set had been... banned.

I'm not exactly surprised. I guess I'm more surprised I didn't know. This has been the trend with other retailers, but Amazon usually tells you when you've been naughty. A lot of other ebook stores just quietly remove your evil erotica and hope you never notice.

What's in this book that's so ban-worthy? Three things I'd written that had been banned when they were first released. The first is a lesbian sleep sex story called "Stripping My Son’s Sleeping Girlfriend." Banned for its name, its content, and the nudity on its cover.

The second is a taboo novella by Lexi Wood called "Dance for Daddy, Salome!" It's gone by other names, too. "Dance, Salome, Dance!" is one, I think. I've lost track, but it's a book set in the 70s, about a dirty-dancing girl who first sleeps with her stepbrother, and then with her stepfather. I'm pretty sure I stole the plot from the Bible, but who remembers?

Number three is the book I can't forget. It's "Nanny State," one of my absolute favourites. Lesbian landlady/college girl(s) D/s, ageplay, ABDL, all sorts. That is one DIRTY book, but, to me, its contents never seemed terribly taboo. Maybe I'm just massively fucked up--in fact, I know I am--but any sex that happens between consenting adults doesn't seem all that awful. Even if one of them's dressed up in diapers. Even if they spank each other in schoolgirl uniforms.

A couple weeks ago, I reached out to a new distributor to ask them about their limitations around adult content. I'd rather know their rules from the outset than accidentally break them and get dinged for it after the upload.

Anyway, I was surprised to see ageplay and ABDL on their list of topics your work can't contain if you're distributing books through them. I guess my Banned Books Box Set won't be heading their way.

I just found it kind of sad, because Nanny State is kind of my masterpiece of nastiness. Poor little Nanny State. Poor little banned books. So much dirty smut the reading public of the future may never get to see.

Seduced By My Best Friend's Dad -- A Dirty Excerpt (#taboogaysex #gayerotica)

Given this month's theme of "pushing limits", I thought it appropriate to dig up my most limit-pushing novella -- and, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of my most popular. Readers love seeing those limits get pushed.

Seduced By My Best Friend's Dad

Jay has a crush on Richard, his best friend's dad. Richard is older, very masculine, cares about Jay, and is extremely sexy. There are just the problems of Richard being straight, married, and the father of Jay’s life-long best friend.

When Richard takes his son and Jay on a camping trip to celebrate turning eighteen, becoming men, and taking their first steps into the adult world, Jay struggles to contain his lust. Hitting on Richard would ruin the camping trip and destroy his friendship.

But when his friend takes ill and Jay and Richard enjoy some bonding time alone, it becomes clear that Jay isn't the only one in the thrall of forbidden desires. A relaxing camping trip soon turns into a series of sweaty, erotic encounters, as Jay and Richard stoke this fire burning between them.

Excerpt

In this scene, about a third of the way into the book, Jay is hiking up a forested hill with Richard -- they're alone, as Jay's friend has taken ill and is sleeping it off in the tent. At the crest of the hill, they sit for some water and sunshine, but soon Richard's leg muscles start cramping from the hike. The erotic tension between the two men has been crackling between them like bolts of lightning -- and it only gets more intense when Richard asks Jay to massage his legs. When Jay gets on his knees in front of his best friend's dad, he discovers that the older man isn't wearing any underwear under those shorts.

Still not breaking eye contact with Richard, Jay willed his fingers back to life, massaging Richard’s upper thigh. With every squeeze of his fingers, he moved his hand half an inch closer to that patch of ball skin. With every passing moment, he felt the tension build in both of them, like he was waiting for Richard to call him a pervert or Richard was waiting for Jay to burst out laughing at the prank. But then his fingertips brushed against that warm, soft, wrinkled, hairy skin, and the tension deflated from both of them.

“Jay...” Richard said, his voice a mere whisper. It was filled with lust and need, happiness and contentment. He wanted this — needed this.

Jay brushed the skin, rubbing his fingers back and forth, then carefully worked his hand under Richard’s shorts and boxers. Soon he had one meaty ball rolling between his fingers. It was almost plum-sized, firm and round. He squeezed the ball lightly, tugged it gently, and Richard let out a low moan, falling back on his elbows on the rock, head cast back. Jay eased his other hand in the other pant leg and grabbed Richard’s other ball, giving it the same massage treatment. He rubbed both balls, smoothing out the skin, holding them firm in his grasp. The long bulge in the middle of the pile of fabric at Richard’s crotch twitched.

Shifting to grasp both balls in one hand, Jay slid his fingers reverently up the length of Richard’s cock, watching the man’s face for any reaction that this was going too far. But Richard was too far gone, too lost in the heat of the moment to ever say no — Jay knew he had Richard, that the man was putty in his hands, but that he had willingly and knowingly put himself there.

He still didn’t understand it — Richard was straight and married and the very fact that Jay was his son’s best friend should have put up some immediate boundaries, placed him off limits. But those boundaries were obviously being ignored. The almost father-son relationship they’d developed over the years also wasn’t a boundary that could stop them. If anything, that closeness only added to the intimacy of the moment. Jay was giving pleasure to the man he’d looked up to all these years.

Click here to find out where to get your copy.

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

#Writing as Impulse Control, a post about #taboo #erotica by @GiselleRenarde

Grief is weird.

It makes you want to do things you know you shouldn't. You KNOW you shouldn't. But you want to do them all the same.

You want to assert yourself as a living being. You want to LIVE because the person who is gone can't. Someone else's death is a reminder of your own mortality.

Or else you go numb and you just want to feel something. It takes more and more just to feel something.

Or else you don't care anymore. You don't care about yourself. You don't care about right and wrong. You don't care.

Or else you're just looking for some form of comfort while you heal.

You all know by now that I live with a sock puppet called Lexi Wood. She bashes her face against my keyboard to produce some of the most taboo smut I've ever seen.

Lexi has been my rock, of late. She's taken the wheel. Not only has she held my hand through all the losses I've lived through in the past 6 months, but she's helped me curb my impulses to go out into the world and do things I'll only regret when I get my shit together.

I'm sure I mentioned to you that writing helped me cope with my cousin's death this summer. Some of that writing was journaling about the situation specifically and about grief, both specifically and generally. But some of that writing was... well, it was Lexi, plain and simple.

It was strange, experiencing this extreme sadness and concern for my family, to be thinking about family all the time, and then turn around to find Lexi writing really raunchy smut about barely-legal teens begging their stepdaddies for a fuck.

Part of me was asking, like, is this really the appropriate time for taboo fiction? But apparently it was, and having something to focus on, something other than my family's state of mourning, helped me tremendously.

Then it happened again.

It was November when my grandmother died--National Novel Writing Month. I'd intended to work on a novel. But that didn't happen.

Following my grandmother's death, obsessive thoughts started creeping into my mind. Obsessive thoughts of inappropriate intimacies. Stuff I knew I couldn't do. Not in the real world. But I found myself thinking about these things all the time. Anyone who's ever wanted to do something they knew they shouldn't knows how excruciating it is to be haunted by those thoughts.

Luckily, Lexi stepped in once again. Lexi saved me from myself by routing all that strange sexual energy into a collection of taboo erotica I've recently published as Taboo Sex with an Ex.  Nice of Lexi to keep to a theme. She's got marketing in mind even when I'm grieving deeply.

Without Lexi, would I have done something I'd live to regret? That's one of those impossible to answer questions, I think. I would like to imagine I'm enough of an adult to say to myself "No, I'm not going to do that" and then... just not do it. But there's a rebel in all of us that hears a NO and automatically says YES. Not only does it say YES, but it digs its heels in a little deeper every time it hears a NO.

Writing smut helps in working through those impulses. I'm a living testament to the power of smut-writing.

We always hear about porn etc normalizing and even encouraging unsociable sex, but here's what I'm thinking: if writing taboo fantasies helps the writer cope with inappropriate sexual thoughts, isn't there a chance reading taboo erotica helps the reader in the same way?

Whether or not you're having impulse control issues, I invite you to read Lexi's latest collection, Taboo Sex with an Ex. It's currently in Kindle Unlimited because I'm doing an experiment which you can read about here.

Taboo Sex with an Ex
6 Explicit Erotica Stories
By Lexi Wood

These girls love their daddies so much they just keep coming back for more… even though they know they shouldn’t… even though they said they wouldn’t! In this mouth-watering collection of sinful smut, six young women return to their daddies to fill their needs as only a daddy can. They shouldn’t have done it in the first time. They shouldn’t come back for seconds. But here they are, pretty and purring and ready for more!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MLW8Z3F?tag=lexiwood-20
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07MLW8Z3F
CAN: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07MLW8Z3F
AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07MLW8Z3F

Taboo Or Not Taboo? (#gayerotica #taboosex #forbidden)

What I’ve learned over the years of writing gay smut is that there’s no such thing as too taboo. There’s also nothing that’s not taboo.

Every story is taboo to someone, and every story is very vanilla to someone else.

I once had someone offer to review one of my books and they were looking for something raunchy. I sent them my most taboo title (which, admittedly, isn’t very taboo compared to most of what’s out there) and the review came back saying it was ho-hum and they expected dirtier.

On the other hand, though, around the same time, I came across a reader review for one of my other stories — one I considered to be one of my tamest titles — and they freaking loved it and called it dirty.

I think when it comes to erotica and taboo, it’s all relative to a person’s lived experience and personal desires. But when it comes to gay men and gay erotica, the bar for what’s considered taboo can be much lower for some readers.

An out gay man in the kink scene would be hard pressed to call anything taboo, whereas a closeted gay man, perhaps one struggling to live the “straight life”, would find a rather vanilla but steamy scene to be taboo. For such a man, the simple desire to be intimate with another man is something that he has denied himself for years, perhaps even for his whole life, and a story about a man overcoming internalized homophobia and having his first passionate (yet vanilla) encounter with another man would be exactly what that reader needs. And, to him, it would be very taboo, as it’s something he feels he can never have.

A short while ago, I blogged about how my stories aren’t necessarily the dirtiest, but it’s what I want to write, so I’ll keep writing them. It’s the same with taboos — if I were to attempt a taboo, I might hit a niche with a hot market and start selling better, but my heart wouldn’t be in it. As many of the authors around here have said in the past few weeks, we write what we are compelled to write. Most authors will tell you they don’t really have a choice in the matter — they either write or they go crazy with all the story ideas in their heads. It’s like a faucet — you open it up and what comes out is what comes out. It might not be what’s hottest on the market, but it’s what we’re working with.

Some readers will continue to call my stories boring and for others I’ll be lighting the fuse on their erotic imagination. Writers can’t please everyone; no writer can claim that their target audience is all readers. So, if we can’t please everyone, then we shouldn’t write for everyone, we should write for ourselves.

For me, that means my “taboo” is illicit sex — it’s fairly vanilla (some mutual jerking, move to oral, end with anal), but it tends to be cloaked in the forbidden (teacher/student, jock/nerd, etc.). What I’m after isn’t necessarily “how raunchy can I make this?”, it’s more “how is this story going to unfold?”



Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Forbidden Desires: The Complete Series. He is publisher at and co-founder of Deep Desires Press and a member of the Indie Erotica Collective. He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.