Diiiiirty...

It was really interesting reading Giselle’s post yesterday. Her experiences seem to be very much in sync with my own.

I, too, started publishing in 2006, though to look at my back catalog you wouldn’t know it. I also wrestled with the idea of going smutty and had a voice of protest in the back of my head insisting I could keep it literary, and hot, AND have the readers coming in droves. I’ve moved in circles with many of the folks who started smutty and then expanded to the more romantic genres. Plenty of them are really kicking arse, these days. Others have been only moderately successful, though in comparison to my own performance, still pretty durn amazing.

I missed the gravy train, for whatever that might be worth. And I tend to kick myself quite often, simply because I have tons of smutty ideas I never wrote. Smart-arse titles that straddle the line between porn and erotica, and which would at least raise a smile, if not a cock. As authors we often complain that readers can’t separate the writer from the story. Clearly I was struggling with that same beastie.

Though I only have three solo titles out at the moment, I’ve published many more. I just have an annoying habit of un-publishing them with a view to re-working, and then getting snowed under with more ideas.

And the more ideas I get, the smuttier they become. To me, this is a good thing.

Despite how visually permissive our world has become, there’s still an element of taboo and naughtiness in the writing of dirty stories. And let’s not make any bones (heh) about it, what we’re writing is dirty, even if it’s a sweet erotic romance.

Still, though, I wrestle with how smutty to make them, and I’m certain that comes from having grown up in a society which was still determined to paint women as either princesses or whores, and never the twain shall meet. I’m certain that when I try to make my work dirty, or even seditious, I end up holding back because I grew up still being told that women “don’t like it”. Not so much by my family, which was neither actively open nor closed about sexual matters, just ambivalent. It was more from school, and extended family, and probably just my own young brain’s interpretation of “the rules”.

Of course, I’ve since learned that many women like it dirty. And I mean really dirty. The kind of fiction I don’t know if I could even read, let alone write. Again, because of those same values which were instilled, or which I inferred.

Having said all that, my next works will actually be a sweet and daffy series of shifter stories. A three-parter, more romantic comedy than smut, but just keeping the bedroom door wide open.

I have plenty of darkness in my head and in my life to draw on. One day, perhaps. For now, I’m keeping it light.

But still dirty, of course.

Everything You Wrote Before Now Was Boring As Fuck

by Giselle Renarde

When I started writing erotica in 2006, one of the most popular blog topics was something like: Erotica versus Smut. What's the Difference?

I remember lots of authors elevating their work--you know, saying their erotica wasn't smut, wasn't porn. Their work was superior because... I don't know... reasons. You think I can remember random blogs I read 9 years ago? I can barely remember what I did this morning.

What I do remember is writing these defiant posts (maybe in my head, maybe on the internet) about how I had NO trouble calling my work smut. I embraced the term. It's sex writing. It's fucking on paper. It's smut!

Man, was I talking out of my ass. I had no idea what smut was, back then. No clue. Yeah, I'd written stuff for Hustler Fantasies, but my pieces were tame. I know that now, because I've turned a corner.

Early in my career, I primarily wrote short stories for inclusion in erotic anthologies. Literary erotica. Brainy erotica. Boring erotica.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up, there, Giselle. Did you just call literary erotica BORING?

Yeah. Or no. I called MY literary erotica boring, but I say that contextually, and I'm going to explain.

There's a certain kind of piece you write when you're submitting your work to a collection of literary erotica. The latitude you can take is enormous. What qualifies as erotic is really up to you--and your editor, of course. You can write diverse fiction. Sex can be anything.  Except porny. Because we're better than that.

How could that much room to move possibly be boring?

Well, it really depends what your readership is after. Why are they reading this story you wrote?

If they paid $15.95 for an erotic anthology, yeah, they're probably looking for literary erotica. They know what to expect. They want you to tickle their brains.

But if they paid $2.99 (or $0.99 or got it free on Amazon) for your weird-ass boring piece of shit short story, trust me, you're going to hear about it.

I speak from experience.

When the calls for submissions dried up in the land of literary erotica, I learned pretty fast that the story you write for an anthology isn't the story you publish as a standalone piece of smut.

The reader is buying your $2.99 or $0.99 or FREE ebooks to get off. Not to tickle their grey matter. Not for their horizons to be expanded. Not for their perspectives to shift so they can look at life in a different way. They're buying this piece of smut to get turned on. That's it.

I didn't learn the true meaning of smut until Lexi Wood came into being. I remember being scandalized when "Daddy" erotica was popular. (It still is popular, but you can't call it that anymore or your book will be banned.)  Suddenly Lexi comes into my life, and she's writing about stepdaddies fucking their barely-legal stepdaughters, and I find out that's where the money is.  The money's in your stepdaughter's tight virgin hole.

She drags me into her world of pure smut and I realize why so many readers have called my work boring. I wasn't giving them what they were looking for. Now that Lexi's led me to water, I'm drinking in everything sweet, tangy and taboo.

...and, GOD, do I love it...

Case in point.

Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords

A Night at the Writers Group

Last night at my writers group, waiting for that potluck dinner bell, somehow the topic turned to nude beaches.  A question of beauty.  Faye told a funny story about a couple of gay friends who had gone to the nude beach and sunned themselves for the first time.  One of them apparently hadn't thought the thing through and sunburned his dick.  They discovered this when they tried to make love.  KY Jelly doesn't fix everything.  Where was this beach, I asked.  In Georgia?  Here in the Bible Belt?  No, Florida.  Florida?  Oh, oh well.  Yes of course.  It would have to be Florida, or course, of course.

I mentioned that I wouldn’t mind spending time at a nude beach, not simply out of voyeurism, though that too, but because Nudity has a new interest to me.  Since I am temporarily living alone I spend a lot of my time walking around the house naked just because I can.  I have learned to wear an apron when I fry things, much the same way the gay guy learned not to sub burn his dick. 

“No,” she said.  “The problem with nude beaches is that I don’t want to see unlovely bodies.  I only want to see beauty.”

“You mean you only want to see beautiful people?”

“I want to see beautiful men and beautiful women celebrating their beauty.  I don’t want to see old ladies with boobs hanging to their knees and wrinkles.”

“Well,” I said, “I'm not that young at all, though so far I've managed to take care of myself.  I don't make any claims to beauty.  But the funny thing is, my ideas about beauty have changed a lot as I've gotten older.  Sex, beauty, my idea of what is erotic.  It's all different now.  You get older, your hormones are different (all the ladies nodded and rolled their eyes) and what you think is erotic or sexy, that changes too.”

“Tell me you don't think young women are beautiful,” said Faye, who was by no means young herself.

“I do, of course they are, but they're not interesting.”

Adult drinks, the ones held in ladies’ hands, paused in the air.

“Young women are sort of, I don’t know – green.  Unripe.  Unsweet.  I don’t see beauty as being so All That at my age, what I want to see is what is interesting. I want to see a woman whose body looks interesting.  A woman who herself is interesting.  Does this woman look like she would be an interesting lover? Do you know the Could You Would You game?”

Faye shook her head.  I indulged that male pleasure of having all the eyes of the women at the table suddenly on me.  I let the moment hang a little.

“Everybody plays this game.  Men and women.  You look around the room wherever you are and you look at the people and you see someone, maybe for you, a man, and you ask this - in a perfect world, maybe a parallel universe, if you could fuck that person and totally get away with it, would you?  Not like, I'm married, or maybe diseases or anything no, or Jesus doesn’t like that, but just you're in paradise and can do anything you want just because you ant it.

“Like in a dream!” said someone.

“Like a dream.  Just fuck him because you want to.  Wham.  Like that.  You play that game?

She nodded.

“Everybody plays that game,” I said, “So when I play that game, I'm not looking for the most beautiful young thing in the room.  I'm looking for a full grown woman who looks a little crazy and intense.  Yoko Ono.  Zelda to Fitzgerald.  Someone interesting.  Maybe a little scary.  I try to imagine what she’s like.  That's how I've changed.  Women think when they get older they're not beautiful anymore, but what they don’t know is that men's ideas of what beautiful looks like changes when you change.

“But interesting doesn't mean beautiful,” said Faye.

“Serena Williams isn’t beautiful,” I said, “But those thighs. Oh my God.  There isn’t a man, gay or straight, who wouldn’t love to go down on her just once and feel his skull squeezed hard between those amazing thighs.”

Some of the women looked shocked and it dawns on me that I’m going too far.

“I think smart men are sexy,” said one of the other women.  “These days it’s so hard to find a smart man who is in touch with his feelings.  A smart man in touch with his feelings is incredibly sexy no matter what he looks like.” 

“What about this,” I said, plunging ahead, pouring a sober slug of ginger ale in my plastic cup.  “What if you were going to make love with a man for the first time, and instead of him trying to prove to you what a great stud he is, he says ‘you can use my body to explore yourself.  Use my male body to explore your desires freely.  Any crazy thing you ever wanted to do with a man and were afraid to ask, now you can do it with me.  Explore your desires through me.’  Wouldn't that be good?  Even if he’s not young, and just sort of okay looking?  Wouldn’t you like that?”

A woman picked up a napkin and pretended to fan herself.

“Some men think like that too.  You think they don’t?  You ever see this movie - Take This Waltz?”

Everyone draws a blank, they haven’t heard of it. 

“It’s about marriage and relationships,” I said, “Sort of a really good chick flick.  There's this scene, after all these women have finished a swimming class, because one of the women peed in the pool, really, and these women are all in the common shower room and they're all full frontal naked and they're all talking about marriage and what's good and bad about it.  But these are real women.  None of these are professional beauties.  Black.  White.  Korean maybe.  A couple of them of chunky.  One of them's pretty old.  Body hair.  You know?  Lumpy knees. Scars. Tits pointing down.  Everything.  And I just thought they were incredibly sexy. They were so real. I'd have been happy to do any of them - could you would you – damn if I wouldn’t. I wanted to walk across the room and lick my tongue up the TV screen.  Uhhhmmmmm.”

“And you're the guy here in the group who write porno stories? said Rhonda, a younger woman with nerd eyeglasses and hospital scrubs.

“Not so porno,” I said. “Maybe that's why I don't have more readers, cause I don’t.  I could write porn.  Porn is easy to write, it's just formula and what I write isn't easy for me.  I don't go for a story unless it has soul.  See - porn and horror have similar narrative roots.  They are absolutely the oldest forms of all fiction.  You think cave men guys didn't sit around the cave fire waving their dicks at each other, telling stories about what great cocksmen they are and all the women they fucked and how they nailed them?  Guys don’t ever change. Not in a million years.  Or the shaman telling ghost stories to scare everybody at night?  Sex stories and horror stories work when you care about the people getting screwed or beheaded or whatever.  You have to care.  Or at least I do, some people don't.  I need to care.  Bad sex can be way more interesting than good sex.  I want to know what people think about when a man can’t get it up no matter how he tries, or a woman is worried if he’ll like her body. I'd rather read a real girls diary telling how she lost her virginity than any porn story any day.  That's sexy to me.  I think so anyway.”

Elle comes into the room tinkling a little hand bell.  "Food’s ready.  Come and get it.  Use the paper plates, I’m not washing dishes tonight." 

Faye stood and grabbed my arm.  “We're not done,” she said.  “Sit next to me.”

To erote or not to erote by J.P. Bowie

When I started writing actual books I was ostensibly a mystery writer - a sort of gay Agatha Christie. There was a bit of sex in there, more or less glossed over in an effort to get on with the story - as one critic stated sourly.

Recently a review site (name on request) said I was the Ann Rice of m/m vampire fiction. I kinda liked that, as I was a huge fan of Ms. Rice ever since Interview With A Vampire. I just wish this accolade was reflected in my sales! But it made me think, Ann Rice really didn't write erotica - wait a minute, that's not true. She did write a series, Sleeping Beauty under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure, but they were a far cry from the sexual relationships in her vampire series.

I'm not sure if I write erotica or not. Yes, there is sex in my books nowadays, a lot of it, but I wonder what the difference is between erotica and graphic sex. To me eroticism is more of a mood, a sultry ambience, a hint of lust, a trailing of fingers over fevered skin, a brushing of lips, a breathy whispered plea. I'm pretty sure I don't write that into my sex scenes. They tend to be more... well... graphic.

Here's an example from Ride 'em Hard Cowboy :

Warning: m/m explicit sexual intercourse for those faint of heart.

Jason pulled back slightly, eliciting a groan of protest from Joel. He dropped to his knees and flung his arms around Joel, showering his face and lips with kisses.

“You are so incredible,” he whispered. “Let me do the same for you.” He  fumbled with the fly buttons of Joel’s jeans, almost pulling them off in his haste to get at Joel’s cock. Joel lay on his back and raised his hips helping Jason to pull his jeans down. Jason’s eyes widened at the sight of the massive bulge straining at the fabric of the jockstrap Joel was wearing.

“Wow,” he murmured on a breath. Like a kid in a candy shop, his eyes gleamed with anticipation as he peeled the jock away. Joel’s cock was more than just impressive. Almost ten inches of hard throbbing flesh met Jason’s admiring gaze. Gripping it at the base, he wondered if  he could get all of it his mouth. He shivered as he imagined it all the way inside him, reaming his ass, fucking him like he’d never been fucked before. Why hadn’t he thought of bringing a condom and lube to the office? Well, because he’d thought they really were going on a lunch date. But this was so much better...

He leaned down to take the head of Joel’s cock into his mouth. Oh, so sweet, the creamy precum that pooled on his tongue, the musky masculine scent that drifted into his nostrils, the feel of hot steel under silken skin in his hand.

The low groan of pleasure that rumbled from Joel’s chest urged Jason on, his lips sliding up and down Joel’s erection, his throat opening wide to take the prodigious length and thickness all the way in. Joel’s hips bucked, another groan escaped him, his hands caressing the sides of Jason’s face.

“Oh yeah, Jason, that’s beautiful... You’re beautiful...”

Jason’s tongue swirled around the underside of Joel’s cock, sliding again and again over the thick vein that ran from the base to just under the head. Every smooth and sensual slide brought Joel closer and closer to the edge. Jason could hear the hitch in his breathing, the heavy rasping sound that told him Joel was ready. He gripped the base of Joel’s cock  and sucked harder, longer, until he was rewarded by the first spurt of cum hitting his palette. He gulped at it, swallowing it down as another followed, then yet another. Joel’s body spasmed under him, the hands that had caressed him now clutched at his hair as the bigger man lost himself in the ecstasy of his orgasm.

 
Jason slowly released Joel, pausing to lick at the last vestiges of semen from the slit.

***

See, that's graphic rather than erotic as far as I'm concerned. Okay, I have one more where I think I may have touched on the more erotic - a dialogue only - implying what was to follow:

Christmas Wishes set in England 1922

“Professor Fielding, correct?” Smiling, Professor Macpherson walked swiftly over to stand in the crook of the piano, one hand touching the polished mahogany, a gentle smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

“Correct. But please call me Christopher.”

“I prefer it to Fielding, as your friend calls you.”

“Percy calls everyone by their surname. His is a bit of a mouthful.”

“Sommers-Smythe. Yes it is. You must call me William, or Mac, if you prefer.”

“I prefer William. It’s a nice name. Strong, evocative of a man who—” Christopher stopped, uncomfortably aware that William’s eyes were twinkling with amusement. “I’m sorry, I babble too much at times.”

“Not babble... I would very much like to hear what I evoke within you.”

Dear God, does this man know what his eyes, his mouth, his smile do to me? I couldn’t stand up now for all of the tea in China...

“I... I...” For the life of him he couldn’t find words with which to form a reply.

William leaned forward resting both his arms on top of the piano and gazed into Christopher’s eyes.  “Professor Fielding, you are blushing.”

“No, no, I’m not! It’s just that it’s suddenly  damnably warm in here, and...”

“The piece you were playing when I came in...” William interrupted Christopher’s mumbling. “Would you play it again, for me?”

“What? Why, yes, of course.” Glad of something to do that would stop him from making an even bigger fool of himself, he placed his trembling hands on the keys and began to play. “It’s not quite finished. Some of the chords towards the end are still eluding me.”

William said nothing, but closed his eyes as Christopher played the piece he was composing for the end of term concert. Under his fingers, the notes rippled, the melody clear and rich, the harmonies deep and resonant. Towards the end of the piece, near the part that had been bothering him, Christopher lifted his gaze in apology and found William staring at him intently, his green eyes glistening pools of emotion. Christopher’s breath caught in his chest, his hands swept over the keys finding those elusive chords, bringing the piece to a close on a diminuendo so subtle that those last notes seemed to hang in the air for several seconds after he had lifted his hands from the keys.

The silence that followed made Christopher’s stomach roil. He hated it...

“I-I’m sorry,” he whispered, looking away from William’s impassive expression. “I said it was unfinished, that it was—”

“It is beautiful.”

“Wh-what?”

“The piece you have just played. I have never heard anything more beautiful.”

 “Oh, surely...”

“Hush.” William moved slowly nearer to Christopher, then dropped down onto the bench, sitting so close that their thighs were pressed together. He took Christopher’s hand in his and raised it to his lips.  “Almost as beautiful as the composer. Almost.”

“William... I...”

Somewhere in the building, a bell sounded, marking the end of a class, breaking the spell that had been cast over both men. William stood quickly, but remained looking down on Christopher’s upturned face.

"My apologies if I have overstepped the mark.” His voice was deep, the gentle burr lending it a subtle allure that Christopher found irresistible. “Your music sparked something inside me I found hard to ignore.” His smile, though solemn, was nonetheless beguiling. “See what you have evoked within me?”

Christopher's eyes widened as he stared at the tell tale bulge behind William's fly. 

***