The topic of safe sex in erotic fiction comes up all the time amongst writers and readers. I recently had a run-in with someone who was disturbed by the fact that the characters in many of my novels and short stories, don’t wear condoms. It’s true. They don’t. They don’t because they live in the fictional world I’ve created, an erotic world designed to play out my fantasies and, I hope, those of other people as well. The truth is that never once have I had an erotic fantasy that involved the use of a condom. I have written a couple of stories in which condoms are used, but in those stories, I didn’t use condoms to make a statement nor to assume that my readers needed reminding that in the real world, safe sex is a must. Rather, condoms played a role in the development of the story.
My stories are my fantasies, entirely and completely the product of my imagination. I’m a firm believer that my readers are intelligent and savvy and very aware of the world around them. I also understand that some people prefer their fiction and their fantasies more realistic. Fair enough. Fortunately for them, there are writers who prefer to write that way. I don’t happen to be one of them.
It’s ironic that the stringent rules and regulations that apply to erotic fiction do not apply to other kinds of fiction. I understand that some of those guidelines in erotica have to do with the publisher knowing the target audience. But In other types of fiction, subjects are covered all the time that are completely forbidden in most standard erotic guidelines for submission, and yet no one expects that readers of non-erotic fiction should need to be reminded that guns are dangerous and murder and rape are wrong.
I have written stories for which the submission guidelines demanded the use of condoms in all scenes involving penetrative sex. I gritted my teeth and wrote what the guidelines dictated. But it seems to me that the message such guidelines send is two-fold. First of all that because erotica is about sex, it’s automatically more dangerous than other types of fiction, and secondly that readers of erotica are just not as smart as readers of other types of fiction and they must have extra instruction and guidance to equip them for the reading of such dangerous material.
Do we really believe that people are more ignorant where erotic literature is concerned, and more likely to cause themselves and others harm than they are if they read any other kind of literature? Do we really believe that if the character in a story has a gang bang without the use of condoms that the reader will automatically think this must be what sex is all about, and go out and try it for her or himself?
Erotica is, by its very nature, the place where the reader can experience for him or herself what would never be considered safe in the real world, what, given the opportunity to do in the real world, given the opportunity to participate in, her or his response would be an unequivocal ‘No thanks.’ Is it any different than a thriller or a horror story, or an adventure novel?
The whole point of a novel is to live vicariously a life that one wouldn’t have the opportunity, and more than likely wouldn’t even want to live, if one did have the opportunity. Commercial fiction is all about vicarious thrills and vicarious experiences from the safety of our own home. That’s why reading is so much fun.
I believe readers should be given credit for discernment, credit for being as savvy about the differences between erotic fiction and reality as they are about the differences between other kinds of fiction and reality. I’m not saying that fiction can’t be didactic. And indeed part of the beauty of fiction is that it offers the inadvertent opportunity to learn something new. What I am saying is that I tell stories. I tell stories for fun in a world that, I think, could use more fun. If there are lessons taught, they come about inadvertently while I’m having fun telling a story. But I don’t feel a deep burning need to tell my readers to do what they already know to do, what they’ve been aware of every moment of their lives from the time their old enough to understand that the world is a dangerous place. And sometimes the world adults must live and function in can be a boring place as well. If they’re like me, and I assume at least some of them are, that dangerous world, that boring world, is a very large part of the reason they enjoy fiction so much.
And they enjoy it while they continue to stop for red lights and level crossings, while they continue to treat their fellow person with respect, and while they continue to practice safe sex, all without having to be reminded that these things are for their own good.
It’s a pleasure to welcome one of my very favourite writers and a good friend, Justine Elyot, back to my site, and this time writing in one of my very favourite genres! Welcome, Justine!
Guesting at K D’s blog always feel like an event and I’m delighted to be here under her glamorous spotlight. Thanks, K D!
I’ve been writing and publishing erotica for five years now and I’ve tried my hand at a number of different styles and sub-genres. If I’m known for anything, it’s probably for contemporary erotica with a substantial dose of kink. But I enjoy reading and writing a diverse range of stories and all those kinky city women with their deliciously dominant lovers aren’t the only string to my bow.
I’ve written a speculative fiction novel (Under His Influence for Carina Press), a paranormal novel (Saxonhurst Secrets for Xcite) and an historical novel (Secrets And Lords for Mischief). And now I’m going back to my roots and experimenting with fantasy with Princess In Chains, the first in a trilogy for Xcite.
I say ‘going back to my roots’ because fantasy books were my absolute favourite as a child. We start with fairy tales, and I stuck with them, having a passion for the Narnia books that led to me borrowing them all from the library six times in a row. Quests, adventures, desperate escapes and rescues – these were rocket fuel to my developing imagination. And you will find all of that kind of thing in Princess In Chains.
You won’t find the controversial allegories of world faiths that you find in C S Lewis’s work though – my kingdoms have religions of their own, or they have no religions. Some of them are up to their ears in strange superstitions and some of them are solidly practical. Some are afraid of sex and some embrace sexuality in all its glorious forms and fluidity. None of them are exactly like a real place – at least, I hope not.
It’s a tiny little bit like Narnia, a little (but not much because everyone is human) like Middle Earth, a little more like Westeros. If that sounds like a place you could visit, perhaps you’d like an excerpt:
Asta was being borne away, aloft, by a trio of rough-looking men. They were some yardlings distant, but if she ran…
She put down her head and cannoned through the press, Taran hot at her heels, shouting imprecations behind her.
‘They have her,’ she explained, turning her head for a moment. ‘My…they have her.’
But the crowd was too thick and too unpredictable in its patterns of movement and she could not get close, no matter how she flailed and kicked. One man turned and grasped her arm, yelling at her for knocking down his small son. That was all the time Taran needed to catch up with her.
‘Mind your woman,’ growled the man, over Taran’s apologies. ‘If I were you I’d get her home and let her work out her passions on the washtub.’
‘Perhaps I will,’ said Taran. ‘Asta. Calm yourself. Are you saying that your mistress has been assaulted?’
‘They are taking her,’ said Leonore, waving in the direction of her last sighting.
‘What did you see?’
‘Three men, wild-looking fellows…oh, what do they mean by taking her?’
‘Let’s follow their direction. Perhaps we can find them.’
They crossed the square, past the swinging corpse in the gibbet, through more crazed dancing, which had started up again regardless of the pother.
Their wanderings led them to a side alley, but it was quiet. If the abductors had passed that way, they had moved quickly. Or perhaps they were inside one of these shuttered buildings.
Leonore stopped abruptly before one of them, seeing again the strange conglomeration of triangles on the doors and walls.
‘One of the men – his arm was tattooed with this sign. At least, I think it was.’ She turned to Taran. ‘What does it mean?’
‘Valish Liberation,’ said Taran. ‘An organisation that seeks to overthrow Corvin from the throne.’
She tugged at the voluminous material of his sleeve.
‘Then that is a clue as to her whereabouts. He must be one of these freedom fighters. They have perhaps kidnapped her – for a ransom? Or…she is a political prisoner of some kind.’
‘Or they are just ruffians who wanted a woman.’
‘There were whores a-plenty out in that square. Why take a noblewoman, except for the purposes I have named?’
I’m very excited to prance about and show off the gorgeous cover for Fulfilling the Contract, which is book two in The Mount Trilogy and the sequel to The Initiation of Ms Holly. And to celebrate the occasion, I’ve added a juicy excerpt to titillate and entice. Fulfilling the Contract will be out in paperback 13 February, just in time to make Valentine’s Day sizzle, and in eBook even sooner! Who says what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?
Blurb for Fulfilling the Contract:
Limo driver, NICK CHASE’s bad night gets worse when he picks up TANYA POVIC at a bar only to discover the explosive sex they share lands her in breach of her very strange contract. Blaming himself that Tanya will lose the large completion bonus earmarked for her mother’s surgery, Nick negotiates with her boss, the tough and mysterious ELSA CRANE, to allow him to fulfill Tanya’s contract and secure her bonus.
Elsa runs Mount Vegas, which offers voyeuristic pleasures for a price. Nick’s job, with Elsa and her quirky team, is to give clients something worth watching through the plate glass windows of Vegas’s luxury hotels and beyond. The learning curve is steep and kinky. As Nick and Elsa’s relationship sizzles and ignites more than hotel room rendezvouses are exposed. In this sequel to The Initiation of Ms Holly things get positively dangerous as Rita Holly and her team are called in from London to lend a helping hand. Bets are being placed. Will Nick fulfil the contract? Will he and Elsa take the gamble? And will they find a way to win at the high stakes, double or nothing, game of hearts?
Excerpt from Fulfilling the Contract:
Elsa looked down at the specs she had discussed with Mrs. Keyser. It was another virgin loses her cherry to a surly billionaire scenario, which would be nicely spiced up by having the head of The Mount in London and the owner of its club playing the billionaire and his virgin. Rita and Edward’s involvement would raise Mount Vegas’ profile considerably within the organization, and it would be a voyeuristic treat for the whole team.
Originally she’d had Tanya in mind for the roll of the virgin with Deke playing the brusque billionaire Dom – he looked the part. Thankfully the idea had totally intrigued Rita and Edward or Elsa would have ended up playing the virgin. Though she never thought of herself as anything but worldly, she had the look that would have worked. She loathed the role of playing a sub almost as much as she loathed the role of a virgin. With Tanya gone, though, she supposed she should get used to it. There was at least one billionaire and virgin fantasy a month since Fifty Shades of Grey.
She forced her attention back to Mrs. K.’s specs, which she had entitled The Billionaire Buys a Virgin Bride.
The plot was simple. The billionaire buys the virgin as his bride to pay off her family’s gambling debt. Of course that bit was all in Mrs. K.’s head. The actual fantasy would begin in the Wedding Chapel. Mrs. K. wanted that part included, with a kinky little scene before hand in which the billionaire checks out his merchandise just to make sure he gets what he paid for. Well that was a nice touch, Elsa thought. She wrote down a few notes about a discrete, but filthy feel-up and probe of the little innocent to make sure she really was a virgin under all that white taffeta. Elsa added some very naughty ideas about the groom guiding his little bride’s virgin hand to the fly of his tux for her first fondle of his very expensive junk. It was shaping up nicely for a billionaire/virgin fantasy.
After the happy couple say their ‘I do’s’ there would be hot sexy foreplay in the limo on the way to the hotel. Elsa could imagine lots of dirty talk on the part of the billionaire about his new bride’s lovely tits and her tight little slit that he was all bulging and hard to fuck. All the while the little virgin would be blushing and squirming and moistening the crotch of her wedding panties, or lack there-of – oooh, that was better yet, make the little dear walk down the aisle without any undies!
‘Oooh Mr. Chase, please be gentle with me. I’ve never been with a man before and you’re sooo biiig,’ Elsa said out loud in a mock-girlish voice. Foreplay in a limo. Of course it would be Nick Chase she’d think of. After he had stormed off last night, she’d given herself a serious finger fucking when she was alone in her bed trying to unwind after a day that had gone on forever. It wasn’t just the thought of him coming into Mount Vegas to finish out Tanya’s contract, all knight-in-shining-armor-like, it was that he’d even consider such a thing to begin with – blaming himself for Tanya’s bad behaviour. Okay, so he’d left in a huff when he found out what fulfilling her contract would involve, but he left with a hard-on, and one it didn’t take 20/20 vision to see. Five would get you twenty he’d had to stop and jerk off before he got back home. She wondered if he’d even made it out of the building before he’d had to answer the call.
God, how she’d love the chance to handle that cock! Wouldn’t it have been something if Nick Chase had agreed to finish out Tanya’s contract? Elsa’s panties definitely got moister at the thought. Wouldn’t she love the chance to train that boy up? With those drowning-deep cinnamon eyes and that slightly mussed bedroom hair that had the bronze shimmer of desert heat about it. Training him would be no hardship. He’d be a huge hit with the clients. She wished she’d have found a way to get that shirt off him. It was quite obvious the man was built for filth, and he was not the kind of a man she figured spent hours in the gym to get that way. He spent time in the sun, she’d bet. The bit of research she’d managed before he stormed the castle to rescue Tanya said that he owned a place with a couple acres outside town and that he’d inherited the limo business from his father. Not his first choice, the Vegas limo business, especially not for someone with Nick’s background. She wondered if his hands were calloused. She loved the feel of callouses against her more sensitive bits. She crossed her legs to get a good squeeze where she needed it and thought about guiding Nick Chase’s fingers to those sensitive bits to check for callouses.
It was hard to get comfy in her chair as she read through Mrs K.’s specs. Seriously she would almost be willing to play the submissive virgin if Nick Chase were her billionaire, and certainly he had that surly billionaire look about him. And oh the way he did guilt! Mrs. K. would burn out her vibrator in a fit of lust at the very sight of him ‘de-virginizing’ Elsa. Elsa was just reaching in the drawer for her own vibrator to see where fantasies of Nick Chase ‘de-virginizing’ her might lead when there was a knock on the door, and her second in command stepped in without waiting for her invitation.
He smiled as she stuck the vibe back in its place. ‘You thinking about last night? I had a good wank afterwards. Chase is hot. I don’t mind saying I was disappointed to see him leave so quickly.’ He nodded down to the drawer where she kept her toys. ‘You want me to give you a few minutes? Or I can take care of you if you’d like.’
‘Thanks, Pike.’ She offered him a wave of her hand. ‘I’d love to take you up on it, but today I really don’t have time, so it’s a good thing you got here when you did. Now that we’re short-handed, I’ve got to re-shuffle everyone for tonight’s little adventure. Deke’s already set to play our big-name magician. Turns out he even knows a few magic tricks, but Tanya was supposed to be his buxom assistant who gets it up the ass in the disappearing cabinet.’
Pike nodded. ‘That was a nightmare to get cameras set up in. Leave it to Darnell Peters to complicate things.’
‘Yes but he pays well and he’s kinky as hell. And he adores watching Tanya.’
Pike sat one tightly jeaned ass-cheek on her desk and smiled down at her. ‘But he likes watching you even better.’
‘She was prepared for the role. I’m not.’
‘That never stopped you, Elsa. You’re great at pulling an act out of your ass. You’re upset about letting Tanya go, that’s all.’
She stared past him at the wall behind. ‘It was the right thing to do, Pike.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘If it had been me, I’d have done it a long time ago. Nobody’s that good. Personally –’ he leaned over the desk and brushed a quick kiss across her lips ‘—I’m still hoping our lovely Mr. Chase will have spent a sleepless, guilt-ridden night and rush back to us all ready to take on Tanya’s contract. I saw you slip the card into his pocket.’
She forced a little laugh. ‘Always an optimist, aren’t you, Pike?’
‘Always a pessimist, aren’t you, Elsa?’ He stood and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. ‘I think we haven’t seen the last of Mr. Chase. If I were to venture a guess, Tanya’ll harass him until the poor guy’ll take on her contract just to get her to leave him alone.’
‘Or he’ll take out a restraining order,’ Elsa said. Then she added. ‘Even if he did come back and he did agree to finish out Tanya’s contract, he’d never last two months. Hell I doubt he’d make it through one week.’
‘It’s Vegas,’ Pike said. ‘I’ll bet you he’ll call back in less than 48 hours, probably unable to shut out the guilt or Tanya’s badgering, or all the nasty thoughts he’s had about what he saw last night.’
Elsa was reminded again why she loved her second in command so much. He had a way of always convincing the pessimist in her that the glass was half full. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘I’ll bet you we won’t see him again. If I win, I get one of your fabulous back rubs.’
He offered her a filthy look. ‘With all the trimmings?’
‘All the trimmings,’ she said.
‘And if I win, like it or not, you’ll be my sub in the next dungeon fantasy. Though I suppose before we shake on it, I should warn you I’ve stacked the deck.’
‘Oh?’ She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him.
‘I accidentally sent Tanya Mr. Chase’s cell phone number last night before I went off to beddy-bye.’ He stopped her response with quick kiss. ‘And no need to play shocked. I got it from you, my lady. You’re not the only one who has access to Mount Vegas research.’ He made quotation marks in the air with his fingers to emphasize the word “research.’” He looked at her from under a dramatically drawn brow. ‘You weren’t thinking of calling him yourself, were you?’
‘I certainly wasn’t.’ She replied. ‘And frankly, I don’t think it’ll matter even if you did give his number to Tanya. He fucked her once and got more than he bargained for. End of story. And he doesn’t have to answer his calls, so yes, Mr. Smart Ass. I’ll take your bet.’ She stretched in her chair and twisted her neck from side to side. ‘I really could use a good back rub.’ She offered him her hand.’
‘It’s a bet then,’ he replied shaking on it. Then he dusted a kiss across the back of her knuckles. ‘I’ll have the dungeon made ready.’
She reached up and gave his cheek a playful slap. ‘You do that. I always like my people to have a well prepared work place. Now can we take a look at this week’s agenda and see how we can minimize the loss-of-Tanya-damage.’
To Rome With Lust, Book 3 of The Mount Series, Coming November 2014
Hypnotist, Darren Braid, is getting ready to launch a new line of erotic hypnosis CDs. A potential publicist suggests that he collaborate with her other clients, wannabe film producer Scott Sunderland and his discovery Liza Hill. Her plan calls for Darren to hypnotize Liza and transform her into a dominatrix. Sunderland will film the transformation and produce a series of BDSM videos.
But shortly after Darren begins hypnotizing the starlet, repressed memories of her childhood abduction begin to surface. Investigating further, he and FBI Agent, Kristen Parker, discover that Liza had been stolen as a child and sold to a ring of pedophiles. While they help Liza deal with her trauma and build her self-esteem, they discover she can identify one of the FBI’s most wanted, a sadist who mentors pedophiles in hidden regions of the internet. The FBI has never identified this man offline, but finding him is their only hope of tracing Liza’s origin. To find her birth mother, Darren and Kristen must help Liza control her fear and face the man who tortured her as a child.
Excerpt
“Braid!” Kristen Parker pounded on his apartment door. She couldn’t hear anything inside, but it was almost 10 pm. He had to be in there. “Braid, I’m not going away. Open this door.”
After pounding for several minutes, Kristen finally heard the bolt being drawn. She didn’t wait for him to open the door. As soon as it was unlocked, she pushed her way inside.
She caught a glimpse Latoya Douglas standing by the sofa before reeling on the hypnotist. “You should have told me.”
“Told you what?”
“Liza. You should have told me she’s being abused.”
“I didn’t see anyone abuse her, did you?”
“No, of course not. But he is, and you know it. Or you wouldn’t have told me to watch her. Sunderland has got her so messed up, she afraid to even form an opinion, let alone express one.”
“Maybe, but her problems could just as well be the result of past abuse. Unless we see it, or she complains, there’s no way to know for sure.
Kristen gaped at him until she remembered that he had been a psychology professor as well as a hypnotist. He might actually know what he was talking about.
Kristen fumed as she turned away. But Latoya’s presence brought her up short. The slender black woman wasn’t moving. She stood completely still. She wore high heals and a black lace corset, which left her shoulders complete bare. The lace was cut high over her thighs, and dipped low in front of her breasts. Hypnotized and frozen, Latoya was a statue of elegant sensuality.
Kristen had experimented a bit with other women, but always preferred men. She had the sudden feeling that Latoya Douglas could change that. She swallowed hard as she tore her eyes away.
“We have to do something.”
“Tell me what happened. First, do you want something to drink?”
Kristen nodded. “Beer, if you have it.” She sat down on the sofa and tried to avoid looking at the sexy statue two feet away.
Darren went to the kitchen and came out with an open bottle of beer. Kristen took a large swig then related her experience with the starlet.
“I was afraid of that. Her self-esteem is so badly damaged that she’s afraid to make even small decisions. It makes her totally dependent on Sunderland.”
“We have to get her out of there.”
“If you take her away from him now, she’ll become dependent on you. She has to decide to leave. And before she can do that, she has to learn to make decisions and trust them.
“What can we do?”
“Exactly what we are doing. I’m hypnotizing her, and you’re being her friend. Together, we encourage her to start eating properly and taking care of her health. Then we encourage her to start observing and thinking analytically. It’s important to get her to start exercising her own judgement; and then to start trusting her judgement. Start with other actors, then her own acting, then other aspects of her life.
“Eventually, hopefully, she’ll be able to see that she can make her life better by relying on her own judgement.”
Kristen eyed Latoya’s frozen body. “Like your uh, boy-toy here.”
“Believe it or not, Latoya is one of the most confident and capable women I’ve ever met. Her self confidence lets her enjoy being controlled in the bedroom, and taking control in the boardroom.”
Darren got a mischievous gleam in his eye. “Her self confidence even enables us to enjoy an occasional threesome.” He was obviously teasing. But seeing this stunning black woman like this, completely vulnerable, completely available, Kristen felt tempted; too tempted.
Before writing my first novel, I worked as a technical writer for 17 years. I hold a BS in Engineering and an MS in Technical Communication.
Since 2000, I’ve been pioneering the art of hyperempiria (creating sensory experience through hypnotic suggestion.) This is accomplished by integrating hypnotic language patterns, positive affirmations and NLP into the narrative of an audio story. One of my hypnosis programs, The Ultimate Kiss, was nominated for an “O” Award for Outstanding Innovation.
Well what do you know? Here it is the 4th of January already! 2014 is well and truly under way. The gym is overflowing with New Years Resolutioners; all around the world new diets have been begun as soon as the New Year hangover wears off; people stop drinking, stop smoking, begin learning Spanish or French, people promise to take better care of themselves, spend more time with good friends, waste less time in front of the telly, and the list goes on. On January 4th the universal urge to be ‘better’ in the New Year is nearly palpable in the soggy English air.
It happens every year, that urge to reflect on what has been and plan how the New Year will be better. Hope and excitement at new beginnings is so much a part of our human nature that the end of a year and the beginning of another one can’t help but be the time when we anticipate, plan change, and dare to dream of what wonderful things we can bring about in the next year. In fact there’s a heady sense of power in the New Year. I think it’s the time when we’re most confident that we can make changes, that we really do have power over our own lives. It’s the time when we’re most proactive toward those changes, those visions of the people we want to be.
Before I actually began to sell my writing, back when I dreamed of that first publication, back when there seemed to be a lot more time for navel gazing than is now, I was a consummate journaler. I filled pages and pages, notebooks and notebooks full of my reflections, ruminations and navel gazes. And nothing took more time and energy than the end of the year entry, in which I reflected on how I did on the year’s resolutions and planned my resolutions for the next. This was a process that often began in early December with me reading back through journals, taking notes, tracing down some of what I’d been reading during that year and reflecting on it. Yeah, I know. I needed to get a life!
By the time New Years Day rolled around, I had an extensive list of resolutions, each with a detailed outline of action as to how I was going to achieve it. I found that some of those resolutions simply fell by the wayside almost before the year began — those things that if I’m honest with myself, I know I’m never gonna do, no matter how much I wish I would. Others I achieved in varying degrees-ish. But sadly, for the most part, a month or maybe two into the year, that hard core maniacal urge to be a better me no matter what cooled to tepid indifference as every-day life took the shine off the New Year.
It was only when there stopped being time for such ginormous navel-gazes and micro-planning that I discovered I actually had achieved a lot of those goals that were my resolutions simply by just getting on with it. As I began to think more about how different my approach to all things new in the New Year had become the busier I became, I realised that I had, through no planning on my part, perfected the sneak-in-through-the-back-door method of dealing with the New Year. The big, bright New Year changes I used to spend days plotting and planning no longer got written down, no longer got planned out. Instead, they sort of implemented themselves in a totally unorganised way somewhere between the middle of January and the middle of February. They were easy on me, sort of whispering and smiling unobtrusively from the corners of my life. They came upon me, not in a sneak attack so much as a passing brush with someone who would somehow become my best friend.
I’m my own harsh task master. I’m driven, I’m tunnel-visioned, I’m a pit bull when I grab on to what I want to achieve with my writing. No one is harder on me than I am – no one is even close. And yet from somewhere there’s a gentler voice that sneaks in through the back door of the New Year and through the back doors of my life and reminds me to be kinder to me, to be easier on me, to find ways to rest and recreate and feed my creative self. I’ll never stop being driven. The time I’ve been given, the time we’ve all been given, is finite. And that gentler part of ourselves must somehow be a constant reminder of comfort and gentleness, of self-betterment that comes, not from brow-beating and berating ourselves, not from forced regimentation, but from easing into it, making ourselves comfortable with it. We, all of us, live in a time when life is snatched away from us one sound-bite, one reality TV show, one advert at a time. Often our time, our precious time is bargained away from us by harsher forces, by ideals and scripts that aren’t our own, and the less time we have to dwell on the still small voice, the deeper the loss.
So my resolution, my only resolution every year is to listen more carefully to that gentler, quieter part of me, to forgive myself for not being able to be the super-human I think I should be, to settle into the arms of and be comfortable with the quieter me, the wiser me who knows how far I’ve really come, who knows that the shaping of a human being goes way deeper than what’s achieved in the outer world, and every heart that beats needs to find its own refuge in the value of just being who we are, of living in the present and coming quietly and gently and hopefully into the New Year.
The topic of safe sex in erotic fiction comes up all the time amongst writers and readers. I recently had a run-in with someone who was disturbed by the fact that the characters in many of my novels and short stories, don’t wear condoms. It’s true. They don’t. They don’t because they live in the fictional world I’ve created, an erotic world designed to play out my fantasies and, I hope, those of other people as well. The truth is that never once have I had an erotic fantasy that involved the use of a condom. I have written a couple of stories in which condoms are used, but in those stories, I didn’t use condoms to make a statement nor to assume that my readers needed reminding that in the real world, safe sex is a must. Rather, condoms played a role in the development of the story.
It’s ironic that the stringent rules and regulations that apply to erotic fiction do not apply to other kinds of fiction. I understand that some of those guidelines in erotica have to do with the publisher knowing the target audience. But In other types of fiction, subjects are covered all the time that are completely forbidden in most standard erotic guidelines for submission, and yet no one expects that readers of non-erotic fiction should need to be reminded that guns are dangerous and murder and rape are wrong.
between erotic fiction and reality as they are about the differences between other kinds of fiction and reality. I’m not saying that fiction can’t be didactic. And indeed part of the beauty of fiction is that it offers the inadvertent opportunity to learn something new. What I am saying is that I tell stories. I tell stories for fun in a world that, I think, could use more fun. If there are lessons taught, they come about inadvertently while I’m having fun telling a story. But I don’t feel a deep burning need to tell my readers to do what they already know to do, what they’ve been aware of every moment of their lives from the time their old enough to understand that the world is a dangerous place. And sometimes the world adults must live and function in can be a boring place as well. If they’re like me, and I assume at least some of them are, that dangerous world, that boring world, is a very large part of the reason they enjoy fiction so much.
Blurb/Synopsis
