I have done a lot of writing, but not erotica. On December 26, 2013, I stumbled on an interesting article while reading news online. The story was about monster pornography and e-publishing. It’s a fun and fascinating read, and it focuses on a particularly important issue----censorship. Here’s the URL:

http://www.businessinsider.com/monster-porn-amazon-crackdown-sex-fantasy-bigfoot-2013-12

So I started thinking about erotica and writing. And then I got an idea. Then another. I had a story beginning to write itself in my head. The next day I wrote the first section of what became Being, Bondage, and Nothingness (the title, by the way, is a nod to Jean-Paul Sartre). As the story kept writing itself in my head, I had trouble getting to sleep at night and woke up early in the morning with whole paragraphs ready to go.

Of his stories, J.R.R. Tolkien said:

They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour…yet always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'.

While I would not consider comparing what I was writing with the works of Tolkien – and I am certain the Oxford Don would never have approved of erotica as literature – I was having that same writing experience, recording something that felt like it was already there. My initial plan was to write ‘Anna’s Story’ as a short story somewhere in the range of 7000 - 8000 words. But as I wrote, more story appeared. ‘Anna’s Story’ became the first part of BB&N at more than 10,000 words. Within a month, BB&N was complete at 26,000+ words, a novella/short novel with a nice story arc.

When I wrote the previous paragraphs in March, 2014, I did not know how much more story would appear, but now (June, 22, 2014) the Anna saga has become two more novella-length books, extending the story, plus two related short stories. Eventually, I will edit the three novellas into a single novel.

Colin Wilson includes a Note to God of the Labyrinth at the end of the book wherein he mentions Sainte-Beuve’s reference to ‘books that one reads with one hand’. This Note is well worth reading as it is an extended discussion of the nature of pornography.

So why erotica? Turns out it’s fun to write and entertaining to read, even with two hands.

My firsthand experience of bondage is limited, but not non-existent. Simple restraint of hands and feet. As I started to write the first real bondage scene in BB&N, I wanted to make the actual task of tying up someone as realistic as possible, sort of step-by-step. As I wrote, I realized just how much work bondage could be---especially if your partner is being completely submissive, i.e., a rag doll. In the end, perhaps, and as my character Mark says, bondage is more of an art form than anything else.

After poking around at Smashwords, reading the Style Guide, and sampling the writings of others, I decided the best approach to story presentation is to deliver the goods – at least some of the goods – upfront. Perhaps the fact that the first part of BB&N delivers the goods right away influenced my decision.

So no coy leading on without any fun and games before the end of the sample section.

You, dear reader, deserve to experience some of the erotic scenery before you pay out your hard-earned cash for a book. That way you can decide if the quality of writing, the tone and theme of the story, and the explicitness of the sex suit your tastes.

Nothing ruins my reading experience more than a typo or a poorly chosen word or phrase. Or forgetting which character is actually the blonde. I could go on. While it is hard for me to accept this fact, it is true: You can read and reread your writing and never find some of those typing errors. Modern word-processing software will not do it for you either. MS Word (e.g.) will not tell you that you have entered ‘for’ instead of ‘from’. You can give your work to friends and associates for review and correction; they will not find all the errors. Professional editors do not find all of these mistakes either; the world of published literature abounds with typos and such.

I want anyone who is willing to take the time (and possibly spend some money) to read my writing to have the best reading experience possible.

So, dear reader, if you should encounter a typo or misspelled word as you read my work, first, my apologies; but second and more important, please do not hesitate to send me an email with your discovery at xandrafraser@gmail.com. Thanks.

One of the wonders of e-publishing is that correcting typos and other errors is as simple as revising the text file and uploading the new version.

Now that I have completed three novellas, two short stories, and have several more related story ideas, I have come to think of e-publishing as encouraging a different way to approach story-telling. The writer has the opportunity to develop a series of inter-related stories, in both short and long form writing, and to tell those stories from different perspectives.

Not that this approach has not been used in traditional writing/publishing. In the Alexandria Quartet, Lawence Durrell recounts essentially the same story line in four books from different perspectives and in different styles. A sort of prismatic shattering of conventional literary technique. E-publishing facilitates experimentation with this approach.