Why erotica?
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.
What about Bondage?
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.
Read more of this interview.