Farenheit ForFucksSake... Authors and Overreaction.

Not a good week for novelists, then. It does seem as though Patrick McLaw, the American schoolteacher whose case was scaring the crap out of writers in both hemispheres, was picked up for more than just writing a couple of ropey science fiction novels, though actual details are still not very available. At the same time, it's not all that surprising that the idea of a teacher being hounded out of his job and marched off for a forcible psychiatric evaluation just for writing stories was so terribly plausible. To anyone on this side of the Atlantic who keeps even half an eye on US politics, the Yanks have been looking steadily more mental for the last few years. Despite having replaced the war-mongering, jeezus-jumping Bush thicko with a bloke who at least appears capable of dressing himself in the morning, America seems to be sliding back into a semi-primordial soup of violent racism and scary institutionalised misogyny.

Over here, though, we're not doing much better. Council worker Bettina Bunte has also lost her education-related job because she wrote a book - in her case, an erotic novel based on personal experience. Once again, there is possibly  more to this story than the information available to the public at present - if Ms Bunte was writing under a pseudonym, how did parents of the children she worked with know about her book? Was she using the fact of her employment by the council in an education-related capacity as a selling point? The latter seems unlikely given that she used a pseudonym.

Writers of erotica - along with horror writers - have had years of putting up with stupid bucketheads who seem to have only the barest understanding of what fiction actually is, because they don't ever read books. Ms Bunte makes no secret of the fact that her novel is based on her own life story, but it's a novel, not a memoir. Mr McLaw's novels are set nearly a millenium into the future, so whatever life experiences he may have drawn on to write them, they are not depictions of actual or imminent events. Some of us who are in the business of writing erotic stories do sometimes base a key scene on something we once did or at least wanted to do, but all of us get very tired of being asked if we have as much sex as our characters.

At present, it's still fairly unlikely that anyone's going to try and revive the Witchcraft Act in order to bang JK Rowling up for casting real spells but the idea that novelists can and should be persecuted for what they have their fictitious creations do is a worrying one, and it needs to be loudly opposed.

Screwdriver!

**** EDITED**** Link to the rest of the party now works!

Fancy a drink? Those of you who read this blog for the feminist rantings might want to run off elsewhere for the day – or not. You might want to sit down, grab a stiff one and join the fun.

Today I’m piling on on the Kinky Cocktail Party which has been organised by Kristina Lloyd to launch the blog tour for her new novel, Undone, which centres on a cocktail bar. Checking out both the book and the rest of the antics going on all over the Web on the theme today is strongly recommended.

So I picked Screwdriver as a cocktail, even though I’m more of a pint-of-cider type, because I fancied talking about science, research and technology in erotic fiction.

I am an absolute bollock when it comes to mechanical, practical stuff. I had trouble changing lightbulbs until I started living alone in my late 20s and got deservedly mocked for trying to make visitors do it for me. However, this didn’t stop me having various goes at writing sci fi stories in my teens, and even having one published in the late, lamented Erotic Stories some time in the 90s. You don’t have to understand the precise working procedures of the internal combustion engine to have your heroine jump into a car and drive over to the house of the person she fancies fucking the arse off tonight. You do, maybe, need to know the order in which one switches off the handbrake, looks in the mirror, tunes the radio and puts the car into fifth gear, or whatever if you are going to mention these details because getting them wrong will make you look a bit of a dipstick. But given that the majority of readers not only know how to drive cars but do the basic list of actions involved in starting a car and driving it away so frequently that they hardly think about them, it’s actually a bit strange to itemise every stage of the process when writing a story that’s predominantly about sex and other human interactions.

With sci fi, or steampunk, or fantasy, you’re making it all up anyway, but it helps to think it through and make your making-up comply with your story’s internal logic. A story-universe full of horny goblins and Merrie England naughty peasants is not going to have its conflict resolved convincingly by someone Googling the problem. If there’s a bit of your hard science and hardcore BDSM tale of interplanetary buggery where someone needs to fix the landing pods, you might need to involve some sort of Alien Beans instead of Magic Woo Beans for this to work.

Either way, you can’t get by without a little research. Be aware of the classic tropes (and the relevant laws of time, motion, gravity, energy etc) whether your subject matter is spooks or spaceships. Writing about vampires, for example, means deciding in advance whether or not they have an issue with garlic and religious iconography and, quite probably, acknowledging the choice you made somewhere within the story given that, like driving a car, most of your readers will have some sort of idea of how to get rid of all those pesky biters.

I’m currently working on a steampunk story which features an orgasm-powered train. I did my research, or some of it anyway, at a steam museum. No, I didn’t offer to demonstrate my theory.

The Glory That Was Geekfest

Having gone along to the first Nine Worlds Geekfest last year to sell stuff, along with Miss Deadly Glamour, and had a completely wonderful time, I was even more thrilled to be attending this year as an actual speaker/performer/workshopper.

I am a thoroughly subcultural, non-mainstream old bird and always have been - give me pagans, perverts and morris dancers over z-list slebs and hipster hangouts any day - and one of the reasons I love these types of event is that you meet nicer people. Nine Worlds deserves particular praise in this area for managing to host an event that is hugely inclusive and accessible without the organisers ever getting tiresomely officious about it. It's just a done deal - all kinds of people are attending: everyone's got the right to be there and enjoy him/herself without being pestered or mocked or patronized or chivvied about.

To my great regret, I was only able to be there on the Friday, but I made the most of my time. Cosplay is something I admire but am generally crap at, being lazy, skint and not much cop at handicrafts. However, I did happen to have a nice gold frock in the wardrobe and, after some consideration, decided that it would form the basis of a Muse costume (given that my official reason for being there was to help Kristina Lloyd run a workshop on erotic writing along with a Smut Slam).

(gold frock, Cthulhu necklace and laurel wreath - job done!)

Admittedly it might have been smarter to wait till after I had done my bit before diving into the messy injuries make-up workshop and putting on a zombie face. But no one seemed to mind my sunken eyes and smears of fake blood.

Despite a couple of technical hitches at the beginning, our workshop went off well, and people seemed to enjoy being given a selection of short passages to transform from one genre to another (steampunk to BDSM, lesbian spanking to paranormal het romance, etc) and the standard of work read out at the later Smut Slam was pretty damn good as well. Kristina and I agreed that, in the spirit of inclusiveness and good sportingness and stuff, we would not give the prize to any of our mates even though several were in the room having been pestered by us to enter the contest in case no one else did, but luckily all the writers who were new to us were brilliant too, and it was actually a difficult decision to make.

And I have lost the bit of paper on which I wrote down the winners' names, which is extremely crap of me. But you were wonderful and I hope you enjoy your books.

Next year, I am definitely going to go for the entire weekend. Even if it means repeated 4-hour night bus journeys while dressed as some kind of alien.

Trans and Terfs and Tossers and Tantrums (part 1)

This whole tiresome unpleasant ongoing ruck seems to me to have two main causes.

Some people can’t accept that they are not the centre of the fucking universe

Some people find that being progressive is no fun unless they can find a moral justification to be absolutely horrible to other people.

(Peace. Smell the flowers. Be excellent or at least not a raging arsehole)

So some trans activists behave as though their worst and most dangerous enemies are feminists, and some radical feminists behave as though all trans people are their worst and most dangerous enemies. This isn’t two bald men fighting over a comb, it’s two lots of people in a burning house blaming each other for having left the bath running instead of helping each other climb out of the window. While a whole mob of other people outside are either hurling petrol onto the flames or loading marshmallows onto sticks for toasting.

That paragraph alone’s going to make some people decide that I’m One Of The Bad Ones.

I actually believe what I believe (and hope) the vast majority of other people believe – that everyone else should be entitled to go about their daily business unmolested. That it’s not OK to attack or try to kill or threaten to kill people because of what they are (different ethnic group, gender, belief system, social class, gender identity) rather than condemning or acting against them because of what they do (thieves, murderers, abusers, bigots, warmongers).

Transpeople and radical feminists have a lot in common, really. Both groups want an end to hetcis male violence against them. The vast majority of violent attacks on any kind of people are committed by heterosexual cismen. When it comes to violent physical attacks on other people for disagreeing, or being different, the tally of such attacks committed by radical feminists in the name of radical feminism comes to…

Er…

Well, OK, Valerie Solanas. Maybe. She did shoot Andy Warhol, though he didn’t die.

Um…

When I was a newbie feminist I heard stories of an attack on a lesbian SM club called Chain Reaction, which was perpetrated by a radical feminist group and involved physical violence (the club premises smashed up and clubgoers hurt; at least one needing to be taken to hospital). But no one died. And that’s the only incident of major violence perpetrated by radical feminists that I have ever heard of.

LGBT people and feminists, despite all the various differences in policies and priorities, should all be allies against a worldwide culture that considers them less fully human than heterosexual cismen.

But it seems that, at the moment, some transpeople and transactivists are turning all their firepower on the group that has the least amount of actual power to act against them. Just as some radical feminists are focussing all their rage on a small group with little actual power.

This post is already getting enormous so, actually, will do the rest of it in a day or so. I haven’t finished.

Anthologies: Something for Everyone

That’s a line I use when I’m in one of my favourite positions – standing behind a table decked with books and facing a horde of eager money-waving punters (not three tramps and a stray dog who’ve come in to get warm, oh no not at all). I’ve heard it said that, in general, publishers don’t much like anthologies of short stories by different authors, and that readers don’t like them either. Either this is as much of a crock as most received wisdom, or it’s just another case of erotic fiction in general being an exception to most of the rest of the rules.

Because, as a veteran flogger of mucky books (damn near 20 years at the London Fetish Fair, quite a bit of time spent at the Birmingham Bizarre Bazaar and Bristol’s SWAMP kink market not to mention about a dozen Eroticas) I have always found it easier to coax buyers into shelling out for an anthology than a novel.

This may be partly down to erotica as a genre being low profile – few people could name more than one* erotica author unless they are already enthusiasts – and individual titles not, on the whole, being promoted via billboards or TV advertising in the way that even midlist crime/chicklit/sci-fi books usually are. The potential buyer, particularly if s/he has not read much erotic fiction, may not be so keen to gamble that one novel out of a tempting array of titles is The One That Will Get Me Off when, for the same price or maybe even less, a collection of works by different authors has far better odds of containing at least one story or scene that speaks directly to the reader’s personal arousal triggers.

Anyway, all that said, I’ve actually got stories in three different newly-hatched collections, so I can hustle and bamboozle you all into shopping with even more choice.

First, for those of you who like a bit of femdom, Nexus have finally released Hell In High Heels 2, a seriously filthy selection of stories featuring dominant women. The story I sent in to that collection involves a mature and rather aristocratic domina of the old school, her maid and some creative and potentially risky fun and games with bramble cables. Those of you who read Black Heart might find you recognise a couple of the characters, as well…

You can grab that for your e-reader only...

Still in femdom corner but a bit more subtle and sensuous and all that, is the story I have in Smut By The Sea 3. The heroine is looking back on the first summer she spent away from home and the things she learned about her own inclinations. And if you think you remember her from a few previous efforts of mine, well, you might just be right about that. The Smut anthologies are generally light-hearted fun rather than mind-altering intensity and more at the erotic romance end of the scale than the hardcore one, but good summer reading all the same.

You can download that or buy an actual book

But if you want something completely different, check out Valves and Vixens, a book of steampunk erotica. I remember getting all unnecessary over myself when I read the requirements for this one, as it meant I finally had a chance to write about one of my favourite mad sci-fi-type theories: orgone accumulation. Do what? Well, it’s a theory originally put about by one Wilhelm Reich to the effect that intense emotions make the human brain emit energy particles which can be harvested. Sort of. There’s no evidence that this is anything other than complete bollocks, but as a starting point for a story? Get in!

Again, up to you whether you want it as a download or a paperback

So whether you’re looking to load up the Kindle before hitting the beach or prefer a paper copy on the grounds that physical books are more forgiving if dropped off a pedalo or covered in sangria, hope this helps you pick your summer reading.

Naughty naughty bitey bitey

I know it's not really funny, and it must have fucking hurt. But when Wossname bit Thingy in that football match, it did acheive the almost unthinkable - it made me actually take a bit of notice of the World Cup. I even went as far as googling 'Bitey Footballer' so I could find out that the one with the sharp teeth is called Suarez and the poor sod with the teethmarks is called Ivanovic. Or Chellini. Or something. There are limits to my patience when it comes to researching stuff, but what I did find out is that Mr Bitey is Mr Bitey Bitey Bitey - he has previous for sinking fang into other players.

And at least one other someone has speculated about whether this is demonstration of a fetish. Well, OK, that's the point at which I actually get moderately interested, though I don't particularly think it is a fetish in his case, more of a nasty habit. Despite the deranged bullshit that was the Janus Report, most people know that most people with fetishes only enact them with consenting adults or the inanimate object of their choice and don't randomly leap at the unwilling in order to gratify themselves with no warning. Suarez probably bites because he's an overexcited, overpaid, overindulged brat in a fleeting high-pressure situation. End of. If he's particularly good at football, his employers should just put him in a muzzle for the next few games.

As fetishes go, biting's one of those that's both borderline mainstream and moderately risky. Lots of people who wouldn't call themselves kinky, exactly, get off on 'paranormal romance' ie vampire porn. The original Dracula novel certainly pulsates with subtle, euphemistic sexuality, and every teenager knows the illicit thrill of the lovebite (and the combined embarrassment and pride of the morning after and trying to decide whether to flaunt or conceal the unmistakable marks). At the same time, the human mouth is actually a great deal dirtier than you think, even if you floss, and a human bite which breaks the skin is likely to become miserably infected pretty quickly.

So commiserations to Cielini or Ivan or wossname, and I hope someone was quick with the TCP when it happened. And thanks, sort of, to Suarez. Because at least now I have an idea for a good BDSM short story.

Oh, and this is not the start of the zombie apocalypse. He wasn't trying to eat the other bloke's brain.

Sex and secret identities

I was reading a series of posts by Charlie J Forrest earlier this evening while pondering some identity issues of my own. My concerns are to do with the fact that I have just landed a bit of a part time Proper Job which will demand respectability and grown-upness of me, and my most overwhelming thought is: thank FUCK my blog, Other Me's blog, both Twitter accounts and my main Facebook account are under a name which is not actually my real, legal, taxpaying-and-voting name, so no little beancounter in an office miles away is going to make the connection and fire me for the modern equivalent of moral turpitude before I've even picked up my first paycheck.

Nearly all erotica writers use pseudonyms. I can only think of a handful who write under the name that is genuinely the one on their passports and birth certificates (and no, I'm not going to say who. It's their business). In the 90s, writers tended to pick elaborate, glamorous names for themselves, simply because they could - and the recieved wisdom at the time was that while readers accepted that these names were aliases, they preferred to read the writings of Rock Steele or Violetta Harlequin-Hampstead to those of Ethel Figgins or Timmy Thompson. The other generally accepted view was, of course, that the male writer of sexy stories was better off selling them under a female identity and the majority of male writers published by Nexus etc in those days did put their work out with a woman's name attached. So my initial reaction to Charlie's concerns was a little bit more 'Calm down love, you'll hurt yourself' than 'How dare you tell such lies to your readers?'

But things have changed in the last 20 years, as I am constantly having to remind myself. Back then, the erotic writer just wrote her or his stories, the publisher published them, they got reviewed in mags like Forum, Desire, Fetish Times or Penthouse, and on the whole the readers just read them. Some readers might speculate about the actual private life of the author, and some authors might have any amount of fun dreaming up biographies for their pseudonymous selves, but no one really cared. These days, though, everyone, even the shyest of scribblers, has to have a social media presence, preferably with a picture or two, and engage in online conversation with readers and potential readers and other writers and anyone at all. And while a pseudonym is still acceptable, a pseudo-personality is not.

I'm not entirely happy about the demand to bare your whole self to the public if you want them to buy your work. I appreciate that people have been angry about a few bloggers and memoirists who invented entire alternative lives for themselves, changing age, sex, race and ethnicity, because these authors were claiming - or at least allowing others to claim - that they were telling an important truth. A fiction writer, though, is telling a story that s/he has made up. So it seems entirely reasonable to use a pseudonym if you are so inclined. Your work isn't about truth or about the unvarnished version of yourself. It;s a story. It doesn't matter who wrote it as long as it's good.