To help celebrate my new BDSM erotica collection - from the always-great Sizzler Editions - In Control, here's the intro - hope you like!
INTRODUCTION: DISCLOSURE
I've written a lot of things
over the years: gay erotica, lesbian erotica, bisexual erotica, all kinds (of
every kind) of fetish erotica ... plus a smattering of romance, science
fiction, horror, fantasy, and even non-fiction.
But, recently, a friend of
mine said something that stopped me dead in my authorial tracks: "Why
don't you write about what turns you
on?"
To be honest, I've always
been a bit ... resistant to writing about myself. Part of it comes from the fact that I consider my sex life
to be what I guess you could call sacred:
a cherished time shared between me and the person I happen to be playing
with. I've always thought that
writers who – and this is not meant as an insult ... or not too much of one –
who sell their own sex lives on the page to be profiting from an intimate
sharing of desire. Another part, I
freely admit, is that for all my writing and sex-ed teaching I'm still a bit
shy when it comes to being out about what honestly, truly turns me on.
But, thinking about this, I
had a freeze-me-in-my-tracks revelation: I actually write a lot about myself.
Take this book, for
instance: a collection of some of my short fiction – a lot of it with a BDSM
kink: pretty much every story here is a part of me. Yes, the details may not be exactly me, but the emotional side of things – the important side as anyone
who really understands about sexuality – is pretty much as intimate as you can
get: "Alice" is the giddy nerves that comes with telling a lover what
turns you on, "Moving" is about finding that special someone you can
drop your guard down with, "In Control" is the fretting that arrives
with the next day, "The Tinkling Of Tiny Silver Bells" is the
glorious feeling of unquestioning love, "Dust" is the beautiful tears
of being forgiven, "The Waters Of Biscayne Bay" is the liberation in
the enlightened joy of a lover loving another person, Painted Doll was all about the tearing-of-the-heart from being too
many miles away, and the sample chapter from Brushes is all about the pleasure that comes from giving pleasure
... and so on and so forth, with just about everything I've ever written.
When I teach erotic writing
I talk very much about this: that the details aren't really important, that the
best way of reaching out to anyone, no matter what you are writing, is to dig
down deep and put down, onto the page, your own emotional truth. Like a lot of teachers I simply forgot
to listen to my own lesson.
So here are some stories I
sincerely hope you'll like ... for, like when I spend time with a lover, it
gives me immeasurable pleasure to put a smile on another person's face.
–M.Christian
