Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: The Four ... Well, Five Deadly Sins. #5: Oh, Shit

Check this out: I just wrote a brand new "Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker" piece for the always-great Erotica Readers & Writers site - all my previous columns, of course, have been collected in How To Write And Sell Erotica by Renaissance Books.  Here's a tease:

Back in the 'good old days' of smut – when pornographers had to haul their steaming piles of sexually explicit materials up four and five flights of stairs – a certain writer with a gleam of sexy potential in his mesmerizing green eyes ... okay, I mean me ... wrote a column for the fantastic Adrienne here at Erotica Readers & Writers called "Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker."

Now one of the things I did was part of being a Streetwalker that really took off was a little series I did called "The Four Deadly Sins:" a playful examination of the things that smut writers could do but that could – to put it mildly – make their work a tough sell.

Fast forward a ... decade?!  Sigh.  Anyway, I had to put aside my Streetwalker days for other things but that little verboten list has always been by my side, especially since I'm now an Associate Publisher for the wonderful Renaissance Books (which includes Sizzler Editions, our erotica line).  By the way [COMMERCIAL WARNING] my old columns are now in a dead-tree and ebook collection called How To Write And Sell Erotica [COMMERCIAL ENDS].

The reason why those "sins" stay with me is because one of my Associate Publisher things is to consider books for publication – and still, today, erotica writers don't seem to understand that while, sure, you can pretty much write whatever you want there are still some things that will more-than-likely keep your work from seeing the light of day.  Just for the record, the four are underage (self-explanatory), beastiality (same), incest (ditto) and excessive violence (torture porn or nonconsensual sex).  But I'm here to talk about a new one that's popped up ... or 'pooped out' to blow the joke.


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“When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”
- Isaac Asimov

BDSM Reviews Like Fingers Breadth

This is ... well, wow: a nice review of Fingers Breadth by the great folks at BDSM Reviews!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 paddles 

This book is not usually the sort thing I’d read. The description is gay/horror; the cover is a hand with part of a digit missing, so normally I’d probably give it a miss. I’m so glad I didn’t. The book blurb from Amazon says you have never read a book like fingers breadth, which is the most accurate description of this book I’ve seen. I started reading with trepidation. I’m not into horror and I have a knack for turning the written word into a vibrant image in my mind. My hesitation came from what I might end up visualizing, as I read about the attacks on gay men, who are drugged, and have their finger (or part of it) cut off. I didn’t need to worry, as it turned out having a finger cut off isn’t the most horrifying part of the storyline. 

There were many things I loved about this book. The author spares us gruesome details in relation to the attacks, and in some instances the act itself is done in a caring manner. He doesn’t limit his storytelling to a few main characters who tell the story and its impact on those around them. This is a book about a community that’s being terrorized, so there is a community of characters depicted throughout the book. Like many of us who are avid readers, I can usually get to a point in a story where I can predict the ending. Not so with Fingers Breadth. The book turned into something I never expected, a psychological mind twist, an immersion into the human condition and how people react to trauma, whether they are the victim of it or merely a spectator from a community perspective. The truly horrifying aspect of the book was the community response to what was taking place. Totally believable reactions of hatred, fear, violence, and the need to be part of what was going on by copying actions, or self inflicting injuries. The heinous act of mutilation becomes secondary, almost an afterthought, to the popular perceptions missing part of a digit evokes. 

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Ernest Hogan On Being A Black Marks Judge

Okay, this is beyond cool: you know, right, I'm helping my great pal Marilyn Jaye Lewis with the Black Marks Contest for unpublished science fiction?  Well, our guest judge for this time is one of my all-time favorite writers: Ernest Hogan ... who just posted to his site about how jazzed he is to be involved.  Thanks, Ernest!

A black robe, powdered wig, and gavel may be in order – I'm going to be a judge . . . of the first Black Marks Literary Award that is. It'll be for a perviously unpublished science fiction novel. There will be a cash prize of $500, plus the option of publication. 

So, if you have a virgin science fiction novel manuscript kicking around that you think is a winner, check out the guidelines, and read them carefully, because they warn:
Any guidelines that aren't expressly followed are grounds for automatic disqualification. 

What will I be looking for in picking the winner? What I usually look for in the genre – I hope to get my mind blown. Give me daring feats of the imagination!

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How To Wonderfully WriteSex (15)

Check it out: my new post at the fantastic WriteSex site just went up. Here's a tease (for the rest you'll have to go to the site):

Only in erotica can the line “Come, Fido!” be problematic. Unlike some of the other Four Deadly Sins of erotica writing, bestiality is very hard to justify: with few exceptions, it’s not something that can be mistaken for something else, or lie in wait for anyone innocently trying to write about sex. This is unlike, for instance, discussing a first time sexual experience and have it accused of being pro- pedophilia. Bestiality is sex with anything living that’s not human: if it’s not living, then it’s a machine, and if it was once living, then it’s necrophilia.

A story that features—positively or negatively—anything to do with sex with animals is tough if not impossible to sell, though some people have accomplished it. However, there are some odd angles to the bestiality that a lot of people haven’t considered—both positive and negative.

On the negative side, I know a friend who had an erotic science fiction story soundly slammed by one editor because it featured sex with something non-human, technically bestiality—despite the fact that there is a long tradition of erotic science fiction, most recently culminating in the wonderful writing and publishing of Cecilia Tan and her Circlet Press (both very highly recommended). Erotic fantasy stories, too, sometimes get the “we don’t want bestiality” rejection, though myth and legend are packed with sexy demons, mermaids, ghosts, etc. This doesn’t even get into the more classical sexy beasts such as Leda and her famous swan, or Zeus and other randy gods and demi-gods in their various animal forms.

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