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This is number twenty-three in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
“PRIMARY RESEARCH,” I said to the beautiful and naked young woman stretched out on top of me as I caressed her breasts.
“You’d better see if they feel like what you remember when you suck on them,” she husked back. “We only have a few minutes.”
Three-and-a-half minutes, exactly. The music cuts in this club were precisely timed and a ‘dance’ in the private room was just one song long. I’d only paid for one.
Large signs posted in each room of the club said, “Prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas.” The club rules forbade inserting any part of the customer into any part of the dancer. Aside from that, everything was negotiable. When we were talking in the main room, attempting to adjust my hearing aids so I could hear her over the loud music, I’d told Brandi that I was an author of erotic novels. I came to the club to remind myself of what a wonderful variety of women looked like naked. She’d convinced me to conduct some research in a private booth.
My investigation had begun in 2016. I’d completed my trip around the world in June, stopping for the summer solstice in Iceland. I spent the summer in intense self-analysis at a nudist camp in Idaho, and then went to a nudist resort in California for the winter. I was trying to figure out whether there was a difference between what I do as an author of erotica and basic pornography.
In December, I went to LA for their “Sex Expo.” When registering, I indicated I was part of ‘the industry’ and got a huge discount on my VIP ticket over the price of a ‘fan’ ticket. I spent two afternoons exploring what was really a very small show. I didn’t know that. It was like being a kid in a candy store with so many things (women) to look at!
On one side of the show floor, a burlesque show was performed three times daily with different performers. I found out later that my ex-wife’s first boyfriend’s daughter performed with the burlesque show. Wow! The performances, like about all burlesque shows, were not fully nude. Their own rules and those of the show required pasties and a g-string. Some also wore a mask or used fans to hide behind.
At the opposite end, a local chain of strip clubs had several stages with poles set up and between ten and twenty exotic dancers rotating in minimal wear. Along the sides were sofas for ‘private’ dances. I stopped in the crowd and watched. I’d been there a minute when a majestic stripper marched across the floor, parting the crowd in front of her until she stood directly in front of me.
“You look like you need a massage,” she said, taking me by the hand. “It’s only ten dollars because we can’t do what we’d do in the club.”
I figured ten dollars was a bargain even if all she did was sit beside me for a song. She did much much more. By the time the song finished, I’d pulled another ten from my pocket and she kept right on dancing on my pole.
“It’s too bad we aren’t at the club. The dances are much more intimate. I work Tuesday through Saturday. Won’t you come to see me there?”
She handed me a business card for a free admission. I promised to see her there. Having dances from Mia was my first experience of really doing primary research. I found out where she was tattooed, that her clit was pierced, and the heft of her breasts in my hands.
And I realized that a great deal of what I do is exactly the same as what Mia did. As Rachel Kramer Bussel defined erotica in her book How to Write Erotica, “Erotica is writing intended to arouse… Using that definition, erotica is expansive enough to cover a huge range of scenarios, from a person who’s turned on by watching another person eat a particular food in just the right way, or putting on just the right style of shoe, to descriptions of anything-goes orgies.”
Mia’s dances were intended to arouse. And did a damn good job of it.
So, I concluded, I was a sex worker.
I really had to laugh that this sixty-six year old man was a sex worker. But in essence, I did with words what Mia did with her body. I fictionalized my encounter with Mia in a short story continuation of US Highways. The short story is “Good Vibrations.”
Of course, that story is a concatenation of several different encounters, some of which actually occurred. After all, the ‘Wonders of My World’ series is the memoir of the avatar of the pseudonym of the alter ego of the author. You can only believe what you will.
The purpose of this recitation is to describe how I fell into the realization that I worked on the edges of the sex work industry. No, I didn’t produce porn. I created stories that could arouse people. They are a long way from being ‘stroke’ stories.
It also began my discovery of and association with other sex workers in strip clubs, movies, and chat rooms. I found them to be genuine human beings who (obviously) had nothing to hide. They were mostly open and honest about what they did.
At another booth at the Los Angeles Sex Expo, I saw fifteen or twenty young women wearing very little, chatting online with their laptops in front of them, and lighting themselves as they entertained fans at MyFreeCams. I chose the one at the end of the table and introduced myself to Miss Molly. This woman absolutely conforms to my weakness. She is tall (over 6’), thin (muscular), redheaded, and stacked. I asked her how this chat room thing worked.
She was very personable, posed for a photo, and explained all about tokens, what happened online, and what the girls generally wanted. I’ve since run into Molly a few times at shows and she always remembers me, calls me by name, knows I’m a writer, and poses for a picture with me. Since she is over six feet tall and wears those platform high heels performers often do, my five-ten is dwarfed by her—which puts my eyes about chest height, so I don’t need to pretend I’m not looking.
After that, I started tuning in to chatrooms and checking the videos that performers sent me. Before long I had a nice collection of performers, many of whom are still performing and still on my friends list. They gave me a whole range of content to use for “primary research.”
Obviously, this is only the tip of the iceberg, so I’ll continue the adventure in next week’s post, “Porn Stars Save the Universe.”
It's happened again. Kindle Digital Press (KDP) has blocked my book Art Something. This is six years after it was first published.
"During our review process, we found that your book(s) violate our content guidelines. As a result, we are not offering your book(s) for sale on Amazon. As a reminder, violations of our content guidelines may negatively impact your account status and you may also lose access to optional KDP services."
As a result of this action, I have unpublished the entire "Strange Art" series from Kindle. The books, Art Something, Art Project, and Art Critic, remain available on Bookapy and B&N.
The online Brazilian Rainforest has shown its face before, and this is the third of my books that has been blocked. They don't provide any information as to what they consider to be a violation of their vague "content guidelines." The best I can guess in this case and in the case of "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins" series is the relationship between brother and sister. It is probably covered in this phrase: "We don’t sell certain content including content that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive."
Note that phrase "we determine." There is no appeal process and no definitive scale as to what they will determine. It is based on whoever or whatever is reviewing content that day.
It is possible that if you have purchased these books from Amazon, they might remove them from your device. It's happened before. You don't own the books, you license them from the provider. Recently, my Halo fitness band stopped working because Amazon declared that it was subscription hardware they were no longer supporting. I believe they will continue to assert ownership of intellectual property.
Please understand that I believe any bookstore has the right to sell whatever books they want to. But they don't own the books and they simply have to stop pretending to be morality police threatening authors.
If you are adversely affected by this and your eBooks no longer work, please let me know and I will replace them. I will probably not release any more books on Amazon. I really like Bookapy much better and have stopped producing paperbacks.
Enjoy!
Devon Layne
This is number twenty-two in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
I’M TRAVELING THIS WEEK and confess this post was not finished in time to be reviewed by my fine editor. If he reads it now and changes something, I’ll update the post. In the meantime, I’ll just hack away at my own thoughts without benefit of review.
My major distributor of erotic books is Bookapy. According to it, I have forty-four titles published. I know there are six others that I’ve overlooked releasing on that platform. Of the forty-four, I’ve classified thirty as ‘coming of age’ stories. The six I will eventually release could also fall under that classification.
But I’ve more recently discovered another term that applies to many of the stories and a second term that might overlap it and be applied to other stories. Oddly enough, the literary terms for these genres are all German words of thirteen characters (and other terms that are even longer).
Many of my works fall under the classification of Bildungsroman. I first used the term to refer to my Nathan Everett novel, A Place at the Table.
Courtney McColl, a former AP Lit/Language teacher blogged her definition on SmartBlogger just a couple of months ago. I’ve found other compatible definitions, but this one is easy to follow.
In its simplest form, a Bildungsroman novel is a coming-of-age story. And it’s fiction rather than a biographical or autobiographical narrative. The writer covers the formative years of the protagonist’s life. Our main character experiences loss, struggles, acceptance, and growth (phew!).
Right. I already said it was a coming of age story, but McColl goes on to describe other requirements.
And it can’t be just a series of childhood adventure tales told by an adult for kicks and giggles. The child must evolve and grow with evidence of reflection and maturation. Society must also be present as an obstacle and/or catalyst for our young character’s growth.
In essence, the literary genre focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood in which character change is important. In writing erotica, it is easy to focus on the ‘event’ of becoming a man or a woman. In other words, sex. But just having sex—even repeatedly—doesn’t explore the protagonist’s psychological or moral growth. It’s actually a physical thing, like having a birthday or growing from five feet to six feet in height. The event does not imply the kind of growth that the Bildungsroman requires.
I’m capitalizing and italicizing the word because it’s German and they capitalize nouns. The meaning is literally ‘an education or forming novel.’ This is very much like what I described a few weeks ago in the post “Character Arc,” in which I discussed the Hero’s Journey.
Imagine my surprise in finding that some of my most popular books belonged to a kind of sub-category of the Bildungsroman. I sort of fell into it with my first story on SOL. People liked my stories about artists! In fact, it was listed as one of the features that people liked most in the survey I took some time ago.
Enter the term Künstlerroman. It means ‘artist’s novel’ in English. Like the Bildungsroman, it is a narrative about the artist’s growth to maturity. It differs, though, not only in the profession of the protagonist, but in that the protagonist in a Bildungsroman typically settles for being an ordinary citizen once he or she has come to grips with the society in which they live. The hero of a Künstlerroman typically rejects the everyday life society demands and continues to run counter to the mainstream.
I think of my ‘Strange Art’ series, starting with Art Something, where Art is definitely on the autistic spectrum and sees the world differently than other people. This emerges in his art, in his multiple polyamorous relationships, and in his relationship with his sister.
In the ‘Model Student’ series, Tony continues to battle with depression and anxiety, all the way through The Prodigal, letting it influence his artwork in ways that he can’t let others see, even while he enjoys a family with four ‘wives’ and children. And we are seeing the same thing appear in the ‘Photo Finish’ series, currently running with book four, F/Stop, as protagonist Nate Hart finds and nearly loses his photographic art as he attempts to conform to a system he does not completely believe in.
According to Oxford Reference, the difference may lie in a longer view across the Künstlerroman hero’s whole life, not just their childhood years. Though it takes six books to get there in the ‘Photo Finish’ series, the story extends years beyond Nate’s college years.
We could continue to classify kinds of novels according to the German literary terms, commonly used in literary criticism.
The picaresque novel (Schelmenroman) follows the life of a rogue or picaro, a clever and amusing adventurer of low social status.
The Abenteuerroman or adventure novel recounts the adventures of the hero in an entertaining and humorous way, but often incorporates a serious aspect. An example from my works would be Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon.
A French term, roman à clef (Schlüsselroman), or novel with a key, has the extraliterary interest of portraying well-known real people more or less thinly disguised as fictional characters. See my blog post of two weeks ago on “Naming Names.”
In the educational novel (Erziehungsroman), the emphasis is on the description of the pedagogical influences and effects on the person described.
An epistolary novel (Briefroman) is a novel written as a series of letters between the fictional characters of a narrative. I’ve often seen this done by two authors, each taking one of the roles.
And, of course, we have the good old romance novel (Liebesroman), which places its primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and usually has an “emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.” In fact, my first foray into the world of erotica, The Art and Science of Love, emerged from a deep need to write a romance with a happy ending.
To wrap up this rambling thought piece on literary genres, any of these can be erotica. Mine certainly are and I’ve identified several of my stories in different categories. But if it is good erotica, it involves not only the titillating sexual aspects, but it also develops as a good story—something that shows growth of the character.
I’m going to depart from the literary posts next week and write a little bit about “Fitting into the Industry.” Of course, I’m referring to the sex industry. It’s been an interesting ride. So to speak.
This is number twenty-one in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
Sometimes I try to understand what I’m writing. Believe it or not. And words come into play that surprise me because they describe something I didn’t know there was a word for. Like “acyrologia,” which means an incorrect use of words, particularly replacing one word with another that sounds similar. Next week, I’ll take a look at “Bildungsroman vs. Künstlerroman.”
Enjoy!
This is number twenty in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
I should have learned my lesson long ago. But even back then, we weren’t so “rights” crazy that I really needed to worry about it. At least I didn’t think so.
I wrote a long serial, way back when (Living Next Door to Heaven). It was very nostalgic. The story took place right where I grew up and I named characters after kids I knew, even describing their appearance, though the characters were not at all like the kids I knew. After the series was nearly finished, I decided to publish it as eBooks. Too long for just one eBook.
And that was when I realized that a reader could do a search on Amazon and recognize herself in my writing!
Oh no!
I went through the entire series and changed the names of people and places that might be recognizable. That caused such an upset on SOL, that I changed all the names back on that platform only. It still causes confusion because two years later, I wrote a tenth eBook in the series, What Were They Thinking?, and used only the new names. To this day, I have people contacting me about which character equates to whom.
I thought everything was taken care of, but when I published book seven (of ten), Hearthstone Entertainment , on Amazon, they blocked it. They would not be specific about why they blocked it and threatened to review all the books I’d published to be sure they met community standards and would cancel my account if they didn’t, if I pursued the matter.
Their only statement, when I pushed a little, was that they didn’t like the cover and some internal content. The cover was by the same artist as all the other nine covers in the series and showed nothing more than any of them did! The internal content? No comment.
Let me just say that the Jolly Green Rainforest fancies itself as a publisher. NO. They are not a publisher of most of their content. They are a damned bookstore. That’s all! End of rant.
After nearly a year of examination of the content and Amazon’s vague “community standards,” I concluded that what offended their delicate sensibilities was having used the name of a popular late-night talk show and its long-dead host. I rewrote the content using a fictional name and published the book on Barnes and Noble and on Bookapy. Not on Amazon. That ISBN was blocked permanently. So, I give that volume away free in the series. Guess I showed them! Um…
Regardless, nearly all the distribution platforms now ask the publisher or author if they own the rights to all the content and swear that no names or images of actual people or products have been used without their explicit permission.
So much for historical fiction.
That brought me to a dilemma when I started writing the Photo Finish series with Full Frame, Shutter Speed, Exposure, F/Stop, Over Exposure, and Follow Focus. I was writing a historical fiction. According to MasterClass, a streaming service with online lessons in many fields, including writing:
Historical fiction transports readers to another time and place, either real or imagined. Writing historical fiction requires a balance of research and creativity, and while it often includes real people and events, the genre offers a fiction writer many opportunities to tell a wholly unique story.
“…includes real people and events…”
The setting for the Photo Finish series is the decade from 1966-1976. It is a fairly well-known period in American history. It includes racial tensions, the Vietnam War, the draft, free love, drugs, rock and roll, riots, and protests. It includes The Beatles, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Gerald Ford, Robert McNamara, 2001: A Space Odysey, Alice’s Restaurant, and M.A.S.H.
At one time or another, I mention all of these. What am I supposed to say when asked if my work contains the names of real people, products, etc. without their permission?
Note: This is a work of historical fiction. As such, names of historical characters, places, products, events, movies, and music have been used to set the context and reality of the time. But the story and characters are fiction. While much of the action is based on actual events or experiences, ultimately, it is still all fiction. Perhaps it will entertain. Perhaps it will take you to a similar time in your own life. Perhaps in rare instances, it will enlighten.
That is the official disclaimer I put at the beginning of each of my stories in this cycle. All the characters in the action are made up. They may have some similarities to people who lived through that time, but so does my Aunt Cora. People mistake her for someone all the time. The location is based on a real town but I gave it a fake name. The names of the people, the businesses and everything else about the town are fiction.
In other words, it’s historical FICTION!
I will say that I visited the town on which this was based and the librarians were both excited and pleased to help me research the community and get the atmosphere right. They went so far as to call in a fellow who lived in the town during that period so I could interview him! Even when I told them the story was erotica, they were so pleased that I was setting it in their little town! That was the inspiration for later setting a movie in the town of Tenbrook, and the town’s enthusiastic response to having a murder mystery set in their community!
I still have to be careful, though. I can’t quote a conversation with a historical character if it contradicts what is known historically. I could still write a conversation that could have happened, but that starts treading on shaky ground. I can’t send a character to the embassy in Nassau six months before The Bahamas became independent and were recognized as a nation. I can’t do anything that contradicts what is known. I can’t, for example, declare that Tricky Dick admitted to me that he engineered the entire Watergate break-in and cover-up. I didn’t talk to him and Dick is known to have never really confessed, even though he resigned and was given amnesty so the action couldn’t be investigated. Similar to other illegal actions that will be forgiven as soon as someone is in power who will do so.
Within those boundaries, I can be as free and crazy as I want to be. And hopefully, my generalization of a character living through that era will enlighten others regarding this small subset of people who lived in that era.
If you decide to write historical fiction, you need to determine what the boundaries are for your work. If the time was more than fifty years ago, you might be able to simply write a story about a dead historical figure. If you declare your work an “alternate timeline” then you can pick up anything you want and change all the details you want, because it isn’t what really happened. All you are using is a set of characteristics of the era to set the stage.
Regardless, Amazon, the great self-declared literary police force, might refuse to “publish” your work. Believe me, they won’t tell you why.
I drafted this post during a week when I was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. Great experience. But recent events have me wondering about the temporal nature of our words. Or as Hamlet said, “Words. Words. Words. Words.” Next week.
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