aroslav: Blog

This is number twenty-five in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT to accomplish at these shows?” my daughter asked me. She is also a writer and posts her stories on that other erotica site. We don’t share our author names with each other, but we often discuss what is happening in our writing.

“Well, most of the emphasis at the show is on video and porn,” I said. “But it strikes me that there should be a market for video that has more story to it than the pizza guy showing up to find a naked customer who has no money but offers to give him a blow job. The extent of that dialog is about three lines and they spend half an hour screwing with no other sound than oh-oh-oh fu-u-u-ck! I think I could contribute to the industry by working on some scripts. Maybe something for Bree Mills.”

If you are unfamiliar, Bree Mills is one of the top producers of women’s porn movies at Girlsway and Adult Time.

“Dad! Bree Mills only works with women!” my daughter informed me. How did she know that?

Well, it wasn’t quite accurate. Bree had been producing a series of retold fairy tales that included male actors and I thought they were right up the line with an adaptation of something like my Wayzgoose/Nathan Everett story Jackie the Beanstalk. Besides, I’d already met with Bree.

We talked about the problems with scripts and I attended a panel discussion with her and four of her actors (including men). One of the things the actors mentioned was that they enjoyed letting their dark side out in the movies. The guy playing a parody of the Big Bad Wolf, especially liked that, since he is generally very soft spoken and kind of shy.

But Bree acknowledged that once the sex starts, dialog goes to hell. It’s very difficult to remember lines while screwing. And so often, there seems to be something in one character or another’s mouth. She did invite me to submit some ideas if I’d like, and she awarded me my prized T-shirt that has emblazoned across the front “Honorary Lesbian.”

Well, lesbians and I do like the same things.

I wrote a short story continuation of my series Wonders of My World called “Whatever NOLA Wants.” It’s published on my website short story collection and revolves around the invitation I got to New Orleans as a result of wearing that shirt.

The next time we met, I told Bree about the conversation with my daughter. She sent a T-shirt with me to my daughter that says, “I like girls who like girls.”

I decided that I needed to jump into the industry with both feet, so to speak. I rented a booth at the Exxxotica Expo. It was costly at $600 for a ‘talent booth.’ The booth was 8x8 and I could sell books in it. I had a banner and some posters created to hang in the booth, and I bought some inventory. (I still have some of it left if you’d like to buy a paperback!) I was also approved to present a seminar titled, “Talk Dirty to Me, Baby.” I included some bits from that seminar in a blog post by that name back in June.

There was one small catch. The show rules required that your booth be manned all the time and you could only have one talent per booth. Back to advertising for an assistant who was willing to dress sexily and act as a shill to bring people in to look at my books. The answer was a cute girl who worked in a sex shop in Vegas, was high all the time, and would run around in her sexy clothes in front of my booth.
Interestingly, her name was Devinne. It sounded exactly the same as my Devon, so people thought we were putting them on.

When I talked to her, she said she’d checked me out before she contacted me about working the show. (We were going to have to share a room because I just couldn’t afford any more. Two beds.) She said I was obviously a legit author with stuff to sell at that show and she was reading one of my books already.

Good.

This venture was going to cost me close to a thousand dollars by the time I paid for the booth, airfare, stock, and promotional materials. I was pretty tense about making it successful.

Devinne and I arrived when the show packet said to and set up the booth the day before the show opened. I wasn’t sure this was going to even be a show with the condition of the space when we got there. The carpet hadn’t been laid yet and the stage area was still being constructed. Nonetheless, my booth looked great and I was confident the show would be profitable. We set everything up and took pictures of the pristine booth.

Then we went to the vendor reception at the hotel bar. I ordered drinks for the two of us at a very crowded bar. Imagine my surprise (and how impressed Devinne was) when a guy next to me said, “Hey, aren’t you Devon Layne, the author?”

Well, yes. As a matter of fact, that was me! He said he’d read about me on the internet and in the show bios. It turned out that he had a booth just across the floor from mine. He’s a photographer who specialized in photos of adult performers. Nice work!

It was the first time I’d simply been recognized in public!

The show was fun, but a financial bust. First, my seminar was scheduled for exactly the time the show opened, so there was no one there when I started. People trickled in for nearly half an hour and I entertained them for another twenty minutes with my discussion of how to talk like an erotic author. The seminar got high marks, but no one showed up at the booth to buy books.

It was ladies’ night and all women got in free. But they weren’t really in a buying mood unless you were selling cute pasties or unusual vibrators. And my location didn’t help much. I was located right across from ‘the dungeon’ with Msl8eluck and her crew of femdoms. You’d think that would be a high-traffic area, which it was. But everyone who passed by had their backs turned to me. I mean, actual attendees were volunteering to be locked to the X-frame and whipped. Why would you look at a book?

All in all, the sales from the show were a bust, but I’m still in touch with many of the starlets I met there.

In fact, the cover of my J-Hop story—SWARM cycle fan fiction—My Sex Slave features a photo of Maren Hill, whom I first met at that show.

The designation of “Honorary Lesbian” still sticks with me, but sadly, I haven’t found another lesbian who wanted to hook up with an old bald man. I try to tell them I’m bearded for her pleasure. Nonetheless, next week I’ll continue the adventure with “Writing Smut.”

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.

I’ve mentioned Mia and Miss Molly in my previous post. Were they unique? No. They were special, but not unique. I’ve met many wonderful sex workers over the years.

Not so many as Angus Vieira, author of Murder & Witches, the latest of his personal detective stories. Angus has nearly 5,000 friends on Facebook, most of whom are women in the industry. Many of those women have given him photos of their butts to display on their birthdays. Sadly, his books are available only in paperback, but I can highly recommend Murder on a Two-Lane Road and Murder on a Small Island, as well as his most recent.

Well, Angus has had a couple more years to accumulate his friends than I have, and spends two or three evenings a week ‘polishing a tip rail,’ in his words. And in his company, I’ve met a couple of stellar beauties who call him a friend in real life—not just online.

His works include sexual scenes, but nothing too explicit. He still holds the dream of walking into a mainstream bookstore and seeing his title on display. I wish him the best of luck.

After I got my feet wet at the LA Sex Expo, I decided to test my theory that I was actually a part, however small, of the industry. I registered for the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo of 2017. They accepted my registration as a member of the industry without hesitation. That meant I got VIP access to both the AEE and the Adult Novelty Expo, all seminars, and the official nightclub parties for $200. The cost of a similar ticket for VIP fans was over $1,500!

I recognized that a partially deaf old man was vulnerable in this kind of environment, so I advertised for an escort. She wasn’t a sex escort, but Dee agreed to accompany me to the show and the parties. She wore costumes like my character Alice in US Highways, American Backroads, and Border Crossings. I had a promotional excerpt of the first book to give away to the artists I met.

And I met some of my favorite online talents, like Miss Molly, Casey, Miah Callix, Ginger Potter, Kendra Cole, Braislee Adams, plus the incomparable Alex Coal and Inked Angel Lydia Black. A hug and a picture with each of them.

I don’t show those pictures around because I look like someone’s grandpa visiting his granddaughter’s college roommate. But they were fun to take.

About that time, I decided to write my first contribution to the SWARM Cycle universe. Of course, I wasn’t satisfied with the typical pickup and go to the stars to battle the Sa’arm. I focused on a fat computer hacker and a bunch of porn stars who refused to leave earth. The result was Pussy Pirates. Every porn star in that volume was based on someone I’d met IRL or communicated with online.

Of course, I couldn’t use my initial title, “Porn Stars Save the Universe” because that would end the cycle and we can’t have that, but collecting the stats on the girls, assigning them names for the story, and copying significant parts of their characteristics brought the story to life.

I returned to the AEE in 2019 accompanied by six friends who adopted roles as my staff. M1 was my security, D my story consultant, M2 my producer. S was my secretary, C my editor, and R a talent (was she ever!). We all had a blast and the number of close encounters multiplied.

I met Amazing Allie at one of the booths just before the show closed for the evening and there was no crowd standing around waiting. We got to talking and I told her I was an author. She professed to love to read, so I pulled out one of my sample copies and handed it to her.

“For me? Really? You can so touch my tits!” she exclaimed. I took advantage of that offer and enjoyed her very much.

Perhaps the best part of that year’s outing was the annual white party. My friends and I all dressed in bright white clothes. Mine included white shoes, slacks, shirt, and a white vest. I topped it with a white Panama hat. I was glad I didn’t need to color my beard. It was already white.

We had a drink at the party and once there were a lot of people there, I stood up to circulate and see who I knew. I’d walked most of the way around the nightclub when a guy came up to me and asked if he could get a picture with me. I agreed and kind of laughed that he thought I was a recognizable part of the industry.

But he wasn’t the last one.

M1 and I walked out on the patio to smoke a cigar. I was no sooner out there than three cute girls rushed to me and asked if they could have a picture with me—cuddled up on a sofa in their cabana. Sure.

We were enjoying our cigars when another girl asked to have her picture with me. She was a little drunk, but I said sure. She wanted to be looking over her shoulder as she leaned against me, ‘to show her best assets.’ Then she leaned into my hand with her midsection and made sure I was in solid contact before the picture was taken.

An online performer named Amee the Heaure, cuddled up to me next. She was in the most revealing outfit I’d seen that night with pasties made of crystals and a skirt made of panels that were always parting to show her g-string. She knelt on the bench facing the fire to get warm and asked me to just cuddle up and keep her backside warm. That was a pleasant task.

But I had no idea why so many of these starlets and fans were wanting to cuddle up and have a picture. I joined my friends after the party for a drink at the center bar in the casino. A complete stranger gave me a thumbs up and nodded. WTF?

As we sat for a drink another guy came up to me. Said he was here for a law convention of some sort that would start over the weekend. Then he said, “I just want to tell you that you wear that outfit so much better than the guy in Jurassic Park.”

They thought I looked like Richard Attenborough! Who had died five years earlier at age 90!

Oh well.

I guess, in one way or another, I was part of the industry.

Even though COVID19 was lurking on the horizon, that wasn’t the last show I attended and I’ve been gratified to be recognized for who I really am. I’ll talk about a couple more close encounters next week in “Honorary Lesbian.”
Enjoy!

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.