Between the sheets

Erotic literature was always around, there have been books going back centuries. What is different is the availability, you can go on Amazon and download anything you want to your e-reader and no-one knows what you are reading. There’s no difficulty getting the book you want, whereas you used to have to go into sex shops or order very strange books online. Now you can buy them in Eason or Tesco.

Another reason is feminism. One of the things that annoys me is that people assume that any kind of romance, particularly if it is erotic romance, is an inferior version of books that men write because these books tend to be for and by women, and about women’s desires, whereas women in a lot of other genres are just there to provide a pair of boobs, or something to be rescued. You cannot write erotica without the woman being front and centre.

TESTING THE WATERS
I would like to think readers are more in touch with their sexuality. The one huge advantage of 50 Shades of Grey, even though the BDSM in it was very dodgy, was that it got people talking. People could say, ‘I like the idea of that, I wonder what’s involved in doing that, that other bit doesn’t appeal to me.’ It brought it out into the open rather than them thinking that they were the only pervert in the village.

Erotic literature is often a handy way of bringing up BDSM in a relationship. You can say, ‘I’m reading this book and you wouldn’t believe what the hero did with the heroine, would you be interested in doing that with me?’ Erotica lets you try out the idea of various kinds of BDSM or whatever you are into without having to go out and buy the leather corset or invest in tools. If you still like the idea of it at the end, you can go and buy whatever you want. 

As a writer, it can be difficult to make some things sound sexy. Bondage can be amazingly erotic but it’s quite hard to describe it in a way that is accurate but also sexy, it gets quite technical. Spanking is much easier to describe in a way that comes off as sensual and exciting. 

There is quite an active BDSM scene in Ireland and among other things they have consent workshops so if you’re thinking of doing something sexy with someone, you can go to a workshop to find out the finer points of what you are interested in or aren’t going to touch with a barge pole, or how to slow things down. These are things everyone should be learning. My daughters are university age and they have learned that if someone is harassing them, saying ‘leave me alone’ is not very effective. Saying ‘I do not consent to that’ makes them back off really fast.

KEEPING UP WITH THE TIMES

As social norms change, so do books. If you go back to the old Mills & Boon books, some of the heroes were total assholes. Then we tightened the laws around rape and now you cannot have a rapist hero anymore, no reader will buy it. Even if you have a very alpha male who goes after the hero with all guns blazing, there has to be consent and it has to be very obvious, explicit consent or the modern reader won’t have it. You can’t sell that book any more than you can a book with 12 year old brides.

There are fashions in writing, the same as in anything else. Some of my favourite authors from the past would open with a description of a library and you describe the people sitting in the library and then you would get to the reading of the will. Modern readers expect the story to start on the first page or two and keep galloping along. They do not want three chapters of back story before they find out what the story is about. There is a thing called the page 17 plot: If readers are not involved in the story by page 17, they’ll dump it. We have a lot more choice now. The real currency now is attention and money. Readers won’t waste their attention on a book they aren’t enjoying. 

HAPPY ENDINGS
Erotica is a huge seller. Woman are not ashamed of it anymore. There was a time when you had to hide anything that looked too sexy inside another book or read it at home, now you read it on the DART. Its positivity is a large part of its appeal. One of the accusations that is often leveled at romance is that it gives women unrealistic expectations. Romance has heroes that care if the heroine has an orgasm, so if that’s an unrealistic expectation, men are doing something wrong. The average hero in erotic romance is not a billionaire that ordinary men can’t aspire to, they are just men who get on with living the best way they can and who tend to be very upfront with the heroine: they like her, they say they like her and they tell her they want to do sexy things with her.
I remember being in Heathrow airport looking for a book for the flight and all my criteria was a book where I know the heroine is going to be alive at the end of it. I ended up buying something quite pornographic. They had no romances and every other book they had, you could see that something bad was going to happen to the woman.

For most people, romance is a central part of their lives it’s nice that you can read something that you can relate to. Most of us, hopefully, can’t relate to having our mother or our best friend murdered. We can certainly relate to a relationship that is going well or is not going well or maybe ends in marriage or happy ever after.

IN THE WORKS
Caroline and I are working together on a sexy historical book. Historical novels have challenges of their own but they have a lot more flexibility in terms of plot. For a modern-day novelist the biggest pain is the mobile phone. There was a time when you found a secret code and you had to get it to someone and you had to travel across the country, whereas now you text it! If you’re lost, there’s Google Maps. I like books where the heroine is alive at the end! I like action adventure and romance, and I like lots of kink in it. 

Did you know

According to TheRichest.com, in 2013, the Romance/Erotica book market was worth $1.44 billion. The next category - Crime/Mystery - was worth around half that at $728 million.