This document is a personal view, and since publishers change their requirements frequently, I cannot guarantee the current accuracy of the information, or that I have included everyone.  I advise you always to check for up-to-date guidelines.  Web links change even more frequently: if you find any that don't work, e-mail me at the address at the foot of the page.

Updated and links tested July 2000
Books list updated April 2001
© Ray Girvan. 

INTRODUCTION

This page is a much-expanded HTML version of a lecture I gave to the Exeter Writer's Group, Exeter, UK, on April 4th 1998.  It began life purely as a UK 'market report', and still has a UK slant, but in the process of compilation turned into a larger analysis of what drives writers in this field.  This is an ongoing project, revised whenever I see anything pertinent, so it's worth visiting again in the future.  Enjoy!

I'll start with a list of names: Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Nicholson Baker, Colin Wilson, Jack Trevor Story, Anne Rice, and Arnold Wesker.  If you're a fan of science fiction, add these: Brian Aldiss, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Samuel R Delany, Philip Jose Farmer, Barry Malzberg, Charles Platt, Robert Silverberg, Theodore Sturgeon, and Ian Watson. [1]
            All of these are acclaimed authors with a reputation for their mainstream work, but who have also written books with a specifically erotic, or even pornographic, slant.
            When this happens, there's a tendency for critics either to dismiss this aspect of an author's work - "It was just hack-writing to help pay the bills in their early career" - or to deny its connection with the pornographic genre - "Ah, but this is a *literary* writer, so it's Erotica".  Both reactions downplay the reality that many serious authors make a considered choice to write in a genre that is commonly regarded as very low-status.
            Embarassingly for the critics, some authors refuse to fit any presumed labels.  Samuel R Delany, winner of three Nebula Awards for his highly literary SF, talks openly of three of his novels (Hogg, The Mad Man, and Equinox) as "pornographic".  [2] [24] And Anne Rice, well-known for her Interview with the Vampire, uses the same term for her sadomasochistic Sleeping Beauty series.  [3] (Rice further confounded the stereotypers by writing these novels not as early hackwork, but *after* her first three novels had established her a safe reputation as a literary author).  [4]
            The purpose of this essay is to provide an overview - and, to be honest, a justification - of the commercial erotic/pornographic fiction genre from a writer's point of view. What are the markets and trends? What authors write in this field, and why? What valid functions does it serve? What can we, as writers, say to our critics? If you've ever asked yourself any of these questions, the information here may help.

With a topic like this, it's impossible to be objective, so I'll start with a brief explanation of where I'm "coming from": how I got involved with this genre.
            It began perhaps five years ago (i.e.  1995) with a short story that wouldn't sell.  I had been dabbling for a while in science fiction writing, and Mad Love was intended as a serious attempt at a literary short story deconstructing the imagery of the 'mad scientist' genre in classic movies and comics: how it portrayed science as a fetish, with its cliches of captured heroines and sexy female robots.  No-one would touch it.  Interzone told me Kim Newman [6] did that kind of thing far better.  The Ian St James competition rejected it as uninteresting. Sunk Island thought it had too much humour.  Erotic Stories didn't think it erotic enough.  I did eventually place it [7] , but en route I tried it on a British publisher, Olympia Press [8], when a writer friend, the late David Weldon, suggested they might like the bondage elements.
           This was scary.  Olympia turned out to be a semi-underground publisher, selling books only by mail order and sex shops, with a specialism in bondage and sadomasochism.  As it happened, they didn't use Mad Love immediately either, but (more frightening) they said they loved the style, and asked me if could write more stories, with less brakes on the sex.
           I panicked! Everything about the situation screamed, "Don't do it!" What would my parents think? (I was 39, and I *still* thought this, which shows the depth of taboo involved). More important, what would my wife think? Fortunately, no horror scenario developed: Clare thought it was fine.  My editor, Josephine, helped a lot by explaining that everyone goes through much the same angst.
            The result was that once Olympia had seen (and liked) two more stories, they upgraded the request: could I write enough for a 40,000-word anthology? It turned out I could, and this came out in 1996 as Butterfly in Amber.  [9] I followed up in January 1998 with a 30,000-word novel, Perfume Slaves [10], which is essentially a pornographic detective story with SF elements (imagine Maigret meets The Avengers [11] with all the inhibitions removed).  Olympia has also bought several single stories for anthologies; I have another novel nearly completed for them; and I'm thinking now of a full-length novel for a more mainstream publisher.

(If you're not writing for the UK, feel free to skip this section.  But the following two, Guidelines and Legalities, may be of general interest to non-UK readers).

This brings me to the general British market for erotic novels.  Olympia is at one end (the most 'pornographic') of a market that extends from sex-shop-only outlets to high-class conventional bookshops such as Dillons and Waterstones.  Currently, the line-up looks like this:

* Olympia: [80] sells via sex shops / mail order only; a 'hard' treatment of bondage, domination and sadomasochism themes, with subgenres according to reader preference over who does the dominating (i.e.  male-dom or fem-dom).
* Silver Moon / Silver Mink: [82]a little lighter than Olympia, but similar sadomasochism themes (hence the S&M initials).  The two imprints are for male and female readers, respectively.
* Virgin Publishing: Richard Branson's outfit has several imprints: Nexus for heterosexual men (any orientation from 'vanilla' to fetish to S&M); Black Lace for - and written by - women; and Idol for gay men.  (Nov 1998: a new imprint of lesbian erotica, Sapphire, is being introduced).
* Chimera: [81] books designed for both sexes, but style similar to Black Lace; a deal of S&M, but with its romantic roots showing.

A number of specifically mainstream publishers have also branched out into this genre, including:

* Headline Erotica: has two imprints, Delta for men ("raunchy"), and Liaison for couples ("sensuous").  (Nov 1998: Liaison is reportedly winding down at the end of 1999).
* Little, Brown & Company: X Libris imprint: largely romantic erotica, for and by women.  (Nov 1998: a new, more SM-orientated imprint, X-Rated, is due for launch in Spring 1999).
* Titan Books: Eros Plus imprint - "general erotica".
* Creation Books [18]: mostly reprints turn-of-the-century classics such as Apollinaire.  For new books, they require an astonishingly high literary standard.

(I'll mention some USA publishers [12] [13] later, but to digress briefly: the picture is a little different in America. There are similar established 'big-name' publishers (Masquerade, [14] for instance).  But the USA has a larger population, and larger subcultural groups with aggressively positive attitudes to their identity, so the market provides a very broad spectrum of imprints for very specific minority readerships: gay, lesbian, bisexual, Afro-American [71], urban Afro-American, Hispanic, gay cowboys, the S&M community, and so on).

Most publishers provide guidelines if you ask: this is important, as there are market differences you can't always anticipate. For instance, Virgin isn't keen on crime or science fiction.  Some publishers want characters to follow 'safe sex' practice if the setting's present-day; some specifically want a non-sexist viewpoint; and some want all scenarios, however heavy, to be consensual.  Guidelines also help you avoid plot cliches, which are easy to fall into, as this is a field where writers commonly submit work without prior familiarity with the genre.  [15]
            But despite the differences, there are common factors.  Typically, publishers want around half of the action to be devoted to sex.  They all expect work that's effective by conventional storytelling standards: plot, pacing, characterisation and use of English.  They also have identical core taboos: no incest, animals, necrophilia, drug abuse, under-age sex, and sexual acts involving mutilation or murder.
            The taboo aspect applies particularly to the British market!  Contrary to common belief (a view perpetrated by those who wish to close down erotica publishers) UK books specifically published as pornography/erotica have far stricter rules on these matters than, say, mainstream thrillers, 'slasher' horror, or crime fiction.
            To take an example: Mendal W Johnson's Let's go play at the Adams'.  This was published as a popular title from the mainstream Grafton Books (no longer in print, but it went through 17 reprints between 1976 and 1983).  Marketed as horror ([16]), it's an account of Barbara ("a lovely young baby-sitter") who wakes to find herself tied to her bed, then spends the rest of the book in bondage as her captors experiment on her.  Although it succeeds extremely well as horror, it is also, to be blunt, a bondage novel.  But no erotic novel publisher, not even one at the pornographic end of the market, would dare touch it, because it breaches two of the big taboos: a) Barbara's captors eventually murder her and get away with it, and b) the perpetrators are young, ranging from outright children to mid-teens.
            This is a deliberately extreme example; but one necessary to make clear how radically the standards differ between mainstream and erotic fiction.

In the UK, the stricter controls of what can happen in erotic fiction can be interpreted, in large part, in terms of our long (and not so distant) history of legal disputes over erotic works.  It has to remembered that it has been only a few decades since classic works of fiction were still illegal.  [68] For instance, John Cleland's Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, written in 1799, was generally banned as late as the 1960s.  Booksellers could be prosecuted; adults in possession could get a police warning and the book confiscated.  [17] [69]
            We have moved on to some extent, at least to the point where traditionally banned works, such as de Sade's, appear in mainstream bookshops.  For text-only fiction, there hasn't been a successful jury prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act (OPA) for 15 years or so.  But in practice, the machinery of the OPA can still be used as a economic weapon against publishers.
            Text-only fiction is routinely seized during raids for other material suspected obscene, such as photo-magazines or videos.  Suspicion of obscenity also allows police to seize company records and equipment as potential evidence, which is kept in store for long periods, preventing the company from working.  Customs & Excise also have power of seizure of imported books, with an added angle that Customs can declare a book obscene without magistrate [78] or trial (and by standards even more strict than those of the police).
            Neither police, magistrates nor Customs have to justify the initial decision to prosecute in relation to earlier legal precedents, and this has resulted in strange situations: at a raid in Bexhill a few years back, police seized books by Virgin Publishing, ones that were simultaneously on sale in British high street bookshops. 
            The good news, however, is that - so far - only the publisher and distributors would be liable if a book were found obscene.  Apart from child pornography, covered by other UK laws (and which would never be accepted by a publisher anyway) it isn't an offence to write a pornographic book.  However, for peace of mind, many writers opt for a clause in their contracts stating explicitly that the publisher accepts all legal responsibility.

The previous section probably makes this sound a frightening genre to work in.  It is.  Even if there are no legal difficulties, I can vouch for the fact that there are other problems for writers.  How do you cope with the possibility that your community, your friends, or your partner will disapprove? How do you deal with people making judgements about your personality through interpreting your work as a reflection of your own sexual orientation? (They might interpret correctly, but might equally be as misguided as assuming a crime writer is a closet murderer).  Given all this, what impels people to write in the pornographic genre?
            In no particular order, and with no claim to completeness, the following can be motives for the writer:

1: Making money

This is a common assumption from those who aren't writing in this area.  As I mentioned in the introduction, it's a common tendency to assume erotic writers are in it for the money (an image that's helped along by the famous example of Henry Miller, who along with Anais Nin and several others, wrote pornography to order for private collectors).  [20]
            In reality, this isn't a field for writers to make money, unless they're very prolific.  [22] My own experience is of expecting at most UKP500 per novel (Olympia's system is to give no advance, but start royalties immediately at UKP1 per mail order sale); but the larger the publisher, the better the payment.  Mary Anne Mohanraj's Porn/Erotica Markets List quotes Virgin Publishing as usually paying "1000 pounds for world rights, set against a royalty of 7.5% with an escalator and 25,000 copies".

2: Portraying the hidden, and social realism.

The taboo-breaking of erotic/pornographic fiction allows writing about aspects of real life normally censored by literary convention.  Examples:

John Cleland's Fanny Hill: unusual for its era, this is a highly realistic account of the life of a prostitute, mentioning risk of pregnancy, worries about disease, and even the implication of contraceptive methods.  [17]

Nicholson Baker's Vox.  This novel is about the subculture of telephone sex chatlines.  In interviews [22] Baker indicates that he's not into the scene himself, but is interested by it as a human phenomenon).  [66]

Samuel R Delany's The Mad Man, one of Delany's pornographic novels [24] is set among the twin subcultures of New York gay men and street people.  Likewise, the late John Preston wrote gay male pornography set in and around Provincetown, NY.  [25] Both, despite fictional elaborations, express a deal of realistic background about the hidden history of the era and subculture of the pre-HIV New York gay scene.

(As an aside, it's worth mentioning that in the post-WWII period, before gay fiction became a respectable genre in the 1970s, pulp pornography - despite its flaws - was the only place where gay men could read positive, and sometimes even realistic, accounts of gay relationships. [26] In mainstream fiction, both books and movies, the stereotype was that such characters had to live unhappily, be 'cured', or die horrible deaths.  The same applied - and still does - to lesbian characters in 'straight' fiction [65].)

3: Satire and subversion.

Showing hypocritical and pompous people indulging in sex is a long-standing tactic for reducing their status in the reader's mind.  Examples:

Pietro Aretino (1492-1556): a friend of Titian, this larger-than-life, highly influential, and wonderfully scurrilous character ("the scourge of princes") wrote pornographic comedies lampooning the clergy and the upper classes of Venice.  [27]

Pornography in pre-Revolutionary France took a similar role in portraying the supposed decadent activities of the aristocrats and royal family.  [28]

Jack Trevor Story's Screwrape Lettuce [32].  JTS is well-known in Britain for his mainstream work, especially Live Now, Pay Later and The Trouble with Harry.  This less-known title, written for Savoy Books, described the mayhem when the the entire British police force eats a strain of lettuce with libido-increasing properties.  As a blatant dig at the Manchester Police Force, then headed by the deeply religious Chief Constable James Anderton (famous for his anti-gay views, and nicknamed "God's Cop" after his account of his conversations with God), the book was immediately banned.

4: Transgression.

By this, I mean the long-standing artistic concept that it's the duty of artists to push the boundaries, to say the unsayable for its own sake, in order to fight social complacency and the general conformist pressure from society.  This philosophy has been central to avant-garde movements for the past century: Dadaism, Surrealism, the Beat Generation [30], the Theatre of the Absurd, and others.
            The most famous example of this, in relation to erotic fiction, is the Olympia Press in Paris.  Olympia published virtually all of the great names of avant-garde literature in the middle of this century: William Burroughs, Henry Miller, James Joyce, Jack Kerouac, Jean Genet, JP Donleavy, Samuel Beckett, and Vladimir Nabokov.  It financed this by publishing pornography in order to float the more experimental titles (those now considered classics) - but the reasons weren't merely financial.  Publisher Maurice Girodias said: "×riting dirty books was generally considered a useful professional exercise, as well as a necessary participation in the common fight against the Square World - an act of duty". [31]
            The idea of transgression features in the intentions of many present-day writers too.  For instance, Alice Joanou is an Ivy-League-trained graphic artist, whose work as includes three books of pornographic short stories ("I have always called myself a pornographer") Cannibal Flower, Tourniquet, and Black Tongue and a novel, Maya 29. She has said that she had "grown extremely disillusioned with the art world and its limitations.  So porn, the most transgressive form still available, seemed pretty appealing".  [34]

5: A vehicle for philosophy.

A classic example is the Marquis de Sade (i.e. Donatien Alphonse Francois, Marquis de Sade).  Now that his books are available in mainstream bookshops, any reader can verify see that they're not mere sadistic description, but works heavily loaded with philosophical discussions: de Sade's nihilistic views on God, sex, society, justice, the exercise of power, and more.  [35]

John Norman: this is the pseudonym of an American philosophy professor, John Lange, who in the 1960s wrote the controversial Gor novels, a series of sword & sandal fantasies of a male-master female-slave society.  [36] Some of the books present arguments for this relationship between the sexes; Norman's non-fiction Guide to Imaginative Sex concentrates on female-submission scenarios; and Norman's letters also indicate that he genuinely believes in the philosophical and biological rightness of the Gorean culture.  [37]

Colin Wilson: The God of the Labyrinth [38].  Wilson has a solid reputation in the UK as a philosopher, literary critic, author, and authority on paranormal and mystical subjects.  [39] In the afterword to this 1970 book, a literary detective story with pornographic elements, Wilson explains his intentions: to write a book in the pornographic convention as a vehicle for his ideas.  These include his views on "life-affirmation" and "life-denial" as they apply to different fiction genres, and his wish to create an "alienation effect" that detaches the reader from the text enough to see the larger message of a book.
            One especially important philosophical element in current erotic fiction is the influence of modern BDSM practice: especially its central "Safe, Sane & Consensual" behaviour code, and the body of thought regarding the psychology and dynamics of power exchange relationships.  This is reflected most in the work of writers actively involved in the S&M scene such as Pat Califia [40], Gloria Brame [41] and Cecilia Tan [42], but a few writers not involved in the scene have been complimented for reporting this philosophy authentically: for instance, Anne Rice's novel Exit to Eden, that she wrote as Anne Rampling.  [43]

6: Commonality of fantasy.

I believe that erotic fiction provides a kind of community between writer and readers: a validation of perceptions and fantasies that are normally marginalised.
            For me, this idea came from the documentary movie The Celluloid Closet, where Susie Bright commented how gay people were forever looking for 'crumbs' off the mainstream table: scenes, however, trivial, that could be interpreted as representing their own experience and mindset (such as the dialogue in the bath scene in Spartacus [44]; or in Ben-Hur, the idea that Messala's animosity toward Ben-Hur might be due to the latter not wishing to resume a previous gay relationship).  This search for 'crumbs' applies equally to other orientations: there are lists on the Internet of many different flavours.  [45]
            There are also fantasies that arise from, and go beyond, well-known fiction.  Star Trek fans will know of the 'K&S' fan fiction, a widespread fantasy involving a gay relationship between Kirk and Spock, and the later Voyager fan fiction typically portraying Captain Janeway as a dominatrix.  X-Files fans will equally know of the mass of fan writing that takes Mulder and Scully into the sexual relationship that never happens in the series.  [46] A similar body of fan fiction has grown up surrounding Xena, Warrior Princess and her possible lesbian relationship with Gabrielle, Queen of the Amazons.  Even less serious programmes, such as Power Rangers and The Simpsons give rise to the same phenomenon.
            There's clearly a huge undercurrent of shared erotic fantasy arising from everyday sources; yet this is marginalised and unexpressed by the mainstream. The erotic fiction genre allows this fantasy to be explored.

7: Simply, to provide pleasure.

I admit that this essay has concentrated on finding intellectual significance to erotic writing, mainly because this stance provides many of the strong arguments for writers to justify their work in this field.  Author Don Winslow e-mailed me with the comment that I had missed a major option: that many writers work with no deep social, political or psychological agenda.
            Point taken.  A best-selling author for Blue Moon and Masquerade, Winslow describes himself as "a dedicated subversive in the war against political correctness".  He quotes the views of Hollis Compton, critic and film reviewer, who argues that those who insist on "erotic literature" miss the point.  Compton "maintains that quality pornography with no literary pretensions, lacking in metaphor, with few allusions, no profound meaning, and no penetrating sociological analysis, can still be justified, if it fulfills its prime purpose - exciting and arousing the reader".  [77]
            It's interesting to note, however, that this view virtually coincides with that expressed by Susie Bright - a writer definitely concerned with the political and social meaning of erotic writing.

In the past, women readers and writers of erotica have been stereotyped into the market niche of soft-focus 'romantic' formó of erotic fiction.  But over the last decade or so, there has been a massive influx of female authors into all areas of erotic fiction [72], in styles ranging from those evolved from romantic fiction to those identical to traditional male-written pornography.  Feminism has pretty clearly helped provide the atmosphere where women can write in previously taboo areas.  However, the relationship between female erotic writers and feminism isn't 100% settled.
            A well-publicised strand of feminist thought has been the Dworkin / MacKinnon view [64]: essentially that pornography is a pathological male phenomenon that automatically degrades women - and not merely a symptom of oppressive attitudes, but the active means of oppression.  [59] This is especially problematical for authors of either sex who explore male-dominant female-submissive scenarios, [47] [70] and also for female authors exploring female-female power exchange situations.  Are the former perpetuating imagery that is damaging? Are the latter just aping male power-related sexual stances?
            The overwhelming answer from women writing in this field is to strenuously deny this portrayal of their motives.  It is *their* sexuality, they argue, not some orientation thrust on them by social factors.  In fact, an exploration of scenarios that Dworkin and Mackinnon would dislike can arise from fighting those very factors.  Lizbeth Dusseau, who writes for Masquerade Books and her own imprint Pink Flamingo [48], describes her erotic fiction, which often contains female-submissive situations, as resulting from the process of overcoming inhibitions that blighted her early adult life. Cecilia Tan stresses of the importance of women seizing control of their fantasies, so that it's fine for them to imagine and write about female-submissive situations, as long as these are not defined by men or by society in general.  [49]
            Other authors equally reject the idea that their orientations are anything but their own.  Pat Califia has said of her 'leatherdyke' books, "Why write something that felt so dangerous? I was pissed off.  I was tired of reading lies about my sexuality." Laura Antoniou [50] and Dorothy Allison [51] have similar views.

Another interesting phenomenon of the past decade has been the shifting of boundaries between pornography/erotica and other types of genre fiction.  In part, I think this just mirrors the generally greater freedom to include sexual situations; but in part, it also seems a deliberate attempt by writers and publishers to push genre boundaries and create new market slots.  This 'slippage' has opened up opportunities for many writers in cross-genre fiction.  For instance, Gary Bowen (whose work includes gay Westerns and vampire erotica) has commented: "I write all genres ...  Porn is the only one that will accept whatever I want to write, with whatever orientation and race of characters I want to write.  It's the freest of all the literary forms".  [79]
            In this section, I'll indicate some of the main areas where this 'slippage' is happening.

Romance.
Romance is a genre that has always had a sexual subtext, and even traditional pulp romance publishers have begun to make this more overt: for instance, Harlequin Mills & Boon has imprints now where the characters are allowed to have sex.  Scarlet, an imprint of Robinson Publishing, specialises in similar "sensual romantic fiction".  [12] Fiction that has crossed the divide from romance to erotica is also the staple of publishers of erotic fiction for the general female market: Black Lace and X Libris.  Authors such as Emma Holly [52], Cleo Cordell, and Vivienne LaFay [53] are major players in this subgenre.

Literary fiction.
Literary fiction is widely considered the prime genre for serious exploration of human experience: and sexuality is fundamental to human nature. Henry Fielding and Jonathan Swift had no problem in writing about sex directly, but it has been argued that the 'literary' form evolved as a way for prudish Victorians to address sexual issues safely and indirectly [73].  This century has seen a resurgence, though not without a long and continuing fight [68], of literary authors' freedom to use sexual detail to a purpose.  For example, explicit details may be necessary for portraying a character.  In Robert Nye's Falstaff, Falstaff's pornographic lies are central to his nature.  The same applies to the long sexual fantasy of the hero of Alasdair Gray's Janine 1982 (and a further interpretation is that the fantasy's domination scenario is an allegory for Gray's own views on England dominating Scotland).  [54]

Science fiction.
Science fiction has a long history of tackling fringe issues in sexuality, and was treading into taboo areas long before many mainstream authors.  The 'New Wave' SF of the 1960s, particularly extended the genre's exploration of sexual themes, which still continues today.  [1] [55] A recent development, however, has been the growth in SF imprints dealing entirely, and more explicitly, in erotic SF.  Circlet Press [56] in the USA specialises in SF and Fantasy erotica.  Its anthologies have included Forged Bonds, ed. Cecilia Tan, high fantasy fiction involving bondage; TechnoSex, that explored sexual scenarios involving technology; and Worlds of Women and Wired Hard, erotic SF featuring lesbian and gay relationships respectively.  [57]

Horror and fantasy.
Sex pretty obviously underlies many areas of the horror genre: for instance, the sexual metaphor of Stoker's Dracula is blatant, and later writers, notably Anne Rice, have explored the 20th century image of vampires as charismatic, sexually ambivalent figures.  But many writers are reworking traditional horror motifs in ways where the sex is no longer sublimated, giving rise to a subgenre of vampire erotica.  Examples include Poppy Z Brite's Love in Vein, an erotic vampire story anthology; Dark Angels, Pam Keesey's anthology of lesbian vampire stories; and Gary Bowen's Diary of a Vampire.  (Despite coming from a pornography publisher, Bowen's novel was a finalist for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award awarded to the best in new vampire fiction).[57] One author, Nancy Kilpatrick (writing as Amarantha Knight) has reworked all of the classic horror stories - Frankenstein, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, and Dorian Gray - as erotic novels.
            Fantasy, too, frequently has an erotic subtext, right back to the fairy tales.  Many authors have rewritten fairy tales to bring these elements to the surface: from more pornographic styles such as Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty series, mentioned above, to highly literary erotic adaptations such as Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber.  [75] A recent offering in this genre has been Arnold Wesker's The King's Daughters, interesting because Wesker is a well-known playwright, one of the 'Angry Young Men' who pioneered gritty British 'kitchen sink' dramas in the 1960s.[76]

Crime fiction.
This crossover is doing well in the USA: though perhaps this is because the connection was always there, the 'mean streets' of American crime fiction always having been nearer social reality than the English poisoning-in-the-vicarage style.  In the American crime novel or film noir, some kind of sexual scenario is often a prime driver of the plot: an affair leading to murder; or sexual tension (or actual sex) between detective and suspect/client.  An important name in this area is Thomas Roche [58], who writes erotic crime fiction, and has also edited two Masquerade Books anthologies, Noirotica, [14] which cross the divide between erotica and the hardboiled crime genre.
            In Britain, Virgin Publishing went cautiously into the edge of this territory with its Crime & Passion series edited by Pan Pantziarka.  These were neither erotica nor pornography, but mainstream crime novels that tried to dispose of the British convention that detectives mustn't have sex lives. [60] Acording to Pantziarka, Crime and Passion ran into a few problems.  [61] Bookshops mistakenly put them either in the top-shelf or romance sections; and crime reviewers absolutely hated the idea of bending the genre conventions.  He says, "Explicit sex in the crime genre is allowed when it's dark, nasty, seedy, psychotic or involving serial killers ...  but sex scenes that didn't fit these narrow confines of acceptability were attacked in the strongest terms possible".  [62]

Returning to nuts-and-bolts for this final section: there are a number of "how to" books on the market.  Most of these can be ordered from mainstream bookshops, or from mail order firms on the Web:

Mike Bailey: Writing erotic fiction and getting published.    Bailey is editor of the UK Headline Erotica imprint, so is in a good position to advise on what his particular publishers are looking for.
Amazon.com entry.  Amazon.co.uk entry.

Edo van Belkom: Writing Erotica. March 2001 launch; shares material with earlier title Writing Horror (EvB is primarily a horror writer: see Edo van Belkom for credentials).
Amazon.com entry.    Amazon.co.uk entry.

Elizabeth Benedict: The joy of writing sex (1996).  How to deal effectively with sex scenes in your writing, not just for erotic fiction. EB, novelist and a teacher in Princeton University's Creative Writing Program, has "a contention that sex scenes are pivotal in carrying the plot, story and character".
Out of print USA.    Amazon.co.uk entry

Lars Eighner: Elements of arousal (a.k.a. Lavender Blue: How to Write and Sell Gay Men's Erotica) (1996).  Currently out of print.  Eighner writes for the gay male market, but his book is often cited as excellent for erotic writers of any orientation, as well as containing good ideas on other aspects such as plotting. NEW: there's an on-line edition at http://www.io.com/~eighner/, where you can read it for a suggested donation to cover Eighner's costs.

Valerie Kelly: How to write erotica.
Published 1986; out of print USA and UK.

Derek Parker: Writing erotic fiction (1995). Parker is a general writer (esp. on astrology and dream interpretation), broadcaster, poet, biographer, etc. See Parkeriters for credentials
Amazon.com entry.  Amazon.co.uk entry.

Pamela Rochford: Writing Erotic Fiction: How to Write a Successful Erotic Novel.  How To Books Ltd, 1997; ISBN 1857032462. PR has written for the UK Black Lace imprint.
Amazon.com entry.    Amazon.co.uk entry.

Lawrence Schimel: The Erotic Writer's Market Guide 1999.  This was supposed to be out from Circumflex, the non-fiction imprint of Circlet Press, but no sign yet. I'll add an entry if/when they ever get this book published.

Josephine Scott: The Essential Guide to Writing Erotic Literature.   Josephine is an established UK author of S&M fiction, and editor of the UK S&M specialist publisher Olympia Press.  Her book is available direct from Olympia Press.

Katy Terrega: It's A Dirty Job...Writing Porn For Fun and Profit! Includes Paying Markets!  (1999). You can read about it at www.katyterrega.com/dirtyjob.html.
Amazon.com entry.

If you search around on the Internet, there are also a number of hints & tips pages, and workshops specialising in erotic fiction:

* The Erotic Mind of Emma Holly. This Black Lace author's home page includes a workshop, 'Steaming Up Your Love Scenes', for romance writers and others.
* Erotica Writing Workshop run by Mary Anne Mohanraj.
* Erotica Readers' Association (ERA) runs a members' mailing list where stories can be posted for comment.
* Erotica Femina. This home page of erotica novelist Vivienne LaFay includes a FAQ and writing tips.

Ermmm ..  none really: except that this essay has only scratched the surface of the erotic/pornographic genre.  However, I hope that I've conveyed something of its flavour: a large, varied, continuously evolving, and increasingly respectable field which I think has great potential for any writer prepared to take the plunge and overcome their inhibitions.
            One of my favourite quotes about this genre comes from Susie Bright, [63] US author and editor of Simon & Schuster's Best American Erotica anthologies: "There's a new question about sex writing and it comes straight from the authors to the readers: 'Did I move you?' ...  "The sex doesn't have to personally get us off, but we damn well better believe it had its author by the short and curlies".
            Her point is that genre and category distinctions are disappearing: all that matters is that the writing has power (whether emotionally, intellectually or physically).  If it does, you've begun to communicate with your reader in the symbols of the deepest human drives and emotions.  No author should be ashamed of that.

Ray Girvan
April 1998; revised July 2000.

Comments or dead link reports to ray@raygirvan.co.uk
My home page is The Apothecary's Drawer at http://www.freezone.co.uk/rgirvan/

[1][back] Sources for SF authors from The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction, ed. Peter Nicholls, Granada Publishing 1981; from Gary Bowen's Erotic SF Biliography (unfortunately no longer available on the WWW); and also from the "Sex" category of the Genres page, Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide.

[2][back] For instance, in Matt Baldwin's interview with SRD in Fugue #12.

[3][back] The fairy tale reworked as an S&M fantasy trilogy - The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty's Punishment and Beauty's Release - originally published by EP Dutton under the name A.N. Roquelaure.  See the Beauty synopses at the official Anne Rice website.

[4][back] "Now my pornographic books are in the suburbs.  They're everywhere..." Anne Rice: Playboy interview.

[6][back] Kim Newman, excellent Irish fantasy/SF author, who specialises in reworkings of classic fiction: for instance, Anno Dracula and The Bloody Red Baron are novels set in a fictional world where Van Helsing failed to destroy Dracula.  See his home page, Dr.  Shade's Laboratory.

[7][back] With a Gothic 'zine, Visionary Tongue ("dark fantasy for the millennium").  See Visionary Tongue Online.

[8][back] Not *the* famous Olympia Press in Paris, of which more later, but one named in homage.

[9][back] Butterfly in Amber, by Thomas Gomez.  "In a first anthology of eight varied and crafted stories, read of the forgotten invention of Leonardo da Vinci ...  of the first experiment of a connoisseur of suspension ...  of Liberty's destiny to become an obsessed artist's living sculpture ...  of the erotic horror unleashed when Fiona Maitland disturbs the powers of ancient Japan ...  and of the ordeal of a Regency lady who falls into the hands of mutineers! Olympia brings you the dark and vivid visions of a talented new voice in bondage fiction!"

[10][back] Perfume Slaves by Thomas Gomez.  "A strange hysteria makes a hospital department erupt in a sadistic orgy, and the only unaffected witness, Aimee Floraison, finds herself abducted, the captive of a twisted millionaire.  But Inspector Coursier of the Surete is on the scent, the tangled trail leading to a string of disappearances in the Parisian Catacombs, an anarchist's seductive slave, and a horrifying nightclub act.  Can Coursier unravel the clues before Aimee becomes the latest victim of a human production line for the extraction of the ultimate perfume?"

[11][back] This 1960s British cult television series had formulaic plots well-known for their frequent bondage situations.

[12][back] For my basic knowledge of this field, I'm highly indebted to the late David Weldon, the editor of the now-defunct Caress market reports newsletter for erotic fiction writers.  For a current web reference on both British and US markets, I strongly recommend the authors' guidelines pages at the Erotica Readers' Association.

[13][back] Mary Anne's Porn/Erotica Resource List provides another good resource for USA markets in particular.

[14][back] See the Salon Magazine interview with Masquerade's Richard Kasak, "the '90s Prince of Porn Paperbacks: "Pulp Friction"

[15][back] For example, Circlet Press warns would-be writers for its vampire erotica anthologies that it has rejected hundreds of stories of the form "vampire picks up victim ...  seduces victim ...  kills victim" with or without "Surprise Ending #1: 'victim' is a vampire hunter ...  Surprise Ending #2: victim turns out to be a vampire too".

[16][back] The cover blurb: "A novel more terrifying than LORD OF THE FLIES and THE EXORCIST combined!" ...  "EXPERIMENT IN HORROR" ...  "A horror tale that will harrow you and haunt you long after you have finished it: Publishers Weekly".
            I personally feel that the reviewers have (perhaps out of sheer coyness) missed the point about the book's nature.  Nevertheless, Johnson's literate style manages to avoid luridness, and the overall effect is extremely disturbing.  This book has a cult following as horror, perhaps because of this very tension between the pornographic elements and the author's breaking the taboos and soft-focus conventions of that genre.  Barry Schneebeli (barschneebeli@earthlink.net) has written an unauthorized sequel, Game's End, so far unpublished. See also my Mendal Johnson page for a biography and review of Game's End.

[17][back] See the essay "Where does Fanny hill keep her contraceptives?" in Can Jane Eyre be Happy? - more puzzles in classic fiction by John Sutherland, OUP, 1997, ISBN 0-19-283309-X. Amazon.com entry.

[18][back] Creation Books Homepage.

[20][back] See William Emerson Ashley's amazing Henry Miller bibliography and its many links.

[22][back] See Jane Allen's account, Pornography Writer of the realities of hard work and low pay.  Darlyn Brewer reports similarly in Writing Pornography for a Living, a piece for a Coda magazine series on underground writing.

[23][back] See the Nicholson Baker Fan Page for Salon magazine and Dave Edelman interviews with Baker.

[24][back] Delany's Dirt by Ray Davis is an excellent analysis of SRD's three "pornographic" novels.  In The Making of Hogg. in the literary magazine Fiction International, Delany talks about the writing process and publication history of Hogg.

[25][back] For a personal account of Preston's work, see his essay "How dare you even think these things?" in High Risk; an anthology of forbidden writings, ed.  Amy Scholder and Ira Silverberg, Serpent's Tail, 1991, ISBN 1-85242-231-9. I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in the subcultural and transgressive intentions of writing.  Check out also My Life As a Pornographer and Other Indecent Acts by John Preston, Richard Kasak Books, 1993.

[26][back] David Seubert's essay on gay pulp fiction, Adult Novels of Men in the Womanless World.

[27][back] Aretino's works include The Courtesan, The Stablemaster and Dialogues.  For brief details and references, see the San Antonio LitWeb Pietro Aretino Page.

[28][back] Western New England College's on-line article on the French Revolution mentions underground literature with titles like The Private Life of Louis XV.

[29][back] Savoy Books generally went in for skating on the edge of legality, as the publisher also of Charles Platt's The Gas [33]; Samuel R Delany's The Tides of Lust (the original title of the recently reprinted Equinox); and two adult comics, Lord Horror and Meng & Ecker.  The latter, its central theme anti-Semitism, featured a thinly-disguised Anderton, with his quoted pronouncements on homosexuality satirised by replacing "homosexuals" with "Jews".  All the books and comics were seized, and Britton prosecuted and imprisoned for 28 days under the Obscene Publication Act (the civil liberties interest being that no jury was involved, only police and magistrates).  Source: "The copper and the comic-books", article by Byron Rogers in the Sunday Telegraph, 10/10/93.
More on Anderton at Feminists Against Censorship (FAC).

[30][back] Unspeakable Visions, Michael Hayward's thesis on the Beat Generation authors and their publishers, including Olympia.

[31][back] From Lust in the Dust Jackets, Salon Magazine feature on Olympia Press and the Golden Age of Erotica.

[32][back] A dig at The Screwtape Letters, a 1943 work of Christian polemic by C.S.  Lewis.

[33][back] A pornographic novel about the social and sexual mayhem caused by a leak of aphrodisiac chemical.  See Mark/Space: Anachron City: Library: Books: The Gas.

[34][back] Source: Club Wired interview with Joanou.

[35][back] There are a number of sites giving brief biographies and quotes for the Marquis de Sade.  See, for instance, Conde Mansion.

[36][back] Gor books - readily found second-hand - could be bought in the SF sections of ordinary bookshops until the 1970s, when pressure groups opposed to their soft-porn male-domination scenarios campaigned for their removal.  (The author Michael Moorcock was a major name involved - ironically, since Moorcock had been an outspoken opponent of censorship when his own books were on the block!) Gor books nevertheless still have a cult following (and not merely with nerdy male readers).  Signs of a revival include fan groups, web pages, a Usenet newsgroup, current reprints by Masquerade Books, and an on-line Gor Magazine from Vision Entertainment.

[37][back] We get the flavour of Lange's scary views from his response to Boris Ludmenkov's "Tor-Tu-Gor" Gor fanzine: "...  the Gorean books do not promulgate the standard monothink of the contemporary cultural establishment ...  They are founded on biology, and not political myth, democratic or otherwise.  It is no wonder that they prove to be so controversial to the puppets of current conditioning programs ...  Indeed, given the power of castration liberalism, wimpery, lesbians, feminist editors, etc., it is quite remarkable that they have been published at all ..." (letter quoted on Kajira Hill's page).

[38][back] The God of the Labyrinth, by Colin Wilson, Granada/Panther, 1977, ISBN 586-04722-0.

[39][back] Wilson's most famous book is The Outsider (1956).  To younger readers, he is best known for his SF, some of which (The Mind Parasites and The Philosopher's Stone) reworks H.P.  Lovecraft themes.  The Space Vampires, loosely based on AE van Vogt's story Asylum, was the basis for the film Life Force).  See FringeWare Inc's Colin Wilson Biography Page.

[40][back] Lesbian S&M writer and activist.  Pat Califia home page.

[41][back] Gloria Glickstein Brame, author, author, editor, poet, academic and sadomasochist.  See her home page, Castle in the Sky, an "eclectic literary site for freethinkers".

[42][back] Writer, editor and sexuality activist. Cecilia Tan home page.

[43][back] See the Exit to Eden synopsis at the official Anne Rice website.  The novel is a sympathetic account of two main characters who, in the process of a police investigation in a BDSM resort, slowly gravitate towards its lifestyle.  It was filmed in 1994 (see IMDB entry) but the movie, in my view, watered down the message by giving a safe comic spin to the whole story.  Mainstream cinema is very poor in its treatment of S&M: male dominants tend to be portrayed either as nerds or psycho-killers [67]; dominatrixes as sexy but a bit of a joke (and very often fat).

[44][back] This is the scene where Tony Curtis, as a house slave, is bathing Laurence Olivier, the Roman senator.  The latter corners Curtis in a spot of conversational sophistry about a preference for snails or oysters being a matter of taste, not morality, and how he likes both (the implication being that he's actually alluding to sexual orientation).

[45][back] For instance, lists of BDSM scenes in mainstream movies; scenes of barefoot actors; lesbian scenes; scenes of actresses smoking cigarettes; and many more compilations of movie incidents that someone, somewhere, finds a turn-on.  In many cases, such 'crumbs' are accidental, but not always: the mainstream media, I'm sure, make intentional use of imagery that's titillating (for instance, bondage overtones to kidnap dramas, or fem-dom overtones to female villains) but play the game of treating it as meaningless or necessary to the plot.

[46][back] And commercial publishers have caught on: Headline Delta has a series of 'clone' books in print, The Sex Files, featuring Jarvis and Hannah, two FBI agents (one a red-haired woman) who investigate erotic paranormal events

[47][back] Certainly I find it a problem: although I'm in the process of writing a fem-dom novel, my prior work is definitely in male-dom territory.  How do I square this with my everyday attitudes? All I can say is, I'm not defined as a person by what I write about! Unlike John Norman, I don't believe in the rightness of scenarios I write about; and I have an extreme dislike of sexism and macho behaviour.  As near as I can explain, my relationship with my subject matter is rather like Edgar Wallace's detective hero Mr J.G.  Reeder, who had "a criminal mind" (enough to empathise with his subject) but wasn't actually a criminal.

[48][back] See A Letter from Lizbeth Dusseau at her Pink Flamingo site.

[49][back] From Cecilia Tan's essay Why smut is important to my liberation (and yours) [42]

[50][back] Laura, Leather and Life, lecture on her life and work by Masquerade Books author Laura Antoniou.

[51][back] The Lesbian Leather Poster Mom, interview with Dorothy Allison, author of the award-winning Bastard out of Carolina.

[52][back] See The Erotic Mind of Emma Holly.

[53][back] See Erotica Femina, home page of Vivienne laFay (a.k.a.  Rebecca Ambrose, Vanessa Davies, Nadine Wilder, Rosanna Challis, and Margret Melrose).

[54][back] See Re-Figuring Imperialism: Gray, Cohen, Atwood & the Female Body, article by Christopher Gittings, Glasgow Review #3, Summer 1995; or these Alasdair Gray: 1982 Janine reviews.  Both Janine 1982 and Something Leather have lesbian S&M scenes.

[55][back] Mary Anne Mohanraj's Alternative Sexualities in Science Fiction and Fantasy List.

[56][back] Circlet Press home page.

[57][back] The Blowfish catalogue has examples of current erotic Fantasy, SF and horror.

[58][back] DarkEcho interview with Roche, acclaimed author of horror, dark erotica, and dark crime fiction, whose writing career began with pornography.

[59][back] For a response to this, see Molly Weatherfield's Pornography (in Theory - and History) page, an "opinionated annotated bibliography" of the issues surrounding this genre.

[60][back] If you look at British genre crime fiction, we have a string of detectives designed not to have sex: a monk (Brother Cadfael); a priest (Father Brown); a celibate elderly person (Miss Marple); eccentrics (e.g.  Campion - though I've long suspected Campion may be gay); and neurotics (Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Morse).  Detection has been treated as a kind of Apollonian game where the detective must be a disembodied intellect, and this sexlessness is a side effect.  Fortunately, a new generation of writers such as Minette Walters seem to be altering things.

[61][back] Sex and Crime, editor and author Pan Pantziarka's comments on the Virgin Crime and Passion imprint.

[62][back] See the Guidelines/taboos section on how destructive and criminal sexual behaviours are perfectly acceptable in mainstream genres.

[63][back] Susie Bright home page.

[64][back] Not a view I agree with! I dispute its claim of simplistic causal connections between our fantasies, what we read and write, and our attitudes and behaviour in the external world.  It completely discounts the possibility of a cathartic function to pornography: of expressing and dissipating our unacceptable impulses.  And its application to lesbians and gay men is highly tenuous. Nevertheless, I accept (grudgingly) that Andrea Dworkin has been demonized and frequently misquoted.  For a brief guide to her views, see the New Statesman interview by Michael Moorcock.

[65][back] See Kerry Fried's Boston Review article, Lesbian Fictions: Straight or Narrow? "Traditionally, lesbians have appeared in fiction just long enough to be saved by men, perform acts of gross depravity, or suffer at their own hands.  Are things improving? Just barely."

[66][back] Baker's other novel with an erotic theme, The Fermata, explores the area of sexual fantasy: if you had the power to stop time, what would you use it for?

[67][back] In Samuel R Delany's autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water, he mentions a "heterosexual sadist" of his aquaintance complaining of distorted representations of his sexuality in mainstream fiction (e.g.  the villain in Hitchcock's Frenzy) akin to Delany's own observations of gay characters being misrepresented.  "But that's different," Delany says at first - then wonders if it is.  See The Motion of Light in Water: sex and science fiction writing in the East Village 1960-1965.  UK: Grafton, 1990, ISBN 0586089101.  USA: Masquerade Books, 1996, ISBN 1563331330: Amazon.com entry

[68][back] See John Sutherland's Offensive Literature: decensorship in Britain 1960-1982 (Junction Books, London, 1982, ISBN 0-86245-065-9).  Although no longer up-to-date, this covers an interesting period - the two decades following the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial - that saw the end of UK censorship of 'serious' text-only fiction.

[69][back] Fanny Hill was the subject of the USA's first obscenity trial on record, resulting in a ban that was revoked only in 1966.  See the E-server.org Fanny Hill text.

[70][back] See Writing Sado-masochistic Pornography: A Woman's Defence by Deborah Ryder, Libertarian Alliance Pamphlet No.  15, ISSN 0953-7783 / ISBN 1 85637 019 4. Ryder is a writer, entrepreneur and masochist.

[71][back] See Erotique Noire: Black Erotica: Amazon.com entry, which includes a list of related titles

[72][back] A feature Some like it hot in the May 1996 Chatelaine magazine said: "The rules of erotica used to be simple: men produced it, men consumed it - and women played the props.  But ...  a growing body of material for and by women is putting that tired old script to bed".

[73][back] Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction, by William A. Cohen, Duke University Press, 1996.  See the Victorian Web's Sex, Scandal, and the Novel.

[75][back] The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter, Gollancz 1989, ISBN 0-575-02584-0.

[76][back] Published by Quartet, ISBN 0704380897. UK Amazon entry.  Wesker, now 66, is best known for his theatre successes including Chips with Everything and The Wesker Trilogy.  An account by Vanessa Thorpe in the UK newspaper Independent on Sunday (Nov 18, 1998) reported that The King's Daughters, based on the Grimm fairy tale, failed to find a publisher when it was originally submitted anonymously. "The work was published only after Wesker put his name to it".  Ha!

[77][back] See Don Winslow's Ironwood.

[78][back] Note for non-UK readers: the magistrate's court is the system for dealing initially with criminal cases.  The magistrate (generally a leading citizen with extra legal training, rather than a professional lawyer) either decides the sentence there and then, or passes the case to a higher court for a jury trial.

[79][back] Bowen quoted in Intervew with a wintke writer in the Australian gay literary magazine, Screaming Hyena.  (Wintke is a native American term for a transgendered person, particularly one in a respected shamanic role).

[80][back] Olympia Press home page.

[81][back] Chimera Publishing home page.

[82][back] Silver Moon Books home page.