I’m an entertainer. Writing’s a form of entertainment. (And not just for the readership: for me, too.) To be aroused by art one’s experienced is (almost by definition) to be entertained, I’d say. If someone’s jerking off to my erotica, then all I can do is lean back in the typing chair, smile a bit, and think, Good!I got the job done. 🙂
…and then noting (with affectionate amusement) some responses:
Well, troops, better get busy filling in that bingo box. 🙂
Also: I have to say (while stressing that I absolutely appreciate the humor behind “shocked, shocked, scandalized…”) that the dissonance is, temporally speaking, a bit ill-founded. Because while I may be best known for the Young Wizards works these days… by no means did it come first. This did.
A soft chuckle in the darkness. “Lorn, remember that first time we shared at your place?” “That was a long time ago.” “It seems that way.” “—and my father yelled up the stairs, ‘What are you dooooooooing?’ “—and you yelled back, ‘We’re fuckinnnnnnnnnnng!’” “—and it was quiet for so long—” “—and then he started laughing—” “Yeah.”
Granted, from the here-and-now POV of readers with access to the hot-‘n’-spicy shipfic or PWP on AO3, this sort of thing (and the numerous other often-lights-off or dialogue-only sexytiems passages in the traditionally published Middle Kingdoms works) would be seen as pretty small beer: soft, non-edgy stuff. Yet in 1979 apparently there were those who found the sex and sexualities on display in The Door Into Fire arresting enough that the book got me nominated for the Astounding Award (for best new author in the field) two years in a row.
There’s no question that the broadly inclusive tone set by those books went on to affect and underlie the YW universe in very basic ways. (There’ve been some scholarly works written by authors who’ve picked up on this, so [much to my relief] this perception hasn’t been just me imagining it.) But I’ll grant you that those who don’t know the MK novels wouldn’t be in a position to make the connection. (shrug) This is just one of those things that comes of having a lot of fragmented readerships who don’t know about each other… a side effect of having done a lot of different things during a career. I can also understand how not knowing about the MK works could leave people who know me only, or primarily, as someone writing for a younger readership, a little bit disoriented (or maybe concerned) when the issue of me writing graphically sexual material rears its head.
Anyway: I consider erotica—and its more casually-dressed (or undressed…) cousin, smut—to be perfectly legit forms of literary expression; ones that can soar to unexpected heights if you’re willing to put in the work. The sexy-stuff-writing muscle requires periodic exercise if it’s to remain viable and/or useful. So I exercise it. And being a 70-year-old person who sometimes creaks audibly when she walks has done absolutely nothing to decrease interest in the subject—the brain, after all, being the biggest sex organ, and the one least vulnerable to the depredations of time. If anything, nearly fifty years of experience (and three and a half decades of marriage to @petermorwood) has added… let’s just say nuance. 🙂
Now doubtless this whole concept will horrify some of the “Eww, You’re Too Old To Be Writing This Kind Of Thing, Go Get A (Home) Life” types. To which all I can say is, “…Well, good!” By and large, such folks are not my readers anyway. And as for any of them who are, and can’t deal? They need to understand that (pointing off to one side) those people over there—the various kinda-straight and pansexual and bisexual humans, and the gender-fluid fire elemental, and the otherly-gendered Dragon, and the mostly-gay ones enthusiastically shouting “We’re fuckinnnng!” down the stairs—are Nita’s and Kit’s godparents. Without the members of that extremely mixed marriage and their increasingly extended family, there might be no Young Wizards series… because it was the splash made by the first of the Middle Kingdoms books that first got the Errantryverse crowd in through a major publisher’s door. And the series’s continued (modest but still noticeable) success through the second and third volumes kept the writing of new YW books going for a good long while.
…So. For those who may have had questions: HTH. 🙂
(And now back to the unending search for a more graceful synonym for “testicles”.)
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