Guest Post - Author Lisabet Sarai on "The Creative Power of Opposition"

The Creative Power of Opposition

By Lisabet Sarai

In the past few years, I’ve discovered a surprisingly effective method for kick-starting my imagination: look at what I’ve been doing, then do the opposite. Some of my best stories have grown out of frustration, a feeling that I’d gotten stuck writing the same sort of tales over and over.

For instance, I wrote “The Antidote”, which appeared in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 11, as a reaction to a long spell penning nothing but erotic romance. I was tired of toning down my language and keeping a tight rein on my characters’ sexual attractions and activities, so that they only lusted after the person involved in their happy endings. “I need an antidote to all this romance stuff,” I told myself, then realized I had a great title. The story unfolds in a near-future in which an authoritarian government suppresses sexual desire in the interests of public order – but where a highly illegal antidote is available, for those willing to take the risk.

My multi-genre novel Rajasthani Moon began as a reaction to the current tendency to slot every story into a well-defined sub-genre. “Let’s see how many different genres I can include in a single book,” I thought. The resulting mash-up has elements of steampunk, suspense, shapeshifter, ménage, BDSM, Bollywood (a sub-genre only Totally Bound seems to recognize) and Rubenesque genres. Personally, I feel it’s one of my most successful works, at least from an entertainment perspective. As one reviewer wrote:  “At first you have a kidnapping fantasy with rip roaring sex that honestly left me breathless. Then you have a ménage with kinky toys that made me crunch ice. ( A lot). Then you add a paranormal twist and I couldn’t decide what I enjoyed more. It all worked. Every part of it.”

My recent release The Witches of Gloucester likewise started in a search for contrast. I was putting together a volume of my lesbian erotic short stories to submit to LadyLit. In the process, I noticed a lot of similarities among the tales. All but one were realistic stories with contemporary settings. Every one revolved around just two women, and most of the stories chronicled the characters’ first sexual encounter. I thought I needed something different, for balance. A paranormal fantasy, perhaps. And maybe I could work in a three-way lesbian ménage, perhaps with some moderately hard-core activities. Furthermore, perhaps I could create some characters who were lovers with a long history, women who knew one another extremely well.

I started writing about Marguerite and Beryl, the two resident witches of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and found I couldn’t stop. The floodgates opened. At the outset, I expected the tale to be in the 4-5K region. It turned out to be more than 12,000 words.

When I submitted the manuscript for the collection to LadyLit, they recommended that we pull out Witches and publish it as a standalone title. Of course, I’m happy to have two books rather than just one...but now I’m back in the situation of thinking the collection (entitled Her Own Devices) might not have sufficient variety!

Anyway, here’s the blurb for The Witches of Gloucester. The book is available now—you’ll find a full list of links at http://www.ladylit.com/books/the-witches-of-gloucester-by-lisabet-sarai/ and an excerpt on my website (as well as several others on my blog).

It’s not about power. It’s about love.

The historic port of Gloucester, Massachusetts has a special charm, due at least in part to its resident witches. For decades, raven-maned Marguerite and red-headed Beryl have lived among its hard-working inhabitants, making magic and mischief. Love and sex fuel their supernatural abilities, but duality limits their power. To reach their full potential, they need a third witch to complete their circle.

Rejected as a nymphomaniac by her puritanical boyfriend, Emmeline escapes to Gloucester to work on her PhD thesis. From the moment she arrives, Marguerite and Beryl sense her erotic vitality and unrecognized paranormal talent. The platinum-haired beauty may well be the enchantress they have been awaiting for so long. Now they need to show Em that her prodigious libido is a gift, not a liability, and to persuade her that her destiny lies in the sea-girt town they guard, and in their arms.

* * * *

I want to thank Emily for giving me the opportunity to come by and shout out about the book. Although I’ve been writing lesbian fiction for years, this is my first stand alone F/F title. I’m really hoping that people will enjoy it.

About Lisabet Sarai

LISABET SARAI writes in many genres, but F/F fiction is one of her favorites. Her lesbian erotica credits include contributions to Lambda Award winner Where the Girls Are, Ippie-winning Carnal Machines, Best Lesbian Romance 2012, Forbidden Fruit: Stories of Unwise Lesbian  Desire,  and Lammy-nominated Coming Together: Girl on Girl. Her story “The Late Show” appears in the recently released Best Lesbian Erotica 2015.

Lisabet holds more degrees than anyone would ever need, from prestigious educational institutions who would no doubt be deeply embarrassed by her explicit literary endeavors. She has traveled widely and currently lives in Southeast Asia, where she pursues an alternative career that is completely unrelated to her writing. For all the dirt on Lisabet, visit her website (http://www.lisabetsarai.com) or her blog Beyond Romance (http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com).

New Guest Post - Astrid Ohletz (Ylva Publishing) "When Sex is a Main Character"

 

When Sex is a Main Character

You’ve almost certainly read them before—those hot-but-forgettable erotic stories where the characters are faceless, the plots are pretty trite, and the lust is all that matters. It can make for nice quickie fantasy material, but too often, people who try to write erotica forget an essential storytelling truth along the way:

Well-developed characters are sexy.

What makes Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet’s sex scenes so steamy, for example, isn’t just the sex itself, but knowing the characters having sex—Nan, a shy, naïve oyster girl from a small town in Victorian England awakening to her lesbian sexuality and Kitty, a cross-dressing dancehall performer who has wooed Nan away to live with her. 

In Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, characters Therese Belivet and Carol Aird’s sex scenes in a hotel room are achingly sensual, in part, because by the time they have sex, Highsmith has told us all about this aspiring set designer and this elegant but unhappy housewife, and we know how hard they have fought for consummation of their desire.

For our guest blog installment here this week, we at Ylva decided to quiz some of our best erotica writers about their craft—what they think makes a story erotic and how they make their erotica characters come alive.

We asked writers from two of our erotica anthologies—the Lambda Award-nominated All You Can Eat, a collection of short stories we published in 2014, and Don’t Be Shy, an upcoming two-part erotica collection we’re publishing in May (Volume One) and August (Volume Two).

Jove Belle, author of Uncommon Romance and The Job, wrote the erotic short story “Vanilla Extract” for All You Can Eat. She believes that sex scenes are an opportunity to paint a complex portrait of the characters. What a woman chooses to do, or not to do, during sex is incredibly telling, she says.

“It's probably the most intimate version of the truth that a reader ever gets of that character. If the character is properly developed, her likes and dislikes will guide the writing and the experiences,” Belle says. “And, as a character grows and changes, how she approaches sex grows and changes right along with her.”

R.G. Emanuelle, author of Twice Bitten, is one of editors of All You Can Eat, and also contributed the story “Smorgasbord”. Sex scenes hint at the deepest parts of the characters’ mind, and often the most vulnerable, she says. “What a character wants to do during sex can expose the different layers of a character’s life—her history and how she has been affected by it.”

Harper Bliss, author of the erotic series French Kissing, and the novels A Higher Education and The Honeymoon, will publish a story this summer in our upcoming erotica anthology, Don’t Be Shy. “…Erotic scenes, in particular, are an excellent opportunity to display the dynamics of a relationship, the deeper desires of a character, and, most importantly, their flair for the dramatic,” Bliss says.

So what makes for good characterization in an erotica story?

“The same as for any character in any story: they should be well-rounded and non-stereotypical,” says Bliss.

“I think the main characters have to be likeable,” adds Emanuelle. “I mean, have you ever pictured a person you disliked having sex? Not pleasant, is it? Makes you want to wash your brain out with soap.”

All three writers concede the point that erotica is a special brand of storytelling, where sometimes the sex is hottest between strangers in anonymous encounters and they will never really get to know each other.

“Sometimes sex is just sex. Period,” says Belle. “That doesn't mean it's not fun and necessary and totally awesome. Falling in love is something completely different and it can change the way two characters relate to each other sexually, but it's not needed for sex to be hot.”

Yet, even though characters don’t necessarily need to have a deep emotional connection, “It can be more satisfying if they do,” says Bliss.

“I do think that an emotional connection creates depth,” agrees Emanuelle. “Depth isn’t always necessary in erotica, so it depends on the kind of story you’re writing and the publication you’re writing it for. [But] I prefer the emotional connection, at least on some level.”

Even when it’s more difficult to portray an emotional connection—such as in a short story when two characters meet for the first time—the ‘lust at first glance’ should generate some emotional heat for the sex to be rewarding, advises Bliss.

“After all,” she says, “real emotion is what will make the story connect with the reader.”

Astrid Ohletz

Publisher

Ylva Publishing