Congrats to
Trix
for winning the copy of the The Beginning of Knowledge by Anne Brooke. I’ve already emailed Trix, so they should already have received my email, but if not, please email me at armchairreader[dot]coleriann[at]gmail[dot]com so you can your download code for your book. Thanks for playing everyone and thank you all for stopping by and commenting on Anne’s guest post — “Erotica or How to Be Fully Human”.
Let’s get the biggie out of the way first (as it were): I love writing sex. Yes, I admit it. It’s one of the high points of my writing life. Even when I’m not writing about sex, I’m thinking about writing it. It’s part of all my novels, and most of my short stories. Even when no sex takes place.
At heart, you see, I believe being erotic is simply part of being human. We’re all physical and sexual (or at least with the capacity for being sexual) people, and including that aspect of our lives within literature is a celebration of being alive and of being who we are.
Neither is erotica the same as erotic romance, though both are wonderful genres and I fully support and regularly read work from either category. Love and romance is a fantastic part of life, whether it’s something where we have personal experience or not. On the other hand, we’re all born with bodies which are responsive and which are an integral part of our characters and how we develop. We can all relate to erotic writing, whether or not we can relate to romance writing.
More to the point, when it comes to erotica writing, the best stories are actually those – wait for it!… – which don’t use the sex scenes as the be-all-and-end-all of a story. Yes, that might seem counter-intuitive, but actually if you’re reading a sex scene and the only thing you’re getting from it is the sex itself, then it’s not erotica. It’s porn. Which is all perfectly fine, if that’s what you were expecting.
Erotica, however, should take you somewhere different. Yes, the sex is hot – or should be! – but good erotica should actually be showing you more about the characters involved and giving you an intimate insight into their lives and what drives them. Erotica is all about character – and character is what should make a book sing. Good erotic writing reminds us at a very deep level just how human we all are, in the body, under the skin. It reminds us we’re not all about minds and hearts, but about flesh and blood too.
If sex, therefore, is doing its job properly, it should reveal character and the real, physical relationship between characters in a way that nothing else can. It should also move the storyline along as part of that deepening understanding of character. TIP to my fellow writers: If something else at that point can reveal your character better than a sex scene, then DON’T WRITE THE SEX SCENE – write the “something else”. Good sex writing shows the people you’re writing about being themselves most clearly and most closely – and that kind of intimacy with a character is what the reader – and the writer – wants.
Erotica can also take us to places in our lives we hadn’t realised we felt quite so strongly about, and can therefore be both exciting and challenging, as well as deeply revealing. And that’s whether you’re a reader or a writer. When I started to write my erotic story The Beginning of Knowledge, I wasn’t expecting my main character, Alan, to be so very quietly angry and desperate about important aspects of his life, and for him to express these darker emotions quite so passionately through his sexual relationship with his younger colleague, Luke.
Luke brings out something in Alan – something both delightful and dangerous – that he’s never acknowledged before. It is a revelation to him, and was also one to me too. Quite honestly, writing this story scared me – partly because though I’ve always known I do carry quite a lot of anger around with me, I hadn’t realised how deeply it goes, and partly because I’d never before acknowledged the link in my mind between sex and the dangerous vulnerability of being known by someone else. Goodness, there’s something for my counsellor to get her head round, if I ever have the courage to discuss it!…
So, if you’ve not read any erotica before or you think it’s maybe not for you, then don’t dismiss it without giving the best erotic writing a chance. Because, at its best, erotic writing is about life, character and the world & bodies we live in. At its very best, it’s all about ourselves.
GIVEAWAY RULES
Please leave a comment below to win an ebook copy of The Beginning of Knowledge. The giveaway will last until Midnight on Saturday, July 27. I will choose the winner using Random.org and email the winner who will then have 48 hours from the time of the drawing to reply to my email. I will then forward the winner’s information to the author so the winner can receive their book.
Please enter the email you’d wish me to contact you at in the comment form, or if you prefer, leave it in the message.
Thank you and good luck!
GIVEAWAY CLOSED
Title: The Beginning of Knowledge
Author: Anne Brooke
Publisher: Wilde City
Length: 12k words
Genre: m/m Contemporary Erotica
Heat: 4 – Spicy & Smutty
Sex Frequency: 4 – Very Often
Keywords/Tags: Short Story, Charlie Harding Presents, Wilde City Press Erotica Week, Dark, Kink (Pain, Humiliation), Public Sex, Self Discovery
Rating: Really Liked It
BLURB
When University administrator Alan Castleton meets temporary worker and talented pianist Luke Milton, he doesn’t expect to become obsessed with the handsome young blond. But soon he is heavily involved in a passionate and angry affair, and exploring the dark shadows of his own personality in a way he’s never encountered before.
The more Alan tries to break free from his obsession, the deeper it entangles him. The dangerous split between his reason and his sexual desires threatens his peace of mind and, when the crisis point comes, he must decide once and for all the kind of life he should lead.
REVIEW
Now this is the type of erotica that I like to read! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a romp or what have you but Anne has written a darkly erotic story that is much more a story about self-discovery than a rough frame for porn without any reason. And Anne is so good at writing these types of stories. Here we have a man (Alan) who is at a point in his life of stagnancy. His relationships always fail and he’s grown to believe it’s solely because of him and his reaction is to abstain from any kind of relationship for a while and go about his life concentrating on his job. What he doesn’t expect is Luke, the new temp in his office that pushes all his buttons — the ones he learns that he’s not sure he ever wanted pushed. Luke makes him feel powerful, but only at the end of his degradation and abuse against him, and that feeling of power over Luke is at the same time addictive and dangerous.
What we have with this story is almost a character study of a man who feels powerless finding power over someone else. He learns throughout the story just how dangerous he is, but that is both because he is in denial of who he really is and that he hasn’t really dealt with his feelings and his past. I think that more than anything this is a smart story, because Anne forces you to confront your own feelings about Alan and Luke. Many will finish this story seeing the sex and pain as the focus, of one man being dragged into a world of Dominance that he doesn’t understand and finding that he revels in it. That it, and the story, is dark and sinfully sexy. I came away with something different from this story, and perhaps that’s what defines this story more than anything, your own perception of it. I found it as a story of a man, Alan, who doesn’t understand himself. He ends up in a darkly addictive spiral out of control because he never faced his issues head on. He always tries to run from them, and so they hold on to him all the stronger.
But it is worth finding out on your own. The writing here is superb. I felt as if I knew Alan intimately only a few pages into his first person narrative because for all that he’s blind to what is going on he’s starkly transparent. So I commend Anne for writing a story that is indeed knowledgable, that is informative but at the same time seductively sexy. I think you should read this one just to see what you take from it.