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Monday, September 20, 2010

Writing an Erotic Novel

I've gotten another question via the Formspring box at the top right of this site (go on, try it, it's easy!). This person's question was:

"Do you think you could ever write an erotic novel, and if so, what theme would you go for?"

Could I? Well, sure. I've written several already, actually. The first one I wrote some years ago when I was still with Faith (if you don't remember Faith, go here for the story). It was an erotic fantasy tale, about 39,000 words long (novella length, really) with very thinly disguised versions of myself and her as the two leads in the story. She seemed to enjoy it, but I've never been very happy with it since I wrote it over a period of just over a week and it seemed rushed to me. Since then I've written several more -- two of them fantasy-themed (unconnected with the first, or each other), one of them a paranormal-romance type (years before Laurell K. Hamilton hit the bestseller lists with her Anita Blake tales, I should note -- bad timing on my part), one of them your standard slice-of-life, and one of them a gothic horror tale. With lots of sex in all of them, of course.

Why aren't they in print? The usual. No publisher has wanted to take a chance on them (you think marketing a standard fantasy novel is tough, try marketing an erotic fantasy novel). All publishers I've submitted them to have rejected them. Sometimes I dust them off and send them back out again when I get the rejections, but sometimes I put them away to rework and modify some more.

Anyhow, yes, I've written several, and may write more if I have spare time. I don't have as much of that as I used to.

(And yes, there will be an EFF post later today).

-- PB

2 comments:

Bilinda Ní Siodacaín said...

Why don't you e-publish through smashwords?

The Panserbjørne said...

I'm old-fashioned in one respect: I don't care for e-books. If I'm going to be providing a novel it'll be something that can be found in brick-and-mortar stores, rather than just online or via iPads or Kindles or whatever. I'm also a bit of a snob and there are so many crap e-books out there that putting my work among those would feel like burying it in dirt and hoping somebody finds the jewel amidst the crap.

Opinions differ. This one is just mine. :)

-- PB