I’ve got a novel that I expect to have finished and on the market by the end of this month. One of my beta readers said it was “like Ben Elton, but with explicit sex”. I’m happy with that as a genre.

I don’t want it to be marketed as “erotica with comedy elements”. I’d rather it was “an extremely sexy comic novel”.

Though, of course, I want it published, and once I have a publisher I don’t care if they market it as “the best thing since Nigella in the Kitchen“, so long as they give me money. 

But I was looking through Kindle, checking out bdsm books, for the marketing and the prices. There are writers out there asking for $6.99 for a semi-literate 15-page wank fantasy, and I have to say that I think they’re dreaming. For all that I think writers should be paid in diamonds, rubies, oysters, champagne and free sex, I still think asking for about $1.50 a page, for 15 pages, is eye-wateringly lazy and greedy.

On the other hand, I expect that no one buys that stuff, so perhaps it doesn’t matter. Nice try, is all.

Anyway, the other thing that struck me was the amount of anti-condom messaging, where one of the hot bits for the intended reader (the target audience seems to be women) is the bit where the male lust object tells the heroine that he’s going to fuck her hard, without a condom. 

I wondered what the hell that was about. Here are my three guesses.

1. Maybe it’s some kind of cultural side-effect of the resurgence of the religious right. Anti-birth control measures are not just getting into US laws, they’re also getting into the porn. 
2. Most people who use condoms probably don’t actually like them. I use condoms. But where we’re being sexually exclusive, been tested, and so on, skin to skin is far more intimate, more sensual, and, in the Erica Jong sense, more zipless. But the “hard, rough and unprotected” porn usually won’t even mention condoms, or the advantages of bareback. Still, maybe for once they’re being subtle.
3. A fair proportion of the books end with the heroine in advanced, blissful pregnancy. Her sexual rival – often her mother – has gone, and now she’s happy being looked after by the step-father. She didn’t get a billionaire, but at least she got a guy who owns his own home and has a job. So, like the billionaire porn, it’s partly sexual and partly an economic fantasy.

The truth is, I don’t really understand “hard, rough and unprotected” porn. When I read a sex scene in this genre, I tend to see it as something like this:

“He pushed her down and as her legs sprawled apart, helpless from her own wanton desires, with one powerful, masculine lunge he exposed her to STDs and unwanted pregnancy.”

This is not hot, to me. But obviously it is for a lot of people. I’m not being a snob and I’m not mocking. I genuinely want to understand this genre. 

Can anybody help?

Julian “I’m Wearing You” Assange

One other point, since we’re talking about condoms.

If you get sexual consent by agreeing to use a condom, and then don’t use a condom without informing your partner, the law on obtaining consent by deception is clear in pretty much all jurisdictions in the world.

If you do that, you’re a rapist.

The legendary and wonderful Molly was a bit irritated by my saying that, in one sense, submission is simple. See  here.

This isn’t another instalment in an argument. Peace has broken out. I love and admire Molly, and she thinks I’m sort of ok.

I meant that obeying an order is usually simple physically (psychologically is a whole different question). Therefore a dom may say his or her order is “simple” to obey. While deliberately ignoring how far from simple it is, in psychological or political terms, or in any way other than physically.

That is, a submissive doesn’t need to be an Olympic athlete to bend over a desk. But there are many other reasons why that may be difficult for the submissive. When the dom says it’s “simple”, he or she is deliberately ignoring a lot of complicated things,

What’s worse, the dom is ignoring those psychological truths for fun and sexual pleasure.

But doms, even twoo-doms, often don’t tell the absolute truth, in a scene. For example, a dom might say the submissive is a silly girl, or silly boy, when the dom knows perfectly well that the submissive is anything but silly.

But being put down a little can make the scene hotter for some submissives, so things like “you silly girl” get said. Sometimes what a dom says, in the heat of the moment, is intended to create a scene and make it sexier. When we’re doing that, we are not on oath.

Anyway, I want to explain why the stories in this blog are written the way they are. 

The first issue is that almost all of what I write in this blog is based on things that actually happened. I’m only one of the people who took part in that experience, so there’s a whole story or side of a story that isn’t told.

There’s always at least one woman involved in the story. Sometimes there might be two or three perspectives on my actions as a male dom. But I can only write as me, and what I did and what I saw, heard and felt.

An observant dom learns a lot by paying attention in a scene, but it’s still not telepathy. The submissive is another person, with their own thoughts and feelings. 

When I write about a woman (or women if it was a threesome or some other complicated arrangement), I think I have three duties. 

1 I have to preserve their privacy. She (or they) shouldn’t be identifiable, not even by people who know who I am. I change things, cunningly, to make sure that people, sexual partners in particular, preserve their anonymity. I can’t give an example of what I do, for obvious reasons, but sometimes I’m pretty damn clever about that. 

2 I should write about the information the woman or the women gave me about what she/they thought and felt about what was going on.

In writing that, I should always respect those women as people, sexual human beings, and never write about them as male fantasy figures. Though I should write about how sexy they were/are, and the pleasure they gave me and (though it sounds immodest even to mention it) the pleasure I gave them.

3 I should not presume to speak for them. If a woman came, I can say that she came. If she said something nice to me, or critical, I can tell you that. But I can’t presume to get into her mind and tell you what she thought.

I can report responses, actions, things said by the submissive. i try to do that in a way that gives a real sense of both her and me, and makes it reasonably clear what she thought, in general terms. That includes when she was thinking I’m being an idiot, which i try to be honest about.

So I’ll write about her words and sounds and movements of her body, which say a lot, but I ain’t no ventriloquist. And she ain’t no sock puppet.  

So in this blog you get bits of my inner monologue, but not of hers. To me, that silence is an act, or omission, of respect.