I just got word that my short story Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts will be in Lethe Press's Haunted Hearths, edited by Catherine Lundoff. I've sold nearly 40 short stories by now, so you'd think I'd be used to it, but every sale feels good.
I didn't set out to be an erotica writer. However, since sexuality, gender, and identity are important themes to me, most of my characters have been revealed through sex and sexuality. My work is therefore erotica. I've been perfectly happy in that genre. But - and there's always a but - I primarily consider myself to be a speculative fiction writer. Certainly some of my stories: Red By Any Other Name, She Comes Stars, Blue Girl, Kells, Feed, Sex Karma, Nations, and both my novels: Chaos Magic and Love Runes, would be considered horror or speculative fiction if it weren't for the graphic sex. Science fiction and fantasy writers are not amused when someone gets smut on their peanut butter though. I've been told (by some rather haughty writers) that my work shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as their genre.
Haunted Hearths isn't erotica. It's lesbian ghost stories. Words Like Candy Conversation Hearts will be my first story to be marketed as horror, I presume. Maybe paranormal. It feels great to finally make that leap into the speculative fiction genre (and subgenres).
I doubt I'll ever leave erotica behind. My characters have a way of wandering into bedrooms and stripping down to their souls, and I'm comfortable following them there. Besides, I'm proud to say that I write smut. But I can't help that frisson of excitement as I finally have an indisputable claim to speculative fiction too.
Now - about that mystery I've been meaning to write...
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4 comments:
congratulations!
Hey, congratulations! Do you mean to say there's actually no sex at all in this story? Are you on your way to fame and fortune?
Well, I'm glad you still like smut, that's the important thing...
D. L. King
D.L. - no sex. my ghost is os pretentious that she doens't deserve to get laid.
But give up writing smut? And leave the glamour, the literary accolades, my gilt Cleopatria barge that I sail daily down the mighty Los Angeles River? As if!!!! (I've grown very fond of my scantily clad hunky oarsmen)
SF needs to be smutty! I wonder what your critical writers think of Phillip Jose Farmer’s or Samuel Delany’s work. Sexual/sensual SF was an outlet I needed as an adolescent growing up in a repressed family, to know it was more than ok to be different. In the late 60’s and early 70’s SF writers were able to write openly and they did. And I’m thankful to them.
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