I have a day job. Christ, no — I have a day and night and often weekend job — and in between doing all the stuff I have to do in order to keep a roof over the family’s head (OK, I admit I do have some help with that from my other half), food on the table and nights in exotic foreign locations, I write erotica.

Yes — erotica.

Not porn — erotica!

A totally gratuitous erotic picture

Some while ago I let slip (maybe on purpose) what I write in my spare time. Lots of people know I write, not so many know exactly what I write. At the time I knew it was a mistake. I thought it might make me more interesting… and it seems to have done that, but I’m not yet sure whether it’s the kind of interesting I intended.

The other day I was finishing up a meeting and someone came up to me as they often do after these things. During conversation they said, “Oh yes, someone told me you write soft porn…” Titter titter.

No – not even soft porn!

I write erotica, and there’s a difference.

They do say porn is for men and erotica for women, but I don’t agree with that. Less men read erotica than women because men are visual creatures and arguably their souls are less romantic than those of women. Hey, it’s evolution. Men have to hunt, pass on their genes, be big and strong and tough. Us women just have to make them think they run the show. But anyway, men are visual and less into reading when it comes to arousal. Women, I think, like their arousal peppered with character and storyline. But I also have perhaps a naive belief that men can enjoy erotica too, and so some of my books are written from and for a male perspective — not a gay male perspective, but that of a normal heterosexual man who likes more intelligent titillation than redtube has to offer.

I write erotica. Erotica — not porn!

If I wrote porn I wouldn’t care about character or even plot. Hell — man comes in to fix boiler, woman sheds her clothes, three minutes later he has his cock in her mouth and finger up her ass, three minutes after that it’s all over. Men, huh?

One of my novels, Ali’s Art, runs to over 120,000 words. That’s over 400 pages. Want to know what happens? Boy moves in with girl he’s always loved. Discovers she’s gay. They live together for a year and boy gets girl. Great plot. Classic.

(By the way, Ali’s Art is FREE on Smashwords throughout July 2012, so if you want to see exactly what I mean download it at no cost at all by clicking here.)

The book has had good reviews, which say what counts is the characters and the slow build of tension over all those pages. Yes, there’s sex. Yes, there’s even explicit sex involving multiple partners, positions and orifices. But it’s not porn. It’s erotica.

Fifty Shades of Grey made me think about this. The book is a phenomenon, and regardless what you think of it’s literary merits it has introduced erotica and sex to a whole new readership. Except all the media refer to it as “Mommy Porn”.

No — Fifty Shades is not porn — it’s Erotica. It’s cleverly marketed, cleverly constructed (but badly written, sorry) erotica.

I know I’m not going to win this argument. People like convenient labels and anything of a remotely smutty nature is always going to be considered porn by most of them.

I could give up and write what people expect, but I can’t. I love writing. I love creating characters and discovering they have lives of their own that go off in all kinds of unexpected directions, taking me, them, and the reader by surprise. And I love it when they shed their clothes and get down and dirty, because that’s a lot of fun too. So I’m going to keep on writing what I love.

I’m going to keep on writing erotica.

Not porn — erotica!

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