Here’s an interview with Nick Urzdown.
Take it away, Nick…
- What was your ideal career when you were a child?
What a question! I was born the year of Suez when Sir Anthony Eden was the Prime Minister. In those days a boy’s choice was between going down a coal mine or labouring in a factory, so ideal careers did not feature on anyone’s agenda. I told my parents that I did not want to be a factory labourer, and my mother encouraged me to try something else, so when I left school at 15 I became a trainee projectionist.
- How did you start writing erotica?
They say that hard work never hurt anyone, but I have never been one to take chances. Working as a projectionist left me with plenty of free time to do other things as the machines were whirring away, so writing just seemed to be an obvious choice, given that I read so much. Being a projectionist meant that I was around Manchester when most decent souls were asleep, so I got to know many of the dodgy characters who inhabited the hours of darkness. Some of them had duplicating machines in their kitchens and operated as pornographers, so I borrowed a manual typewriter off an uncle and churned out a 5,000 short story, all gaping vulvas and throbbing cocks – I am sure that you are familiar with the theme. Anyway I offered it to one of those merchants who looked it over, stuffed it in his pocket and gave me £3.00 and a couple of drinks from the bar. Thus began my professional career…
- Where do you draw your inspiration from?
Both my books are memoirs, and features real women whose identities I have disguised. So the inspiration comes from the memories of a long life, well lived.
- What’s your favourite genre within erotica, and why?
I write about spanking these days, and have done for many years. When I was growing up spankings were everywhere, and not just at school or within the home. Secretaries got their bottoms smacked by their managers – I can remember the receptionist at a major Manchester cinema who was told by the general manager that he would spank her if she messed up a call by making mistakes with the telephone switchboard again. I do not know if he ever did it, but nobody thought that he was wrong to pull up a young woman in that way. Again, I can remember standing waiting for a bus in about 1970 and a young couple were arguing. The man said to the girl quite simply that he was going to spank her that night when he got her home and the people in the bus queue who heard him just smiled. It was all very normal… Sure, it turned me on, and when I began to chase women I would usually find an excuse the threaten a spanking, and most of them took it in good part. Thus I got to spank all my girlfriends, as the ones who ran a mile rather than be spanked never became a girlfriend! I have all those memories and it gives me pleasure to write about them.
- What’s the best writing tip that you have ever been given?
Treat it as work, because that is what it is. Sit down at about the same time every morning and write 500 words. Return later and do another 500 words, which gives you a thousand for the day. Do that five days a week and you will have 5,000 words every week, or 20,000 in a month. In three months you will have the first draft of your manuscript.
- What are you working on at the moment?
A novel – my first! It will be set in a dystopian Britain where the European Union has collapsed under the weight of its own stupidity and the states of Europe are fighting amongst themselves. Britain stirs the pot to keep them at it, but so long as there is a rough balance of power she leaves them to it. At home the collapse has led to a rejection of the old liberal consensus and the army followed the King’s orders to dissolve parliament. The King now rules through his Privy Council. Murderers and rapists are routinely hanged in public and muggers are caned, also in public. The problem is that you cannot pick and choose your repression and that is what our heroine tried to do. She was all in favour of muggers getting thrashed, but resents the fact that women like her also have to bend over. The government is trying to save money by creating work for men and encouraging women to pick out a likely fellow to marry, just as their great-grandmothers used to do. Many middle class women resent this, hence the canings when they become too vociferous. My girl meets a senior figure in the Royal British Constabulary who falls for her and tries to protect her from her own idiocies. What do you think of it so far?
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http://strictuncle.blogspot.com