elizabeth cage

I like smut (but please don’t tell anyone) by Elizabeth Cage

I know that you might be getting bored with any further mention of FSOG.  You’ve bought the tee shirt (yes, it’s actually on sale in a store near you with the slogan, “We aim to please”) and you’ve added the cd to your Amazon wish list (which contains all the tracks mentioned by Mr Grey, who, being sophisticated, knows a lot of classical music).

But a surprising comment by a friend, a professional artist, got me thinking about an issue that probably affects erotica writers in particular, and triggered this post.

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Naughty Little Secrets by Elizabeth Cage

The commercial success of Fifty Shades of Grey has spawned a host of patronising and downright irritating articles about erotica. Phrases like “new world of feminised erotic fiction” abound. New? How new is new? Fifty Shades is referred to as a “breakout clit lit novel” or “posh porn”. The media do love labels. Publishing giants like HarperCollins and Random House are now reported to be signing 6 figure deals to secure titles that they hope will duplicate and exceed the huge sales of Fifty Shades. As a writer of erotica for more than 13 years, I should be excited about this, and I am. Yes, the market could soon become saturated, but there are still many more opportunities to be published. Nowadays, when people realise what I write there seems to be less awkwardness in their response and more enthusiasm about erotica being the big thing right now. While this could all be good news for writers, why does a part of me feel uneasy? Is it sweeping generalisations that are trotted out along the lines of, women prefer to read rather than observe. Who says? And the assertion that “new” erotica is well written whereas in the past it was just pages of sex. And do any other writers bristle when a genre they have been working in for years is now being heralded as “new.”

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