Friends who know me are likely gonna think what took her so long when they see my newest title, Story of L. But those same friends also know this about me: I either intuit things in a blink of an eye or I’m totally clueless. I mean if-it-were-a-snake-it-would’ve-bit-me clueless.
And I was completely clueless about recasting an S/M classic and modernizing it.
But my editor wasn’t. She saw the possibility — and knew my potential. When she proposed that I write a lesbian version of Story of O (and that we would unapologetically call it Story of L), I almost fell out of my seat.
By the time I righted myself, I knew I’d write the book. Love at first sight works like that.
But building a relationship with your novel is like any other relationship. It takes work. I decided I wanted to write a kink novel featuring characters already experienced in BDSM. We have plenty of novels from the newbie perspective and plenty of light tales of BDSM LOVE. We don’t have many novels set in the “experienced” world of BDSM.
That decision made Story of L a challenge from the outset, made it a much higher platform than I had ever before attempted. Now I know how high platform divers feel when they step up their game.
Story of O is a seminal work. It won both public scorn and literary awards upon its release in 1950′s France. It was, if I remember correctly a book club choice twenty-plus years later in America, placing it in nightstand drawers across the country. The late Susan Sontag composed a essay arguing that O was as literary a novel as anything in the stuffy institutional literary cannon, raising eyebrows everywhere in either scowls or elucidation.
Which told me this: I had to write Story of L as if it had to be a legacy work. And I had to make sure Story of L reflect the queer leather world as contemporary to our here and now as O was in it’s. Only time will tell if I achieved the former but I’m reasonably confident I’ve managed to produce the latter.
I’m deeply satisfied that Story of L, the story that overtook my writer’s existence for quite some time, has finally stepped into the light of day. I hope you favor it with your time and that it rewards you with the satisfaction of am engaging and erotic read.