So what happened? Simply put, government pressure aimed at the credit card companies. Ten years ago, Republicans held almost across-the-board control of power. And although online porn had become a cat out of the bag in the 1990s and then gone feral, they donned their animal control caps and went on the hunt. Their best way to limit porn? Make it difficult for providers to conduct business. Use the tools of capitalism against pariah capitalists.

Thus, the origin of outrageous credit card fees for adult business. Ultimately, it didn’t stop Big Porn in its tracks, but it did push out lots of little guys. DIY pretty much died in its tracks. (Anyone remember the “amateur porn” fad of the ’90s? Where’d that go?)

My colleague eventually found an affordable credit card vehicle. Out of Amsterdam. (So much for on-shore, domestic business.) And the process was taxing enough for her that I subscribed to her site for a couple of years, figuring every little cent aided her artistic efforts –and made a modest stand against suppression via capitalism.

Today, we’re facing something similar and likely as insidious. Key on-line bookstores like All Romance eBooks and Bookstrand and DIY vehicles like Smashword have received the equivalent of a cease-and-desist notice from Paypal if they’re carrying “indie erotica” – self-published, self-produced erotica.

See Crackdown Roundup via Dear Author.

But it hasn’t impacted only indie publishing. Pink Flamingo books, a longtime early adopter who began selling erotic fiction on-line seventeen years ago, was the first websites I knew to report pressure to kill titles. If I remember correctly, the key pressure came to bear on their “consensual non-consensual” books, a buzz-work for an advanced BDSM understanding of an immersion consent. Regardless, today, their author guidelines reflect that pressure:

DO NOT INCLUDE: characters under 18 having sex or in sexual situations, (even in flashbacks), bestiality, incest, excrement, snuff and necrophilia. Additional content restrictions include storylines featuring rape, abduction, kidnapping, coercion, breeding females, nonconsensual slave worlds, auctions and prostitution, also drugging, water sports (piss play), diapering and extreme violence.

The chilling arm of suppression has renewed its reach, this time affecting all manner of on-line e-bookstores.

Origin Stories

It reminds me of the late 1960s in an oddly parallel way. And sadly, I suspect a key pioneer for free speech and the erotic word, Barney Rosset, is rolling over in his newly-turned grave. Rosset, owner of Grove Press, fought for the freedom to publish and sell works like Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Tropic of Capricorn, and The Naked Lunch, a fight that repeatedly found him courtrooms across the country, including that Most Supreme. And he won those cases, giving publishers and consumers access to all manner of the erotic word.

And, like now, a slippery slope appeared. For every avant garde work that no longer faced suppression, dozens of clearly erotic titles entered the marketplace. Everything from Victorian/Edwardian literature to nonfiction exposés to erotic sleaze filled bookshelves in five-and-dimes, drugstores, cigar shops, and magazine stands. While many of these businesses had a long history of covertly carrying printed pornography, they felt no compunction about filling their racks with this new material. Nor should they. The law, for once, was on their side.

Then, as now, publishers began to push the limits. Erotic fiction grew ever more explicit and its display more in-your-face. Granted, much of it was on-par with any erotica you’d find in a brick-and-mortar bookstore today, but the American public wasn’t used to such direct contact and visibility. The Victorian Merry Order of St. Bridget was one thing; Wring Neck Daddy or Orgy Lust, another altogether. The line between erotic fiction and outright pornography was blurring.
Eventually, new cases before the Supreme Court settled the matter, especially Miller v. California, codified the avenue for explicit printed pornography.

And, essentially, by codifying community standards, it drove printed pornography into its own space, the adult bookstore. You could still buy non-obscene erotic fiction in a bookstore or via a book club – the latter put Story of O in countless nightstands across American – but if you wanted hardcore, totally taboo stuff? Well, that was pornography – questionably obscene at that – and it was relegated to the adult bookstore.

The 1970s saw an explosion of pornographic books, thanks to that ruling, and hence the rise of the taboo sex book. Then as now, incest titles were exceptionally popular, but, segregated away from the greater public, no one really cared. Out of sight was truly out of mind, and it continued well into the 1990s, until streaming film porn became the consumer norm. (Oddly enough, you can find much of this material on eBay, segregated into its Adults Only category under Everything Else. Hypocritically worse, Paypal will accept your sales transaction. Go figure.)

What Goes Around

Today’s bookstore purges are quite similar to those days. Erotic romance? OK, sure. Erotica? Protected by artistic and literary merit. But taboo pornography entering the on-line bookstore? Well, that’s that blurry line between erotica and pornography from the late 1960s all over again.

When I joined the ranks of professional erotic writers in the late 1990s, we had a list of publisher-mandated taboos to avoid: rape, incest, the under-aged, bestiality. If a print publisher wanted a distributor and a bookstore presence, you didn’t tempt fate by violating those perceived hard limits. In fact, I once wrote a story in which a character recounted the long-ago leering of her now much-older lover when she was eighteen. The publisher asked me to change her age in the backstory to twenty-one. Why? Because the age of consent was twenty-one in their state AND their most major customer might refuse the book if she remained eighteen. Had I written the story of literary fiction, I probably wouldn’t have faced that problem. But in an unabashedly, clearly erotica story? Too much risk.

So where did those taboos originate? To some degree, they’ve always been with us, but I’d place their codification at the feet of the mid-1980s Meese Commission Report on Pornography. Conducted by a Justice Department committee under Edwin Meese during the Reagan administration, its published findings were laughably considered the most pornographic thing produced in 1986. But from it came an extrapolated awareness of what the Reagan administration might well consider obscene and subject to prosecution. Hence, the itemized list of taboos to avoid.

And it worked like a charm. For the most part, it protected print erotica from prosecution. Plus, other newly-emerging factors turned the anti-porn crusader’s attention elsewhere: the VHS explosion of porn-to-video companies, then on-line porn. In fact, if you ask most people to define porn today, they’re far more likely to think film footage. The written word as porn was something your grandpa enjoyed. Like eons years ago.

Paypal’s actions reflect obscenity law’s unfinished business. One can easily argue that what’s currently being suppressed in the marketplace is written porn and not constitutionally-protected erotica. I suspectsmany of its purveyors have marketed their work as porn and not erotica; that is, they not only deal in the taboo, but use the most unmistakably pornographic language in their meta data and lurid cover imagery. Just like pay porn sites.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Except that when you employ these tactics, you’re exposing yourself – and in ways that are, at some point, going to attract trouble.

I’m not sure we can really call the Paypal crackdown censorship. No one’s stopping people from writing this stuff; they’re primarily saying they won’t traffic in its business. In fact, this stuff’s been on the web since the days of Usenet. The difference now? People want to sell the stuff.

We are, however, seeing suppression. And its sweep is wide this time. The late Barney Rosset experienced a similar situation late in his publishing life, after he launched Blue Moon Books in 1987. The American Family Association, fueled by the late Rev. Donald Wildmon, pressured Kmart to rid its shelves of Blue Moon Books under threat of a boycott. The books sold well there, but Kmart caved and removed the books from its shelves. Rosset, speaking to Fresh Air in 1991, said “I never thought any battle has been won. It takes different forms.”

Today, the form has assumed yet another shape. And as long as the Meese Commission-inspired taboos guide corporate risk aversion, this form of suppression will stand. Because nothing stands in its way to otherwise challenge it – and possibly overcome it.

His obituary in the New York Times did him well, except for the details about his erotica titles, namely: “After discovering a trove of suppressed 19th-century erotic books, including ‘My Secret Life,; he started Blue Moon Books, which published those as well as newer titles.”

Rosset not acquire those titles to start Blue Moon Books; he had acquired a stash of erotica in the late 1960s from an antiquarian bookseller leaving the business. These he republished through Grove Press under the imprints the Library of Victorian Erotica (hardcover) and Black Cat Books (paperback). He added contemporary works to the line as well, an approach he resumed when he did start Blue Moon Books.

Here’s a snippet about the matter, culled from my copy of Obscene, a documentary about his publishing life:

In 1992, Rosset spoke with NPR’s Fresh Air about Blue Moon Books and discussed a flap in which the American Family Association pressured Kmart, then owner of Waldens Books, to abandon selling Blue Moon titles.

His fight for free speech never truly ended. Nor was his ideal freedom ever fully realized.

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.

And, as the name suggests, it’s a retelling of the seminal Story of O, recast as a lesbian tale. How that came to be is a tale for another day (or twelve hours from now, after a good night’s sleep), but for now, I’ll leave you with this:

Liv called her hunger The Void. She thought she knew it – and herself.

Until a night with Cassandra silenced it.  And brought out something in Liv she didn’t think possible: submission.

One taste of that, and Liv wanted more.

But Cassandra isn’t an easy dominant.  She expects Liv to earn her way into her good graces.  And her demands aren’t simple.

How many hurdles will Liv need to jump before she can kneel before Cassandra?  Before Cassandra chooses to claim her?

Just what will it take to become Cassandra’s “L?”  And will the outcome be all she hopes for – and needs?

Find out in a timeless tale, retold.  In Story of L. Available from Ravenous Romance and all e-book booksellers.

Why? Well, because…

First, because I love everything about the printed word and because Ravenous Romance really has something here with its Ravenous Nights reading series, I became its publicist and organizer. You can read all about the event at its website. Follow us at Twitter and Facebook. You know, the usual social networking stuff!

If you’re a published erotica or erotic romance author and want to read for us sometime, contact me at debrawriting at cox dot net.

Then, second, I finally finished and turned in my fourth novel. I’ll make a genuinely BIG announcement about it once the cover art’s available. Somehow, cover art makes its existence seem concrete!

Third (and significantly), I joined Ravenous Romance as an acquiring editor! Yes, after years of authoring short stories and novels, I’ve decided to shepherd the works of other authors into publication. I’ll continue to write the occasional short story and will still strive for a novel a year under my own name, but I love books and I want to bring books into existence.

So what am I looking for? Specifically, I’d like to see novels in the M/M, menage, lesbian, shape-shifting and kink categories. And I’m also looking for older erotica/erotic romance works that have fallen out of print, with rights returned to you, the author. If they saw print once and can be tweaked to meet erotic romance conventions, I’d love to return them to life!  Query me at the same email address above.

I’m also editing anthologies for Ravenous Romance under the name Debra Wilson-Koss, the first of which celebrates back-door loving.  The Call is here and don’t let my new name confused you. It’s the same old renegade me!

So there you have it, and here I am, re-minted and ready for action.  Or at least whirlwinds!

RAVENOUS ROMANCE™ LAUNCHES NEW YORK CITY READING SERIES
Publisher of erotic fiction to launch Ravenous Nights at Lower East Side venue

[Boston, MA – February 1, 2011] – Ravenous Romance™, a leading online publisher of erotic romance novels and short stories has announced a collaboration with New York City literary hot-spot Happy Endings Lounge to host a monthly erotic reading series on the first Friday of every month called Ravenous Nights. Happy Endings, a funky 2-story club that was once a massage parlor, is located at 302 Broome Street. The first Ravenous Night is scheduled for Friday, February 4 from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., and it is free of charge.

The lineup for February 4 includes:

• Cecilia Tan, best-selling erotic author of the Magic University series
• Caridad Pinero, New York Times best-selling erotic romance author
• Mo Beasley, founder of Urban Erotika, a spoken word performance series
• KT Grant, author of The Princess’ Bride
• Debra Hyde, acclaimed writer of BDSM erotic romance and author of the BDSM classic, BLIND SEDUCTION.

In celebration of Ravenous Nights, Barnes & Noble has announced that they will offer free copies of the Ravenous Romance anthology Once Upon a Threesome to the first 100 people to download it. In addition, Ravenous Romance will give each attendee a free Ravenous Romance drink coaster to each attendee and the Happy Endings Lounge will create a special “Ravenous” cocktail which will only appear on the menu during Ravenous Nights.

Ravenous Nights
Friday, February 4, 2011
8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Free of charge
Location: Happy Endings Lounge
302 Broome Street (at Forsyth St)
(212) 334-9676

In the name of all things erotic, let’s party!

But the bane of this process?  The space right in front this picture window. I swear it’s messing up the feng shui of the room almost as badly as the upright piano off to its left.  The piano, I can do nothing about. My spouse wants to keep it, a family heirloom, and to say he’s been giving and kind about the books about the house would be a gross understatment on my part. Sometimes, one must give back in equal gesture.

click for enlarged image

So, the window.  I’ve decided I want to put a work table there to provide a place to sort books, keep research files (in piles, most likely. LOL!), and house other in-progress sundries.  If I could squeeze some small bookcases into the setup, all the better. I think I’d like to keep its length to equal the broad span of the picture window because of surrounding furniture, but everywhere I look for possibilities, I’m underwhelmed.  A prime example: IKEA work tables.

I suppose I have images of finely constructed home libraries in my head — you know, the kind you’d find in books about the subject — and I’m not really that way. I’m far too practical and price-conscious.  But I’m willing to entertain ideas, so let me put it to you: What would you do? Have you seen any interesting work tables in your home design adventures?

I don’t have space measurements at this time (I’m on the road, traveling), but I will when I return home. The only restrictions I have are no dark woods, white, or all-metal tables. The room’s woods tend towards maple in hue.

So, ideas?

(P.S. I’ll provide a pictoral tour of my library once the reorg is finished.

A decade previous to this date, I embarked on writing short erotic fiction. Dozens of my stories appeared in major anthologies from Cleis Press, Alyson Books, the now-defunct Venus Book Club, Berkley Heat, and more.

Visit ravenousromance.com's gigantic celebration sale!

Until Lori Perkins blew me away by inviting me to submit Ravenous Romance. She remembered my writing and publishing creds — something every writer prays for — and just when I questioned whether to continue on, she gave me the very outlet I needed to journey on. I had a whole new reason to celebrate and cherish opportunity. Since then, Lori and her partners have brought two of my novels into e-print. They’ve asked for several more, including one that is shaping up to be an opus of a lifetime. And, most soulful to me, they’ve allowed me to write from the erotic edge. Not once have they asked me to softball my erotic portrayals.

Today, all of us Ravenous Romance authors are celebrating our good fortune. We’re ecstatic. And our publisher is celebrating, too, by offering all full-length ebooks to the reading public for a mere .99 cents. Go, check it out, and if you’re fond of my writing, look in the Wicked Pleasures section for more kinky fiction.

Happy anniversary, Ravenous Romance!

Over the summer, my college-aged, production-savvy daughter helped me assemble an exciting DVD/CD promotional package, specifically geared to the erotic romance/erotica reader. It’s a DVD/CD package that has book trailers, author commentaries, and book excerpts of all my novels.

My novels are exceptionally kinky and probably not for the faint-of-heart. But if you’re an adventurous, open-minded reader and game for interesting twists of erotic extremes, then you might enjoy my work.

If you’d like one of these babies, simply email me at debrawriting at cox dot net, provide your snail mail address, and I’ll send you a DVD/CD combo at no cost to you. (Adults only, please.)

I absolutely promise to regard your snail mail address as sacrosanct. I will not share it and if I have future offerings, I will contact you first via email.

I hope you’ll check out this freebie of mine. We had such fun putting it together and I’d like to pass our enthusiasm to you!