I’ve started this weekly blog about my life as an erotica author. Why and how did I get started? How is it going? What have I learned? These posts are suitable for general audiences, but probably not of interest to anyone under 50. Feel free to contact me with questions or for information about my 50+ erotica books. For the past twelve years, I have been on an incredible journey and there is much more to that story. I’ll post here each week with another short chapter of my life as an author of erotica. Might even give tips regarding how to get involved. I encourage you to join my Patreon community.
4/30/23
Writing What You Know
AN OLD ADAGE in the writing business is to “write what you know.” If you know police procedure, then write a procedural mystery. If you know insider politics at the national level, then write about a corrupt senator. If you know military strategy, write a war drama.
If we took that far enough, only serial killers could write about Gacy. Only an art thief could write about a theft in the National Gallery. Only an astronaut could write space operas. And only an elf could write high fantasy. Writing what you know might not get you where you want to be. It certainly wouldn’t me. I needed to write what I wanted to know.
I took some art classes in 2005, and then, in 2010, I wrote a story about a painter who made love to his models. My second major story was about a painter who was depressed because he felt like a fake. He painted watercolor and oil and murals and frescoes. I’ve never painted at that level. I have suffered from some amount of depression and I suffered with my daughter’s depression when she went off to college. I’d have to say, I wrote what I wanted to know—maybe what I needed to know about handling depression—not what I knew.
During my travels in 2014, I met a one-time neighbor of mine from back in the days I was in junior high and before. He was older than I by half a dozen years. I’d given him my card and he invited me to stop at his farm in Southern Indiana the next time I came through the state. I did the next year and spent a very pleasant long weekend dry camped under an old sycamore tree on his farm. We often relaxed together in the evening with a little drink and I discovered he’d been reading my books avidly.
“Devon, I’ve known you for fifty-five or sixty years. We were neighbors. During that time, my daddy and I raised cattle and horses. We farmed over a hundred acres. I’ve been a farmer and rancher all my life and I still have fifty head of cattle out in the pasture. I know cattle and horses,” Mike said. “And I know you never had a ranch or a farm! So, in that whole erotic paranormal romance western adventure series, how did you know so much about ranching?”
Mike was truly puzzled and amazed. He went on to cite passages where I wrote about how much dry feed it would take to winter cattle, how the price at auction worked, and how many acres were needed for a herd of horses.
How did I know that stuff?
“Mike,” I said, “it’s called research. You worked for a while as a county extension agent. Well, they’ve got those up in Wyoming, too. A friendly bunch who were happy to answer questions. The librarians at the Coe Library on the University of Wyoming Campus pulled down plat maps from 1866, a contemporary history of Laramie written in 1872, train schedules for the Union Pacific, and a record of who the area ranchers were and how much land they claimed at the turn of the twentieth century.
“The school system transportation department was happy to tell me details about how long the bus ride was from Centennial to Laramie, how many kids of what ages were on the bus, how many stops it made along the way, and what they did in bad weather. Research is how I learned about the ranchers’ opinion of the introduction of wolves into the Yellowstone and Rockies and the adversarial relationship with the Forest Service. Research brought me Cheyenne legends, the migratory patterns of buffalo, and the troop movements of the cavalry that massacred the Cheyenne at Sand Creek. It’s all about research.”
Well, of course, it was also infused with what I did know. Laramie Wyoming Bell was a Cheyenne girl I went to school with the summer of 1966 in Colorado. Never forgot her beauty, her gentle demeanor, or her name. And never managed to find her again, no matter how much research I did. I hiked many of the mountains in that range. I rode horseback through some of them and owned my own horse for a few years.
But there are also subjects I avoid because I don’t know anything about them. I’ve learned my lesson with some. In Blackfeather, I mentioned a girl firing a Henry .44 rifle in 1866 and its kick bruising her shoulder. “That rifle wouldn’t bruise a baby! It had no more kick than firing a .44 revolver. That’s all wrong,” wrote a gun person. I believe that was the last time I wrote a story that specified any kind of firearm!
I don’t know military anything. I sometimes have to write about a person’s rank or pay or training, and when I do, it takes hours of research, reading the memoirs of people who served at the time, running it by my editors who served at the time, and trying to wrap my head around what that was like. And I still get it wrong at times. My hero in the Hero Lincoln series was unlike any previous hero in the Damsels in Distress Universe. He was not former military. He was a crippled magician and juggler with a theatre degree. I understood that.
The same was true when I wrote two stories for the SWARM universe. Even though the stories talked about creating a militia, it was a very unmilitary organization. I avoided anything that smacked of regular military. Not because I’m opposed to those stories, but because I don’t know anything about it.
So, if you ask me if I write what I know, my answer is yes and no. Personal experience creeps into everything an author writes, but—as I had to explain to my older sister—having written about a good and caring father didn’t mean that I had a good and caring father. It was more what I wished I had.
And that, I could imagine.
Next week, let’s talk about the exciting topic of genre bending.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
