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.
5/7/23
Genre Bending
I’VE ALLUDED to some of the things I’m going to write about today in previous posts. Let me start by saying that ‘genre bending’ is not the same as ‘gender bending,’ so if your sensitive little balls just crawled up inside your pelvis, relax. This isn’t a Budweiser commercial.
I want to dig deeper into making a genre—like sci-fi, incest, do-over, mind control, mystery, etc.—a universe—like SWARM, Damsels in Distress, Naked in School, etc.—or a story your own. Let’s take a couple of examples and have some fun.
I was recruited to write a SWARM story by a couple of authors through gentle suggestions saying they thought I should have something to contribute to that universe. I complained that I didn’t know a thing about the military and wasn’t likely to learn much. Zen Master wrote to me and said they had lots of guys who knew military stuff, but they needed more good characters.
I read every story (290+ at the time) in the SWARM Universe twice before I decided to set about writing something in it. It started with a simple premise of “Porn Stars Save the Universe.” I knew a little something about porn stars from hanging out with them at AVN and online. I had gained a lot of respect for several of them. I started highlighting places where other authors had opened the door a crack to things like a rebellious AI, people who refused to take service in the Confederacy, and the development of technology the Confederacy considered ‘outdated.’
When the first book, Pussy Pirates, was finished, the SWARM authors kind of took a collective breath and said, “Okay. We asked for it.” Omachuck, who had been significant in editing, latched onto the ideas and wrote them into his next story. But it was not a pickup and escape to the stars to do battle with the Sa’arm story. It was all earth-centric, with people who were non-military and below the grade that would have made them citizens of the Confederacy. The second book, The Assassin, I specifically released as “non-canon” so other authors would not have to deal with my version of the future of that universe.
I have had a weakness for do-over stories, but got really tired of hearing the same old same old from them. First, I set out to write one that would simply break all the rules. In Not This Time, my hero woke up at 17, not 14, the morning after making the worst mistake of her life. Yep. Her! She didn’t have perfect recall of everything that had happened in her former life. She recalled the things that had been important to her. And she had to make a new life out of the miserable mess of one she’d had, following her unwanted pregnancy.
Then I set out to sort of redeem myself with another do-over that would have an old man thrust back into his almost fifteen-year-old body. I just don’t have the stomach for fourteen-year-olds having great sex. “The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins.”
I couldn’t just go with the genre, though, without putting my own peculiar stamp on it again. Jacob was back in what he could identify as his teenage body, but it was a different timeline in an alternate universe. People were familiar, but often in different roles. The timeline was after his first time on earth, so most of what he remembered could inform him about how to behave, but couldn’t make him rich by knowing the future. And the rules of the society were different, often including things he had advocated in his previous life. Now he had to live with them.
He ended up in a constant struggle between his old man self and his teenage self, so he could enjoy his youth. The old man kept trying to ruin everything.
The point of these illustrations is that somewhere in the story of our lives, there is room for an alternative version. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Fites (the bitch) was determined to break me of the habit of saying that something was “just like this but different” in some way. I raised a hand one day and stated, “I lost a pencil similar to this one, but with a red eraser.” Without ever actually hearing what I said, Mrs. Fites said, “It can’t be just like that if it’s different.” It was the first time I understood that teachers didn’t listen. Still, I often think, ‘Just like this but different.’
Within every story type, every archetype, every myth and scripture, there is room for a, “Yeah, but what about if they did this instead?”
When I wrote in the “Damsels in Distress” universe, my first question was, “Why do all the heroes have to be ex-military. Aren’t there other heroes in the world?” I wrote about Hero Lincoln who was a theatre major, paralyzed from the waist down after he was struck by a car while saving his niece and sister-in-law. That was a hero, and he fully deserved a trip to the healing chamber. He took an earthly caretaker with him and while he was still on crutches was sent off to rescue a damsel who didn’t really want to be rescued. His weapon was his crutch and a deck of cards.
The Hero explored a different part of the continent, once mentioned in another author’s book, faced some of the forbidden animals, dealt with disillusioned damsels, and had to knock one of them out in order to drag her back to Crossroads. There was lots of space to create something new in a well-established universe.
Inserting my own adventure in a history that sounded like it ‘could have’ happened was truly topped off in my Bob’s Memoir series. A 4,000-year-old demon travels throughout the world, inserting himself into different known stories from history and mythology. Frankly, it was one of the most fun books I’ve ever written!
I approached the myth of Pygmalion thinking, ‘If it happened to one artist, surely it has happened to others.’ So, I wrote a whole series of stories based around the relationships of artists and their artworks called Pygmalion Revisited. All had different media and stories, but all had the magical relationship of an artist and his or her artwork.
When people ask me where I get ideas for what I write, I don’t even know how to answer. How can I not have ideas about what to write? Look at any story—even in the newspaper or on Twitter—and then say, “Just like that, but this is different.” You have a whole new look at the genre.
With a little luck and the crick don’t rise, I’ll have a lot more stories to come. Next week, I’m going to deal with a very hard subject: Murder, He Wrote.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
