By
A P von K’Ory
Are readers manipulated? Do they read books they truly like, or do they go with what happens to be touted in the market as “the trend”?
I made a conscious decision to write erotic romance books for the discerning readers who, like me, want to read something a bit more substantial and worthwhile, in my opinion. I wanted to write books for readers who are ambitious enough to want to read about different lives, situations, and cultures that would negate the familiar grounds, not just something they can “easily identify with”. I’ve defied the rules and combined erotic romance with the thriller/mystery/crime genres. My hope is to cater to an audience that is selective, experimental and sophisticated enough to venture into something new.
So when the publishers’ editors asked me to write something erotic, I tried to veer away from the sort of bite-sized billionaire hero, and the woman who enjoys being dominated via the usual trademarks of blindfolds, chains, whips, or floggers and the like. I broke away from what they wanted me to write simply because it was what was “currently popular and selling”. Instead of changing my books to fit yet another – my coinage – ©McErotica, I decided to write what I personally would love to read, and self-publish that. My objective is to deliver an emotionally satisfying sexual extreme sans whole kits of gadgets. The best and most abundant kits are in the mind, and that’s what I work with.
My focus reverted to my first award-wining series, Bound To Tradition, set in Africa and Europe between 1950 and 1979. From this unusual love story between a Swedish industrialist and a Kenyan girl he’d planned to adopt but ended up marrying, I picked out the youngest daughter, Svadishana (Shana), now 32.Then I paired her off with 28-year-old aristocratic English-German MC, Roman. As if that didn’t complicate the plot and characterization enough, I made them both “financial nomads” whose businesses span the globe, and therefore not bound in a single city or country. The benefits of writing for the joy of creativity, instead of monetary gains, is that I could let rip. I was my own commander. In other words, my sole goal was to create my “baby” in my own image.
I wrote what I call ©Sophisterotica that would appeal to me personally, as a reader. The sex scenes are penned the way I would want them both from the man and for me. I wrote for myself, but was convinced there are other women and men out there who would enjoy the sort of erotic literature I wrote and would enjoy reading. There’s also the truism about writing what you know. I simply added more of my fantasies to that. I needed conviction in my work in order to give it all the passion and authenticity it deserves. I wanted my readers to know they’re reading something I’m passionate about, not something I’m writing “to market” or because it’s a trend.
I sincerely believe there are other readers who are prepared to read something different and original. To me traditional publishing has become a bit of a recycling business. Books are less likely to be chosen for publication based on their literary merit. There was a time when publishing houses were true talent scouts, mentors, nurturers. Those days seem over. Today, publishers are more like bankers or repetitive, predictable production lines, much like the interconnected fashion and film industries.
I have nothing against readers who prefer erotica that involves physical and social pain and humiliation. I simply prefer erotic psychological battles that challenge the intellect a bit. But I’m aware there are a lot of readers who love those “typical” erotica books.
Like the Good Book says: Unto Caesar what it Caesar’s. I'm convinced that if a writer believes in their work and perseveres, the work will find its way into the heart of readers one way or another.
Roman: I never chased after a woman. It was always the other way around. Then I caught a glimpse of the woman I would kneel for, at the opera, and I didn’t even know her name. But I determined to find her if it took me the rest of my life.
Shana: He stood in the room with her. The frisson in the currents freaking between them was as solid as a steel portal. The mutual force of predator and prey blasted its way into her core ... her soul ... Danger. Keep far away from him.
Marie: Some men were born to rule the world; others were born to ruin it. Roman Alastair Northcott Broughton Castell was born to do both. But she loved him and awaited his baby.
Alyssa: He was the lover she wouldn’t tire of. Roman had something so damned perilous about him he was addictive. Who gets addicted to safe and riskless? Not her.
Grieg/Phoenix: Had His Girl interpreted that Friday night as abuse? He’d only done what she wanted – protection of her cherished innocence.
Excerpt from Golden Shana: The Chase (Book 1)
What a difference a day makes… And it hadn’t been a day. It had been an evening in Milan. Brief moments of an evening. I didn’t care about the consequences to whomever. Through my obsession with Svadishana I became aware of the fact that I was a person. A human being, not an almighty god, with all the baggage that comes with being that. I too – eureka! – had a heart pumping white and red corpuscles through my veins. Blood, not icicles.
Was it love I felt for Svadishana? A woman I’d spoken three whiny words – Please call me! – to? Was it more than simple lust and desire? Did I want to possess more than just her body?
Pondering these questions alone was so unlike me. That woman had turned me into an alien even unto my own self. What I felt, my inner voice said, was more than the thrill of the hunt. More than lust, desire, need, passion, the excitement of possession, and subjugation.
Of course all that was part of it. But the basis or the source, the seedbed on which all that sprouted and was growing to full blossom in me, could well be something else.
When I thought of her, saw her image from Milan in my mind, watched how she moved in long smooth strides in YouTube, my brow beaded with sweat. I couldn’t pull my gaze away from the few photos I’d fished out of the Internet. Group photos at a family birthday or the authorized biography of her father. Her movements in a YouTube conference clip were springy and powerful even in their smoothness. She exuded strength all over the place, laughing, talking, gesticulating.
A breath-taking beauty. Such beauty that I dared not believe it at times.
And brains to go with it.
In love or not, I knew what I wanted and Svadishana was the answer. I wanted her and would do anything short of suicide to get her. Who knows – perhaps when it came to that as the only means available, I’d really murder too. I didn’t in the least care about the consequences, as long as they got me to where I wanted to get to.
Svadishana’s arms and knickers and… heart?
What obsession, Roman. Get back to real.
No chance. Real was Svadishana.
Blurb: Golden Shana: The Capture (Book 2)
Roman: I wanted to eat all of her. Even within that fortress I longed to erect around her to hold her captive in, to keep her away from men not worthy of the sight of her, I’d devour her.
Shana: Roman was deadly sex. She had no antigenic for immunity against him. Instead she lay there on his bed, in an impossible state of sluttish disarray, holding her breath.
Marie: “So you didn’t bring your rich old cow with you.” The bitch was ten years older than her, years older than Roman himself. Weren’t men supposed to prefer younger women?
Alyssa: She was not going to let Roman treat her like a hole in the air. He started this triangle and she was going to make it equilateral.
Grieg/Phoenix: His philosophy stated that peace was bondage, and war was freedom. His Girl was his territory, and no other man’s.
Excerpt from Golden Shana: The Capture (Book 2)
I picked her up and carried her like a bride. Or a sleeping child. She nuzzled between my neck and shoulder. I kicked the door shut behind us.
We were both ablaze, and I needed to check that, wind it down a notch.
“Like to lie down on the sofa and cuddle till we both slow down a bit?”
“Bed.” Her voice vibrated against my neck.
We left the entrance hall behind us. The flames kept on leaping.
“Overriding my sensible decision?”
“Yes. Bed.” Tremulous once, tremulous twice.
“Just got me, and you want to run away with it.” I bore her past the living room.
“Bed.”
“I’m getting a restraining order on you.” I took the first stair, chest tight again.
She lifted her head off my shoulder and her Huskies sent megawatts to my blues. Unveiled desire. My balls clenched. At this degree I risked coming where I stood with her in my arms. I was tempted to close my eyes and summon my control. For the first time I felt life surge through my veins for a woman, the whole woman, not just sex with her. Again, I experienced that powerful instinct in me to guard and protect her, the fragile and most precious thing in my life. She had a pull on every cell in me. Her masses of loose curls gave warm slaps through my chinos to my hip, sending the sergeant into planning guerrilla warfare for its freedom.
The witch. I was hypnotized. I had to stop climbing the stairs and get my head cleared. She was as necessary to me as the air I breathed, yet she knocked that air straight out of my lungs. Her naked desire was intoxicating. Insanity mingled with reality. I really had her back in my arms. She came to me, came to my home for the first time. And ordered Bed, not a mutual shower. She was the first and only woman to take me to this Newland. She was my perfect balance. I’d fallen hard and didn’t even want to get back up. It happens to the worst of us ingrained rogue playboys.
The Huskies still pinned me in Newland. “Skirting around the deed, are we?”
“Protecting my golden goddess.”
For sheer survival, I broke the lock of our eyes and started up the stairs again.
Blurb: Golden Shana: The Untouchable (Book 3)
Roman: I loved owning women. Then I found my woman. But she would never be owned, not even by the gods. She left me. Still, her dangerous admirer and I began wars over her, not merely street fisticuffs.
Shana: Roman scares me in every way and the fear excites me. I’m brainless in his arms, brainless just from thinking about him. He makes me navigate so many labyrinthine passages and secret doors that I’d never even been aware of before. My body knelt and wept for him. My common sense made me flee from him while I could.
Marie: I sold Roman my heart and soul. Only to realise my body had not been consulted, and was therefore out for war.
Alyssa: I really got all that about Roman. The super-ink indelibility of him, the substance of him that stamped his four-figure-euro Ferragamo Oxfords, the supernatural charisma that rocketed him all the way up there with Lucifer. His square would never fit my round. But hope springs eternal, right?
Grieg: “If I have whoever your girl is, why don’t you simply come over and take me off her or her off me?” Roman had not reacted like a man who had received that damning message. Over the phone, he’d sounded as if he didn’t have a single feather ruffled. Time to start the war.
Excerpt from Golden Shana: The Untouchable (Book 3)
I heard him change the phone to the other ear. “Castell, you’re a kid running a billion-euro crib, you pervert.”
My system actually waged wars for me to jump out of my skin. Control, Castell.
“Oh, yes. I’m about as straight as the U-bend under a sink, fuckwit. So is this the problem? A pissing contest based on having some beef about your wallet being a little anorexic in comparison? Have I got that bracketed?” I heard him swallow again. I decided on a blind knock on that, although for all I knew he was drinking water. “By the way, I’d ease up on the drink. Otherwise you won’t manage to solve the square root of bugger all, let alone remember if you have any other name but Sggirb.”
“I know you right up to your fucking perve room, Castell. I delivered the CD—had the CD delivered – right into your fucking office, practically into your hands. You know nothing about me. So you better watch your smart mouth.”
“Ah, you thought you’d simply storm the Bastille that’s my home and be discreet about it, then slink into my office building and show me the dot over the i that amounts to your balls? You’re right, I know nothing about you. You’re not even in my periphery, private or public.”
“I’m not a ball of yarn to your kitten, so watch your fucking mouth, Castell!”
Just to keep him put off his stroke, “Who would you say has all the tools for annihilation, fuckwit, the kitten or the yarn?”
“You’re lucky I’m—”
“Luck is basically mythical. Reality is called chance. How about we meet?”
He said nothing.
Not good, because now that I was screwing him hard, I needed to keep up the pace. So I said, “You could make it your mud hole or you could haul your arse back here to my city. Then we roll up our sleeves, or whisk off our T-shirts. Then we start doing a little tribute to Muhammad Ali out in the Congo with Joe Frazier.”
He said nothing. I heard him swallow at intervals during the silence. “I’m rapt with attention, fuckwit Sggirb, so let’s have a date and then – to quote your countryman –you are an American – float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
“You think you’re so fucking cool…” He rumbled the word out long: Coooooollll…
“Oh, I don’t just think it.”
“Just keep your hands off her, Castell. Keep your hands off My Girl!”
“If I have whoever your girl is, why don’t you simply come over and take me off her or her off me?” I paused for a reply, none came. “Or is this the sheep being docile until they get utterly famished?” Another pause. Silence, so I continued, “You sound like you wouldn’t find a clitoris if you were armed with a compass, street map and a fucking NASA telescope.”
“You can’t intimidate me, Castell.”
Which only exposed to me the wound I’d ripped open in him. Time to add chilli.
BUY LINKS IN KINDLE – Please note that the books are also available in paperbacks:
Golden Shana Series
The Chase
The Capture
The Untouchable
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