Fun and Kink

Watching the evolution of kink groups over the past couple of decades has been interesting. Twenty years ago, the process of finding and joining kink groups was a tedious rigmarole that involved looking up ads in the backs of newsletters sold at adult bookstores, exchanging letters, meeting for appointments, going to munches, paying yearly fees and then, quite often, finally getting to go to a play party only to find that no one there shared your fetishes. These days, all an adult has to do is get a membership on a social networking site for kinky people, look up where the nearest event is (and there are a whole lot more of them now than there were before), pay the event fee and go do whatever it is you want to do.

One of the things that I enjoyed about the evolution of kink groups in those twenty years was the creation of TNG (The Next Generation) groups, or TNG subgroups within existing groups, for younger kinksters, usually defined as those 35 years of age and under. Not only did I have an easier time talking with people in TNG groups, but the parties were just a lot more fun. My style of kink has always tended to be on the silly and playful side, and you just don't find that many older kinksters into that sort of play. On the whole, I'd say that those who get into kink for fun and joyful purposes are a very small percentage, and given the solemn tone that tends to dominate at all-ages play parties, it's easy to see why so many of us who like that kind of play never really feel at home in that kind of an environment.

As I've been writing the California Bondage Sorority books, it's been difficult to figure out the tone to take. I've always wanted to address serious issues like abuse and consent in the books, and so I try to keep a fairly serious tone in most of the novel. There are less serious moments, though, including the kind of "tie-up games" I love so much. Stylistically, I think they work to help the books from becoming too dark, but I worry about readers not identifying with the events like they do with the more serious scenes that they're more likely to have seen in kink clubs (and online videos and the like as well).

The California Bondage Sorority books have never been intended to present what I think of as an idealized world of kink (far from it), but there's always a danger when you're a writer that people will assume you write about how you'd like things to be. I fear that this may cut both ways with me, because the funnier scenes may turn off old-time kinksters who want their kink more serious, and the darker scenes will turn off people who don't want to consider the serious issues of abuse and consent in their erotica. Feedback on California Bondage Sorority Book One has been positive so far, but time will tell whether or not that continues to be the case as I work to find the right tone for the novels.

Fashion and "BDSM"

The intersection of fashion and what people perceive as "bondage" or "BDSM" has long intrigued me. Even back when I was in high school, I can remember some of my teachers showing us picture spreads and advertisements in fashion magazines, and pointing to anything that looked vaguely rope-like coming off of a woman's clothes and claiming that it "represented" a leash, and therefore the subjugation of all women. I had enough reasons not to like those teachers, but the way they went on about that stuff really ticked me off.

Kink, like other practices considered outside of "mainstream" society, has a real problem with people misusing its terminology. Too often I hear someone talk about a "bondage dress," and then I see that it just has a couple of horizontal straps on it that only have a decorative function. I was reminded of that earlier this week when I saw a news article talk about fashion models in "BDSM-style denim masks" that just looked like dreadie wigs put on backwards. If those can be called "BDSM-style" then I don't know what isn't "BDSM-style."

There are, of course, those fashion designers who use elements of actual bondage in their designs, such as this Samuel Cimansck show that showcased some very interesting -- and more importantly, effective -- gags. I got one of the first copies of the complete reprint of John Willie's Bizarre magazine when it came out from Taschen about twenty years ago, and one of the ways Willie liked to talk about bondage in the couched terms he had to use back then was to wrap it up in the auspices of fashion. I can still remember a wonderful article he wrote in his tenth issue -- gorgeously illustrated with his watercolors and line drawings, and even one photo of a tape gagged damsel -- about how gags would eventually become a fashion necessity for all women.

I've always believed in the value of aesthetics in kink -- such as matching a duct tape gag to the wearer's clothes -- but it's hard to see true bondage in fashion becoming much of a reality simply because of the worries about the wrong people seeing it. There's.a part of me that still wishes that John Willie's dreams about gags becoming fashionable would come true, though, and not just because I can think of a lot of people who need to be gagged all the time. Those old high school teachers of mine certainly spring to mind.

Erotic Novels and Politics

As I wrote California Bondage Sorority Book One, I struggled with whether or not to include discussion about political issues in the novel. On one hand, university campuses are often full of political discussions and arguments, so there was a lot to be said for adding political discussions to make the novel more realistic. On the other hand, though, politics is a huge turn-off for a lot of people, so including politics in the novel would come with the risk of alienating readers. That's probably even more true for an erotica novel, where many readers don't want anything getting between them and the titilation that they want to feel.

I don't care to discuss my own political beliefs too much (at least on this blog), but I'd like to think that I'm one of those people who can recognize idiocy on all sides of an issue. College and university students tend to go to extremes in their politics because it's a time when many young people try out different beliefs and philosophies to see what works for them. Focusing on those extremes felt like a good way to go about exploring politics in my novel, with characters like Belle and Dean Ranklin, while still having more reasonable characters like Victoria and Chloe.

For now I'm trying to keep Cece as apolitical as possible, just so she can watch the extremes and keep reporting on how they play out. As the protagonist, she's going to be the character that most readers identify with, especially since the novel is written in first-person perspective, and I hope that keeping Cece out of the political fights will help readers stomach the politics of the other characters, whether readers agree or disagree with them.

It feels like there's still a lot to be said for not distracting readers from the fun of reading the novel with political stuff, but I'm hoping that the California Bondage Sorority novels can transcend the traditional boundaries of erotic novels and be appreciated through the lenses of other genres. Maybe that's too ambitious of a goal, but I'm still shooting for that as I begin work here on the second novel. I hope I can get it into your hands soon.

Can Erotica Be Cross-Genre?

I read a lot of fiction, and although there are certain genres of fiction that I don't care so much for, I like to read from a variety of different perspectives. I always try to keep my mind open to all kinds of books, and if a book holds my interest then I don't particularly care what genre it's classified as. Most of my friends who are avid readers seem to have the same attitude towards the books they choose to read.

Erotica seems to be a sticking point for a lot of readers, though. Part of that may be due to the weird puritanical influences that still pervade a broad cross-section of American society, but it also seems like there's a widespread attitude that any written work that can be construed as "erotica" must only be intended for masturbatory aid and can't have any other value. It all goes back to the definition of the dreaded p-word: "Something with no artistic value." Since we still haven't moved past Justice Potter Stevens' nebulous "I know it when I see it" classification of the p-word, all it takes is one unfriendly reader to get a work classified as "without artistic value."

Obviously kink, and bondage in particular, play a huge part in California Bondage Sorority Book One, but I didn't write it as just a work that some people will (hopefully) find erotic value in. I spent a lot of time working on other themes that I feel should interest a wider variety of readers, such as woman-on-woman bullying, university politics, shifting attitudes towards what are considered "acceptable" punishments (outside of kink) and the voyeuristic tendencies of modern American culture. I wanted to write a book that could be enjoyed in a variety of ways, in large part because that's the kind of writing that I enjoy reading the most.

There are lots of readers who are just inherently squeamish towards kink and/or sexuality, just like there are readers who can't handle horror novels (as just one example). I'd like to think that there's a way to open erotica up to a broader base of readers by emphasizing the fact that lots of novels classified as erotica can be read in a variety of ways. I just wish that I knew how to go about doing that, except through my own writing.

Whither Harmony Concepts?

Like a lot of kinksters my age, one of the first "gateways" I had to the world of "bondage and discipline" was the work of Harmony Concepts. Even if my tastes in kink didn't run to the more subdued to start with, I probably would have latched onto Harmony's work simply because of its high artistry -- both from their professional producers and the amateurs whose work they distributed -- and how it so closely mimicked the kind of "tie-up games" I loved to play when I was younger.

Other studios did more explicit work, which was good in its own right, but even in an age before fucking machines and horror movie-like backdrops and all that stuff, Harmony's work tended to be much less "hardcore" than their contemporaries. Apart from special video lines, which were often advertised separately from their monthly mailers, their work contained no S&M (except for the kind of "spanking" that was so light that it'd be generous to call it "love taps"), hardly any explicit sexuality (save a few videos near the end that had magic wands) and usually only allowed nudity above the waist. Their "Harmony Philosophy" pervaded everything that they did, and for those of us who were (and still are) fans of love bondage, their work remains a kind of holy grail of the pre-digital age of kink erotica.

As more producers and models started setting up their own websites in the 1990s and 2000s, though, and as digital photography enabled amateurs to set up their own websites and make money that way, Harmony stopped being the kind of destination studio that it used to be. Especially as grittier, more sexually-explicit work became the norm in kink erotica, Harmony began to be seen as almost an anachronism, a quaint relic of the old days of fetish photography and videography along the lines of Irving Klaw's work. It didn't help that love bondage began to be seen as "not real" kink by many people who claimed that you weren't "really" kinky unless you engaged in X, Y and Z forms of "extreme" kink. (I abhor that kind of thinking.)

Although Harmony's old work is still available through their website, and other studios like FM Concepts produce stuff that's closer to Harmony's work than most of the other major studios these days, there really isn't the kind of one-stop-shop for a wide variety of current love bondage erotica that Harmony Concepts used to provide. Pretty much every major studio does a fair deal of explicit sexuality and hardcore S&M, probably because that's what sells the best these days. I'd like to think that there's still enough demand for love bondage that another studio can pick up where Harmony Concepts left off, but maybe the best we can hope for is the scattering of amateur love bondage producers that are still out there, but aren't as easy to find as the major studios.

Standard Guidelines for Fetish Shoots

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Book One of the California Bondage Sorority series is now available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

On the coast of California lies a private liberal-arts university with a sorority whose sisters learn a whole lot more than the three R's ...

Fresno-born brat Cece Sorensen arrives at Pearl Springs University on a bright August day, eager to escape her parents and live a wild college life. Little does she know how wild that college life will be ...

Lured into the secretive Epsilon Pi Sigma sorority by her scheming mother, Cece is soon inducted into a world of near-constant bondage, harsh punishments and more gags than she ever thought possible. Her "big sister" in the sorority, Chloe Demers, gives Cece the discipline she's been needing her whole life, from sleeping in chains to waiting on the other big sisters as a French maid.

Before her first semester as a college student is over, Cece will experience public humiliation, fetish video stardom and a trip home that will push her to her very limits. But along the way she'll make wonderful new friends, learn a lot about the world of BDSM and discover that some of that stuff can be pleasurable.Very pleasurable.

The first book of the California Bondage Sorority series will take readers on a roller-coaster ride through the worlds of kink and college alike, and sets the stage for even crazier adventures to come as Cece Sorensen begins her journey as a sister of Epsilon Pi Sigma.