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.