As long as erotic literature is still broadly classified under the heading of romance, one of the things that this may result in is that readers will expect erotica to hew to the same aspects of fantasy seen in most romance novels. Although there are certainly exceptions out there in the market, romance novels tend to take place in ideal environments, with any dangers or difficulties that pop up being quickly resolved, and nearly always to the protagonist's benefit. One of the reasons that romance novels have been so popular decade after decade is that they provide the same kind of escapism for readers that "popcorn movies" provide for filmgoers, albeit with fewer explosions and more purple prose.
From the very start of conceptualizing it, though, I didn't want California Bondage Sorority Book One to depict an idyll. The fantasy of.a sorority where the sisters practice all kinds of kink on each other is compelling to a lot of readers, and it's my hope that the book can be read in that way if that's how readers want to experience it, but Epsilon Pi Sigma is far from perfect. I very deliberately raise issues of consent and safety in the novel to reflect problems that I saw back when I was a part of BDSM groups and went to play parties. (Those problems are the main reason why I don't participate in those things any longer, and keep my kink to my inner circle.)
Some of the people who've read the novel have had issues with those aspects of the sorority, though. On the one hand, I can't blame them for having those problems because I wanted them to be problematic, to raise questions and concerns about how the sorority (and even kink in general) operates. At the same time, though, if readers don't want to engage in those issues then it feels like there's no possibility for erotic texts to deal with larger issues that many may (rightly) find non-erotic.
I want the California Bondage Sorority books to be capable of being read in a variety of ways, from erotic romance all the way to literary fiction. Historically, though, erotic literature has always been pigeonholed into the category of romance, and all the stereotypes that come with that categorization. If it's just not possible for my books to break out of that mold, regardless of what I do or say as the author, then I'm probably going to have a very hard time creating dialogues about the issues I'd like to discuss, let alone an audience for my novels.
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