Remember the First Time?

Today I am remembering the first time I typed the word "clit" into a story. It was an experiment -- a thrilling and dangerous one. I wanted to know what kind of story I most wanted to write, and had made a promise to myself -- I would allow myself the freedom to write what I wanted for a year, without worrying about the future or whether I could publish it, or any of that.

The seminal moment came with a story called "Robot Lovers Prey on the Lonely." The title came to me first, and I had a vivid sense of the first scene. Quickly, it became clear that to tell the story right, I had to write about sex explicitly -- not just behind a closed door. For this story, I needed explicit sex to have proper characterization. Pulling back from that would have meant betraying the story.

I typed "nipple." Then a while later, I typed "clit." I felt good about the sex scenes as I wrote them -- they felt expressive and clear.

But pretty soon, horror hit me. What was I doing? This was a good story. By adding all this sex, I was dooming its chances. I would never be able to sell it anywhere respectable. If I could publish it, it would be caught in a ghetto somewhere. No one would read it.

I had to finish the story -- it was one of those special cases in which I truly felt compelled. But I was afraid of the implications of what I had done and the line I had crossed.

That first story turned out to be one of my first published erotic stories (and the inspiration for the name of this blog). It came out in Experimental, an anthology published by Ravenous Romance, and I'm incredibly proud of it to this day.

It amazes me to think of how frightened I was when I wrote those first "forbidden" words. I'd love to grab my younger self by the shoulder, give her a kiss on the cheek, and say, "Baby, you ain't seen nothing yet."

My Question About the Six Swans

I recently blogged at Forbidden Fiction about how my fairy tale retellings usually start with a question--a point of dissatisfaction in the original story. This is true of The Six Swans, too.

In the classic version of the story, the main character must spend seven years silent, sewing shirts for her brothers, in order to break the curse that has turned them into swans. A king's servant discovers her in a tree one day. For some reason, she throws her clothing down to him one article at a time (in the story, this is presented as an attempt at discouragement, but that really doesn't make sense to me). He is stunned by her beauty and takes her to the king, who promptly marries her. The king's mother is evil, for some reason, and takes away the babies the new queen bears, telling the king that his silent wife is responsible for murdering them. The king refuses to believe this for quite some time. Eventually, his mother convinces him that his wife is killing the children, and he agrees to have her burned at the stake. Luckily, this happens to coincide with the end of the seven years, and the girl is able to restore her brothers and explain herself just before she dies by fire.

Now, that is a weird, weird story. What particularly interested me was the king's trust in the main character. She can't speak to him. Her behavior must appear insane. What could he have known or felt about her that would give him the sort of confidence in her that he displays, in the face of damning evidence that she's a murderer.

Trying to answer that question drove my entire writing of the novella. In my version of The Six Swans, the sexual connection between the king and his bride is so strong that his body trusts her even when his mind does not. Trust is visceral and physical.

As is common for me, that hypothesis then spread through the story, affecting how I portrayed both of the main characters.

If you'd like to see how this worked out, you can pick up the book here.

How I Write Fairy Tale Retellings

I posted at Forbidden Fiction describing how I come up with ways to retell myths and fairy tales:

I think that most retellings of fairy tales and myths are about answering questions raised by the stories but not resolved — or about adjusting the traditional answers given. This is why I can read literally dozens of versions of Bluebeard or Cinderella without ever getting tired of it. Each author has a different take on the questions that bother them or how they answer them.

You can read the rest here.