Yes, OK, fair enough, I’ve got a lot of my former kinky times on my mind at the moment. But I’m also revising, though only lightly, a fetish-themed novel I wrote about 10 years ago, and keep tripping over how much the world has changed even in a very few years. It was a little bit of a shock going over Black Heart prior to the print version coming out, but the book that came before it (and,for those of you who are interested, was the first story in the Black Heart/Thrillers universe)…
That’s a bit of a shocker.
I used to say, and sometimes still do, when selling books at fetish fairs and markets, that porn and erotica don’t really date. A spanking is a spanking, and handcuffs are handcuffs, and even fetish clothing doesn’t go through quite the same fluctuations in style as daywear or vanilla partywear might. However, the sort of little background details that practically no one can help including in a piece of genre fiction, because those things are just part of the background of life at the time of writing: those can trip you up. A couple of years ago, I was editing someone else’s novel, which had a couple of scenes involving the tall dark dirty bastard initiating his about-to-be-sexually-awakened True Lust into the ways of WhatsApp. This was all very well (who am
I to piss and moan when I once spent three pages of a novel describing the then-arcane art of sending an email?) apart from the fact that there was a prologue, which spoke of the main events having happened 15 years previously. Only there was no WhatsApp then…
My main problem with the current refurbish is the way the characters use social media. Well, they don’t, much. No one mentions Facebook, or Twitter, though there is a fair amount of discussion of ‘internet forums’. In my defence, when I was writing the original version, people generally stuck to squabbling about their kinky times via the likes of the late (un)lamanted Informed Consent, or London Fetish Scene. And people only did that sort of thing on their laptops: internet-ready phones were around (I think), but rare and expensive.
I decided against rewriting huge chunks of the story to take in the technological advances of the past decade. I’m still of the belief that it would have 
dramatically changed, if not totally kippered, several plot points if someone could have launched a Twitter pile-on – or if the protagonist had decided to take a smartphone into the Den of Evil. (Someone runs off to look for a phonebox during the climactic crisis. And not to have a wee in it, either, which seems to be the things’ main purpose these days.) I’ll just have to pop in a paragraph or two at the start, informing readers of the above facts, and wish them joy of the story. Well, it’s got some filthy bits, some fun stuff, and (I hope) a satisfactory solution where everyone gets what they need and deserve.
I haven’t produced much new fiction for a while (last week’s little bit of mischief aside). Part of the reason is
that it feels a lot more difficult and challenging to write about kinky times and sexy times without the background colour not just creeping in but threatening to overwhelm the juicy bits. Yes, it’s important to keep on writing: we need our escapism and we also need our challenging, angry, satirical filth if we can get it or produce it.
Oddly enough, today another idea started brewing. It looks like a slow burner, but who knows?
Why not visit the bookshop before you run along? Or leave me a comment?
2 Responses to “Those Kinky Times Have Changed”
LN Bey
You bring up several interesting points! One is the problem of trying to keep up with technology — in any genre. I’m working on a non-erotica story which would be SO much more complicated of I were to set it today — the social media aspect would take up more space than the human interaction.
Some of Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace novels are strangely dated because they rely on internet technology for their plotting (namely The Reunion), but she also refuses to update them. Which I think is wise, because she would then be constantly updating them every few years. She is leaving it as an artifact of the time. It’s a problem, isn’t it? You can’t just leave it out altogether. I ran into this in the seven years it took to write my novel. Technology used to be something we could ignore in erotica but it’s crept so deeply into our social lives and interactions that it’s more difficult now.
And your last point is a big one, I think. Not only has the erotica market collapsed, but it seems to be simply less *fun* to write than a few years ago. The times are ugly. Creepier. Anxiety seems to curb our urge to be filthy — at least in publishing it — though it’s hard to say exactly why. But a lot of people are leaving the field who I miss.
Very insightful post.
Zak Jane Keir
Thank you. It’s something that niggles away at me fairly often, particularly as a More Mature author (like many people, I had a good laugh when it was pointed out that some of the less plausible parts of the 50 Shades books included a) that she’s got to her third year of university without having a clue how to use a computer and b) once she’s graduated she steps straight into a publishing job…) too easy to fall into the trap of thinking stuff has not changed.