Au Courant

I guess I am the one that Lise was referring to when she spoke about the fourth horsewomen who goes for the "au courant erotic literary experience."

I am a romantic; a violent one at that. I see romance everywhere. Every part of my day is a romance in the way I see things. I remember reading a scathing comment about Anais Nin in a review of her biography saying that she was writing the things that she was writing (about her erotic life and erotica) while there was a war going on and I thought to myself who were they to criticize?

There are politicians who leave their office because they want to be with a woman that they love in another country, or who get caught with their pants down, literally, and surely these are not exemplary behaviors, but it goes to show you that love and sex, at the end of the day, are the things that drive us more than anything else, no matter who we are. They are basic, human and it is the truth. I am watching Remember Me, My Love, and what I am viewing is underscoring this point. Earlier this evening I was watching The Apartment while I was moonblogging h

ere, and it as well was even more demonstrative of this point. I love it.

I see love and romance everywhere I am. I was at Nocello drinking Nocello with the other three horsewomen and there was this photograph (all the images here are Horst P.Horst). A bunch of Horst P. Horst photographs and this one (right) struck me. It is a costume from Salvador Dali's Dream of Venus, 1939. Surreal and erotic to me at the same time, apropos of Dali and the Surrealists. This restaurant had the best bread and the scent of Nocello liqueur alone is an experience--walnut and hazelnut combined! But it was the abundance of photographs that remained with me. I like erotic images as well as erotic literature. I resent that men are considered to be the visual ones because I always judge a book by its cover!

The world that we live in is designed by love and sex. It is an inevitable truth; we would not be here without one, the other or both. Women read romances on my train, to and from work every morning, from all walks of life. Erotica-- is what usually can be found in my hands. Friends tease me that I could find the erotic books in a pile--not so much on my train, but it is on the rise and people are taking it more seriously. Still not the most easily accessible genre by any means. It is kind of hard to define. I guess it is clear that I like romantic erotica for the most part, but not all of it is romantic. I like variations--I am constantly intrigued by plots that I have not seen before. I love innovation within the erotica. Right now there is a bloom for innovation with erotica, The Erotic Readers and Writers Association always inspires me because I am always learning something new from their site--there is always some twist and turn on the genre which I love.

Not sure if I am au courant as Lise gave me credit for since my archetype for erotica is Anais Nin--I read from her Little Birds at my RWA-NYC Chapter sister Rachel Kramer Bussel's In The Flesh Reading Series last year. I am as yet unpublished as an erotic writer and in a lot of ways am still honing my craft. Sometimes I write pieces that are erotic, but there is not a bit of sex. Is that possible? I think that half of what makes something erotic is the power that another person has over another person, the surrender. I think that we surrender as a part of every day life and that is why it makes such compelling fiction. The things we do for love and sex...