CLEiS PRESS

rkb:

They asked some great questions, and I answered in my typical long-winded fashion! Love the photo essay interspersed throughout the interview. Thanks, Black Coffee Poet!

CLC: Why Erotica?

RKB: The short answer is because I found that I liked it and was good at it. The first erotica story I wrote was called Monica and Me and got published in Shar Rednour’s anthology Starf*cker and Tristan Taormino’s anthology Best Lesbian Erotica 2001. That early validation was so thrilling for me and showed me that the ideas in my head could translate onto paper. From there I started writing more and more, and I think part of it is that I like to do things that come easily to me, and erotica has, for the most part, since the beginning. But it’s also that the erotica market is made up of so many short story anthologies, and that was accessible to me as a beginning writer. I didn’t have much experience with fiction but I’d read lots of erotic stories and thought, “I want to try this.”

I’m pretty sure that’s how a lot of people come to erotica (and other genres), and what I love about it is that you could submit a story today and a year from now it’s in a book. That’s still exciting and I’ve kept up with it because I’ve found ways to recreate that initial thrill; I feel that every time I open a box of my books and marvel that the covers that looked so beautiful on my computer screen look even better in actual print. I just got a Nook and am enjoying it, but to me there will never be any reading experience that can rival holding a book in my hands. I’m the kind of person who reads everything—the copyright, the blurbs, the back cover, the acknowledgments. I love books, and so getting to work on them and keep innovating and keep publishing new authors as well as ones I’ve worked with extensively is as exciting as it was the first time.