I became friends with Leslie McAdam last year, during release of the bestselling Because Beards anthology, in which we both featured, raising funds for the Movember Foundation.
In 2014, Leslie was diagnosed with clinical depression, and began receiving hospital treatment.
“It’s embarrassing for me to admit,” she comments. “I have an advanced degree and a steady job. I’ve been married, with children, for a long time; I did what was expected and did everything right, but giving to others, without taking care of myself, made me depressed. Part of my depression was from repressing my feelings. I didn’t let myself be angry, or hurt, sad, or upset. I also didn’t let myself feel pleasure. Through help, medication, better diet, exercise, and learning to say no, I recovered, slowly, from depression. But something was missing.”
Leslie read Fifty Shades of Grey and had an epiphany: that it was permissible for women to be sexual, to read erotic fiction, to talk about it, and embrace their arousal. “By reading it, I gave myself permission to be sexual,” Leslie asserts. “I got a whole lot closer to my husband, and through pursuing pleasure, pursuing the feel-good hormones from an orgasm, being in communities that are sex-positive, I’ve really recovered from the depression. I can say that, without a doubt, opening myself up to sex, in a healthy and positive way, made my life so much better.”
She realised also that, to find her bliss, she needed to pursue her dream of writing. Leslie draws on her own experience to write about recovery from mental illness, as well as exploring such topics as addiction, low self-esteem and poor body image. As she explains, “I try to always write about what I know or have experienced.”
Leslie’s stories portray our common pre-occupations, anxieties, and fears, and the universality of our desire to love and be loved.
“My first novel, The Sun and the Moon, is about a depressed lawyer who recovers from sexual repression with the help of a sexy surfer. It won a Watty, which is the world’s largest online writing competition.” In writing the story, she aimed to reach out to others living with depression, or who feel sexually repressed, hoping they find solace.
Leslie is a fan of anything that acknowledges, and celebrates, women’s sexual nature. She laughs, “Magic Mike XXL has the barest whisper of a plot (“we’re getting the band back together!”), but it doesn’t matter. It’s a joy to watch Channing Tatum and the rest of them dance!”
Leslie also has a soft spot for old Fred Astaire films, delighting in the amazing movement of the body (she studied ballet as a child) and often listens to music while she writes. She played Wild Child’s Break Bones repeatedly while creating All the Waters of the Earth. “The strong female voice has a heart-breaking quality,” says Leslie. “However, Beck is my favourite, and has been since I was a radio DJ, in the 1990s, in college. More recently, when I wrote The Ground Beneath Our Feet, I was influenced by the twenty one pilots’ song, Car Radio.”
Leslie often paints, using oils to capture the colours of her home landscape, in California. She names Maynard Dixon (whose Californian landscapes, and portraits, have great realism, and use colour vividly) as an influence on her painting, and on the way she approaches ‘painting’ characters and settings in her fiction.
One of Leslie’s film favourites is The Secret of Roan Inish. As Leslie explains, ‘It’s a fairy tale about a fearless young girl who goes to look for her little brother, who she finds watched over by seals. I saw it in the theatre when it came out in the 1990s and have loved it ever since. I named my daughter Fiona after the heroine. I like her bravery and her fierce desire to take care of her family.”
She also adores the quirkiness of Wes Anderson’s films, and The Darjeeling Limited in particular. She relates, “Three brothers go on a trip across India by train, carrying their deceased father’s baggage, with an itinerary for their spiritual journey. It resonated with me for a long time.”
You can purchase Leslie’s Giving You box set at http://amzn.to/2veo2eQ
Book One: The Sun and the Moon
Book Two: The Stars in the Sky
Book Three: All the Waters of the Earth
Book Four: The Ground Beneath Our Feet
About Leslie McAdam
Leslie McAdam has written four novels (the Giving You series) and co-wrote All About the D with with Lex Martin. Her novella, Lumbersexual, won first place in the Romance category of the Summer Indie Book Awards, while her novel The Sun and the Moon won a prize in the world’s largest online writing competition (the 2015 Watty). Her short story Man Bun Christmas received a Wattpad romance award.
She lives in a drafty old farmhouse on a small orange tree farm in Southern California, with her husband and two small children. Leslie always encourages her kids to be themselves – even if it means letting her daughter wear leopard print from head to toe. She loves camping with her family, and mixing up oil paints to depict her love of outdoors on canvas. An avid reader from a young age, she’ll always trade watching TV for reading a book, unless it’s Top Gear. Or football.
Find Leslie at
www.facebook.com/lesliemcadamauthor
www.instagram.com/mcadam_leslie
Music is a huge influence in Tabitha’s work. She reveals, “If I want to feel horny, to get in the mood for a big fuck scene, I put on Whole Lotta Love by Led Zepplin. God, that is a sexy song. Honestly, I could go on for hours about music. I go to see bands and concerts a lot and get so fired up. No musical genre is excluded, from country to classical, rap to rock, folk to jazz, dubstep and drum n bass – I love it all.”
Speaking of her literary influences, Tabitha tells us, “Toni Morrison changed me. She was the first writer, for me, to have sensuality woven throughout every sentence – making it a rich part of her work, rather than a separate thing. In my own writing, I try to keep all things sensual. Not just when I’m writing a sex scene. I like the whole piece to have an air of arousal, of something impending.”
She has also drawn up plans for a perpetual energy machine using inverted pendulums, and is in the process of designing a hamster wheel: ‘it will be better for their little backs and smoother, for less nocturnal noise annoyance… yes, I have a noisy hamster’.
Find a full list of Tabitha’s books 
Kay recalls Cassandra’s Conflict, by Frederica Allen, as her introduction to the world of BDSM/S&M literature. She remembers, “It made me realise that you could read about pushing sexual boundaries, taking pleasure from reading, without entering that world yourself.” It was another decade before she put pen to paper, but Kay believes this book had greater influence than she initially realised.
Of her most recent work of erotica, Wednesday on Thursday, Kay says, “I’m fascinated by words. Their origins, the way we use them and the power they have. What could happen, I wondered, if someone became obsessed with how individuals react to certain words when used in certain situations? Certain erotic situations…”
Much later, LN read Roquelaure’s Sleeping Beauty trilogy, then Réage’s Story of O, Antoniou’s Marketplace series and Weatherfield’s Carrie novels. LN explains, “Although the styles (and intentions) of these four women authors differ radically, they each have a definite sense of erotic cruelty—consensual, yes, but often ‘consensual non-consent’. It’s about how the characters deal with the system they’ve agreed to enter. There is love, or something like it, in these books, but desire, and the drive to keep going, to keep pushing oneself, is the bigger theme.”
porn’),” says LN, “They’re full of wealthy people, and take place in worldwide organizations that trade and train voluntary sex slaves, or variants thereof: Roquelaure’s world is a conquering castle; Réage’s a more local wealthy club. We follow entry into a whole new world, not just a new relationship.”
“A woman is seen busily cleaning her sleek Modernist house, in preparation for a dinner party,” LN explains. “The guests all show up, two couples, and I remember thinking it was a little odd that she was the fifth wheel in this; she had no partner. They all look around, so impressed with her house and the food, but, being an air freshener commercial, they start to sniff the air, and we see the dog on the sofa and the fish frying, and then they all look at her, very disapprovingly. She sort of hangs her head in shame. And every time I saw it I felt this wonderful little tension, because it was obvious, to me at least, that she was going to have to be punished…by the guests!”
immerse the reader. “So much erotica seems to lacks detail until the sex scenes,” LN regrets, ‘As if they’re taking place on an empty stage with no setting.”
Read my review of LN Bey’s Blue 
Janine also names Angela Carter’s Bloody Chamber as an influence on her own short stories, for style and erotic/fairytale subject matter.
as have Sondheim’s lyrics, which move and inspire her, being ‘clever and emotionally complex’. She enjoys musicals at the tragic end of the spectrum: Cabaret and Jesus Christ Superstar, and Sondheim’s Into the Woods.
When Milja Petak released the fallen angel Azazel from five thousand years of imprisonment, she did it out of love and pity. She found herself in a passionate sexual relationship beyond her imagining and control – the beloved plaything of a dark and furious demon who takes what he wants, when he wants, and submits to no restraint. But what she hasn’t bargained on is being drawn into his plan to free all his incarcerated brothers and wage a war against the Powers of Heaven.
imprison Azazel for all eternity.
You may like to visit Janine’s 
Struggling writer, Kelly Blake has a secret life as a sex tutor. Celebrated sculptor and recluse, Alexander ‘Lex’ Valentine, can’t stand to be touched. When he seeks out Kelly’s advice incognito, the results are too hot to handle. When Kelly terminates their sessions due to what she considers to be her unprofessional behavior, Lex takes a huge risk, revealing his identity to her at a gala exhibition, his first ever public appearance. When Kelly helps the severely haphephobic Lex escape the grope of reporters and paparazzi, rumors fly that the two are engaged, rumors encouraged by well-meaning friends and colleagues. The press feeding frenzy forces Kelly into hiding at Lex’s mansion where he convinces her to be his private tutor just until the press loses interest, and she can go back home. They discover quickly that touch is not essential for sizzling, pulse-pounding intimacy. But intimacy must survive secrets uncovered, as their sessions become more and more personal.
touching. From well-detailed interactions to the steamy interludes, this is a story that is blazing hot.” 5 out of 5, 
Among her favourite such reads is David Schickler’s Kissing In Manhattan collection, which gives readers a ‘strange and seemingly random cast of characters, centred on a mythic Manhattan apartment complex called The Preemption’.
has ever seen before but, if they go too far or are overdone, the film falls flat. For me, kink scenes follow the same logic. I want my sexy story bits to be steamy and hot, but I want to be sure that they’re still grounded in something real. Do body parts actually move and react that way? Is proper safety, negotiation, and consent being observed? Does the kink serve a purpose to the plot and character development or is it more flash over substance?”
About the author
and is currently at work on a novel The Seven Seductions. His work explores the thoughts, feelings and emotions that accompany the erotic experience.
human condition through the lens of the erotic. See my review 
Another of his short story collections is 
Krissy explains that her love of literature began when her grandmother would pay her 20c for reading and reviewing books. She adds, “I moved on from stories about mice to Moomintroll, and by the time I hit Ray Bradbury I no longer needed the money. The books themselves became the reward. I started to write because books like R is for Rocket and S is for Space by Bradbury left so much space for me as a reader that I needed to add to the dialogue.”
It comes as no surprise that art has inspired Krissy’s work. Her family are visual artists and, as well as designing the sets for a couple of theatre shows in her youth, she enjoyed her own art exhibition. Her Triptych comprises three conjoined novellas, each named after, and referencing, well-known paintings: The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, by Katsushika Hokusai; Susanna and the Elders, by Artemesia Gentileshi, and Romulus and Remus, by Peter Paul Rubens. Krissy stresses, “I can’t seem to write anything without the inspiration of the visual arts.” An Uncertain Grace is inspired by a photo created by Sebastio Salgado, which holds a central position in her narrative.
best and worst selves, our innermost selves—and who we might become.
the Watchers trilogy: In Bonds of the Earth. It’s a thought-provoking and immersive novel, setting new standards for paranormal erotic romance. Janine’s authorial style is unforgettable. She likes to write about magic, myth and mystery, dangerous power dynamics, borderline terror, and the not-quite-human. She takes exciting risks in her storytelling; she’s innovative, and she brings fierce intelligence to all she writes. 
“Stretching up into the great vertical space of the tower, they had become a living helix of light—a caduceus coiled about the pillar of the world. I thought of all the legends from across the Earth. I thought of the Garden of Eden and the Great Dragon of Saint John’s Revelation; stories bookending the whole of human history.
with hands (remember that the Serpent of Eden is punished by being made to crawl in the dust, strongly suggested that it previously had other forms of locomotion).
“Broad at the shoulders and lean at the hips, six foot-and-then-something of ropey muscle, he looks like a Spartan god who got lost in a thrift store. He moves like ink through water. And his eyes, when you get a good look at them, are silver. Not gray. Silver. You might take their inhuman shine for fancy contact lenses. You’d be wrong.” – In Bonds of the Earth
Our psyche comprises contradictory elements. Linnea, we are told, is ‘an alloy’, stronger than the metals from which she is made. A powerful metaphor in the story is given through Linnea’s sculptures, which comprise contrasting, yet harmonising materials: hickory and chestnut or oak and walnut. They symbolize Linnea’s inner being. ‘There are three tiny knots… clustered like moles on a woman’s shoulder.’ This metaphor continues. ‘The twisting shapes hint at lovers entangled ankle to throat’, bound by fine steel wire, brass straps, clear glass bands, rough rope knotted. Linnea’s art is a visual representation of what she desires for herself: bondage and forced compliance. We are told that ‘wood fucks wood’ and that the scent is ‘musky, human’.
enclosure, I knew she would become obsessive about the walls: that she would make art from this constraint, as well. 
with interest. He is dropping into the strange, abstract space where she stops being entirely real to him, where he stops being real to himself: the no-place that is all places, and their bodies become geometries and his body and brain divide themselves into pieces simultaneously dissociative and entirely, pulsingly, engaged.’
protagonists?
outside spaces – looking inward and outward. Linnea struggles against Alex’s constraint of her freedom, but we come to see that her constraint is also internal. ‘She’s a coyote in a leg-hold trap, chewing at her own ankle.’ When she asks what he wants from her, he laughs, evading, ‘because the answer is love and he cannot admit that’. Linnea evades, as well. ‘It is not the house and enclosure that blocks honesty; their constraints travel with them.’
anyone. She resists, saying, “No one is anyone’s.” Later, taunted by dominatrix Klee, Linnea asserts, “I am not yours. I am no one’s.” Klee responds, “So sad. We all belong to someone…”
will stay together as things are, but there’s a sequel I have thought about that starts six months from now, when Linnea has left Alex and ends up in Switzerland, using Klee, Berndt, Vadim (and others) to make sense of her experience. Can they return to one another after that? Depends on the next book. 
I’m also researching an erotic fantasy novel! Yes, research: I can’t bring myself to write anything without lots and lots of reading ahead of time. 
I
Always this dance, and writing has helped me embrace the totality in the supposed contradictions.’ – read more 
Others discovered the liberation of writing much later.
Christina Mandara voices the opinion that women’s reading material is being dictated to them: a view shared by Sorcha Black, who believes, “The policing of women’s sexuality includes censoring what we read.”
Remittance Girl, in her article, 
However, the majority of writers with the 130 authors survey assert a desire to write recognizable, diverse characters, and situations, with psychological depth, to better allow readers to empathize, and enter into alternate possibilities.
(where the plot extends beyond the surprise reveal of them actually being a §transperson). She laments the ‘generic’ in erotic fiction.
experience is fantastic even though you don’t know his/her name. The female version usually has the gorgeous partner falling in love for the first time in his life after the aforementioned great sex.” Donna asserts, “I’d like to see more celebration of the magic of sex between people who know each other well. I’d like to acknowledge that time and trust are important in creating a situation where great sex can happen. Couples who’ve been together for a long time are not necessarily bored with each other. They can go deeper, they can play, they know each other well enough to trust it will be mutually enjoyable.” 
mistrust, fear and emotional wounding’ — shows characters obliged to ‘reconstruct their identity in the light of what they’ve done’ –more 
“I love exploring the slippery relationship between truth and fiction. The stories I value convey truths that spring from careful thought and deep feeling, truths we often keep secret from others and ourselves. Exploring those truths is what I aim for when I write.”
She adds that the public versus private face of a person can exist not only in terms of their sexuality (how they express it to the world versus how they are in private) but their art form (dance, painting, sculpture, music, songwriting, writing, and so on).
Themes: Mortality
share of authors, and our voices are growing louder.
There’s still a degree of censorship, and traditional publishers remain somewhat cautious about stepping outside of the box, but, if we keep writing up against the boundaries, inch by inch, they will surely come down.
It’s true that some elements of the human condition are universal. We all, surely, know what it is to love, to despair, to smile, or to regret. We know the fragility of life and we share wonder in the world we inhabit.
As Cecilia Tan states, “I was put on Earth to write but it wasn’t until I started writing erotic fiction that I found my voice. I want a world where sexual freedom, not sexual oppression, is the norm, and so I write about sexual pleasure and fulfillment.”
as well as a creative one’. She explains, “French feminist Helene Cixous phrased it beautifully in an essay called ‘Laugh of the Medusa’ – ‘Write yourself. Your body must be heard.’ I think this applies to all women’s stories, but particularly those around sexuality. The political aspect of it, the desire to confront and subvert, is a strong motivation for me – as strong as the desire to seduce and arouse.”
that some readers have criticized her writing of female protagonists who lack ‘the same moral compass’ as themselves. She notes, “I call these cardboard cut out heroines. From my personal experience, people make crazy decisions when it comes to love and passion.” She asserts that ‘flawed, impulsive, manipulative heroines’ breathe life into fiction.
some authors mention a desire to explore the realm of non-consent.
preoccupy myself with it as I write would be to stymie the story before it’s even formed. While I acknowledge the reality of censorship, I try not to let it, or fear of it, influence my writing. I serve the story. If it trips censors, so be it. I have the luxury of pulling it and sending it elsewhere.“
However, KD Grace stresses that this generates an attitude of ‘us against the world and circle the wagons’ and ‘a real sense of camaraderie among erotica writers (with little of the petty jealousy I’ve seen among writers in some other genres).’ She feels the erotica writing community as ‘a family’, saying, “That encouragement has meant a lot to me through the years.”
desire. I think it put light on the seed already in me to find new and evocative ways of writing about feminine desire and describing the desiring female body.”
thing that truly inspires me to silence the inner critic and just write and enjoy the pleasure of speaking the unspeakable.”
and our fears. We emerge changed and, as RG tells us, we ‘expose something true’ of ourselves (more 
Rejecting typical notions of what constitutes ‘literary quality’, her own narrative voice is distinctly lyrical yet she also weaves a good tale. Ms. Learner is a story-teller.
the erotic gaze and the creative process.
I lost my father when I was 16, while in the middle of studying King Lear for my O’ levels, so this play has particular emotional power for me. Various Shakespearian characters fascinate me: Ariel, Puck, Ophelia, King Lear (and his fool) and Falstaff (an incarnation of Bacchus really).
I’m eclectic in my influences. Definitely, when I discover a new writer who has broken a rule, or who perhaps has an original onomatopoeia to her/his prose, it can be inspiring.
Are you influenced also by film? 
Tell us a little about your writing processes.
Tobsha Learner
novels and dozens of plays. Her latest release is Picture This. Besides writing erotic fiction, she is known for her historical fiction, and for her thrillers (writing as 
More about 
Having interviewed just over 
was so much poorly written erotica. How hard could it be to climb to the top of that dung heap? However, the more I read, the more I discovered truly talented writers, and became determined to write quality stories myself.”
drawing of two pricks. The editor of the volume asked me to remove the phrase.” He felt obliged to concede, being a young academic and this being his first publication. He asserts that he would not do so today.
only benefit of a publisher is the promise of reviews, which many small presses don’t bother to solicit.” 
horror novel through a small press. It was a disaster. There was so little editorial work done that it went on sale within a week of me submitting it. I should have smelled a rat. They did no promo and the company quickly went bust.” 
with ‘publishing’ in that sentence.”
books visible’. She asserts, “My advice to new authors would be to ensure you have built a brand before you set out. Know the image you’d like to portray to your followers and work hard to build on what you’ve achieved.” She also warns against expecting ‘instant success’. 
where ideas may be further debated, and professional expertise shared, you may like to visit the 
unsurprisingly, apt to denigrate erotic fiction as no more than ‘poorly written filth’.
in their craft, including through editing “I‘d like to see better editing, with consumer dollars following the well-groomed and thoughtful written word.”
disappointed on coming across a book labelled as ‘erotica’, which does not meet their expectations for romantic elements. Meanwhile, erotic fiction authors may be ‘judged’ (and reviewed critically) against criteria they have never attempted to meet.
men’s writing on the topics of relationships and sex is more often respected, being lauded for insight into human nature and named as literary fiction, while women’s work on the same topics is more generally dismissed. She states, “Romance has a bad reputation as being sub-par… as if what women choose to read isn’t as respectable or reputable as what men choose. The aggravating thing is that when women write about relationships and sex (romance novels), their books are viewed by some with disdain or disinterest. But when a man writes about the same topics, his books are viewed with great respect. He’s said to have great insight into human nature. His books are often lifted out of the romance genre and placed in literary fiction, which some view as having more clout. Women’s voices and insights matter.”
are commercially risk-averse, serving up what they believe audiences wish to consume. The situation has become, largely, a self-perpetuating loop, of authors creating works within a ‘safe’ and market-proven zone.
it shapes our thoughts’. Siri Ousdahl states, “I’d like there to be a larger place for high-quality, graphic sex writing: fiction that is not coy, does not romanticize or trivialize, and is psychologically realistic.”
of hiding and downplaying erotica’. As Elizabeth Safleur puts it, “It’d be nice if Amazon didn’t bury our titles.”
starting point for discussion rather than offering any definitive answers.
‘becomes disrupted’, through ‘extreme pleasure, pain or mental anguish’. (more 
into a realistic vein, much of what people actually want is that which they can’t (or don’t feel they can) have in real life. This is why rape fantasies, incest and other transgressive sexual acts continue to sell erotica and generate clicks. The appeal of the forbidden is as old as the Bible, when Eve and the apple laid the foundation for centuries of sexual taboo. The fact is that we get pleasure from doing that which we’re not ‘supposed’ to do… While some taboos have been neutralized by an expanded notion of sex positivity (for the most part, gay couplings, anal and oral sex and extramarital situations don’t pack the transgressive punch they historically have), the amount of incest porn, tentacle porn, bestiality, non-con and various forms of edge play being consumed has risen…” Malin notes that, as such acts are ‘still taboo’, they ‘retain the power to arouse in ways that non-transgressive acts don’t tend to’. 
themes. Not only am I turned on by this objectionable thing – I want to think about why I am.”
inspiring deeper levels of reflection). This may be why historical erotic fiction is so popular, since the setting more immediately confers a transgressive stance: a feeling of ‘taboo’.
that has triggered deep and serious introspection on many topics. These are the books that will stay with me for life.” 
able within the limits set by major retailers (we cannot escape the fact that publishers are in business to make money).
despite the majority of countries worldwide (and the majority of American states) setting the age of consent below 18 years.
despise. They all answer one question, without hesitation… what if?”
books don’t fit my personal beliefs, my business model, or my audience, so I’m not going to publish them’ and that has to be okay.” 
with friends and family and how far we keep separate our ‘writing identity’, to avoid social stigmatization.
avoid ‘judgement’, not just from co-workers or neighbours, but from family and friends, or to avoid negative consequences for those they love.
Although the journey continues, we’ve come a long way in embracing equality of rights across sexual orientation, race and gender. And yet, whatever their ‘secret’ reading habits, some members of the public draw the line at rubbing shoulders with writers of what many term ‘filth’.
As Spencer Dryden notes: “If my friends, family and associates learned of my interest in erotica, they would drop dead in horror, so I use a pen name.
agent who essentially said, ‘Yuck, don’t contact me again’.” 
of my family, but this has been exacerbated by my choice to write erotica. Indeed, I was told I should concentrate my energies ‘on something much better’ after I published my last book. The person involved hadn’t even read the book, and had no idea that, aside from the power play through the sex, it broached some serious subjects that have been prevalent in my family for decades, and that there was more to consider than which pages to bookmark and show their friends in secret! My children never cease to amaze me, though: they have just accepted what I write and are interested in me as a writer, regardless of genre. In fact, my daughter seems to find it pretty cool that I write erotica.”
particularly through dreams.” Jay Willowbay adds his belief that ‘any erotic author that doesn’t mine their own fantasies is ignoring their most bountiful source of vivid and exciting material, and letting it go to waste’. Cari Silverwood continues this train of thought, saying that, if we neglect to use our fantasies we’re unlikely to write scenes which ‘resonate’. Tamsin Flowers comments that fantasies feed into her work ‘either explicitly or less directly, lending shade and nuance’.
Tabitha Rayne also asserts that personal fantasies are the engine behind her writing, saying, “No matter what I write, in that moment, it is my desire. It is absolutely my fantasy.” She notes that what stirs her one day can be very different the next.