In which I experience the 50 Shades of Grey Phenomenon

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or holed up in a mountain cave with a sexy redneck, you’ve heard about 50 Shades of Grey (and the sequels). Regardless of the variety of personal opinions of the book, no one can deny that the bdsm erotic romance has become a force of nature.

Now, I haven’t read it. It’s not my cup of tea for a variety of reasons, none of which I need to get into here. My thought process here has little to do with the actual book itself and more to do with the entire phenomenon.

Earlier this week, I was in Montana for some day job stuff and during a meeting this book came up. My first thought was “Oh, here we go.” You see, I’m on twitter and the majority of the people I follow and/or talk to are writers or bloggers or somehow tied up in the book community (you see what I did there – wink wink, nudge nudge). And, while not all of them share the same opinion, the vast amount of them view 50 Shades with varying degrees of Meh. Yes, I’m oversimplifying. These things happen.

So it was fascinating to hear career corporate women talk about this book. One of them is extremely high in a huge company and she has personally hand-sold the trilogy to well over 35 of her friends (note to self: never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth…also, get this woman to buy my book).

These women have never considered or wanted to give control of their lives to their husbands/partners/boy-toys, but there’s something titillating about the fantasy. Because…what if they did?

Now, as a kinky gunshy harlot, I understand this all too well. Of course, I keep my day job and writerly stuff as separate as possible (you wouldn’t believe it, but they thought I was the innocent one of the group *grins*), but I DO understand. Hell, I live it.

During this conversation it came up that they had no idea where to go from here as far as reading material goes.

*IN FLIES KATEE TO THE RESCUE*

I literally just emailed a list of bdsm erotic romance writers to them. You see, whatever your thoughts on 50 Shades, you can’t deny it’s opening up a world to your average Joe and Jane that they have never experienced.

The best part? They want MORE. Now. This instant.

As far as I’m concerned this is a Very Good Thing.

Don’t you agree?