Pollygraph (erotica author interviews): JE & M Keep - BDSM at the end of the world!

Why erotica?
My partner and I were just getting so frustrated that all of our favourite books faded to black. We’re big on fantasy and scifi, and it’s so hard to find a book that has explicit sex on top of an engaging story and awesome characters. We believe that sex is as important a part to character development – sometimes more so – than combat and really felt there was a lack of it outside of paranormal urban romances.

How did you get into it?
We started writing each other sexy letters when we were dating, and then progressed to World of Warcraft fanfiction. When we quit playing WoW, we started building our own massive worlds and it spiralled from there!

What kinds of erotica do you write?
High fantasy, science fiction, horror, contemporary, historical… We bounce around a fair bit, but all our stories have a lot of commonalities like that they tend to be dark and a bit twisted, and often are not romantic. Or, at least, not romantic in the Harlequin fashion.

What is it that draws you to the darker side of erotica?
I’ve never really been a fan of the boy meets girl, they fall in love, something tries to keep them apart, and in the end, love triumphs all type of storyline. I grew up reading V.C. Andrews and true crime stories, where relationships were wrong and taboo and ended in heartbreak. I’m not sure how much it affected me and how much is simply me, but that’s definitely the stuff I’m drawn to now.

My partner had a long unpleasant track record with such things in his own life, and claims that since we got together 13 years ago that it’s been all blissful romance, so he likes to write about the other side of the coin!

Why science-fiction and fantasy erotica? What does the speculative fiction part bring to your erotica, and what does the erotica bring to SF?
I think it spices things up a lot. There’s a lot of really amazing authors out there that can take the same contemporary story and make it fresh and interesting, but we’re not great at that. SFF allows us to explore a broader range of topics like sexual slavery, taboos, rape, etc. and to push the envelope without offending real life groups.

We also both strongly believe that sex has as much, if not more, of a place in SFF as violence. A lot of fantasy and scifi authors go on for pages about every motion of a sword or cast of a spell but the second sensuality is introduced, they get shy. There’s been so much character development missed out on because of this. Sex is such a window to the soul, I think.

Are you involved with the SF/F community, or is there little overlap between SF erotica and plain old SF?
There’s still a lot of wariness about erotica in general. Paranormal communities have embraced it, but Scifi still tends to be very set in their ways about what is and what isn’t scifi. There was this one episode of Party Down where two characters wrote a scifi script and it was ‘hard scifi’ and the sex slave/love interest dies and barely anyone cares. In the rewrite, they gave her a more predominant role and it became a lot better, but there’s still puritans who don’t like sex in their scifi.

I think it ties into a lot of gender expectations and roles, and so it’s complicated. The geek culture as a whole is kind of a weird place right now for women and female characters, but as more and more people embrace it, I think Scifi will become a much more welcoming place. First for romance, then for erotica.

Tell us about your experiences as an erotica author. What have the big challenges and successes been?
Our biggest successes are always hearing from fans. People who want to discuss our books, our characters, and what they want to read next is an amazing thrill.

The biggest challenge is the constant momentum and reaching our audience. We both know they’re out there, because we’re our own audience. We’ve spoken with a lot of people who really want this type of book – one that has a great story, strong and interesting characters, and doesn’t fade to black. It’s hard to connect with people if they don’t know that what they’re looking for is available, though!

Do the people around you know what you write? How have they reacted, or how would they react?
I’ve told a few people I write scifi/fantasy or romance, and they’ve all been interested in the same way that people have always been interested in writers. What a pleasant hobby! No one thinks we can make money off of it, and we tend to keep it on the down low that we’re making a nice amount each month. Though since my partner has quit his other work to focus solely on our writing, it’s really much more obvious now.

How does your collaboration work? Do you tend to have fixed roles in the writing team, or does it depend on the story?
Typically one of us will have a general spider-webbed plot written out, and then we’ll assume the role of certain characters, fleshing out their reactions. I think this is one of the reasons our books are so strong, and why we have such an even split of male and female fans.

We don’t skip over one character’s reactions, and we describe each character very thoroughly. It also allows our writing to be very responsive and dynamic, so it never feels like the story is forced.

As for fixed roles? No, though my partner is usually the one coming up with and detailing out the plots and pre-planning, I do plenty of that myself too. Especially when he’s feeling a bit burnt-out.

Does writing as a team bring an extra frisson to erotica?
I really think it does. It allows us to really focus on both or all characters and what they’re feeling, and how they’re acting. It lets us get fully involved in what parts we have to worry about, and then fills in the gaps really nicely.

Every time we write separately, our stories tend to be much shorter, and I definitely think it’s the lack of dynamic writing that adds to our descriptions.

What's your typical writing day?
We try to write a little bit every night, but weekends are our big deals. We’ve finished novellas in a good weekend, and finished short stories in an okay night. Typically we can do over 4,000 words in a few hours.

Tell us about your most recent titles.
Vile Wasteland was a novel we put out recently, set in a sort of dystopian future where humanity fled beneath the surface of the earth in great underground facilities to wait out some unknown apocalypse. The story follows the main character, Alex, a young woman on a mission to save her friends from dying of food contamination or starvation.

We definitely don’t hold any punches on the sex here, right up to the bitter-sweet end, but it’s mainly a work of speculative fiction or sci-fi that just happens to cover it all!

We also have Brought the Stars to You, a sci-fi romance. This novel is the first in a planned long series we have. Then there’s our love-at-the-end-of-the-world tale with BDSM, Bound as the World Burns.

Do you have a favourite, or favourites, among your stories?
I really love our longer novels. We have a bunch upcoming over the next few months, like False Shades which is a noir erotica. We had to do a lot of research into psychology and Freud and the different theories floating around in the 1920’s. There was a lot of discussion of sex at that time, and kinks, and why people develop certain sexual tastes so it blended really well together. I think it was likely, if not my favourite, the one I’m most proud of. It’ll be released later this summe.

And finally, what can we expect to see from you soon?
The Warlord’s Concubine, will be released June 1st, 2013. This was one of our more intense, emotional pieces of writing simply because the characters are very morally grey, and sometimes downright cruel, but driven by great aspirations and powerful emotions. They have reasons, of course, but we wanted to make sure the characters were still sympathetic and engaging for the reader.

It’s about a woman, Mirella, who serves as handmaiden to a princess when the princess’ city state is overrun by a brutal army. It’s led by an almost demonic looking man, whom the handmaiden instantly lusts for. He has power, and confidence, and she’s convinced he’s a god.

The story follows the relationship between the two of them as the Warlord tries to get the princess to marry him, solidifying his hold on the city state. It’s very much a dark romance story, with two anti-heroes at the forefront.

The Keep | Blog | Facebook | Twitter @jmkeep/@jekeep | Mailing List | Goodreads | Amazon US/Amazon UK