The Case of the Missing Naughty Novella

If you go back a few blogs you’ll find an entry regarding Verena Vincent’s retirement. Who’s that? Well, that’s my other pen name. The one my family doesn’t know about because she writes slightly raunchier novellas. Nothing too extreme. No sex with sasquatch or tentacle beasts, but definitely a spicier version of my usual work.

I’d released two novellas under this name. (Kayla’s Cowboy Fantasy and Holly’s Dream Lover Fantasy.) They weren’t terribly popular but they were fun to write and gave me an opportunity to indulge my dirty mind so I decided to push the envelope and delve into the oversaturated paranormal erotic romance genre. The result was an experiment called, The Vampire’s Last Virgin. This was a failed experiment, at least in terms of sales. I didn’t care. I thought it was a fun, sexy book and the few people who were kind enough to review it were quite enthused about a sequel because I’d purposely ended the story quite abruptly, with a sequel in mind. (The Vampire’s Former Virgin.)

Then something bizarre happened. VLV disappeared entirely from the well-known e-book retailer where I do most of my sales. And get this: it was removed because of content. In other words it was censored. My understanding is that the title suggests underage sex. Yup, the word "virgin" apparently gets the perverts all riled up and no one want to incite the dirty old pedophiles by using the wrong word. Nevermind that the virgin in my story is in her twenties and engaging in consensual vanilla sex with A MYTHICAL CREATURE. Not exactly shocking compared to some of the content out there.

I was initially somewhat resentful at this retailer for making such an arbitrary decision but it also made me feel like an outlaw. I`d always written such tame erotica but now my work was banned. That`s how bad-ass I am. But then reality slunk back in and I realized that they can do whatever they want. If I`m dumb enough to pick a title which causes red flags to go off then I deserve to have my book removed without warning. (Though a small, cynical part of me wonders if they would have made an exception if the book had actually sold.)

I was able to release The Vampire`s Last Virgin through another e-book publisher so it can be found. But now the question remains: what about the sequel? I really feel that I owe the people who read the first book some closure for those characters. But the majority of VLV’s readers bought the book through the site that later banned it. Even if I finished Dani and Alex’s story, very few people would actually get a chance to enjoy it because I can’t change the title at this point. So it would also be banned. Seems like a lot of work for very little payoff.

And isn’t that the point? The payoff? The answer to that question is “NO.” I don’t write because of the money. I would actually make more working a second part-time job, so why do I do this exactly? I do it because I have something to say - something that I want to share with the world, even if it isn’t great literature or even good pornography. It’s what I do. And that’s exactly why Verena Vincent is coming out of retirement. And why I suspect there will be yet another banned book in my future. Am I a rebel, or what?