An Interview With Cecilia Tan
Hi There:
As part of my erotica author interview series, it is my pleasure to bring to you an interview with the amazing erotica author Cecilia Tan.
Cecilia Tan will be the keynote speaker at the 2015 BDSM Writers Con. She is the author of many books of erotica and BDSM including the Magic University series, The Prince’s Boy, the Struck by Lightning series, The Velderet, Black Feathers, and many more. Her latest release, a new edition of The Tower and The Tears from her Magic U. series is out this week.
Q: Where do you draw your inspiration from?
My inspiration when I first began writing erotica and BDSM came from my desires, many of which were unfulfilled then. I was writing erotica before I’d ever had actual sex and a lot of what I wrote was about what I hoped it would be like. As it turned out, my writing was either prophetic or a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, especially about the BDSM parts! Later, as I got more experienced in the BDSM community, I was able to build up a wellspring of experiences to draw on for stories and ideas. It’s funny: you’d expect that, say, a big whipping scene would inspire a story about a whipping, but it’s often small, subtle details that become the sparks for stories. Like I’ll remember one specific thing about the way the leather wrist cuff tightened, or one detail about how the rope sounded as it slid across the bed.
Q: Where’s your favorite place to write?
These days I write a lot in coffee shops. It really forces me to focus in a way that I don’t always when I’m at home, and it serves as a reward at the same time! Isn’t that what BDSM is all about: discipline and rewards? No wonder I like writing in coffee shops.
Q: Do your nearest and dearest know what you do, and if so, what was their reaction when they found out?
“Found out” makes it sound like it was ever a secret. It was never a secret. I’ve been a professional erotica writer pretty much my entire adult life. My first professionally published story was a self-bondage story called “A True Story,” which it was. My mother was little worried about bondage and the master/slave roleplaying at first. Her take was that she couldn’t figure out how she had raised me to be a freedom fighter for civil rights and yet I could eroticize slavery. Once I explained that BDSM is about consent and a personal imaginative connection between two people, and nothing about the subjugation of one race by another, she was fine with it. She reads all my books!
Q: What was your ideal career when you were a child?
I always wanted to be a writer. In fact, from a very young age I didn’t say I wanted “to be” a writer. I said I “was” a writer, I just wasn’t published yet. Well, I was right!
Q: What’s your biggest writing achievement?
Why? I’ve always been very artistically satisfied with my work. I’ve pushed the boundaries many different directions. In the 1990s I went in a more literary direction. I’ve incorporated fantasy and science fiction, pushing the imaginative boundary. I’ve done a lot with blurring the strict lines of gender and genre. So it’s kind of cool that right now it feels like all of a sudden my achievements are starting to be recognized by the book industry and the romance world in particular. So I guess I would say my book Slow Surrender stands out as an achievement for things like winning the RT Award and the Maggie Award for Excellence, as well as being my first book that was sold in places like Target!
Q: What are you working on at the moment?
I always have lots of irons in the fire, but the big thing right now is I’m writing a new BDSM romance trilogy for Hachette that is going to mix rock stars and BDSM. It’s “billionaire BDSM” except that this time the heroine is the billionaire. The series will be called Secrets of a Rock Star and the working title for the first book is “Taking the Lead.” It should be coming out about a year from now: January or February 2016.
To read a sample of Cecilia’s latest release, The Tower and the Tears, please visit her website here:
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