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Entangled Lives: Memoirs of 7 Top Erotica Writers
Delve into the true-life stories of today's top writers of gay, lesbian, and bisexual erotica, and find out just what fuels their imaginations and stokes their passions. Lusty, poignant, funny, and daringly honest, here is a thought-provoking peek at very private lives. Marilyn Jaye Lewis is the founder of the Erotic Authors Association. She lives in Easton, Pennsylvania.
256 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2007
8 people want to read
About the author
Marilyn Jaye Lewis
42 books12 followersMarilyn Jaye Lewis is the author of the award-winning book Neptune & Surf and the co-editor of the international best-selling erotic art book, Mammoth Book of Erotic Photography.
She has received many citations and awards for her erotic fiction, including finalist in the William Faulkner Writing Competition and winner in the New Century Writers Awards for her novel Curse of our Profound Disorder.
Her short stories and novellas have been published worldwide and translated into French, Italian, and Japanese.
Lust: Bisexual Erotica represents her erotic short stories from 1997-2003. And the forthcoming Ribbon of Darkness is her collected works of short erotic fiction from 1996 - 2007. Anthologies she has edited include Hot Women’s Erotica, That’s Amore!, Stirring Up A Storm, Zowie! It's Yaoi! and Entangled Lives.
Her popular erotic romance novels include When Hearts Collide and When the Night Stood Still.
Upcoming novels: Freak Parade, A Killing On Mercy Road, We’re Still All That, and Twilight of the Immortal.
She has received many citations and awards for her erotic fiction, including finalist in the William Faulkner Writing Competition and winner in the New Century Writers Awards for her novel Curse of our Profound Disorder.
Her short stories and novellas have been published worldwide and translated into French, Italian, and Japanese.
Lust: Bisexual Erotica represents her erotic short stories from 1997-2003. And the forthcoming Ribbon of Darkness is her collected works of short erotic fiction from 1996 - 2007. Anthologies she has edited include Hot Women’s Erotica, That’s Amore!, Stirring Up A Storm, Zowie! It's Yaoi! and Entangled Lives.
Her popular erotic romance novels include When Hearts Collide and When the Night Stood Still.
Upcoming novels: Freak Parade, A Killing On Mercy Road, We’re Still All That, and Twilight of the Immortal.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 30, 2015
Sometimes I wonder. We all do, those of us who write erotica. What is it that makes us willing to bare our dirtiest fantasies to the world? To parade our perversions before our readers? It's true, we hide the truth, we polish and perfect the memories, leaving out the disappointing, the embarrassing and the painful moments, plucking the burning embers of our desire out of the ashes and using them to kindle the words on the page. Still, I don't think it's possible to write well, in erotica or any other genre, without drawing on one's personal passion.
I wonder about myself, and of course, I wonder about other authors of erotica, especially the well-established and well-published ones. Is there something about their histories that helps them write
particularly well? Who are they, what have they experienced, and how does that relate to their talent?
ENTANGLED LIVES offers, by example, some answers to these questions. Marilyn Jaye Lewis has drawn together a set of autobiographical essays by seven outstanding erotic writers: Bill
Brent, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Amie M. Evans, Ian Philips, Greg Wharton, Rob Stephenson, and Marilyn herself. The talent of these contributors is apparent their essays, which are clever and lyrical, ironic and humorous, ecstatic and despairing by turns. They are also, sometimes, wickedly hot. Most of all, though, each of these memoirs is profoundly honest. These are not fictional accounts, carefully groomed for marketability. These accounts include what their authors would have omitted, in a story: the feelings of inadequacy; the sudden disgust with oneself or one's partner; jealousy, infidelity, violence, and other less than noble pursuits; addiction and sexual greed.
The book begins with "Threeway", a chapter written by Ian Philips and Greg Wharton, one of the most renowned couples in gay erotica, and their partner in pleasure, "Adam Greenway" (whose identity is not revealed but who is also an erotic author.) The three contributors alternate in their narratives, and even more amazing, the chapter (which spans more than a year) was written in "real time". When it was begun, the authors didn't know how it would end. Ian, Greg and Adam (having encountered their bared souls in their chapter, I feel comfortable calling them by their first names) have distinctive voices and perspectives, but all of them reveal much of themselves.
I was particularly struck by their revelations about how writing interacts with their real lives.
Commenting on Greg's attraction to Adam (another writer),Ian writes:
"Yes, we have an author fetish. It's out in the open. So much of our libido is channeled into our writing and publishing that it, well, only makes sense that fucking with the people who wrote the words we loved so would be the ultimate culmination of the act of reading and writing and publishing them. The omega orgasm."
Meanwhile, Greg, apparently far more self-confident than Ian, adds an aside:
"It's funny that one of the questions asked quite often of erotic authors (most authors actually) is 'Have you done what you write about?' or 'How much of this is true?' or 'Do you really do that?'. And I've often heard authors answer, 'No, I'm an author.' Or 'It's fiction.' But guess what? I *do*do that stuff. I have done most of what I write about. (Except for sleeping with my sister's husband, since I don't have a sister, or killing someone, for those of you who know some of my stories... Some of it *is* fiction.)"
And Adam says, simply:
"Our relationship started with words."
The dance executed by these three men, together and in pairs, across two coasts and in the middle of the country, makes for fascinating and entertaining reading, but also provides serious insight into their respective psyches.
The second chapter is Marilyn Jaye Lewis' memoir. She writes about her long-term but intermittent submissive relationship with the woman who finally satisfied the dreams of surrender and punishment that she had harbored since she was a child. The emotional intensity of this chapter left me with a sympathetically aching heart, especially when I learned that Marilyn is no longer in contact with this person who so changed her life.
"What do I call her, then, if not by her actual name? How do I conjure a suitable other name for the woman whose twenty years of illicit trysts with me have been at the root of much of my most popular erotic fiction -- even when the stories were sometimes about men?"
This paragraph goes to the heart of why a book like this is both intriguing and important. We love, we fuck, we rejoice, we suffer, and then we funnel all this into our work.
Bill Brent supplies the third chapter, entitled "This Insane Allure", in which he chronicles his adventures and misadventures in the gay underground of San Francisco, his battle with AIDS and his addiction to crystal meth, meaningless fucks and incandescent orgasms. This chapter is not easy reading. Through it, though, or actually, in hindsight, Bill manages a level of acceptance and grace that redeems the sometimes awful truths he shares. And he too, talks about how writing fits into this puzzle of his life:
"Sometimes I think that I achieve through writing the kind of release that others achieve through crying. I started writing down my thoughts and feelings about the same time that I started getting assaulted at school. Somewhere along the wounded path to adolescence, I lost
the ability to cry tears on all but the rarest occasions.
Writing, then, is a sort of antivenin."
The next chapter is Amie M. Evans' "Public Sex: A Bottom's Confession". After Bill Brent's harrowing story, Amie's seems almost light-hearted, even through spankings and fistings, in trains, parking garages, back alleys, all places where discovery was a mere breath away. What makes this chapter compelling is Amie's overwhelming, insatiable lust, which drives and molds her:
"Desire, the kind of desire that comes from somewhere primordial, deep inside your blood, to be taken, to be used, to be filled, to be spiritually cannibalized. There is an all-consuming want, like the craving of an addict; it grows into an obsession when you don't get it. Your mind allows the thought of having it to consume you in a poor imitation of the real thing. While your pussy may throb to be touched, it is your mind that is addicted to fisting, your mind that craves consumption."
Rob Stephenson follows with "Exuvia (1977-1980)", an account of his first lover and his initiation into the gay community in late seventies San Francisco. Sex, drugs and punk rock; bathhouses and
parties; waterbeds and bongs; heartbreak and betrayal, and finally, his first experiments with BDSM.
"I hurried home, mind racing, heart pounding. How could something so powerful and sexual come to pass between us when neither one of us had even ejaculated? I hadn't removed my clothes. Before that night, I'd always thought that successful sex had to result in an orgasm (my orgasm, specifically, but even better if my partner had one, too). And the ultimate sexual act had to involve a physical merging. Moving inside another had until then been a literal concept."
The final chapter in ENTANGLED LIVES is Rachel Kramer Bussel's "Confessions of a Spankaholic". Rachel's stories almost always have a first person confessional tone, so this chapter perhaps less startling in its openness than the others. Like the other essays, however, her contribution is lively, well-written, and peppered with details that would never work in fiction (like the guy who spanks her but frustrates her terribly by refusing to screw her). The touchstone of truth in this piece, though, is Rachel's account of her last night before breaking up with the girl she loves (who is going back to a former girlfriend). They try to recapture the magic:
"We kissed like we'd never get the chance to again, which in many ways was true. I went about spanking her almost like a robot, wishing I could feel anything but what I was feeling, wishing we could somehow start over, go back to the beginning and discover ourselves all over again. But all I could do was move by rote, trying as hard as I could to bring us somewhere close to pleasure, even though I knew that was impossible. We tried to pretend everything was normal, but even though our bodies could respond, it wasn't worth it if our hearts weren't in it, and eventually, I dropped my hand and we simply lay there with nothing to say, with a silence so deep no loud whack could fill it."
The key to sex resides in the mind and the heart; it's not just about bodies. That may be lesson that erotic writing teaches. We can be aroused by words alone, the ideas that they suggest, the images they paint. The body responds only when the mind is engaged, or to quote my own tagline "Imagination is the ultimate aphrodisiac."
ENTANGLED LIVES is a wonderful book, both enjoyable and enlightening. As I read each author's confessions, I couldn't help mentally fashioning my own erotic memoir. What revelations would I share? Which events contributed most to making me the woman and the writer I am today?
If you are a reader of erotica, this book will open your eyes to the complex interplay between reality and fiction in the writing life. If you write erotica, the book will fill you empathy for its authors and perhaps give you some insight into yourself.
I wonder about myself, and of course, I wonder about other authors of erotica, especially the well-established and well-published ones. Is there something about their histories that helps them write
particularly well? Who are they, what have they experienced, and how does that relate to their talent?
ENTANGLED LIVES offers, by example, some answers to these questions. Marilyn Jaye Lewis has drawn together a set of autobiographical essays by seven outstanding erotic writers: Bill
Brent, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Amie M. Evans, Ian Philips, Greg Wharton, Rob Stephenson, and Marilyn herself. The talent of these contributors is apparent their essays, which are clever and lyrical, ironic and humorous, ecstatic and despairing by turns. They are also, sometimes, wickedly hot. Most of all, though, each of these memoirs is profoundly honest. These are not fictional accounts, carefully groomed for marketability. These accounts include what their authors would have omitted, in a story: the feelings of inadequacy; the sudden disgust with oneself or one's partner; jealousy, infidelity, violence, and other less than noble pursuits; addiction and sexual greed.
The book begins with "Threeway", a chapter written by Ian Philips and Greg Wharton, one of the most renowned couples in gay erotica, and their partner in pleasure, "Adam Greenway" (whose identity is not revealed but who is also an erotic author.) The three contributors alternate in their narratives, and even more amazing, the chapter (which spans more than a year) was written in "real time". When it was begun, the authors didn't know how it would end. Ian, Greg and Adam (having encountered their bared souls in their chapter, I feel comfortable calling them by their first names) have distinctive voices and perspectives, but all of them reveal much of themselves.
I was particularly struck by their revelations about how writing interacts with their real lives.
Commenting on Greg's attraction to Adam (another writer),Ian writes:
"Yes, we have an author fetish. It's out in the open. So much of our libido is channeled into our writing and publishing that it, well, only makes sense that fucking with the people who wrote the words we loved so would be the ultimate culmination of the act of reading and writing and publishing them. The omega orgasm."
Meanwhile, Greg, apparently far more self-confident than Ian, adds an aside:
"It's funny that one of the questions asked quite often of erotic authors (most authors actually) is 'Have you done what you write about?' or 'How much of this is true?' or 'Do you really do that?'. And I've often heard authors answer, 'No, I'm an author.' Or 'It's fiction.' But guess what? I *do*do that stuff. I have done most of what I write about. (Except for sleeping with my sister's husband, since I don't have a sister, or killing someone, for those of you who know some of my stories... Some of it *is* fiction.)"
And Adam says, simply:
"Our relationship started with words."
The dance executed by these three men, together and in pairs, across two coasts and in the middle of the country, makes for fascinating and entertaining reading, but also provides serious insight into their respective psyches.
The second chapter is Marilyn Jaye Lewis' memoir. She writes about her long-term but intermittent submissive relationship with the woman who finally satisfied the dreams of surrender and punishment that she had harbored since she was a child. The emotional intensity of this chapter left me with a sympathetically aching heart, especially when I learned that Marilyn is no longer in contact with this person who so changed her life.
"What do I call her, then, if not by her actual name? How do I conjure a suitable other name for the woman whose twenty years of illicit trysts with me have been at the root of much of my most popular erotic fiction -- even when the stories were sometimes about men?"
This paragraph goes to the heart of why a book like this is both intriguing and important. We love, we fuck, we rejoice, we suffer, and then we funnel all this into our work.
Bill Brent supplies the third chapter, entitled "This Insane Allure", in which he chronicles his adventures and misadventures in the gay underground of San Francisco, his battle with AIDS and his addiction to crystal meth, meaningless fucks and incandescent orgasms. This chapter is not easy reading. Through it, though, or actually, in hindsight, Bill manages a level of acceptance and grace that redeems the sometimes awful truths he shares. And he too, talks about how writing fits into this puzzle of his life:
"Sometimes I think that I achieve through writing the kind of release that others achieve through crying. I started writing down my thoughts and feelings about the same time that I started getting assaulted at school. Somewhere along the wounded path to adolescence, I lost
the ability to cry tears on all but the rarest occasions.
Writing, then, is a sort of antivenin."
The next chapter is Amie M. Evans' "Public Sex: A Bottom's Confession". After Bill Brent's harrowing story, Amie's seems almost light-hearted, even through spankings and fistings, in trains, parking garages, back alleys, all places where discovery was a mere breath away. What makes this chapter compelling is Amie's overwhelming, insatiable lust, which drives and molds her:
"Desire, the kind of desire that comes from somewhere primordial, deep inside your blood, to be taken, to be used, to be filled, to be spiritually cannibalized. There is an all-consuming want, like the craving of an addict; it grows into an obsession when you don't get it. Your mind allows the thought of having it to consume you in a poor imitation of the real thing. While your pussy may throb to be touched, it is your mind that is addicted to fisting, your mind that craves consumption."
Rob Stephenson follows with "Exuvia (1977-1980)", an account of his first lover and his initiation into the gay community in late seventies San Francisco. Sex, drugs and punk rock; bathhouses and
parties; waterbeds and bongs; heartbreak and betrayal, and finally, his first experiments with BDSM.
"I hurried home, mind racing, heart pounding. How could something so powerful and sexual come to pass between us when neither one of us had even ejaculated? I hadn't removed my clothes. Before that night, I'd always thought that successful sex had to result in an orgasm (my orgasm, specifically, but even better if my partner had one, too). And the ultimate sexual act had to involve a physical merging. Moving inside another had until then been a literal concept."
The final chapter in ENTANGLED LIVES is Rachel Kramer Bussel's "Confessions of a Spankaholic". Rachel's stories almost always have a first person confessional tone, so this chapter perhaps less startling in its openness than the others. Like the other essays, however, her contribution is lively, well-written, and peppered with details that would never work in fiction (like the guy who spanks her but frustrates her terribly by refusing to screw her). The touchstone of truth in this piece, though, is Rachel's account of her last night before breaking up with the girl she loves (who is going back to a former girlfriend). They try to recapture the magic:
"We kissed like we'd never get the chance to again, which in many ways was true. I went about spanking her almost like a robot, wishing I could feel anything but what I was feeling, wishing we could somehow start over, go back to the beginning and discover ourselves all over again. But all I could do was move by rote, trying as hard as I could to bring us somewhere close to pleasure, even though I knew that was impossible. We tried to pretend everything was normal, but even though our bodies could respond, it wasn't worth it if our hearts weren't in it, and eventually, I dropped my hand and we simply lay there with nothing to say, with a silence so deep no loud whack could fill it."
The key to sex resides in the mind and the heart; it's not just about bodies. That may be lesson that erotic writing teaches. We can be aroused by words alone, the ideas that they suggest, the images they paint. The body responds only when the mind is engaged, or to quote my own tagline "Imagination is the ultimate aphrodisiac."
ENTANGLED LIVES is a wonderful book, both enjoyable and enlightening. As I read each author's confessions, I couldn't help mentally fashioning my own erotic memoir. What revelations would I share? Which events contributed most to making me the woman and the writer I am today?
If you are a reader of erotica, this book will open your eyes to the complex interplay between reality and fiction in the writing life. If you write erotica, the book will fill you empathy for its authors and perhaps give you some insight into yourself.
January 19, 2008
From my original blog review -
“Lives” includes memoirs by Bill Brent, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Amie Evans, Marilyn Jaye Lewis, Ian Philips & Greg Wharton & Adam, and Rob Stephenson. My hands down favorites are the essays by Bill Brent and Marilyn Jaye Lewis. There’s something about lovely, lyrical writing about sex that’s just plain bad for you that makes it hotter. Not that they are similar beyond that; Brent writes about his years on crystal meth while Lewis writes about a long-lasting torrid and illicit affair with another woman. But as a writer, what I liked best about these two essays was how both authors tied their experiences back to their writing.
Not because I entertain the (generally) mistaken belief that erotic writing is inherently biographical, that somehow we as erotica authors all mine our personal lives for our stories, but because in this case I think it’s important to who they are as people. Writing, like meth and self-destructive sex, is a kind of addiction; it has its moments of elation, its periods of crushing depression. Sometimes you just need to know that other people got through and made it work for them.
The other memoirs in the book cover negotiated polyamory, public sex, coming out and spanking, each from the varied perspectives of the different authors. Some of them are very nearly as fascinating as the Brent and Lewis pieces, others seem a bit long for the material. Still and all, it is a brave book, full of scenes that range from the poignant to the smoking hot. Read it to learn more about your favorite erotica writers or read it to discover writers who are new to you. Just read it; you’ll be glad you did.
“Lives” includes memoirs by Bill Brent, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Amie Evans, Marilyn Jaye Lewis, Ian Philips & Greg Wharton & Adam, and Rob Stephenson. My hands down favorites are the essays by Bill Brent and Marilyn Jaye Lewis. There’s something about lovely, lyrical writing about sex that’s just plain bad for you that makes it hotter. Not that they are similar beyond that; Brent writes about his years on crystal meth while Lewis writes about a long-lasting torrid and illicit affair with another woman. But as a writer, what I liked best about these two essays was how both authors tied their experiences back to their writing.
Not because I entertain the (generally) mistaken belief that erotic writing is inherently biographical, that somehow we as erotica authors all mine our personal lives for our stories, but because in this case I think it’s important to who they are as people. Writing, like meth and self-destructive sex, is a kind of addiction; it has its moments of elation, its periods of crushing depression. Sometimes you just need to know that other people got through and made it work for them.
The other memoirs in the book cover negotiated polyamory, public sex, coming out and spanking, each from the varied perspectives of the different authors. Some of them are very nearly as fascinating as the Brent and Lewis pieces, others seem a bit long for the material. Still and all, it is a brave book, full of scenes that range from the poignant to the smoking hot. Read it to learn more about your favorite erotica writers or read it to discover writers who are new to you. Just read it; you’ll be glad you did.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews