Elizabeth de la Place is the author of short stories with
wholesome titles like
The Billionaire’s Babysitter: Deflowering the Sitter, Sexy Hardcore Lesbians, Lesbian Strap-On Party, Ambulance Slut, Cum on and Haze Me, and
Tie Me Up Teacher. (Click on the pictures for any you want to order.) Obviously these aren’t for kids or their conservative parents, and they
may even be a little more than what the
Fifty
Shades of Grey crowd can endure, but I was intrigued by them … and more
importantly the woman behind them. De la Place and I “met” on Smashwords, and
after I reviewed
The Billionaire’s
Babysitter: Deflowering the Sitter, I decided to interview her. After all, it’s not too many “smut” writers
who would be willing to be so open about what they do.
De la Place is a college student studying chemistry at what
she describes as a “liberal arts college.”
“I write for my school’s feminist newspaper,” she says, “and I hope to
get my PhD after I graduate. I think a
lot of erotica authors lie on their author bios, but I actually was a
cheerleader throughout middle and high school – my experiences and the stories
the other girls would tell definitely serve well as inspiration for me
now.” In fact, the camp in
Zombies at Cheer Camp was based on a
cheerleading camp de la Place attended.
So how did this former cheerleader start down the much
maligned path of writing erotica that borders on pure porn? The answer is pretty simple: She read a forum
post about it and the rest was history. De la Place explains, “I figured that
it would be fun to try out – at the very least, if it didn’t work out, it would
make for a great story.” Since her
personal sexual fantasies were “pretty involved,” it made getting those fantasies
onto the page a bit easier, but as any writer knows, writing is only part of
the battle. The other part involves your
readers and what they think of your work.
Erotica has its share of rabid fans and detractors. Bad porn still can fulfill a masturbation
need in the lonely, but bad erotica causes the author to be treated like a
leper at the prom. Everyone wants to
look, but nobody wants to dance. De la
Place has been lucky.
“The reaction has been really good!” she states. “I’ve received fan mail, which is exciting,
and my friends, many of whom help me edit and provide me with ideas, have been
really supportive and encouraging. Even
if they do make fun of me a little bit.”
De la Place’s subject matter (barely legal erotica, for instance) hasn’t
caused an outrage, either, which is surprising when you consider American
culture. “I like to think that, as a
younger woman and as a queer woman, I manage to handle those subjects
well. A lot of barely legal erotica
strikes me as a little skeevy because I don’t like the idea of a docile,
infantile woman – even when the female characters in my stories are being
submissive, I want to make sure that they are willing and clever
participants. It’s easy for me to put
myself in their shoes and to insert a bit of my own personality into them. There is one subject she does shy away from,
however.
“I would never do a rape/dubcon scene for pure titillation,”
she explains. “I do a lot of work with
survivors of rape and abuse, and I think that using the rape of people,
especially the ‘Oh, s/he enjoyed it in the end, so it’s okay,’ does a lot of
bad things with regard to normalizing rape culture. Only one of my stories features some mild
dubious consent, and I struggled a lot with the decision to include it.”
De la Place’s works aren’t novels. They are short stories ranging anywhere from
3,000 to 5,000 words, which some would say is just right for a piece of erotic
fiction as it gets right to the “good stuff.”
The price for these pieces is $2.99 (more for the bundled works). “That’s less than a price of a cup of fancy
coffee,” de la Place explains, “and a sexy story is the sort of thing you can
read again and again.”
Independent authors of ebooks and stories are left to price
their works themselves. It was something
I struggled with when it came to pricing my books and short stories, and it is
something Place thought hard about, as well.
“My prices mostly come from what I think they’re worth without
underselling myself, and from my observations on how the really successful
erotica authors price their work.” One
key indicator of how appropriately a piece is priced is by how well it is
selling. For relatively unknown authors,
the price can mean the difference between fame and famine, as they don’t have
their name to trade in on. De la Place’s
sales vary.
“I have a short story,” Place says, “
Ambulance Slut, that I joke
about because I don’t think it sold a single copy in the United States for
months after publishing, but it sold bizarrely well on Amazon UK for a
while. As time goes on, my sales have
been increasing a lot – I make more in a week than I did in my first few
months.” I had a similar situation
happen with
Melinda. It sold in America, but someone apparently
started a discussion about it on some British forum, and suddenly I was seeing
a spike in sales overseas and hearing from Brits who had a fetish involving
starving women. It was odd to say the
least, and it did get me thinking about writing some truly fetishistic porn in
order to supplement the bank account.
While I haven’t thoroughly ditched the idea yet, looking at the amount
of work de la Place produces has given me pause.
In June she published “about a dozen titles.” The next month she did about six. “I hope to get five more titles online before
I go back to university at the end of August,” she states. “My production will definitely slow down when
I’m in school, since classes are my absolute first priority, but I hope that
I’ll still be able to publish a few times a month.”
With the amount of short stories de la Place puts out, I
felt the need to ask her if she thought she had a novel in her. As any writer can tell you, there is a world
of difference between writing a short story and writing a novel. “I don’t know,” she answers. “I’d like to think so. I’d definitely be interested in writing young
adult novels, but I’m not sure if I’m cut out for a longer length.” For the immediate future, however, de la Place
is sticking with what she knows.
“Up next are probably more lesbian works, maybe a dip into
fantasy and sci-fi, and hopefully the conclusion to the Cum on and Haze Me trilogy.
I have a big document full of ideas, but when it comes down to it, most
of my stories are based on what I feel like writing that day. Sometimes I wake up and really want to write
about horny schoolgirls, and other days I feel like writing about some gay
knights having sex with a dragon. It’s
always a surprise, but it also helps to keep me from getting burned out.”
With ideas like that, who needs a novel? It seems like the short story is working just
fine for this author. And while I’m not
quite sure I’d enjoy reading about gay knights having sex with a dragon, I’m
fairly positive there are some folks in Europe who will make that a best
seller.
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