2018: Year in Review

As we’re coming to the end of another year, I thought I would look back at what, at least for my writing, has been a pretty memorable twelve months.

I started 2018 with the goal of self-publishing my first novel as an e-book. I’d never published a book before; the most productive thing I had done with my writing was sharing short stories on erotic fiction sites. Sharing stories on these sites is pretty straightforward; you write your story, think of a title and blurb, post it all into a web form and the site does the rest.

Putting together and publishing a book was very different to that and required a lot more work. I went into 2018 very excited because towards the end of 2017 I had finished writing my first erotic novel, Best Friends With a Naked Girl, and I had a target to publish it in the first few weeks of 2018.

Well, I managed to meet my target but the book was far from perfect, with a poor quality cover that had to have some very clumsy edits in order to be accepted by the platform Smashwords, which I was using at the time, so they could distribute it to other e-book retailers who might be a bit squeamish about having so much nudity on the cover.

So I published it, but it still needed some work.

As 2018 went on I began to think about how I actually wanted my book to appear, the image I wanted it to have, and I went back to one of my influences, Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise comic. I decided I wanted to have an illustrated cover rather than one which used photographs. I can draw a little myself but not well enough to put on the cover of a book I was expecting people to pay money for. After a lot of searching I found an illustrator (Danielle Fenner) through the site DeviantArt who took commissions and was happy doing mildly erotic work with some nudity, and whose style looked like what I had imagined in my head for the book.

I republished the book with its fantastic new cover showing the two main characters; Becky (the titular ‘naked girl’) and Lisa (the ‘best friend’).

I had few expectations of how the book would sell and indeed, in the first couple of months it was in publication, it sold about what I imagined it would. I was happy with any sales at all; I didn’t get into writing to make money (if I had I wouldn’t have chosen nudist/exhibitionist erotica as my genre, I’d have gone for something more profitable!) and it was nice that even a few people had bothered to check out my work and seemed to like it.

This was encouraging to me and it caused me to go back to a book I had begun working on earlier in 2017. This was a slightly different novel – an alternative universe version of our world in which public nudity has become legal in the USA, I called it Brave Nude World because I can’t resist a pun!

Although I had not expected to finish Brave Nude World any time soon, I was now inspired and I ended up publishing the book as my second novel only a few months after the first, in April. I learned a lot from my first experience of self-publishing and this time I made sure that the book was perfect exactly as I wanted from the start, including commissioning a new cover from Danielle.

Although Brave Nude World was not a smash hit, it seems to have boosted my profile a little on Amazon and Best Friends…, which had begun to lose attention, really picked up following the publication of Brave Nude World. Both novels continued to well exceed my expectations for sales throughout the rest of the year, and as the year ends I have sold a few hundred and a lot of borrows through Kindle Unlimited too. I’m not sure if it is a lot or not, but I had told myself at the start of 2018 that if I sold 30 copies I would be happy, so I’m delighted that so many people are responding to and enjoying my fiction.

I only published one short story in 2018, much of the rest of my writing time has been given over to novels. It isn’t that I prefer one over the other, but I confess I’ve been a little short of ideas for shorter stories lately. The story, (NIP) Nina In Public, was written for a competition and although it didn’t place highly, it was fun to write.

Much of the rest of this year has been spent working on my next novel, Love Life of a Naked Girl, the sequel to Best Friends… I was fairly certain when I published Best Friends… that I would like to do a sequel, there seemed more of the girls’ story to tell. In particular, Best Friends… is mostly told from Lisa’s perspective; Love Life… goes into Becky’s character a lot more, as well as introducing some other characters to be more of an ensemble piece.

The other thing I have been doing throughout 2018 is working to promote my writing through social media (mostly Twitter and this blog). I’m not sure how effective my advertising is, but I quite enjoy doing it and I think if you are a self-published author, being active on social media is quite important. That said I am perhaps not as prolific a tweeter as others, my Twitter largely ignores both things happening in my life away from writing, and also politics, which are two big and popular things to tweet about. I just feel, as a thirtysomething male author, that the sort of people who read my books (which are usually about pretty young naked women) aren’t really going to be that interested in my life!

I do browse Twitter a lot though and one person I am a big fan of is the model, artist and self-described “Naked Person” LucyMuse. It is Lucy’s thoughts on the intersection between creative nudity, erotic nudity and non-sexual naturism, and where she places herself in that, that have inspired me to label my writing Naked Fiction this year. I feel that while my writing is undeniably erotic and therefore sex-positive, I try also to promote naturist values in terms of the enjoyment and empowering qualities of non-sexual nudity. While many naturists would probably be angry that I use naturism or a version of it in my fiction, I hope to be seen as a little different to many erotic writers in that I’m not seeking to sexualise naturism; instead I’m writing about naturists who also happen to have good, fun, interesting sex lives. So I would not call my writing “naturist fiction” but also I would not consider it purely “erotic fiction” either – hence, naked fiction.

So at the end of a busy 2018, what does the year ahead hold for me?

Well, in January 2019, probably around the anniversary of the publication of Best Friends… I will be publishing Love Life of a Naked Girl, which as I have said is the sequel to Best Friends… and follows the further adventures of Becky and Lisa.

I have already begun work on my next novel. I had planned to take a break from writing for a while in 2019, I have many other things in my personal life I would like to do that don’t involve sitting at a computer. But inspiration struck me and I found myself revisiting some story fragments and plotting a novel around them, which is already progressing well. So without wishing to set myself up for a fall, you can expect a fourth full-length A D Rowen novel at some point in 2019.

Beyond that, I would like to finally attempt to write a non-erotic work, one which explores naturism and nudity for the main character but without the sexualised element in my other books. I’m not sure this would find its target audience (I’d like to write it for Young Adults) but it could be a fun experiment.

I’d like to end by (once more) thanking everyone who has read one of my novels, checked out my short stories, followed and interacted with me on Twitter, read my blog, and especially those who have offered advice and encouragement and indulged my weird humour and tendency to over-philosophise.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a great and prosperous New Year.

Publishing Platforms for the Indie Writer

A post and conversation on Twitter the other day has inspired this blog post's topic; as a self-publishing indie writer of erotica, which do I think is the better option for an author to take - publishing an e-book via multiple platforms, or opting into Amazon's Kindle Unlimited service, which requires exclusive availability?

I should preface this by saying; I am no expert on self-publishing. I have two novels in the marketplace, both niche erotica. I have been doing this for less than a year. I write for fun and not profit, although I am pleased that the success of my novels has exceeded my expectations. There are people who have written entire books, blogs and websites about how to maximise your earnings as a self-published author in both the mainstream and adult-only marketplaces, and there are a great many authors who make a sizeable, even liveable, income from self-published e-books. If they have something to say about platforms and exclusivity, their advice probably comes from a more informed, researched and considered position than mine does!

That aside, I can talk about my own experience within my narrow field.

Firstly, an explanation. When you as an author choose to publish a novel or story or other work as an e-book, currently you face a choice as to what option you take.

You can choose to make your book available across multiple platforms, so that different retailers can sell it. Obviously the main one of these is Amazon, they have come to dominate the marketplace for both electronic books (the Kindle is the market leader in e-readers) and traditional books. But there is also Smashwords, who function as both a marketplace for e-books and a distributor to other retailers (such as Barnes & Noble) as well as several others, including specialist retailers.

That is one option. The other is that you can opt to sell exclusively with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP Select) and not have your e-book available via any other digital platform. The incentive Amazon offers for this exclusivity is that you can then be entitled to some of the 'pot' of royalties for Kindle Unlimited, Amazon's subscription-based virtual lending-library (KOLL), as long as readers can borrow your book via KU. Amazon pays you a small sum per page read on KU, with the amount being dictated by the overall size of the pot, which grows as they get more subscribers.

(It should go without saying that if you don't want to make your book available via KU, you have no requirement to go Amazon-exclusive and indeed the best option for you will doubtless be multi-platforming).

So while at first glance this would seem to be a no-brainer (more platforms = more potential sales = more potential royalties), having a book available via KU has a number of selling points; especially if you are an author of erotica or other less-mainstream genres.

When I began selling books, I didn't actually realise that KU required your book to be available exclusively through Amazon. Chalk that up to eager excitement on my part to publish - I simply didn't read all the terms before hitting 'publish'. As a result, for a couple of months I had a book available on both KU, and also via a non-Amazon retailer, in this case Smashwords.

I don't recommend doing this. While Amazon is so vast it is possible to 'game' both marketplaces (at least in my experience for a short time) as your books tend to fly under the radar of the various automated processes they have to keep track of things (unless someone actively reports that they are not exclusive) it is a breach of your terms and will undoubtedly lead to some sort of punitive action from Amazon if they find out - with ignorance being no excuse. In the end, when I realised, I opted to remove my books from Smashwords and keep them Amazon exclusive and in the KU scheme.

My reason for choosing that option, ultimately, came down to the fact that I was getting more readers through KU than I was through Smashwords. My sales on Smashwords had started well, but had petered out to almost nothing by the time I discontinued selling through them. I also wasn't confident that Smashwords was as secure as Amazon in terms of being able to protect my work from being pirated, due to the wide variety of file formats they made books available in (including .pdf). While this is great for accessibility, it also greatly increases the risk of your book being circulated for free without your permission, in my opinion.

So compared to Smashwords, KU was performing much better for me. It's true that the amount you receive per page view is small, but overall my total income from KU pageviews is about half as much as my income from book sales on Amazon, whereas my income from Smashwords had peaked at 25% what I was earning from Amazon sales and had dropped to less than 10% by the time I took the books off that platform.

It's perhaps understandable that a book on Smashwords doesn't perform as well as it does on Amazon. Amazon dominates the marketplace to the point that the existence of alternative retailers for e-books is not well-known. I hadn't heard of Smashwords until I began investigating platforms for self-publishing, and as authors who often mostly interact with other authors, we can become ignorant of the fact that sites like Smashwords might be common knowledge to us, but are not always well-known to consumers.

That said, Smashwords has one major selling point for me, and that's the fact that it is an authorised distributor serving Apple iBooks, which I think is Amazon's main competitor in the e-book market. So while Smashwords itself might not be on the radar for many consumers, the places it distributes books to may well be. I don't think I personally made enough of the Apple connection when I was promoting my books, and had I done so it might have benefited me somewhat; that said, it is more difficult for authors to market works on iBooks directly to readers in my opinion as Apple doesn't have a webstore in the same way as Amazon; browsing and purchasing is done via the app. That said, Apple does offer a lot of tools to aid authors who wish to use them.

For me, however, opting to be Amazon KDP exclusive to be enrolled in KDP Select and have my book available for lending via KU was the right option.

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So how can you know if it is the right option for you? Here are a few criteria I think can be considered:

Am I publishing a novel or a short story?
If you're publishing a story that isn't very long, you probably aren't going to receive a lot of money each time someone reads it on KU. It may be better to have it available through multiple platforms for a set price than have it for 'free' to subscribers so you will be paid per page read. However a novel of 200 pages or so will probably generate a little more income, provided everyone who downloads it reads to the end!

On the other hand, short stories still do well on KU because many readers may not consider them good value for money as a purchase compared to a novel priced around the same amount, but may be more inclined to read them if they are getting them as part of their KU subscription. I had a KU subscription for a few months and read a lot more short stories than I normally purchase, because I didn't feel short-changed as a consumer by the comparative costs.

(There are authors who claim to have found ways to game the Amazon KU system and some websites that will tell you how this can be achieved (book-stuffing etc.), I am not a supporter of this approach however, mostly because it creates a bad experience for the unwary consumer).

How much effort do I want to put into marketing my book?
One of Amazon's key advantages over its competitors is the size of its customer base and the tools it has set up to market books and other products to them. Even if you do almost nothing to promote your book to a wider readership, you will probably still sell some copies if it's on Amazon, and having it available to loan to KU subscribers will probably increase that attention.

Most authors I have encountered who report success across multiple platforms are those who take their time to do a lot of marketing and promotion of their books via social media, via their own websites and so on. If you are constantly putting out word about your books, no matter where they are available, you are maximising interest; but many authors either lack the time to put this kind of work in, or just aren't interested in playing this game. For myself, I am probably in the middle ground; I would much rather spend the little free time I have writing than I would advertising, but I also enjoy social media and blogging. If you're prepared to put the work in, you might find you don't need KU, but it is a lot of work to raise awareness about alternative platforms when they struggle to find an audience themselves due to Amazon's marketplace dominance, and you often seem to end up having to market the platform almost as much as you market the book you are selling on it.

Am I writing something that may prove too controversial for Amazon?
This is especially pertinent for someone writing erotica. All e-book retailers have rules about what they consider acceptable content, and some are stricter than others. For example, Amazon say that they don't allow erotica in which the theme is incestuous relationships between family members. I don't write about those themes myself, but I know some of those who do find careful ways to get around Amazon's rules; but there is always the risk Amazon will be alerted to the content of your book or else your work will be caught up in one of their legendary purges. So if you write, say, mother-son incest, it is probably best not to put all your eggs in one basket (and really, Amazon's rules say you should avoid their platform altogether). Other platforms are more lenient, and may represent a better option.

More generally, a point I have made before is that consumers of erotica are not necessarily looking for what I call a 'forever book' - that is, something they will keep and return to again and again. They're looking for something to read for a particular experience or thrill and once they have read it they will move on to the next novel or story. In that regard, the lending function of KU is perhaps the best option for erotic works as it enables readers to get the thrill-read they desire without asking them to spend money on an individual transaction.

Do I just not like Amazon?
It sounds flippant. But much the same as many big multi-national companies, Amazon has more than its fair share of critics and people opposed to them on ethical grounds. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has more money than God and is growing richer everyday; meanwhile there are stories of incredibly poor treatment of Amazon's warehouse workers and exploitation of loopholes to limit the amount of money Amazon pays in taxes to the countries it operates in. More generally, there is the undeniable impact online retailing has had on the book marketplace, with many physical bookstores - both independents and chains - struggling to stay afloat, unable to compete with the lower prices of the Amazon monolith.

So there is definitely a discussion to be had about whether, as an independent author who has free choice over where to sell your books, you should actually rebel against Amazon's market dominance and make your work as widely-available as possible.

Even if you're someone like me, who does not have any real ethical qualms about selling on Amazon, you should recognise that a healthy marketplace needs some competition. For instance, the percentage Amazon pays in royalties to its self-publishing authors is currently priced competitively with other platforms like Smashwords and iBooks, in order to encourage authors to use the Amazon KDP platform. If Amazon eliminated its competitors, they would have no need to offer a competitive percentage in royalties; they could throw authors a pittance and keep the rest in profit, and the authors would have no recourse because it wouldn't be as though we could take our books elsewhere. So as e-book authors it can be argued we do have a long-term advantage to multi-platforming in order to protect our income now and in the future by helping to maintain a diverse marketplace.

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In the end, what works for one author might not be the best option for another, and every way of doing things has its advantages and disadvantages. But the beauty of being a self-published writer is having the control over how you distribute your work; if something isn't working for you, changing how you do things is easy, and entirely in your hands.

'Best Friends...' or 'Brave Nude World'?

I recently noticed a trend in sales of my two books on Amazon. For the past few months, I have sold exactly twice as many copies of Best Friends With a Naked Girl as I have Brave Nude World.

That's something I find interesting, as my experience as a customer on Amazon tells me that people who read one book by any author are usually encouraged by the site's advertising and algorithms to at least be made aware of, if not actually purchase, books by the same author.

I've no complaint at the way my sales are occurring. Every sale makes me happy, and I'm glad my readers are finding something to enjoy in my work. But it does have me wondering why someone might 'prefer' (or be drawn to) Best Friends... over Brave Nude World.

Firstly, I should say my own assumptions about the two books. I had believed that, of the two, Brave Nude World would have greater appeal.

For one, it was my second novel (although I wrote the majority of it before I turned the Best Friends... short stories into the Best Friends... novel, my experiences writing Best Friends... as a novel were invaluable in the editing and rewriting process that I went through before Brave Nude World finally saw publication). As a result, I tend to feel it is the stronger of the two in many ways.

Secondly, I believe that if you want to judge a book by its cover, Brave Nude World has the better one. I love the image that Danielle, my cover artist, created for me, and by this point I was myself more experienced in putting book covers together. My working relationship with Danielle was stronger too, such that they were able to make suggestions that I could use to improve my construction of the cover. I think Brave Nude World's cover looks more like a professional book cover, compared to Best Friends... which, although brilliantly illustrated, does look more like a self-published amateur work due to some decisions I made about the design and lettering before I knew better.

Lastly I assumed that Brave Nude World would have slightly more universal appeal. Best Friends... is a small-scale story of two teenage girls, one an exhibitionist/nudist, the other very much not but also haplessly falling in love with the first. Brave Nude World has an older protagonist, a mid-twenties woman, who lives in a (deliberately nameless) city in the USA and explores the social experience of public nudity as well as having the character experiment with, and accept, an exhibitionist side. I assumed more people would want to read about the latter than the former.

But those are my assumptions, and what is interesting is to look at how my work is selling and being received, and challenge those.

Best Friends... might have been my first novel, but that might be one reason why it enjoys such popularity. People who had been following my work have read the versions of the stories that appeared on short story websites and knew me for that particular work. As such, the fanbase I have built up definitely finds the ideas in Best Friends... appealing. Brave Nude World is a slightly different work, in setting, theme and characters, and it may be that some of my fans simply prefer Best Friends... with its British setting, teenage (18+) characters and themes of romance and coming-of-age sexual exploration.

The feedback I have received for Best Friends... indicates that even if readers bought it because of the nudity/exhibitionist angle, they found the relationship between Lisa and Becky to be compelling and likeable. At their heart, I think fans of that book are romantics, wanting a happy ending for the characters, and there are perhaps more people who read my fiction for those reasons than just the titillating elements.

Brave Nude World has less focus on romance; this is deliberate, Rachel is intended to be a rather typical millenial, with a typical millenial's attitude to dating. She's not a teenager in the flushes of first love; she is an adult woman navigating metropolitan life, making immediate choices rather than looking for a long-term and permanent partner. At the end of the book she has some sort of relationship, but whether that has a future is down to the reader's imagination. I stand by the choices I make for my character, but I accept they don't give the reader a relationship to root for the way that they might for Lisa and Becky's.

Cara Delevnigne's selfie
which inspired the cover of 
Best Friends With a Naked Girl

Simple things, like the cover, may also come into play here. Brave Nude World may have a striking cover image; Rachel standing nude on the subway platform surrounded by clothed commuters, nobody batting an eye. But the cover of Best Friends..., with the clothed Lisa and the naked Becky posing for some sort of Instagram-style selfie together, has a lot of pull too. It's arguably more overt in its display of nudity than Brave Nude World. To be sold on Amazon, I felt it best to make some minor censorship of Rachel's bare bottom on the retail version of the cover, whereas the image I had decided on for Best Friends... (inspired by a photo posted on Instagram by the model Cara Delevnigne) reveals about as much of Becky's body as it is possible to get on a book cover on Amazon without being banished forever to the depths of the naughtiness dungeon. So in terms of looking interesting and sexy, I suppose Best Friends... rather trumps Brave Nude World (the cover of the former is based on a titillating picture from one of the world's sexiest women, the latter takes its inspiration from a scene in a French comedy film).

I imagine it's possible that even the titles of the books have some effect on how they are being received. While both titles imply nudity, Best Friends... is rather more overt in what it suggests; the title assures the reader that whatever else they can expect in the book, there will be at least one Naked Girl. Brave Nude World, my clever/terrible play on the title of Aldous Huxley's most famous work (seriously, I can't believe I was the first person to publish a book with that title) might seem to me less clumsy, but it also tells the reader less about what the book might involve.

Ultimately I'm delighted with the recent sales of both my novels and I know I have a number of readers who have probably read and enjoyed both equally (even if for different reasons). But it's interesting (not to mention a little intimidating!) as I move into the final stages of writing the sequel to Best Friends... to try to imagine what it is that attracts people to that particular book and what they enjoy about it, to make sure that they enjoy the new one just as much.

Paperback Writer

I've published my two novels to date as e-books, available on Amazon exclusively (I like being able to offer them via Kindle Unlimited, erotica I feel does well from that, and KU requires brand exclusivity) but I recently decided to investigate one of the other options Amazon offers to self-published authors; selling paperback copies.

If you are a self-published author, getting your book into print as a physical copy can be a burdensome task, and it is for this reason that the rise in popularity of e-books has seen an accompanying rise in the number of self-published authors. It's easier now to self-publish and have access to a global marketplace for e-books; that's why I did it and that's why a lot of other people do it too. I write for a hobby, not out of a dream of being a full-time writer (I mean, it would be nice, but I'd probably have to diversify from writing about people getting naked); if it was at all difficult to actually get a book on sale, I wouldn't have done it. But Amazon and Smashwords and the like are pretty straightforward once you've gotten the hang of formatting your manuscript how they like them (they are not exactly the same!) and I found the publication side of things to be a breeze compared to writing and editing the damn things...

In the past, if I had wanted to actually get my book out in paper copies, I would have either needed to find a publisher to agree to publish it and pay me royalties out of what was left once their costs and profit had been subtracted, or found a 'vanity' publisher who I could pay to print the book and send me copies which I would then try to sell on. There are all sorts of reasons why booksellers would be reluctant to take on stock from a self-published author; my work being niche erotica would only add to those, so I'd never considered it an option.

But Amazon offers a slightly different model in several countries around the world. You upload your manuscript and book cover to them, and they offer it for sale as a paperback; but they only print as many copies as are ordered. They don't take any money from you upfront, the cost of printing the book is taken from the sale price. They take their bit of profit (seller's fee) off the top of what's left, and the rest is yours.

The difference in approach makes it a lot more appealing. Under a vanity publishing model, I might pay for 500 copies at £3 a copy. I could sell those myself for £7, making £4 per book, but I'd have to sell 375 of those 500 copies before I had made back what I'd spent on printing. And I'd have to do that through finding enough stores and individuals interested in my book to make that number of sales (more if you consider that book stores would take their own slice of that £7), all without any advertising or support from a publisher.

While I might think I have a great book, persuading enough people by myself to take a chance on that would probably only end in a financial loss and a box full of unsold books in my attic.

But with Amazon, if nobody ever buys a paperback copy of my book, I've lost nothing. I've spent £0 in printing costs, and nor have Amazon, because none have been printed. The only way a book gets printed is if someone wants to buy it, and Amazon only prints as many copies as there are customers. So there is no upfront financial cost to me, and no box of unsold books under the bed at the end of it all. And I haven't had to spend my days off lugging a suitcase full of novels around my local bookshops trying to persuade them to stock a novel with the words "Naked Girl" in the title.

(That's not to say you can't do that if you don't want to. Amazon offers authors the option to buy copies of their book at only the cost of printing, they are then free to sell these on if they wish, using the exact same model as the old vanity publishers; the difference is you don't have to do this).

It seems ideal, but it's not as revolutionary or beneficial as it might first appear.

Because these are in effect bespoke printings, the cost of printing is quite substantial. Publishing houses manage to keep overheads low by printing in large quantities; the more copies you print, the less per copy it costs (up to a point). I work in my 'real' job with print and editing so I know this; but it is true for all manufacturing I think; if you're setting up a printing press or any other type of large machine, it's more viable to set up the machine and make 5000 of the same thing than make one thing once, then reset the machine to make a completely different thing, 5000 times.

But Amazon is doing things differently. I don't know enough of their business model to know if they are literally printing one copy at a time, or printing a small number in batches and storing them in their warehouses, but I suspect if it's the latter it isn't a high number (perhaps 10 copies initially, replenishing or rising according to demand). So the cost per copy for printing is much higher.

That's not a problem for Amazon because it deducts that cost from each sale; but as you as the author set the sale price of your book, it becomes your responsibility to price accordingly. Amazon adds your print cost together with their selling fee; you can't charge less than the sum of those for your book. If you want to make any money per sale, you are looking at whatever you charge on top of that; and depending on what your book is, that sum is already quite high; perhaps even more than the cost of a book you would buy in a bookshop. Which means that you risk pricing yourself out of the market for people who might actually want to read your book, the end result being your book doesn't sell as many copies because people think it's too expensive next to books from publishers who are able to keep costs lower. To keep it priced competitively, you probably have to accept that your royalties per book will be quite slender; a more expensive book will net you greater royalties, but have less chance of selling many copies.

Also, one has to ask if there is really a huge demand for paperbacks in the field of niche erotica, especially compared to e-books? Many readers of erotica are likely to prefer e-books because they sit anonymously in Kindle libraries, and can be read anywhere without inviting embarrassing judgement for being someone who likes 'dirty books'. You can hide your erotic e-books from a partner who would perhaps be upset by your enjoyment of Planet of the Nubile Teenage Nude Space Vixens or from your parents, or your children. And they don't cost a lot, so you can delete them once you've read them and not feel like you've wasted a lot of money.

Meanwhile, a paperback has to come to you via post (your family might open the packaging, or at least ask you what you'd ordered) and is then a physical object that sits on a shelf or wherever you choose to keep it, ripe for discovery by people you'd rather not find it; but you wouldn't throw it out or give it away because you paid for it. Also it's not like you can sit and read a saucy paperback on the bus without getting at least some funny looks.

Self-publishing paperbacks through Amazon isn't likely to be a path to riches and fame. So why have I done it?

I think ultimately, it was because I thought I might have a few readers who might enjoy being able to own physically a copy of my books. Those less self-conscious about having a book with the words "naked" or "nude" in the title on their bookshelf. Those who like the book covers and want to enjoy them as more than just something to be glanced at (or skipped entirely) in black and white on their Kindle.

I don't demand my readers buy my books in any format, and I certainly don't expect those who have already paid to read my work on Kindle to buy a physical copy just because one now exists. But I like that I can have the option there for those who want it.


Best Friends With a Naked Girl (Kindle and paperback) and Brave Nude World (Kindle and paperback) are available now.

Naturist

Naturism is the practice of going nude alone or socially for reasons of comfort and/or physical and mental health benefits. Naturists believe that social stigmas about nakedness as sexual when it is between men and women are unnecessary as to simply be naked is not by itself a sexual act. Most naturists also believe in the importance of self-identifying as naturist (as opposed to just enjoying nakedness namelessly without categorisation).

I’m a naturist myself and naturism (or nudism - in fiction I tend to use this term) plays a big part in my writing. Becky in Best Friends With a Naked Girl identifies as a nudist, and Brave Nude World is about an alternate version of America where public nudity becomes a protected legal behaviour - those who take advantage of this new right are called nudists. In my short stories, the protagonist of What Was Found When Lost is nude because she is visiting a nudist retreat, and Roommate’s Revenge has a nudist co-habiting with a clothed girl.

I confess that as an author who is also a naturist, the idea that fellow naturists might enjoy my stories is very appealing.  Yet, I have to also acknowledge that for many naturists, there are aspects of my work that would be problematic.

For starters, my books and stories are unashamedly erotica. Although I think they are very much on the soft-core side of the adult market (while there are sex scenes and masturbation scenes they are fairly lightweight), they are definitely "adults only".

Many naturists would likely find little to approve of in stories which use naturism, or a version thereof, as the basis for sexual escapades. After all, real naturism isn’t particularly sexy, and for the most part it isn’t done for sexual reasons (adult swinger-type resorts aside). But we live in a world that sexualises all nudity, and so people who choose to be visibly naturist are often fighting against that perception in order to gain more social acceptability for their lifestyle. When it turns up in porn and other adult entertainment, naturism is often depicted in a very unrealistic way, with the sexual possibilities of people being uninhibitedly nude together brought to the forefront; all of which gives a very misleading impression of naturism to the wider world.

So how do I, as a naturist, justify writing books in which the practice of being naked is often sexualised, when the reality for me is that naturism is not a sexual experience?

I admit it is something I have pondered myself, and my justification comes from the fact that I believe that there remains a place for sexual nudity, and that practicing naturism is less about the complete eradication of sex and more about understanding that sexual and non-sexual nudity are both good, positive things.

To any naturists concerned about my work, I would send a message that despite the fact that my stories undoubtedly use nakedness to titillate the reader and create erotic tension, I am always careful to draw a line between sexual nudity and non-sexual naturism.

In Best Friends... Becky has a conversation with Lisa where she explains how she sees a distinction between her nudist lifestyle and the exhibitionism that she also enjoys:



In Brave Nude World, a much longer conversation takes place between main character Rachel and her friend Amber, exploring how shares nudity can be both a non-sexual experience but still naturally prompt sexual thoughts in certain situations, without the innocence of nudism being harmed:

I don’t think that naturism is sexual, but I think that while we understandably benefit from drawing a line between non-sexual naturism and sexualised nudity, it doesn’t follow that sexualised nudity is bad; and if we are to truly be able to treat nakedness as natural we need to acknowledge that both can exist simultaneously.

By that, I mean that I don’t stop finding my wife attractive and her body desirable just because we practice naturism together. Likewise, just because my characters are involved in some version of nudism does not mean they are not going to explore their own sexuality and embark upon various sexual adventures in my erotic fiction (many arising from the uninhibited moments created by that nudism).

Some naturists may find this unacceptable but for the time being I am going to continue writing about themes of nakedness in a way that interests me.

I'm no hero (!) and I'm certainly not perfect. In the past I have written stories which pander to some of the least-positive porn stereotypes about naturism (although I'm proud to say the tired old 'nudist camp orgy' scenario has never been used in any of my work), but I'm not ashamed to have explored more controversial areas in my fiction, even if it would get me exiled from the 'club' of online naturists who scream "NO PORN" at the top of their lungs on Twitter.

But I'm also interested in alternative perspectives. I've not encountered many authors who manage to marry naturism and fiction in a way that creates interesting and compelling stories without acknowledging sexuality, but I'm always open to suggestions and recommendations from fellow naturists and others who might have an idea of books that do it 'right' (and don't disappear up their own fundament of dullness).

I even have long-term plans to write my own: I've begun plotting out a non-erotic romantic comedy about naturism. For those readers who want to read about naturism but are put off by themes of exhibitionism and sex scenes in my published work to date, I hope this will be more their cup of tea.

New Story! NIP - Nina In Public

After a long break (I was working on my next novel, and then I was laid low with seasonal allergies that left me with little energy for writing), I've returned to where I started, and posted a new short story on Literotica.com, where anyone can read it for free.

This time I've actually done so to enter a contest the site is running in honour of National Nude Day, which is apparently a real thing and takes place on July 14th.  The contest requires authors to submit a story which is themed around nudity - suffice to say I had no difficulty there!

My latest story is called NIP - Nina In Public.  The title is a little pun - NIP usually stands for Naked/Nude In Public, which is certainly the premise of the story; but I called the main character Nina, so that works too. 

Nina is a camgirl/self-employed erotic model and she finds herself going off to fulfill the video request of a particular client with a fetish for public nudity; needless to say, things don't go according to plan, and when she has her bag with her clothes in stolen, Nina's left with no choice but to go out in public naked, no matter how embarrassing it gets.

You can read the story here.

Here's a few additional bits of information about the story, if you're interested (you may want to wait until after reading it in case these count as spoilers):

• Nina isn't based on anyone in particular but her perspective on sex work and the way she got into it are inspired by an old friend of mine who is an online sex worker and has been for several years now.  Girls who make porn are people and sex work is real work, I have nothing but respect and support for women who do that work through their own choice.  Be nice to camgirls, don't steal their vids or abuse them.  And don't look down on your friend who does it.
  
• This is the first time I have written a classic ENF (Embarrassed Nude Female) / forced public nudity story (the typical 'person gets naked outdoors, loses or is cut off from their clothes and ends up having to go naked in public view' tale).  I haven't done one of these before because it's hard to come up with interesting and original ways to have a person be naked and lose track of their clothes outdoors.  The all-time classic is the person whose clothes are stolen while skinnydipping, or the "locked out naked" scenario.  I have read some very good stories where the central character experiments with a little impromptu nudism or nude sunbathing and their clothes are taken then.  Or, a couple who get amorous and their clothes are taken while they're making love.  And that's about it.  So, Nina doing a sort of "dare" (for money) and filming it is a slightly different take on the scenario, which I haven't read elsewhere before.
  
• Often in these stories, exposure/humiliation seems to be a sort of karmic punishment for the woman as a result of them transgressing sexually (exploring nudity or sexuality).  I was trying to avoid that here, so of course Nina ends up having quite a good time and getting hella laid despite her initial embarrassment.  I wanted good things to happen to her, not bad.
  
• Originally the story was going to be a tale with a twist, I abandoned that as I couldn't make it work.  I figured in the end a more light-hearted story was better so I introduced Ryan and had him and Nina getting it on (because it is porn, at the end of the day!).  See if you can guess what the twist was going to be though!
  
• Although I don't say, the story takes place in July.  That's why Ryan is home, he's actually finished college for the summer, but Nina forgets this.
  
• Nobody has two computer chairs in their bedroom but I wanted the two of them sitting next to each other so that's what we ended up with.
  
• I've no plans for further stories with these characters, sorry!  Like most of my short stories this is a one-off.

'Brave Nude World' and the World Naked Bike Ride

As someone who recently published a novel about a world in which public nudity is permitted under law, I thought I would write a short post here about an event, which takes place in cities all over the world, in which public nudity isn't just permitted, but is largely the norm - the World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR).

I've participated in the WNBR once, in London a few years ago, and I found it a mostly positive experience.  I'd do it again except my calendar never seems to align with the event, but maybe next year or after I will be back there.

The book Brave Nude World, and the social change that it depicts, was in part inspired by things like the WNBR. At the WNBR, you see people who might well balk at the prospect of being naked in public at any other time seeing the event and thinking, why not?  Either because they want to help support the ride's message, or simply because it would be a new experience to ride a bike naked through the streets of one of the world's major cities; the participants go outside the social norms and (hopefully) find something positive in that.

That concept inspired my writing because I wondered about the experiences of those who took part in the WNBR and went fully naked (not everyone does), having never done anything like that before. Were they inspired by others to join?  Were they fearful or uncomfortable?  And did that fear pass?  Did the experience prove enjoyable, and did it lead to them re-evaluating how they felt about being naked in front of others?

These ideas, in part, led to the character of Rachel in Brave Nude World, someone who has previously not ever considered behaviour as radical as going naked in public but, now in an environment where this is more acceptable and where others are doing it and enjoying it, opts to not be a bystander but a participant, and as a result changes her worldview.

That said, however, the fictional world of Brave Nude World would, perhaps, not be compatible with the message of the WNBR.

In Brave Nude World, the nudists want public nudity to be not just legal (which it becomes) but unremarkable.  "As normal as putting on a sweater on a cold day" is a phrase which the book uses often.  The normalisation of public nudity is a key theme of the book.

But an event such as the WNBR demands resistance to the idea of public nudity as "normal". In order for its message (calling for a world in which cyclists are more numerous and, crucially, safer, as a means to encourage an end to dependence on fossil fuels) to be heard, it must stand out from the norm.  That is why the cyclists ride nude.  Because naked people are not the norm, and it makes them difficult to ignore.

That's why I've always disputed the idea that the WNBR is a "naturist" event, an annexation some naturists attempt because, well, naked people are naked people (ignoring the reason why the WNBR riders are naked).  But just like the "nudies" in my novel, naturists promote the idea that being naked is completely normal. The WNBR relies on it not being.

Perhaps, then, the WNBR would be a better fit for one of my other characters: Becky in Best Friends With a Naked Girl? 

Becky would love the WNBR, because she could be naked in public with maximum enjoyment and zero negative repercussions.  In fact (spoiler for Best Friends With a Naked Girl ahead) I almost considered using the WNBR as the setting for the finale of Best Friends..., but ultimately decided it would be more fitting for the girls to take part in an event where the number of naked people was a lot fewer and they were therefore much more individually noticeable.

In the fictional world of the novel, I like to imagine Becky as one of those people who lines up every year, naked on her bike, having a great time. 

Perhaps she even takes part in multiple events around the country where she can? And why not? Just as long as she doesn't drive to them - I genuinely have a huge objection to "naturists" driving in cars to London or Brighton in order to participate in a protest against reliance on cars, just so they can be nude in a public place. Take the train guys!

Brave Nude World and Best Friends With a Naked Girl are available on Amazon Kindle now.

FWA - Fun With Acronyms

I write a lot of fiction centred around female nudity, especially public nudity, nudism, and exhibitionism.  I'm certainly not the first to do that, and before I was a writer I was a reader. 

From the time when I first began reading this type of fiction (in the form of 'streaking' stories), and later also seeking out pictures and videos with the same themes, I have gotten to learn that there are a lot of acronyms used to describe what the scenario you are reading about or watching contains.  While they might be impenetrable to people who don't know this particular field/kink, they are very useful to those that do.

I recently contributed to a discussion on the Literotica forum about such acronyms and I thought I would expand here on some of the examples I gave and what, to me, I expect to find when reading a story with those tags.

CFNM (Clothed Female/Nude Male)
Probably the most fetish-y of the tags, this usually denotes a scenario in which a man is nude in front of a woman, and he is a submissive while she dominates and/or humiliates him.  She might mock his nudity or penis size, force him to perform the duties of a slave, exhibit him for other women, force him to masturbate in front of her or others, or masturbate him herself (usually not in a loving way!).  Of course, like all good BDSM the man is a willing participant in this, usually (as is the case with most non-consensual stories) being initially persuaded against his will before discovering that he likes it.

Less commonly, it can also mean a male exhibitionist exposing himself to a woman in a less power-dynamic based way (for example, a man agrees to model nude for a female artist friend, and through this sexy times ensue).

CMNF (Clothed Male/Nude Female)
This can also be BDSM-based; a female slave/pet who is naked for her clothed master is not uncommon.  Most people who write these type of scenarios have read at least one John Norman Gor book!  Usually an element of humiliation is involved but sometimes the nude/clothed balance is used just to denote who is subservient to who; lack of clothing 'lessens' the parts of the submissive's identity that are independent of the master.

However CMNF can also be more broadly applied, to scenarios where a woman is naked in the company of a clothed man for mutual pleasure or her own pleasure.  Stories where a man has a female partner who is an exhibitionist fit this category.

CMNM (Clothed Male/Nude Male)
Basically the gay version of CFNM.  Submissive male is naked as part of being dominated by one or more other men.  Usually the clothed male is dressed in a way that denotes extra power (suits and uniforms are common).

Less common, this can form the basis of gay first time/experimentation stories, although usually these quickly become NMNM!

CFNF (Clothed Female/Nude Female)
Can be lesbian dom/sub scenarios, even in a broad sense (strict college professor forces female student to strip for punishment, for example), but not exclusively.  Sometimes in CFNF scenarios the "dominant" character is the one naked, with their nudity denoting sexual confidence rather than submission/humiliation.

Best Friends With a Naked Girl is a CFNF story in which, for the most part, the nude female (Becky) calls the shots, and the clothed female (Lisa) allows Becky to assert her wants onto her.  Becky is constantly portrayed as the more confident of the two, and the one more in touch with her own sexuality.

ENF (Embarrassed Nude Female)
The classic 'caught naked' scenario.  Character finds themselves naked in front of other people when they don't want to be, and end up red-faced by being exposed.  Of these categories this is the one most used in mainstream fiction/cinema (think Daryl Hannah locked out of her house naked at the start of the movie Roxanne, or the "character X walks on on character Y in the shower" trope in many sitcoms).  In erotica, the character usually ends up aroused/excited by the experience (again, as is common in scenarios which begin in non-consensual experiences).

While ENF could begin with a character losing their clothes and instantly plunged from comfort to humiliation, another popular scenario is for a character to begin with consensual nudity (e.g. skinnydipping or nudism) which later progresses to them being seen naked in a way they did not want to be.

CNF (Confident Nude Female)
A less common term, but basically the opposite of ENF.  Here, the woman is naked in front of others because she wants to be, and she knows exactly what she is doing.  Often the excitement in the story comes from the juxtaposition between her confidence in her body and sexuality, and the reactions it causes in others.  Usually, these are stories about female exhibitionists, although "this is me in my natural state, deal with it" nudist characters are also common.

My favourite type of character to write.  Becky in Best Friends is your textbook CNF - she has no embarrassment about being seen naked, even if it causes embarrassment in others.

Can show up in mainstream stories; think Alexis Dziena walking around naked in front of a surprised Bill Murray in Broken Flowers. 

OON (Only One Naked)
A progression from CxNx stories where the character is naked around and in front of a whole bunch of people.  Their nudity is more greatly emphasised because they are outnumbered by people who aren't naked.  Can be humiliating (being seen naked by many people is worse than being seen naked by one) or exciting for them (if being seen naked by one person feels good, then the more the merrier!).

Nude in School/College type stories like DH Jonathan's The 'Volunteer' use the OON scenario (nobody else is walking around naked except Dani, and she is frequently in the company of a great many clothed people); in this instance, being the only naked person "others" the character and marks them as different as usually in these situations nudity is not socially acceptable.

Stories of nude life-modelling for art classes are also in this realm.

NIP (Nude In Public)
Fairly self explanatory.  Character is naked in a public place where nudity would not be the norm.  I tend to restrict this tag to stories where characters are nude in places where it is almost certain that other members of the public will see them (for example, the street, a college campus, a shopping mall, a subway station, a movie theatre, a public park...) - a hike nude in quiet woodland might technically be public, but the expectation of the reader of an NIP story is usually for greater exposure than this.

Character who is nude might be an ENF or a CNF, or start as one and end up as the other!

F2S (Forced to Streak)
I don't see this much any more, although it used to be more common as there was a web forum dedicated to such stories.  In them, a character is naked, usually in an innocent way (skinnydipping or being accidentally locked out of a house naked are common) and then discovers their clothing is missing, or destroyed.  They are therefore left with no choice but to run naked from a place in which their nudity is concealed, through a more public setting, until they reach safety (either home or their car, or some means of clothing themselves).

Of course, as with the other stories in which the character is naked against their will, they might well find as the story progresses that they actually find the risk and/or humiliation exciting.

F2S could also be confused/interpreted as Forced to Strip, which I suppose might be one reason it isn't used much (although such stories, in which a character is undressed, or made to undress, against their will, tend to be tagged as Forced Stripping in my experience).

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I'm sure these aren't the only acronyms in our world of erotica, and I'd love to hear new ones I've not encountered before, or your take on what you expect when you see those above.

'Brave Nude World' is now available

My second novel, Brave Nude World, is now available to buy as an e-book from Amazon (for Kindle).

Brave Nude World tells the story of an alternate near-future United States in which public nudity has become legalised, and protected as a right by law.  In the years following this legalisation, the practise of going nude in public rather than wearing clothes starts to become more commonplace, and a new nudist movement begins to grow and become more visible, especially in urban areas.  However, society is still catching up with legislation, and people are still adjusting to the idea of naked people in their midst, with old taboos only gradually being eroded.

The novel is told from the point of view of Rachel, a 24-year-old designer living in a big (unnamed) US city.  Rachel has never felt inclined towards being a nudist before, but in the world of the novel, where she sees naked people on the subway, in the park, on the street and in the workplace, she becomes more fascinated by and drawn toward going nude in public and, in experimenting with this, finds herself exploring new sides to herself, including a hitherto undiscovered exhibitionist streak.

My attempt in writing this story is to bridge a gap between my interest in writing about nudism/naturism, and my interest in writing erotic fiction in which exhibitionism and public nakedness figures prominently.  The world of the novel is a "realistic" nudist utopia - there are no barriers preventing people from going about their lives naked save some remaining social taboos (which are explored in the text).  However the main narrative is as much about Rachel's self-discovery and evolving sexuality as it is about her finding a place in this new and more permissive society.

I've read many stories of alternate worlds to our own in which going nude in public is permitted (and in some cases even enforced) but none which consider the gradual social changes that would need to accompany any legal changes before nudists could freely walk the streets unclad without a care.  Brave Nude World is my attempt to show a society in stages of transition, as it approaches the clothing-optional utopia imagined by some naturists, without being quite there just yet.

I hope the novel will be appreciated by naturist readers who will enjoy the premise and aren't uncomfortable with sex and sexuality (and who can understand and appreciate the discussions the central characters have about sexuality in a clothing-optional society) as well as my core audience who just like reading about girls going about in public with no clothes on.

You can get Brave Nude World here:
Amazon

Covered Up

Don't judge a book by it's cover, they say.  Unless it's actually a real book and not a metaphorical one, in which case the cover is actually quite important.

My debut novel, Best Friends With a Naked Girl, has a brand new cover, courtesy of a wonderful illustrator (Danielle aka CYNVII) whom I commissioned to draw it.

The process of working with someone else to create a book cover was a new one to me.  My writing has always been a solo venture: from the days when I first joined Literotica, to putting my book up for sale, I never talked about my work with anyone else. 

Funnily enough, as I was contemplating this post, I read about fantasy author Terry Goodkind, his dissatisfaction with the cover of his latest book as arranged by his publisher, and the fallout over his very public and pointed criticism of the cover, which unsurprisingly came across a lot like a mean-spirited attack on the illustrator, who was only following the brief given to them by the publisher.

Luckily, as a self-published author, I never had a publisher; my communication was direct with the illustrator.  They were not someone from the world of erotic fiction and, as far as I know (I've never asked, but one assumes...) had no interest in the specific themes of my writing which are, let's face it, pretty niche even in erotica.  But, they did illustration for money, were fine with doing somewhat NSFW art, and most importantly to me, had a style that I really liked.

That was the reason that, when I published Best Friends... back in January, it had a quite different cover.  I'd always wanted the book to have an illustrated cover. I'm a huge fan of Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise comic series, (which definitely inspired me to write stories about women with complicated, non-heteronormative love lives despite being a straight Cis male).  I was in love with Moore's art style and the simple character-showcasing covers of the collected editions I own, and wanted something similar for my own work.

I also wanted something that would mark my book out as something a little different in the world of erotica.  A lot of erotic novels have covers that are quite similar (not quite this bad but definitely following a theme), using photographs of ladies in sexy lingerie or shirtless, handsome hunks, for a generic "this book has sex in it" message.  There's nothing wrong with those sorts of covers, they are kind of a classic, and many self-published authors have only limited options to create their book covers - not everyone wants to pay a graphic designer, after all, especially for a book that might only sell 100-200 copies across its entire lifetime.

But the sexy lingerie girl didn't, in my head, fit with what I wanted to suggest my book was about.  Sure, there is a buttload of nudity, masturbation, and sex both straight and lesbian.  But it's also supposed to be a cute, funny and ultimately romantic story about two chalk-and-cheese girls who find common ground and, maybe love.  I wanted my characters, having a good time, front and centre and the only way I could imagine achieving that was to draw them.

Only problem was, as an author who had never self-published a book before, I didn't have the first clue about creating a cover.  I tried my hand at doing my own (I'm not a terrible artist, I did a few album covers and t-shirts for bands back in the day) but I didn't have the necessary skill or software.  I tried approaching artists I admired who already drew work with erotic or nudist themes: all of these had their own projects which they were passionately committed to, and did not want to take on commission work.

I was very keen to publish, though, so I ended up knocking up a cover using Amazon's own app that it offers as part of the Kindle Direct Publishing service.  It did the job - fortunately I'd been able to find a photo that conveyed some of the spirit of fun I saw in my work - but it wasn't what I really wanted. 

Plus, it was a little too NSFW for the e-book retailers.  A downside to writing erotica is that if you make everything sound or look too sexy, the people who sell it will get cold feet - but if you make it completely sexless, nobody will take an interest.

Now, admittedly my image choice (a clothed blonde grabbing a naked brunette's breasts from behind) was a little across the line, but I hoped that, because there weren't any visible nipples or genitals, I'd be able to get away with it.

Of course, I didn't.  Smashwords rejected me for premier status (meaning my book would only be sold through their website, it wouldn't be put out to other retailers like Barnes & Noble) and over on Amazon, while you could still buy my book, it wasn't going to turn up in most searches unless the person doing the searching had disabled the site's ever-present adult filter. Some (clumsy) editing later, Smashwords were happy, but I was left wondering why I was insisting on having such a risque cover, when it wasn't even the cover I really wanted in the first place.

So I went back to looking for illustrators, and through the art community DeviantArt I found Danielle.  They had done a commission a couple of years back that was very Strangers in Paradise and their more recent work had a really awesome mix of stylised cartooning and physical realism which I felt was perfect.

Fortunately, unlike Terry Goodkind I was in full control of what was being commissioned, I gave Danielle a very detailed description of what I wanted, including how I had pictured the characters - I even included a photo I had seen that showed the sort of pose I had in mind. Danielle sent me drafts for approval and I made any changes I asked for (which weren't many, mostly it was just Becky's skin tone) and the overall experience was very positive. 

And the result speaks for itself.  I'm really happy with it and while I know it won't be everybody's cup of tea (I'm sure there are some readers who preferred the old cover) it's definitely different to what's on the front of most of the erotic and nudist fiction I see on the book retail sites.

If there's anything I would take away from this process, it's that things run smoothly when you show respect to the artist that you are asking to do the work.  Danielle, contacted by a random chap who wanted them to illustrate a self-published erotic novel, could have told me to get stuffed (or, more likely, just deleted my email) - instead, they were happy to work with me; and I like to think that part of that was because I didn't come across like a terrible pervert in my contact with them (in spite of the fact that I am actually a terrible pervert).

Secondly, show respect but also, pay them.  Unless a person offers to work for free, don't expect them to.  I was clear from the start with my illustrator that I knew I was to be a paying customer, that I was interested in their work but also needed to know the cost of that work and, once it was confirmed this was something that was affordable to me, I was in agreement that I would pay, and pay on their schedule and terms.  If you enter into an agreement that an artist is going to produce work for you for money, give them the money you agreed (unless they don't deliver the work, of course).  There is an element of trust involved, and I'm sure some artists have let clients down, but far more what I hear is artists explaining how they have been told that they should work for free because they can get "experience" and "boost their profile", which should be better than any financial reward.

It's true some artists may choose to work gratis in return for the experience, in order to improve their skills or make a name for themselves with prospective future clients - but that is down to the artist to choose to do that, you can't act as though you have a right, as the person commissioning them, to expect they will give their time and energy for you and expect nothing in return except that some people might see their work and think of hiring them.  Once again, if they don't offer to work for free, don't ask them to.

I'm hoping Danielle will be able to illustrate the cover of future novels I will publish, but if they aren't able to, I will look for another illustrator and whoever I work with, I will remember those two things - treat them with respect, and pay them what you owe.

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Best Friends With a Naked Girl can be bought as an e-book from Amazon, Smashwords or Barnes & Noble.

Writing About Naked People

It's been two weeks since I first threw my debut erotic novel, Best Friends With A Naked Girl, out into the world of Amazon Kindle.

Sales have exceeded what I expected (in that I have sales - I fully anticipated that nobody would ever buy a softcore niche-fetish coming-of-age lesbian love story from a first-time author with no experience of selling or marketing a book), and I've been working where I can on raising the book's profile with potential readers using social media.

To that end I've spent rather too much time in the world of naturism on Twitter.

Why naturists - or as some would have it, nudists?  Well, I admit that the majority of naturists wouldn't consider reading an erotic lesbian coming-of-age story about exhibitionism (or at least, wouldn't admit to it!), but there are certain themes in my book that cross over a little with that particular world.  Becky identifies as a nudist as well as an exhibitionist, after all - and there's a strong philosophy about accepting nakedness, about being proud of who you are and about problematic societal attitudes to women who choose to not be covered up all the time.

So I've been seeking out particular Twitter figures who promote naturism and pro-nudity stuff to try and subtly make people aware of my work.

There's another reason for this; I'm a little more familiar with that world, having been involved in social nude recreation for several years now, having first become interested in it in my mid-20s.  Although I choose not to apply the term naturist to myself, I'm not averse to doing naturist things, in particular nude spas, beaches and social events.  I keep the writer side of myself away from these things (hence the pen name) because there are some in naturism who would not approve of the fact that someone who writes sexy stories about naked girls might also be taking part in a nude social event - while I feel both my writing and my nude recreation are compatible, I know others don't share that view.

But regardless, I've found myself suddenly putting my view across about nudity and nakedness, and naturism, on social media, rather than just focusing on my writing.  I do have certain opinions about these subjects; many of which I try to communicate in my fiction.  I try to give a sense of fun and enjoyment of nudity; try to depict social and casual nakedness as well as the sexual side of what is enjoyable about being nude; and try to present a very "body positive" viewpoint from my characters.

I use nudism in my work too because it's a useful short-hand explanation of why a character might have no compunction about taking off their clothes in front of friends or family or even a stranger.  It's an established trope, showing why a character might not have a taboo about nudity even when others around them do.

I also use nudism in my work because I enjoy writing characters, especially women, who have a certain amount of self-confidence.  If you're someone who routinely gets naked with or in front of other people, you are likely to be someone who has confidence in yourself, and that is the sort of person I like to put in my stories.

What I don't like to do is what some other authors of erotica do, which is to use nudism and nudists in an absurdly cartoonish way in their fiction; for example, writing a story about a "nudist camp" which is full of partner-swapping swingers, group orgies and even incest.

That's not interesting to me as a writer, it belongs to the past, to 1970s sex comedy films full of "naughty nudists".  I don't think it's very sex and I also find it very unrealistic.

What interests me more are modern day, 21st century attitudes to nakedness and nude recreation.  My characters are usually young people aged 18-30, they aren't really interested in the seaside-postcard, holiday-camp version of naturism.  They're more aware of things like Instagram body-positivity, the neo-hippy movement, and general changing attitudes to body shame that are happening across their generation.  How do these people explore their own identity within these type of ideas?  How do they explore their sexuality with them?

Sex and sexuality is often a taboo subject in naturism, for the simple reason that naturism seeks to break the instant linking of nudity and sex, arguing that mixed gender, cross-generational nude recreation is perfectly natural and not likely to produce any more sexual feelings than socialising clothed would.  That's not something I disagree with personally, and I can support that with my own experiences.

But I'm also writing about sex, a lot of sex.  The main narrative purpose of my books is to describe sex and relationships, and the main thing people are reading them for is the sex.  I hope they also enjoy the characters and the plot but, well, it is erotica, there's going to be some fucking in there and they're going to be disappointed if there isn't.

As it happens, I think the sex in my stories is fairly soft-core.  It's smutty, sure, and descriptive, but it tends to just be quite mainstream in terms of what the characters get up to.  Many excellent erotic writers take their wagon far down the roads of kinky, explicit, hardcore filth but I'm happy hanging out in the parking lot.

But is the association between characters being nude and identifying as nudists, and them being described having (relatively soft-core) sex something that means my work gives a version of nakedness which naturists would find objectionable?

I would hope that it would not, and that people with an interest in both the innocent, positive side of being naked, and the fun and sexy side, find something in my work they like.  Ultimately, I write what I want, but it's nice to think some people at least enjoy and appreciate it (and of course, buy the book!)

Best Friends With A Naked Girl can be read now on:
Amazon Kindle
Smashwords

Behind the Scenes: A Quiet Neighbourhood

A young college dropout develops a habit of streaking her sleepy suburban neighbourhood during the day.  When she meets a kindred spirit, adventure ensues.

A Quiet Neighbourhood

This is in many respects your typical exhibitionist tale.  A lone female protagonist develops a kinky liking for public exposure.  She meets someone who shares her kink and in meeting, the two find themselves pushing each other further in the boldness of their exhibitionism, and of course along the way find themselves in some sort of sexual encounter also.

As such, it’s probably not my best but everyone has to do one of these, and it was certainly a way of condensing a lot of the influencing stories I have read so as to start crafting my own, hopefully more original, works.

When I published this, some reader feedback involved complaints that it was contrived and unrealistic.  I would not disagree, but I would add that the scenario demands contrivance, and that ultimately the purpose of erotica is not social realism but stimulation, which sometimes requires a certain suspension of disbelief.  Is a young woman out jogging naked and meeting a similarly naked, attractive female motorist who just happens to be a neighbour, something that could ever actually happen?  Probably not, but it’s more fun than the alternative.

In the end, it’s fantasy.