filled with imperfect thought (and spunk)

In the summer, when there is no tiling or painting to be done, I sometimes occupy myself with writing porn.  Yeah, seriously.  I don't share this information with a lot of people because: a.) I don't want to deal with their judgment (whether that be negative, ie:  Ugh you're revolting,  or positive, ie:  Whoa that's hot) and b.) I don't want people to ask me if they can read it.  Because it's TMI.  I use a pen name.  I'm semi-successful.  I don't make enough money to quit my real job, but I make enough money to know that there are a significant number of people (women, I believe, in most cases) all over the world wanking to the dark sexual stuff I think of.  Oh yeah, it's kinky porn.  (Like I said, TMI.)  One day I'd like to focus on writing something a bit more literary, but my longstanding suspicion is that the porn pays better.  I'm always surprised that people will pay good money for porn - but I can assure you, they will.  (I once shared my secret with RW and RH - because we were in Italy and had a few drinks.  RH only mused that porn without pictures didn't really count as porn, and RW has kept my secret in his pocket - I think - but alludes to it ocassionally when we drink.)

I have a problem with the porn industry in general because, of course, most of those women are terribly exploited.  But the women in my stories aren't real women trying to make money or get famous - they're fiction - and they're my fiction, and they tell me they don't feel exploited in the least.  And what's more, they never need reconstructive surgery to turn their orifices right side out afterward either in spite of all the dirty stuff they get up to.  I'm fairly convinced that my contributions to the porn industry are not harmful to anyone.  Plus they allow me to buy a lot of expensive shoes.

It is always a funny experience working with a cover artist.  Cover artists read your blurb - never the whole book -  and come up with an idea of what your characters look like.  Let me be honest.  When I'm making this stuff up, in my mind's narcissistic eye, the heroine always looks like me.  I mean a significantly airbrushed and perfected version of me, but still me.  She's always a somewhat non-threatening, never particularly bodacious, spindly-limbed awkward kind of woman.  I describe the heroines the way I describe myself - with a critical eye.  I don't write them to be perfect at all.  Yet no matter how much I write about myopia, social awkwardness, clumsiness, etc., the cover artist always comes back with a picture of a huge-boobed big-haired blonde woman who looks like she came from Texas in 1985.  I don't know why that is.  I mean, I suppose it must be what sells the story, but again, with an audience (I presume) of mostly women, why is that what sells?  Why don't people want to see covers with relatable women who have bodies like teenage boys?  Olive Oyl, now there's a sexy lady.


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I'm having wine and potato chips for dinner.