I love Kitty Thomas & other mindblowing erotica

blackcat777 · Feb 3, 2018

I'm re-reading Comfort Food, and this book is just the best. THE BEST. It isn't even about the sex - it's about a gutting psychological journey, and sex is the only vehicle visceral enough to use as metaphor. That is precisely my kind of erotica! (*Also super, super interesting to observe her marketing techniques on Amazon.)

I love Anais Nin, too, and Story of O (of course) was mental. I also have no idea what it was or where I found it anymore, but there were these shorts, despite being intended for "play along" rather than literary reading, that were set in a dystopian future where sex bots replaced women, and the dystopian undercurrents were riveting. There was a chapter from the obsolete human wife's POV that gives me gutted traumatic flashbacks to this day, not because of the sex, but because of the visions of the future it painted. O_O

Who else likes mindblowing erotica? What similar books to any of these would you recommend? I have a ridiculous stash of erotic romance, and while that's all well and good in a yummy sex/story/emotions kind of way, it's not brain-breaking like Kitty Thomas. I'm craving some more sex-as-metaphor-for-mindfuck books.

StoryofWoe · Feb 6, 2018

I LOVE Comfort Food and Anais Nin and Story of O. These are the dirty books that helped shape me as a erotica writer. As far as I'm aware, Kitty Thomas and Tiffany Reisz are the only big-ish name authors currently writing the kind of erotica I enjoy. Lesser known authors I can think of are Laura Reese (highly recommend her book Topping from Below if you're into kinky, twisted erotic thrillers), Malin James, Remittance Girl, and Elizabeth McNeill, author of the erotic classic Nine and a Half Weeks. I, too, would love some recommendations for erotica that honestly delves into the murky waters that make up sexuality and desire.

Warning: mild rant ahead.

I'm not happy with what erotica has become post-Fifty Shades, or at least, what the reading public's perception of erotica has become. There's been a lot of talk on Twitter about representing healthy relationships in romance, and tangentially erotica. Personally, I don't need my smut to be aspirational. That's not why I read Kitty Thomas or Laura Reese. That's not why I occasionally seek out dub/non-con on Literotica.

If there's one thing I appreciate about the erotica-reading and -writing community (after having shifted gears toward erotic romance) it's the unspoken rule: don't yuck my yum. Your kinks are your own. I'm not going to call anyone out for reading and enjoying a book with a flawed protagonist or power imbalance, especially if that imbalance is a major source of conflict; nothing turns me on more than a book that's both debauched and self-aware. I'd appreciate it if others wouldn't presume that I can't tell the difference between fiction and real life. My mind is not so squishy and permeable that reading about an obsessive affair or poorly executed BDSM scene is going to change the way I feel about consent or women's agency over their bodies.

Back in high school, I secreted Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden to class in a MacGyvered brown-bag book cover. That book forever squelched any urge I may have had to judge other people for their fantasy lives. /endrant

blackcat777 · Feb 20, 2018

Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden

This looks really interesting.

nothing turns me on more than a book that's both debauched and self-aware. I'd appreciate it if others wouldn't presume that I can't tell the difference between fiction and real life.

Any kind of power struggle digs deep into primal wiring, and I feel like people who scoff at that are missing a huge chance to deeply understand themselves and the people around them. I think it's so important that people have the safe space of literature to explore those impulses. E.g., rape fantasy =/= wanting to be raped in real life.

Incest is also DEATHLY popular (at least in terms of sales on Amazon), and because that's not in my personal little black bag of kinks, I couldn't put my finger on why it was so popular. Just recently I read some interesting Freudian theory that it comes from a place of domination fantasy and wanting to dominate others in a completely taboo kind of way. I thought that was interesting.

Switch gears back to interesting books and another book so interesting I have to rant about it here -

I just started reading The Fermata by Nicholson Baker. It's about a man who can stop time and uses the power solely to undress women without their knowledge. The descriptive style is fascinatingly visual (even for other things that are not sexual in the novel, like glasses and pieces of chalk), and it also has a hard sci-fi kind of edge to it.

Maybe a slightly different kink than the Kitty Thomas stuff, but equally cerebral in its approach.

I love Kitty Thomas & other mindblowing erotica

blackcat777

StoryofWoe

Sick and pale with grief.

blackcat777