Byline: Claire Black
'ILEVERED myself so that I was on top of him, and his bright hard gaze looked up at me. His long lashes were swept back, and his blue eyes penetrated my soul and seemed to scour me for what I really wanted."
Once upon a time, if you wanted to read something that might get you hot under the collar, or indeed hot in other places, you'd have to withstand the embarrassment of buying (and perhaps asking for help to reach) a top-shelf publication.
The advent of the internet allows us now to indulge our private interests without worrying about who might be watching (unless you're into that sort of thing), there's never been so much choice when it comes to reading material to turn you on. There are countless websites, magazines and books of erotica. Type 'erotica' into Amazon, as I just have, and more than 11,000 matches will come back. That's enough bedtime reading to keep you going for a while.
Bulk is of course, sadly no guarantee of finesse, but it seems the world of erotic literature for women is about to take another step towards mainstream respectability and quality control with the publication of In Bed With, a collection of "unashamedly sexy stories" which is the latest collection of erotic work aiming to evoke gasps of pleasure.
It's not the sexy aspect of the anthology that makes it interesting but the fact that the stories - including Down on the Farm, Just Lie Back and Think of England and The Convenient Gardner - spring from the fertile imaginations of some of Britain's finest women writers. Contributors to the book include Ali Smith, Joanne Harris, Esther Freud and Louise Doughty, each of whom have written under a pseudonym, which means at least part of the fun will be working out which writer wrote what.
The trend of literary authors writing pornography isn't a replacement led light bulbs new one. Bestselling author Anne Rice wrote sadomasochistic erotica as AN Roquelaure and Pauline Rage who wrote Histoire d'O (The Story of O) was the translator and editorial secretary Anne Desclos.
Writing pornography has also been used as an apprenticeship for writers waiting for their big break. Celebrated author Joan Smith, one of the 20 contributors to In Bed With, has said that she used to write pornography while she worked at the Sunday Times, although it was never published.
But if we're all happy to indulge our desires when it comes to reading about sex, why use a nom de plume, or as one the writers who has commissioned the collection, Kathy Lette, has called it, a "nom de porn"?
"I wouldn't say that that's about stigma," says Sarah Hedley, editor of Scarlet magazine, the only UK women's magazine to feature erotic fiction. "A lot of our writers use pen names because they write for other publications too. Writing, whether you're covering accountancy or sex, is very much a part of you, your opinions, your belief systems and because it's sex, people want their identity to be private. I totally respect that."
With a growing readership from 16 to 60 who are everything from "solicitors to women who work in Greggs" Hedley knows that well-written erotica aimed at women is a healthy market. Each month Scarlet issues a 30-page 'Cliterature' section and, according to Hedley, reader surveys show that it's consistently one of the most popular areas of the magazine. And as for the notion that women only want to read about sex if it's dressed up in the fluffy garb of romance, Hedley reckons it's a fallacy: "We avoid the softly-softly, trashy chick-lit erotica and the old-style Mills & Boon kind of writing. What we do is more hardcore - we call it urban erotica - it's very
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