An ongoing discussion within the erotic writing and reading community is to define the difference between erotic literature and pornographic literature and when does erotic writing become pornographic. There’s a similar discussion going on with romance writers and readers of when does romance become erotic. Since I don’t read or write straight romance, I won’t get into that discussion. Here is the definition of pornography: Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal. Back to Erotica vs Pornography or if you prefer smut. The purpose of both, I think you’ll all agree, is to sexually scintillate and stimulate the reader. Some say that pornography goes farther than erotica and therefore appeals to men more than woman. Then again, define goes farther. I know there are erotic stories that go every bit as far as pornographic stories and I can’t see how gender has anything whatsoever to do with the difference. Therefore, that doesn’t work for me.

Among other things, I write erotic romance or erotica. I suppose, though I have written mostly erotic romance, I have strayed over the imaginary border between erotic and smut on a couple occasions. I consider Bananaz such a story. What was the difference? Simple. Erotic and pornographic alike, both contain sex and were approximately equally explicit. Therefore one could say erotic romance is romance with pornographic scenes. The difference was in the story. The pornographic story was pornography there was no story. If you took the sex away, you were left with next to nothing. Not so with erotic stories. If you removed all explicit sex scenes, you still had a story. It may have been weakened but a good writer could smooth it out and a story remained. The bottom line; no story it’s pornagraphic, story with pornographic scenes it’s erotic. I would be interested to hear your opinion.

As this is my introductory blog post for eXcessica, I figured it might be prudent to start with why I began writing erotica at all.

A few years ago, I was looking for an adult chat room online, just something to pass the time. I found a few before clicking on one that was associated with a site called Literotica. I didn’t care for the chat room too much, but the site itself intrigued me, especially when I saw the wealth of posted stories.

Having been a writer since my teenage years, I’ve dabbled a little here and there in writing down some of my erotic fantasies. I never thought any of them would ever be read, of course. I wrote them mainly for my own titilation. But now, suddenly, I had discovered a place where such writing was accepted and encouraged. And the best part was that anyone could submit to the site.

So I created the name of slyc_willie for the site and began posting stories. Admittedly, they really weren’t more than tales of pure sexual fantasy and deviation at first. I thrilled at writing them, because I felt a sense of taboo-breaking. My writing had always been mainstream, and while I had only had a few short stories published, I longed to write something more risque that would be accepted. I guess I had always been something of a pervert.

The response, both on the Literotica forum, and through comments left on my stories and sent to me via email, was unexpectedly, and overwhelmingly, positive. Over the following couple of years, some of my stories were recognized as contest winners. I received touching responses from readers telling me how my stories had affected them, and not just sexually.

For the most part, all of my writing now is erotic. When Selena asked for authors to join her in eXcessica, I was hesitant at first. But eXcessica offers a chance at publication in a market which shies away from stories that involved highly detailed sexual acts. And that is what I write, for the most part. I write what I like to read, and what I like to read is detail.

My first novel for eXcessica, Pretty Baby, is due to be released soon. It is the story of Alyssa Green, told from her point of view, as she realizes a long-held fantasy of becoming a prostitute. The novel was originally released on Literotica as a six-part series, but the story, available through eXcessica is markedly different. It is cleaner, more concise, and while holding to the original descriptive detail, contains a bit more of a story.

There will be more coming from me in the future, that much I can promise. Some of it will be quite dark, but then, what do you expect from someone named Gabriel Daemon?

-Gabriel Daemon