Fifty Shades of...Red

It wasn’t until some recent furtive staff room discussions on the Fifty Shades books that I learned I still, at this advanced age, blush. The joke began that I can turn Fifty Shades of Red. And after my Fifty Shades of Green post last week I found out I am not the only writer out there who gets nervous about the idea of writing erotica, or even just erotic scenes. I received several blog comments and was part of quite a few discussions on the topic of what I now call The Mother Factor.

Writing erotica is one thing. Making it available for the public to read is another. But the thought of having one’s mother read it, well, that is quite another thing altogether. The thought seems to be almost universally cringe-worthy. But you don’t even have to put it to the mother test, some of us don’t have mothers anymore, any person you know well can serve as the ‘mother’ in this scenario: a sister, grown child, co-worker, and most horrifying of all, a boss. For me, having it read by a co-worker or my boss wouldn’t only be embarrassing, it would result in the loss of my day job.

So that brings me to the point made by one commenter. How could I ever promote erotica? I would have to be under such deep cover, with a pen name no one could ever connect to me, that all but the most anonymous promotions would be out of the question. And as we know, no author can have a book published without committing to a lot of promotional activities, many of which are not anonymous.

I admit it. I am a nervous Nellie. My hat is off to the wonderful Cathryn Cade who was kind enough to leave a comment on last week’s post. She does it all with such aplomb. She is confident and comfortable with all her writing, including the erotic bits. And boy, I have to tell you, she does those well! But most impressive of all is the fact that she can talk about writing erotic WITHOUT turning Fifty Shades of Red. Even on the evening news. Wow!

Maybe in my next life I will be able to do that too. But for now I am doomed to turning Fifty Shades of Red.