Damn you, Fifty Shades of Grey, for keeping me up all night. And, no, it’s not what you think. While you were blushing and trying to co-ordinate your index finger (page-turning being somewhat challenging when reading erotica), I was having an ‘if only’ moment.
OK, maybe there was a little ‘If only Christian Grey would ditch his linen shirt on my bedroom floor’ (I’m not explaining the plot for the three people living under a rock or too tight to drop $9.96 in Big W for what is, admittedly, one shade literary; 49 sensation). But mostly it was ‘If only I’d written that freakin’ book, I’d be a squillionaire.’
Everyone who strings words together for a living wishes they’d written a bestseller. I’ve often mused I was Jane Austen or JK Rowling, or even that drug fiend Enid Blyton. You’d have to be on some sort of substance to cook up The Faraway Tree and protagonists called Fanny and Dick. They were gifted at creating characters and getting them into trouble (although I’d have hooked up Lizzie and Mr Darcy 100 pages earlier, and left that brat Dick to languish in The Land of Spells).
But even if I’d done an MA and read The Odyssey, I still couldn’t have conjured the genius of Harry Potter or Suzanne Collins’ gripping Hunger Games trilogy.
Now, Fifty Shades? Well, anyone could have written it, couldn’t they? Boy meets girl, seduces her, wants her as his plaything, but the pesky wench falls in love (I’m winging it here because I’m only 200 pages in).
Still, as my too-clever-by-half daughter says whenever anyone remarks that a piece of art is so infantile they could have done it: “Yes, but you didn’t, did you?”
No, I didn’t. But I am now. Because, dear reader (note the classic literary device), I’d like your feedback as I give erotica a red-hot go (I’ve nailed the adjectives). As any publisher will tell you, the next best thing to being an overnight literary sensation is shamelessly ripping off of an overnight literary sensation.
Just as Twilight spawned more vampires than Mills & Boon boasted square jaws, soft porn is exploding all over our bookshops and e-readers. (Look out for Eighty Days Yellow, which is not, as the title suggests, a memoir of living with an STD.)
Apparently there’s only one rule with erotica: never refer to genitalia by its real name. In Fifty Shades, Christian’s penis becomes a “popsicle… like steel encased in velvet,” while a vagina, “that small, potent, powerhouse at the apex of my thighs”. I do admire a genre which encourages 10 words when ordinarily you’d skimp with one.
Anyway, let’s go straight to my Chapter 3 – readers get frustrated if you delay the sex. My main character, Kristen, is an actor and, unbeknown to her boyfriend – let’s call him Rob – is getting it on in a carpark with Rupert, who’s just directed her in her latest film (honestly, I love making up this stuff).
“Through the sultry pools of her melted chocolate eyes, she surveyed him – a hot column of volcanic magma rising from his smouldering loins. She could feel a shift in her tectonic plates, a trembling deep inside as she sensed his impending eruption would blast her up to a nine, possibly a 10, on the Richter scale of pleasure.”
Sorry, guys, I can only give you a taster. But for all you publishers – and I know how badly you want me – see email below.
Catch Angela Mollard every Monday at 9.30am on Mornings, on the Nine Network.
Email angelamollard@sundaymagazine.com.au. Follow Angela on Twitter.
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