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Sex is Life: Part Six

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This is part six of a discussion with Benji Bright. Read part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five. Buy Candid here.

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JOHNNY: I’ve held onto an idea for a superhero comic miniseries for seven or eight years now, and I still think it’s great, but it’s probably not my unwritten masterpiece. It’s funny, but (and maybe I mentioned this above and I’ll cut it from any published version to save redundancy) the four or five months where my work sent me out of town and kind of turned my world upside seems to have done the same thing with my drive to write and a lot of my ideas. Ideas that I know I’ve cherished or have waited to work on seem to have drifted away, or gotten lost when I tipped my toy box over. I have dozens of stillbirth stories in my Dropbox file, but most of them mean nothing to me now. 

Hopefully it just means that my unwritten masterpiece is still an unconceived masterpiece.

So, we’re on the verge of your next big book release, and it’s kind of the polar opposite of your other recent releases. I’m speaking of Chevalier, your ongoing (still, right?) series from JMS Books. I know you have a lot of varied writings on your site, but do you think the Chevalier‘s audience will find something to like in Candid, and vice versa?

BENJI: Ah! You’ve hit upon my kryptonite: questions of audience. This is always where I get the low marks. What’s funny is that Chevalier started life on Nifty.org and was somewhat of a success—if the amount of emails I got about it were any indication—but I think once the story made the leap to JMS Books it was exposed to a different audience, who liked it (or disliked it) for different reasons. So already we’re talking about two sets of readers: the readers of straight-up erotica and readers of M/M romance (and the flavors therein). I think in both cases I’ve had to convince readers. The former I’ve had to convince to keep reading despite the copious plot and a sometimes lessened emphasis on sex, while the latter I’ve had to convince to keep reading despite a lack of emphasis on romance. 

I think people who enjoy the character work in my stories, the building of compelling and immediate personas, will find a lot to enjoy in Candid. I think those who come to my erotica for sexual atmosphere will certainly find no lack of it here. So I guess to answer your question in the roundabout way that is my want: yes, I think Chevalier‘s audience will find something worth reading in Candid. And in the reverse-case, I’d like to think Candid readers could love Chevalier assuming they’re not too squeamish about genre. 

Shifting gears a little, I just read Lars Eighner’s essay “Why I Write Gay Erotica”. It’s a brilliant and thorough accounting of the writer’s thoughts about what makes the genre viable and essential. I’m curious, in your opinion, what makes gay erotica worth writing? Worth reading? 


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