Guest Author - Jennifer L. Thompson

Internationally acclaimed erotica author Fenner Jekyll is offering the thrill of a lifetime for one lucky reader in a contest that will be sure to get your creative energies flowing. The winner's erotic dream will be penned in a story authored by Fenner Jekyll, and will be then published on the Phaze website. The winner will have the choice to receive credit for their story, or to remain anonymous, and will also receive a signed hardcopy of the story. In order to enter the contest, there is a "puzzle" that must be solved, based on the contents of the author's latest book, titled "Mitigated Filth", available in an online format through the author's website.

Here is what Fenner Jekyll had to say in part one of our interview:

Jennifer: Being an internationally acclaimed author, how did you find this to affect your style, if at all?

Fenner Jekyll: All writers are essentially show-offs. Many will deny it – ‘I’m basically a shy person who just wants to be left alone to write’ – but they’re being disingenuous. What could be more self-exhibiting than writing down a whole bunch of made-up stuff and then expecting people to read it and enjoy it?

So, although I may say I write primarily to amuse myself, in fact I do it in order to communicate my ideas, observations, passions, inventions to others – and if I receive any approval at all for that, it simply validates my behavior. Acclaim just encourages me to keep doing what I’m doing – and what I’m doing is exactly what I want. The entire cycle is probably deeply unhealthy and it all springs, I expect, from having been a terribly indulged child to whom affection was too freely given.

Now, an utter lack of acclaim – that might change my style. I can’t bear to be ignored.

Jennifer: Do you find erotica to be a growing market in the literary field?

Fenner Jekyll: I don’t really know, in any statistical sense. But if you look at the Web, there seems to be an awful lot of it about.

The question is, of course, how much of it is any good? Because of the open nature of the technology, practically anyone can make their writing accessible to every literate person on the planet. This means, I’m sure, that the discerning reader can find a much greater amount of well-written erotica than they might have been able to get their hands on twenty years ago. However, it seems likely that the good stuff is much harder to find amongst the daily avalanche of unfiltered and unchallenged slurry that comprises the total available mass of erotica washing about in cyberspace.

This isn’t a problem specifically with erotica, of course. It’s true of absolutely all the content offered via the internet. There’s a huge amount of fantastic, useful, entertaining, clever stuff out there to be enjoyed – more than anyone could assimilate in a lifetime – but you could spend several lifetimes wading through crap to find it.

Then again, that's better than the alternative - which would be to have some kind of appointed arbiter saying what could and what couldn't be put into the public domain. ~

In part two of our interview, we will see what Fenner Jekyll has in mind for the future, and find out something about the creative origins of this contest.