Guest Author - Jennifer L. Thompson
In part one of our interview, Internationally Acclaimed Erotica Author Fenner Jeckyll discusses writing and erotica. If you've not yet read it, you can find it HERE. Part two tells us more of what's to come from the author, and more about the contest that can put your erotic fantasies in print!
Jennifer: What can we look forward to seeing more of from you in the future?
Fenner Jekyll: More erotica, I hope. But also some other stuff – perhaps some dark short stories, some suspense, some comedy. All of these elements crop up in Mitigated Filth, but the erotic element is the main driver of the stories in that collection.
So – I’ll see where the mood takes me. But whatever happens, you can keep up-to-date with developments by checking out www.fennerjekyll.com from time to time.
Also, of course, if there’s anything you’d particularly like me to write, you could always enter the contest to have a short story written just for you. The details of that are on the site too.
Jennifer:This is a very original contest. How did you come up with the idea?
Fenner Jekyll: It’s a combination of a few things: my love of words for their own sake; my fascination with any kind of puzzle or mystery; and the fact that I actually like writing within arbitrary constraints.
The first of those – the love of words – comes out in the stories, I hope. I use many different narrators because I’m interested in the rhythms of language and how forms of expression differ from region to region, from generation to generation, from one personality type to another. I try very hard to make each voice convincing.
My love of puzzles also features in some of the stories. One of them – the story of a porn star trying to track down a partner she once had sex with – is essentially a whodunnit. (What the mystery partner dun, by the way, is not what the quarry usually does in whodunnits. For a start, the victim enjoyed it.) But many of the stories are designed to make the reader wonder what’s going on and where it’s all leading. The growing anticipation – of sex, or shock, or laughter, or revelation – all adds to the feeling of being seduced by the story.
In order to make the contest work, I had to write stories with titles starting with certain letters of the alphabet – and I like the imposed creative discipline that implies. In fact, I think that having to write within parameters actually increases creativity rather than constraining it. When I write the story for the winner of the contest, I’ll be working with the suggestions that the winner has put to me. That’s an exciting idea. I’m looking forward to it.
