Many Shades to Erotic Literature
In the story, “Hitts & Mrs.,” Lori Bryant Woolridge explores the anticipation and tenderness of romantic companionship, and asks the question, where does friendship end and infidelity begin? Is it cheating if you never get caught, or is the very nature of emotional intimacy between non-spouses a violation of someone’s vows?
These are the sorts of evocations you’ll find in Woolridge’s approach to erotic literature, layered stories that include a multihued cast of characters whose fixations are driven by “philosophical questions about love and life asked by all of us, regardless of ethnicity.”
Cleis Press published her anthology, I Can’t Help the Way I Feel, earlier this year, and her next project, Stiletto U: Lessons to Unleash the Confident, Sensual You (Based on her Stiletto U workshops) hits the bookstores in the spring of 2011. She’s also working on a three book erotica series for Simon and Schuster, due out in February.
As someone in her niche age group, 30’s to 50’s, I appreciate how she approaches each story from a “base of wisdom and not just straight up lust.” These are tales for lovers who prefer their sexual play to be emotionally satisfying, romantic and hot, hot, hot without resorting to heavy dollops of kink. They deal with real life experiences and attitudes towards sex, highlighting how “seasoned women and sexual and deserve to take pleasure in their bodies.”
Woolridge recently chatted with Modern Love, and nothing was off the table. She talked about her insights and frustrations with the literotic industry, and the sources of her inspirations. What she doesn’t share is something I know from private conversations: She’s a dynamic workshop leader and acutely funny.
I like to write about love because it is such an intriguing and often confusing part of our human journey, as is sex. Everyday women tend to be my greatest muses. Fabulous women who experience the sunshine and rain of life and want to be all they can be but just aren’t quite sure how to go about it.
Modern Love: You primarily write in the African/American niche, but identify as multiracial and have a varied cultural background. Tell me how you navigate that process to create stories that reflect sensuality and sexuality that have a universal appeal?
Woolridge:I think I have to split a few hairs here! When it comes to my mainstream fiction, I do not write in the African/American niche, but rather my publishers promoted and marketed me there. It’s true that some of my stories contain upper middle class African-American characters but again, unless I am trying to make a racial statement they are just living their lives just as we do in real life!
In fact, in my first novel, Read Between the Lies, the characters were described but not race identified, except for the two African-American characters because I was specifically writing about how racism can present itself when you are Black and upper class.
In Weapons of Mass Seduction, the leads were a 40 year-old African-American woman, a 50 year-old white woman, and a 20 year-old biracial woman and a Latina woman. The main theme explored how women learn to be sensual beings and the subplot dealt with racism in politics.
ML: I detect some frustration here.
Woolridge: One of the really sore subjects among writers of color is the way our books are marketed and promoted in such a narrow fashion and based on the A-A genre du jour, with no thought to what the book is actually about.
Many of our books are of broad interest to readers of any race but simply aren’t marketed or made available to them.
ML: What kind of stories were you looking for in I Can’t Help the Way That I Feel, and did you succeed at your goals?
Woolridge: My goal was first to create an anthology of stories, not simply sex scenes strung together with transitions. Next I was going for erotic literature for 'women of a certain age', as it fills a unique niche in the very popular erotica genre.
Because I’m a consumer as much as I am a supplier, and I wanted to read about women like me… but even though the stories feature women of a certain age, they are geared towards any sexy, thinking man or woman (of any race) who enjoys a certain elegance and sophistication to his/her erotic side, both between the covers of a book and in their bed.
Lastly, each story needed to be based around temptation, and after that it was up to the writer’s discretion. The contributing authors truly succeed at meeting these goals and the stories in this anthology range from the subtle to the scintillating and cover a broad range of emotions and sexual acts and fantasies.
ML: Imagine the reader least likely to identify with the characters in any of your stories and tell me what about their own sexuality/sensuality would they recognize in these stories?
Woolridge: I think the reader who would least identify with this anthology are folks who are into kink and fetishes as these stories would probably seem pretty vanilla based on their standards. I think what they’d recognize and relate to their own sexuality in these stories is a willingness of the characters to proceed with a sense of adventure, curiosity, spontaneity and lack of judgment for themselves or others.
ML: Who and or what are your muses?
Love. I like to write about love because it is such an intriguing and often confusing part of our human journey, as is sex. Everyday women tend to be my greatest muses. Fabulous women who experience the sunshine and rain of life and want to be all they can be but just aren’t quite sure how to go about it. Mother Nature is a total muse, if only in the sense that her beauty and bounty calms and excites me.
To learn more about the author and her workshops, visit www.loribryantwoolridge.com.
Check out my new website! www.tinamariebernard.com. I'm also a regular contributor to Sharewik.com, Greenprophet.com, Fearlesspress.com, SexIs.com, and others.
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