BDSM Bedtime Stories Season Two Episode Twenty-One ~ Amy Valenti

Ms. Valenti joins us today with both an interview and an excerpt.  She's provided a sexy little piece from Hot, Rich and Dominant.  Narrated by J.A. Rock, it is not to be missed.  Enjoy!

La Crimson Femme:  Amy, your day job is editing books for others.  How does this impact your writing?  Does it help you look for certain things not to do in your own writing?  Or does it make you not want to write?

Amy: I think I’ve learned a lot about writing by studying other people’s stuff. I’ve probably learned more from editing and being edited than from my creative writing degree, actually! Editing has taken away a lot of my writing time, though. I do a lot fewer day-job hours now than I used to, partly for health reasons and partly because it was seriously throwing a spanner in the works where my books were concerned. I’d want to work on them, but after spending all day staring at manuscripts, the last thing I felt like doing was sitting down with Microsoft Word.

La Crimson Femme: Personal question - you are into women, yet you write a lot of maledom.  You also write ménage.  I did see that one of your New Year's resolutions is for more diversity.  When will you start writing more F/f?  (Yes, I do know you write as Sidonie Spice who seems to be MIA since June 2012.)

Amy: It’d be nice to say, ‘right now’. And I do have a WIP or two. A couple of my Rack and Ruin books are supposed to have F/f  D/s at the centre of them. Unfortunately, this year has thrown a few obstacles at me, and as a result I’ve been struggling to write much at all. I’ve managed to up my word count over the last couple of months, though, and I’m hoping once I get NaNoWriMo out of the way, I’ll be able to write some F/f. Somehow, it seems like the most personal subgenre to write in because it’s what I’ve actually experienced, so it’s easier to fall back on the M/f dynamic I fell in love with while reading NCIS fanfic way back in 2006.

And since you mentioned that most of my books feature male Doms, I’ll elaborate – no one finds it weirder than I do that I have next to no attraction to real life guys, yet fictional guys will have me drooling all over them. I find it easier to class myself as a lesbian because then I don’t get any real guys’ hopes up.

La Crimson Femme: O_O  I see.  So you could theoretically swing the other way.  Hmmm.  In your BDSM research, what have you learned this year that made you take a few steps back and go, WTF?  People do this?  How do you do the research?  Where do you go?

Amy: Well… I’ve personally been a sub/bottom on and off, though sadly more off than I’d like! So there’s always that to draw on – what I’ve experienced, how it felt and what emotional triggers have been touched. I’ve also been a voyeur in local clubs, and there’s a yearly conference held by the SM Dykes group in Manchester, England that I’ve been to every year since 2008. Always lots to learn there in terms of technique (not that I actually use the techniques myself), and the anecdotes people tell during the workshops are always invaluable research material, too.

I may have said this one too many times in the BDSM group already, but earlier this year I found that any type of topping actually has the ability to make me cry. Having been tied up by my partner at a rope workshop, I then ended up with a rope in my hands, expected to do the same thing to her. I got about halfway through before I panicked and burst into tears! It gave me a huge amount of respect for tops/Doms in general, for the amount of expectation that a bottom or sub can put on them. I just crumbled under the pressure of trying to make it pretty and functional.

In terms of WTF in sub stakes, though, being whipped by nettles is something I learned about this year and I was horrified by the thought. I think I must have worse reactions to nettle stings than most people, because I can’t imagine having all those raised, burny, itchy bumps on me would be erotic at all. But of course, ‘my kink is not your kink, but that’s okay’ applies. J

La Crimson Femme: *shudders* I don't like nettles.  I agree with you on that one.  I saw a video of the nettles rubbed all in the woman's pussy and asshole.  Yikes!  It's hawt to read, but I don't want it done to me!  Now, what have you learned so far this year which made you go, "I must try this at home"?  Have you tried it?  How did it go?

Amy: I hadn’t considered until this year that it was possible to be fucked with the handle of a flogger, but that’s something that made me sit back and go, “How intriguing!” Unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity yet to have it done to me, and I doubt doing it myself would have quite the same effect.

As for something I have tried, this is a very tiny and insignificant thing compared to most elements of BDSM, but it just about fits. I’d been feeling like I’d love to be dragged around by the pigtails – not as an ageplay thing, just as a hair-pulling fetish with a strangely specific twist, I guess! There was a ‘services offered’ board at the SM Dykes conference and I put down that I’d offer up my pigtails for the purposes of being pulled around by them. I wasn’t actually expecting anyone to take me up on it, but a lovely switch lady was nice enough to do exactly that a couple of times the following day, on the way to places and during a workshop. It was fun – the mix of forcefulness and mild pain were enough to make me nice and breathless!

Sigh… I’ve had quite a boring year in terms of kink, haven’t I?

La Crimson Femme: Mmmm, being pulled by the hair is deliciously arousing.  Totally a trigger for me.  I understand why you enjoyed it!  Maybe next year, more time will be saved for kinky fun!  If you were to have weekend at a BDSM "playground", who would you bring and what would you want to do that weekend?

Amy: You’ve opened a can of worms now, but I’ll resist the urge to list everyone I can think of! Most of them would be seriously obscure pop culture references.

I think I’d definitely want to sub to Gibbs from NCIS alongside his regular sub, Abby – the characters, though Pauley Perrette could also come as herself. Mark Harmon kind of freaks me out when he’s not growling orders and being grumpy as Gibbs. Anyway, we’d make a great M/f/f ménage. ;) Maybe Abby could switch and she and Gibbs could double-top me, too.

Knife play with Melisande from the Kushiel books by Jacqueline Carey would just about kill me. Possibly literally, but it’d be a happy death! Also, I’d take knife play from Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I might have a slight problem with wanting sociopathic women to come near me with sharp objects.

I’d also want Mary Elizabeth McGlynn to be giving the orders (she’s a voice actress who does a lot of video games and anime, and she has the sexiest female voice ever).

La Crimson Femme: O_O Riigghhht.  I wasn't actually asking about celebrities but now that you mention it, I'd be thrilled with your list of activities and people too.  I wonder what that says about me?  Do you think there is a difference between writing BDSM and non-kinky Erotic?  If so, what is the difference?

Amy: Yeah, the formula is slightly different, I think. In the context of BDSM, having some controlled violence and humiliation involved is acceptable. Outside that dynamic, characters can seem overly subservient or domineering, so it’s all about getting the balance right, I suppose. I don’t often read vanilla romance or erotica as a primary genre (subplots within stories of other genres aren’t so bad), because it’s almost guaranteed that either the hero or the heroine will piss me off in some way. I think I’m just fairly critical of characters, though.

La Crimson Femme:  You know, now that you mention this, I think that's why I've been shying away from non kinky books.  I'm experiencing the same irritation with the hero or heroine.  I wonder if we are jaded?  Why do you think there are so many BDSM books out with rich male dominants?

Amy: This is something I never really considered until the world went nuts over Fifty Shades, though it’s obviously not a new theme. If you look back at pre-FSoG Harlequin books you can find all sorts of amusing titles about billionaires and princes and overall rich men seizing their women and carting them off, sometimes whether they liked it or not!

Anyway, I’ll freely admit that I jumped on the bandwagon to see if a book about a rich Dom would be more popular than my average-income Dom books. I didn’t think it really would be, because the title I chose was so blatant – kind of an experiment to see if super-obvious titles drew in readers, really. I was surprised by how many people read the first couple of books and were waiting for more, especially since I had next to no interest in writing much about a rich Dom. I’m not a fan of books that drop designer brand names here, there and everywhere  - I don’t think designer labels are any better than lower-priced ones, and I’m not that materialistic, so I couldn’t think of a way to make it all relatable to the reader and stay true to my own feelings about where the story should go. Let’s just say that I compromised in some places and decided to downplay the riches in others. I’m still trying to finish the series, but I’m within the last 20,000 words so the end is in sight! Somehow, I doubt I’ll be writing anything else about obscenely rich men, though I’m very happy with the direction HRD has taken. J

To answer the question, I think it can be summed up by two things: money and sex. People don’t like their jobs, so they fantasise about being able to give up working to be ‘kept women’ (though I kind of hate that phrase – do they have it outside the UK?). The world is so materialistic these days that being showered with expensive gifts must be a fantastic dream for women who hardly have enough cash to treat themselves every once in a while. As for the dominant part, I’m not exactly sure what appeals to women who wouldn’t want to get into BDSM themselves, but these alpha males do seem to know all of a woman’s hot-spots…which is a lot sexier than having to give lots of feedback while you’re in bed, so that your guy can get it right.

La Crimson Femme:  Amy, this is profound.  I think you've hit on the major reason why these books are so popular.  And you are right, pre-FSOG, there were a lot of millionaire (now billionaire) romances.  I'm fascinated by how your experiment played out.  All for the better for you!  Have you ever met a rich male dominant? Or a rich female dominant?  If so, what did you do with them?  ^_^

Amy: I don’t think I have, but I’d imagine life must be really hard for them – not knowing if people like you for you, or because you’re hot, rich and dominant (sorry, couldn’t resist!). I’d be happy to ditch the ‘rich’ part in favour of hot and dominant, though – money isn’t really that important to me, which is awesome because I’m not rich!

La Crimson Femme: Tell us one thing about yourself that most people don't know.

Amy: When I was a teenager, I went through a really weird phase of making a cup of tea with milk and sugar, and putting a few strands of dried spaghetti in it. I’d wait until the hot water turned the spaghetti a bit bendy (not totally soggy, just a bit more flexible and soft while still a bit hard inside) and then eat it. I haven’t done it in about nine years, but that’s probably because I don’t usually have spaghetti to hand. I still maintain it tastes yummy…

La Crimson Femme:  *Grimaces* Okay, that is different.  I was with you until the spaghetti.  Since I'm mildly allergic to spaghetti, that's probably where you lost me.  Thank you for sitting down with me for this lovely interview.  Everyone, be sure to check out Amy's Hot, Rich and Dominant Series.