As told by Lewis Ricker:
I used to be a mystery writer, back in the poor days. I've no fondness for them, the pay stunk, my agent rarely talked to me, I rented a small room, nearly an alcove from an old lady downtown. If I went out at night I risked my life between unlit cracks in the decaying sidewalks and dark alleys which held all sorts of dangers, physical and beyond.
“The Ghost of the Rum” changed all that. A few throw away passages had the Ghost, Fernando, lamenting the loss physical pleasuring to the psychic investigator who was trying to discover who the murderer was. It was a dandy idea I thought at the time, instead of giving her clues which he couldn't because he'd been haunting another part of the mansion he spoke eloquently about his lost love and their last night of passion.
The psychic, a woman resembling his long lost love of course, melted at his charms, his rich Spanish accent and the tenderness of the details, details he'd had three hundred years to recall and revisit. How did this change my life? I knew I had captured the sorrowful remembrances, I knew I'd captured the revisionist history of her memory and their relationship but that wasn't it.
Unable to touch the investigator he was rapidly falling in love with Fernando was forced to lead her through actions that she took on his suggestion to pleasure, tender and raunchy they resounded with the reading public. The book, which at first sold almost the same number of copies as my previous tome, went suddenly to reprints as the demand increased.
Did I understand this? Of course not! Did my publisher? Don't be silly! How about my Agent? Are you kidding? All of us were flummoxed and left with the only devise any large out-of-touch corporation has, focus groups. I've never sold enough to be worth them but suddenly with this success the suits, brass and shirts wanted to, needed to know what I'd done right.
One after another the results came back and each focused on this chapter. Second groups were issued, specifically targeting this chapter and they returned details that failed to panic me but instead sent me into spasms of delight.
No longer was I limited to mysteries, a genre I'd already been pushing the envelope on as you can tell from the “Ghost”, now I was able to spread my wings into any area, any fiction I desired. And being a poor, horny and young male writer the idea of getting paid for tossing in as many juicy erotic fantasies as I could was gravy.
Now right off I know you're thinking “erotic”, isn't that a genre? Sure it is, I wasn't writing erotic fiction, which in itself is too limiting I was writing about whatever I was interested in. Greek pseudo-history, science fiction space adventure, philosophical drama, it didn't matter, as long as there was at least a few chapters where two people came together the books couldn't stay on the shelf long enough.
An anthology I wrote which basically just included my sexual fantasies sold out before the presses started in advance sales alone. Well, I have to admit, I was shocked, a bit taken aback. Why, if this is what the readers wanted were they not merely going to the erotic section and purchasing it. My agent loaned me one of the best selling erotic novels and as I read it the truth came to me.
I wrote of encounters with awkwardness that rang true because its how I felt. I wrote of the blushes and flushes of red and shifts in pose that spoke volumes. When my characters had sex on the carpet they didn't just get rug burn, their back's ached, their arms shook from fatigue and for reasons which I understood but did not appreciate the readers wanted that truly visceral depiction.
And the humour, how can you write about sex and love and passion without humour? How can you portray two middle-aged fresh lovers trying to make love in the bathroom without reflecting the humour of an errant leg nearly sliding into the toilet brush holder or the panic as he sits there, her riding him, straddled on the seat, feeling the base of the toilet shift, feeling his hand fatigue, worried that one or the other might give?
I included it because that's how I saw it. Even things I'd never done and would never do, for some reason I had the ability to envision all the little details and to convey them with frankness and playfulness and passion. And my readers, my followers, snapped up each tome in volumes.
Soon I sat there stunned, before my Televid as commentators and street folk randomly quoted me. The crowning glory was a post game victory where the winning coach used one of my sexual analogies to describe the last minute goal that won them the cup. And as each book included more and more of these, as I allowed myself to wander further and further into this realm the sales went higher and higher.
Sometimes I experimented with depictions of rougher actions or seedier things as the ideas came to me, it didn't seem to matter, the stories of bondage didn't sell any more or less than the tender passions unless I rushed the moment. The accolades streamed in regardless and the money not far behind it.
I can still write it, at the drop of a hat usually, any hat, and on those few times my mind gets clouded, well, I have people that help me clear the blockages but the mind is the best sex organ and I'm growing frustrated with reality not measuring up. No, that's not true, something else is missing in real life and maybe it has to do with the situation.
You see when I write I'm deep in the mind of both people and as they come together even the least glamorous details are still mine to chew but in the real world the one-sidedness of love is perhaps what I'm having problem with. And a real relationship eludes me as I wade through throngs of willing groupies, starlets who haven't the depth to maintain the real thing or supernumeraries that exist simply to serve me, most one-sided indeed.
Someone to share the realities with, someone who reflects my own sensibilities, someone who is going to make me whole perhaps, I'm not sure what it is but I do know it's missing. An odd irony.
