I’ve written about this before but it struck me today as I read reviews for a book I flat out loved and some of them were of the “oh my god this is the worst book evar” variety. I loved this book so much it changed how I came to think about erotic writing and BDSM in erotic writing – this was before I’d really given serious thought to beginning to write myself.

I wonder then, if books with sex and sexuality at their core aren’t the most difficult to access because they’re not universal. Yes, we all have sexuality in some sense whether it’s none to nympho but at the same time, sexuality is incredibly individual and what made me stop, read the paragraph, stop, read it again and once more while my heart pounded and my brain screamed, “That’s amazing!” – someone else read it and thought “holy crap, this is awful”

And really? That fascinates me. There are authors I’ve read who’ve made me cringe, made me think, “this is terribly executed tripe, unsexy, uninteresting and the heroine is the biggest idiot I’ve ever read” and saw online a discussion about how hot that same scene was.

An example? The Beauty books by Anne Rice’s alter ego. Honestly? I thought they were awful. Not sexy at all. Clumsy and silly and the BDSM play in them made me snicker. By marked contrast, in her Vampire Chronicles, especially the first three books, you have impotent vampires who ooze sexuality. She writes so deftly and with such sensuality that I think all the craft she uses there is totally absent in her Beauty books.

By contrast I’ll bring up Emma Holly’s Velvet Glove and Molly Weatherfield’s Carrie’s Story – these books occupy opposite ends of the spectrum. Velvet Glove is softer and more of an erotic romance while Carrie’s Story is straight erotica. Both books though explore the subject of BDSM from the perspective of the sub who is exploring the issue with an honesty and openness that is intense and very sexy.

To think people look at either book and find the Beauty books superior or more sexy surprises me. It doesn’t offend me, I can’t argue with it because it’s all perception and filters.

This isn’t earth shattering, it’s not something I hadn’t realized before but it still amazes me how the deepest and most common of human behaviors can also be those we cannot see through the same eyes.