Because I’m an amazing porn stud (and because I asked), I convinced Shon Richards to spend some time at the Liquid Whispers Virtual Kitchen Table ((All rights reserved. Patent pending.)) for a little cyber coffee and a ten-question interview.

We’ll get to the questions and answers in a minute. First, I want to draw your attention to a few things.

1. Shon maintains a blog called Erotiterrorist. You will read this interview, then you will click over to it and become a devoted fan. That is not a request.
2. For those of you who are inclined to tweet–or even just to lurk about Twitter–Shon can be stalked found at @ShonRichards.
3. The image above is the header image to Shon’s blog. It was created by George Sportelli ((See more of his work at www.sportelli.blogspot.com)), who deserves a standing ovation for that luscious bit of eye candy.

And now, without further ado, I give you Ten Questions with Shon Richards:

LW: “Erotiterrorist.” That’s quite a name. How’d you come up with it? Do you ever feel nervous that the NSA is looking over your shoulder?

SR: I came up with the name shortly after the Janet Jackson Super Bowl nipple.  I was a bit politically overactive at the time and I felt that the religious right’s outrage over Janet’s breast was a bit forced.  It felt like people were treating her nudity as if it was some sort of terrorist attack and that we needed to bomb somebody for punishment.  It occurred to me that if they were that terrified of Janet’s breast, what the Hell would they think of an erotic writer?

Later that year, Clean Sheets had a contest for erotica with a political twist.  In a single sitting I wrote a story about erotic terrorists and I won 2nd place in their contest.  I liked the concept and I debated writing more stories about it.  I never did but when I started a blog, I wanted a name that reminded me that no matter how tame or vanilla I think porn is, some people out there would think it was the work of demonic forces.

My first wife was terrified of the name because she thought I was asking for a trip to Guantanamo.  I did used to get a lot of web hits from Langley which was kind of funny.  I remember one time a person emailed me to say that they were going to link to my site but they didn’t want to promote terrorism.  That is porn in a nutshell.  Some people love porn and other people are convinced that it is evil.  I think erotica writers and fans should never forget that.

LW: You’ve been writing for a long time. When did you start, why did you start, and why did you keep going?

SR: I was an only child till I was 8.  I read a lot and stories were very important to me when I played with my toys.  I had continuity in my play and I was annoyed when other children came to visit because I had to update them on what all my toys were doing and how they acted.  When I was 12, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons ^(TM) and that gave me a huge outlet for creating worlds.  I played a lot of RPG games and usually ending up running them because I was the one who wanted to come up with three dozen supporting characters.

I started really writing when I got my first computer in the 90′s.  I went looking for stories and I found a lot of fan fiction and porn on the Internet.  There was a lot I liked but also a lot I hated.  I wrote my first stories as parodies of the entire internet erotica because I was trapped in a weird mental space where I wanted to mock it yet also desperately wanted to be a part of it.  I got a few parodies out of my system and as my time spent in roleplaying games declined, I transferred that energy to more likable characters and more serious plots.

I keep going primarily because I love to write.  My self esteem takes a hit if I don’t produce something new to impress myself with on a regular basis.  I am also something of a tinkerer and I enjoy exploring new avenues in porn that others might not.  I didn’t see anyone else making a choose-your-own adventure porn story, so that makes it more exciting for me.

LW: You once wrote about having agoraphobia. Since writing that post, you’ve become a stay-at-home-husband. First, welcome to the club! Second, what are you doing to keep that condition from turning you into a cat-hoarding recluse?

SR: My agoraphobia has been a weird experience.  I have always been highly anxious and the hostility of my family didn’t help that.  My first wife was very dominating and I can see now that she exploited my agoraphobia in order to have better control over me.  For example, I didn’t learn to drive until I was thirty-five and my first wife would berate me for not driving but then also come up with excuses as to why I couldn’t learn.

My 2nd wife has introduced me to the wonderful world of medication and that has helped immensely.  Learning to drive, learning to manage my own bills and other basic adult functions have really helped me kick my anxieties.  I am also at that weird age where I can see signs of anxiety in other people in public.  Most people are terrified of looking stupid and I notice that now.  I think I overcome my agoraphobia by sheer pride.  I want to be a better person.  I hit bottom when I couldn’t leave the house; I am too ashamed of myself to go back to that level again.

I tell you what I do: when I notice that I am avoiding a situation because of some sort of anxiety, I force myself to do it whether I really need to or not.  I can be antagonistic to myself that way.

LW: There’s an old writer’s maxim that says, “Write what you know.” What do you think about that advice? Follow-up: You write about some pretty wild stuff. Tell us about that.

SR: You do have to write what you know.  Most people however are wrong about what they know.  You don’t need to know every thing there is to know about bondage to write about it, you just need your own opinions about what you like about it and exploit that.  Star Wars isn’t about real space combat and vast empires; it is about a kid becoming a hero with a wise mentor and fun friends.  Lucas had friends and he knew the kind of glory he daydreamed of having.  He turned around and made a movie based on those wishes.  No galactic law knowledge required.

Which brings me around to a lot of the weird things I write.  I read and play a lot of fantasy and science fiction books and games, so I am comfortable in those genres.  I also enjoy playing in sandboxes that no one else is, so if I see something like Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon and realize no one is making over-the-top space opera porn stories, than it encourages me to do it.  By not having a contemporary, I become my own expert.  I also play up to my strengths.  I know I don’t know a lot about subject X, but I know a lot about flirting and sex, so if I write about subject X, it is just a background for the sex and flirting.

LW: As a follow-up to that follow-up, you recently wrote a post in which you lamented that much of BDSM “porn” is more apologetic than kinky. Tell us more about that, please.

SR: BDSM is that wonderful, lovely topic where people have feelings to do things a certain way, and a hundred reasons from society that they shouldn’t act on those urges.  For a lot of men, it boils down to just feeling guilty about the joy they get from making a woman submit to their greediest desires.  Most men don’t realize that there is an entire culture of women eager to submit.  Not all women, but some.  That simple concept can be really hard to grasp and it works both ways.  I know plenty of submissive women who feel that their darkest urges are not right in some way.

Quite a few BDSM books, bless their hearts, try to explain this.  A lot of them work really hard to make the readers comfortable with enjoying what they are reading.  I used to find it helpful because I had my own doubts but now I find it annoying and some times tedious.  Odds are, the way I have made peace with myself is different than the way that the author of the story has.  By reading their argument that doesn’t apply to me, it just makes me think more about my own reasoning and less on the story at hand.  I would rather that kinky stories stick to the kink and trust their audience to not need their hand held.

Rarely does other genres do this.  You never see a horror novel stop and spend twenty pages on why it is okay for people to read horror.  Same with action movies where quite frankly, it is not okay to kill security guards by the dozens just because they work for the bad guy and yet they never take a time out to discuss the thrill of watching carnage. It drives me crazy when I see it in erotica.  I feel erotica should entertain, not be counseling therapy.

LW: Taking it back down to a more vanilla level, I’m bitterly jealous of your writing output. How do you do it? What does a typical day look like?

SR: My output is driven by guilt and ego.  When the Web hits go down and the comment on my blog dry up, I take pride in knowing that I will post a new story on Wednesday.  It is hard and it takes practice but when I skip a week, it is like failing at sex with the most beautiful woman in the world.  It is unthinkable.  I should get therapy for this.

I do have some tricks though.  I use reccurring characters because a good character is a story engine.  Otto Von Madd is an erotic mad scientist.  If I see a science fiction movie with a cool gimmick, I just ask myself what Otto would do with it and bam!, got an outline right there.  Same goes for Vaquel Di, a deep space explorer, Nash Nighthammer, a fantasy warrior and Holly Valentine, plucky reporter gal.  It is much harder to come up with brand new stories and new characters on the spot.  I do it to keep myself fresh but I try to have a few stories in the buffer first.

The novels get a bit trickier.  What drives my novels is pure desire to see the book.  Pusse and Cox was my desire to create a grind house movie that I would enjoy.   No one else was going to pair a male stripper and a cheerleader turned private eye.  If I wanted to read that book, I would have to write it.

My routine is a bit flexible.  I usually plan what I will write as I eat breakfast, write it as time permits during the day and then berate myself for not coming up with a new story idea by dinner.  This is why I like novels as, once I have the outline, I can write for weeks without having to brainstorm anything new.

LW: It’s been said that writers do a lot of reading. Do you read and, if so, what are you reading now?

SR: Right now I am reading Death is a Ruby Light which is an old 70′s spy sex novel that I am loving right now.  Remember when the Russians had high tech equipment and terrorism was something that only happened in the Middle East? I am slowly working my way through a 500-page collection of Jorge Luis Borges’ stories because he is smarter than I am and I have to digest him in smaller bites.  I am itching to read Dumas’ Three Musketeers again but I also have Dan Simmons’ Drood to read and I find that Simmons is a winter writer.  His stories always read like they were written on a bitter cold night.

LW: You have at least one guilty pleasure. Name it. Describe it. Tell us how we can have a similar experience.

SR: My guiltiest pleasure is spanking a woman who owes me something.  That might sound sinister but really it comes down to the thought that I can spank to my heart’s content because of some sort of transgression.  I enjoy spanking a lot but there is an art to spanking to make sure the spanking hurts but doesn’t hurt too much.  Someone once described a good spanking as a high speed massage.  I like doing those but what I really like is spanking for selfish reasons mixed with either punishment or payback.  That makes me happier than I care to admit sometimes.

LW: Ben & Jerry’s ^(TM) is coming out with a new flavor of ice cream based on your sex life. What’s is called? Please describe it.

SR: The ice cream would be called Von Madd Vanilla.  It would be French vanilla with bits of mint and orange chocolate.  I am pretty much a romantic in my sex life these days but I do adore the occasional oddity.

LW: Marvel, DC, or other? Explain and justify.

SR: When I was a kid, DC.  As an adult, I am horrified by the weird quasi-racist undertones of replacing minority current characters with their white male namesakes.  Also, they killed off Ryan Choi, a hilarious Asian scientist who didn’t know karate just to make five no name villains look good.  Sigh.

With that out of my system, I have to firmly say Other at this point.  Empowered and Bomb Queen are among my favorite titles and they are both adult and yet worlds apart.  I love Hellboy and I adore anything Richard Sala puts out.  Marvel and DC spend all of their time trying to create movie properties instead of telling good stories.

LW: Look into the future for a moment. Do you see a day coming when you won’t write any more? How will you know when that day has come?

SR: If I stop writing, then you will know I have been replaced by a clone or alien duplicate.   I stopped writing once when I was severely depressed and I imagine another depression could do the same.  The thing is, I know how important writing is for my well being, so I write almost as if it was a prescription.

I fully imagine dictating a story on my death bed.  I got shit to say.

 

 

I love that line, “I got shit to say.” It’s got a certain attitude–confidence? determination? chutzpah?–that makes me smile. Since there’s nothing I can say that will top that, I’m going to go ahead and let that be the last word…

Right after I remind you click over to Shon’s blog. He’s got shit to say, and you’ve got shit to read. Believe me, if you haven’t already fallen in love with his work, you’ll thank me later for introducing you.

Oh, and don’t forget that you can also find more Shon Richards goodness right here at Liquid Whispers, too.