Eldorado
writer publishes digital erotic fiction as new career path
Neuroscience graduate left field and
found her niche writing romance
Phaedra Haywood | The New Mexican
Posted: Saturday, May 19, 2012 - 5/19/12
Posted: Saturday, May 19, 2012 - 5/19/12
·
"Thinking he was trying to
embrace her, she pulled away and found herself back against the brass railing.
By the time she gathered her flustered thoughts, her wrists were handcuffed to
the rail behind her. Mortified, a bit afraid and -- worse --suddenly and wildly
aroused ... ."
So reads a teaser excerpt from Sapphire, a digital novel written by Eldorado resident Jeffe Kennedy about a female executive who enters into an affair with a man "determined to prove that she longs for the loss of control he can give her."
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Kennedy was a little girl who was good at math and science -- who grew up, she said, at a time when little girls who were good in math and science were "pushed."
In college she double-majored in biology and comparative religious studies and went on to get a master's degree with a double major in zoology and physiology, specializing in neuroscience.
She intended to be a neurobiologist. But while living in Wyoming and studying for her doctorate, she attended a conference of neurobiologists. She didn't like what she saw.
"Everybody I talked to didn't seem happy," she said. "And all they could talk about was their work. So I sat myself down and I said, 'If there were no ifs, ands, or buts, what would I do?"
Writing, she was surprised to find, was the answer.
She started taking some classes at the University of Wyoming, and one of her personal essays struck the fancy of one of her professors. He passed it on to his sister, an editor at the University of New Mexico Press. She contacted Kennedy.
"She asked if she was in time to publish my first book," Kennedy said. Wyoming Trucks, True Love, and the Weather Channel," a hardcover collection of Kennedy's essays, was published in 2004.
The book got good reviews, Kennedy said, and it gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling to walk past a bookstore and see it in the window. But it didn't sell.
Then she saw a request from Samhain Publishing for "red-hot fairy tales." Kennedy said she had always wanted to write a "nasty" version of Beauty and the Beast.
So she did.
Petals and Thorns, Kennedy's racy version of the classic fairy tale, didn't get picked up by Samhain, but digital publishing house Loose Id liked it, and it was published online in 2010.
Kennedy cried. Because, she said, she didn't imagine such a book would be her first published novel.
But, she said that "people really liked it and it didn't take me so long to write, and I thought this could be a good way to build my career."
Since then, Kennedy has published Feeding the Vampire and Sapphire. Both are erotic-romance novels published by different online publishing companies.
She doesn't get big advances for the books. But the publishers provide editing and marketing, and she gets a generous chunk of the royalties every time someone pays to read the book on their digital reader.
"The advent of the e-reader has made a huge difference in that people have more privacy to buy and read romance and erotica," she said.
"People look down on romance," she said. And in the past the "clinch covers," showing a couple locked in a steamy embrace, "would shout out what you were reading."
Kennedy said romance is now the fasting-growing genre of online books. "The whole idea that romance is only for dumb women has been debunked." Indeed, Fifty Shades of Grey, the novel at the top of four of The New York Times best-seller lists, is a racy romance novel that began online.
Some critics have said the strong BDSM -- bondage and discipline/dominance and submission/sadism and masochism -- themes in Fifty Shades of Grey (which also appear in Kennedy's book Sapphire) glorify sexual violence against women and perpetuate antifeminist ideas that women long to be dominated and controlled.
But, Kennedy said, "There are a lot of people giving opinion on it who don't read it, haven't read it or would never read that sort of thing."
"There has always been, especially in American culture, this deep discomfort with people enjoying sex, especially women," Kennedy said. "But BDSM is not about day-to-day life. It's about sex and power exchange and intimacy and that is the part that people miss. It's something you do in the bedroom that you don't do in the office, and that's part of what makes it fun."
Or as Barbara Walters said when discussing Fifty Shades of Grey on The View last month, "Women like us," (who work hard and have high-profile jobs), "when you get home, you want the guy to be in charge."
Kennedy's next book, Rogue's Pawn, will be published online in July. She is still not a full-time writer yet -- she supplements her income as a freelance environmental consultant-- but she is having fun.
"Romance writers are so generous with advice and help," she said. "They love what they are doing. It's really a terrific community to be part of."
So reads a teaser excerpt from Sapphire, a digital novel written by Eldorado resident Jeffe Kennedy about a female executive who enters into an affair with a man "determined to prove that she longs for the loss of control he can give her."
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Kennedy was a little girl who was good at math and science -- who grew up, she said, at a time when little girls who were good in math and science were "pushed."
In college she double-majored in biology and comparative religious studies and went on to get a master's degree with a double major in zoology and physiology, specializing in neuroscience.
She intended to be a neurobiologist. But while living in Wyoming and studying for her doctorate, she attended a conference of neurobiologists. She didn't like what she saw.
"Everybody I talked to didn't seem happy," she said. "And all they could talk about was their work. So I sat myself down and I said, 'If there were no ifs, ands, or buts, what would I do?"
Writing, she was surprised to find, was the answer.
She started taking some classes at the University of Wyoming, and one of her personal essays struck the fancy of one of her professors. He passed it on to his sister, an editor at the University of New Mexico Press. She contacted Kennedy.
"She asked if she was in time to publish my first book," Kennedy said. Wyoming Trucks, True Love, and the Weather Channel," a hardcover collection of Kennedy's essays, was published in 2004.
The book got good reviews, Kennedy said, and it gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling to walk past a bookstore and see it in the window. But it didn't sell.
Then she saw a request from Samhain Publishing for "red-hot fairy tales." Kennedy said she had always wanted to write a "nasty" version of Beauty and the Beast.
So she did.
Petals and Thorns, Kennedy's racy version of the classic fairy tale, didn't get picked up by Samhain, but digital publishing house Loose Id liked it, and it was published online in 2010.
Kennedy cried. Because, she said, she didn't imagine such a book would be her first published novel.
But, she said that "people really liked it and it didn't take me so long to write, and I thought this could be a good way to build my career."
Since then, Kennedy has published Feeding the Vampire and Sapphire. Both are erotic-romance novels published by different online publishing companies.
She doesn't get big advances for the books. But the publishers provide editing and marketing, and she gets a generous chunk of the royalties every time someone pays to read the book on their digital reader.
"The advent of the e-reader has made a huge difference in that people have more privacy to buy and read romance and erotica," she said.
"People look down on romance," she said. And in the past the "clinch covers," showing a couple locked in a steamy embrace, "would shout out what you were reading."
Kennedy said romance is now the fasting-growing genre of online books. "The whole idea that romance is only for dumb women has been debunked." Indeed, Fifty Shades of Grey, the novel at the top of four of The New York Times best-seller lists, is a racy romance novel that began online.
Some critics have said the strong BDSM -- bondage and discipline/dominance and submission/sadism and masochism -- themes in Fifty Shades of Grey (which also appear in Kennedy's book Sapphire) glorify sexual violence against women and perpetuate antifeminist ideas that women long to be dominated and controlled.
But, Kennedy said, "There are a lot of people giving opinion on it who don't read it, haven't read it or would never read that sort of thing."
"There has always been, especially in American culture, this deep discomfort with people enjoying sex, especially women," Kennedy said. "But BDSM is not about day-to-day life. It's about sex and power exchange and intimacy and that is the part that people miss. It's something you do in the bedroom that you don't do in the office, and that's part of what makes it fun."
Or as Barbara Walters said when discussing Fifty Shades of Grey on The View last month, "Women like us," (who work hard and have high-profile jobs), "when you get home, you want the guy to be in charge."
Kennedy's next book, Rogue's Pawn, will be published online in July. She is still not a full-time writer yet -- she supplements her income as a freelance environmental consultant-- but she is having fun.
"Romance writers are so generous with advice and help," she said. "They love what they are doing. It's really a terrific community to be part of."
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