Interview: Jeremy Edwards

Today’s installment of the Dirtyville/Kinkyville interview series features Jeremy Edwards, author of Water-Cooler Routine in the Dirtyville collection. He shares with us his thoughts on erotica vs. real-life sexual encounters, using humor when writing about sex and his upcoming live readings.

LUX ZAKARI: What initially prompted you to submit your story, Water-Cooler Routine, for the Dirtyville collection?

JEREMY EDWARDS: I knew right away that if Sommer Marsden was going to be founding a town called Dirtyville, I wanted to be one of the settlers! Her call for submissions suggested to me kinky goings-on behind closed doors and curtained windows, and so I turned to my favorite kind of kinkiness (women who piss à l’érotique).

LZ: Why is that one of your favorite kind of kinkiness?

JE: Well, I think that ultimately such turn-ons can’t be fully explained: there’s a component of mystery to why an individual finds a certain thing beautiful, arousing, or compelling. But I think I can at least describe the subjective appeal that this kink holds for me. To begin with, it has to do with the difference between the male and female peeing mechanisms, and their association with the sex organs. This seems to make female peeing a thing of great beauty to me, and a thing that is endowed with great erotic potential—especially when considered in the context of women who enjoy intense sensual and sexual pleasure before, during and after peeing… for whom the physical pleasures are coupled with psychological excitement… who perhaps are turned on by things like pissing in front of (or on) a lover, peeing in public, or sensuously and deliberately wetting their panties. So I write about such women a great deal.

LZ: On your web site, you have written, “If we can make our portrayal of sex even sexier than the reality of sex, then that’s erotica.” Can you explain why this statement is so meaningful/powerful to you?

JE: I think, as erotica writers, we’re probably all aware of how complex, multifaceted—and sometimes seemingly elusive or ineffable—the wonder of sexual experience is. It’s a stimulating challenge for us to endeavor to put all that into words, and we’re rightly proud of ourselves for being able to evoke it in one way or another. But by the same token, I feel that there’s a sense in which erotic art (whether writing, visual art, or performance) can imbue sexuality with a seamlessness, an aesthetic purity, and a compositional “perfection” that transcends real-life sexual experience, no matter how good. I’m not saying excellent erotica is better than excellent sex; I’m just saying that they’re inherently different, and what art has going for it is this ability to have certain superlative qualities that reality, just by its nature, will not. (Reality, in turn, has its own advantages!) And I guess this concept, as encapsulated in my little statement that you quote above, is important to me because I feel that this ability to distill, frame, focus and, in a way, “out-sexy” sex is the most important point of erotic art (speaking for myself as a creator of erotica). It’s not the only purpose erotic art serves, but to me this is its defining raison d’être as an art form.

LZ: I’m really interested in your thoughts on sex versus erotica. Do you think that reading/writing erotica, if “out-sexying sex,” takes away from the real-life sexual experience?

JE: No, not at all. I think they’re just two different types of experience. Perhaps it’s a bit like the difference between enjoying a fun evening face-to-face with friends, spontaneously kidding around and cracking each other up; and sitting unaccompanied in a theater, laughing uproariously at a stage comedy that has been carefully scripted and rehearsed.

LZ: What is one of your favorite stories in the collection and why?

JE: I loved Willsin Rowe’s piece Not of This Place for its sensitivity and its sexy, uplifting tenderness. I really liked the protagonists.

LZ: You currently have a book out—Rock My Socks Off—that is funny as it is sexy. Is having erotica be both humorous and erotic important to you? If so, why?

JE: The erotic and the humorous are two of my favorite categories in life, and I much enjoy seeing them in tandem, both when I’m reading and when I’m writing. For a full-length work in particular, where there’s especially a need to have plenty of “meat” for the plot, interactions, dialogue and so forth beyond the core erotic content, my personal preference is to look to the tools of humor—comical situations, characters who quip every time they exhale and so on. That’s definitely the direction my tastes run. And I do think humor and eros can function in a synergistic way: speaking again as a reader-writer, I can attest that witty, playful characters are sexy to me, that I love banter as foreplay, and that laughter turns me on.

LZ: What can readers expect from you next?

JE: I’m glad you asked! I have an all-Jeremy story collection in the pipeline, an e-book called Spark My Moment (from Xcite Books). By the time this interview goes live, it may already be available. I’m also beginning to schedule some live readings for fall and winter.

LZ: Where will your live readings be held?

JE: I can’t give a lot of specifics quite yet, but with luck I’ll be appearing both in the (U.S.) northeast and on the West Coast!

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To purchase the Kinkyville collection, Dirtyville collection or both, visit dirtyvillecollection.blogspot.com.

Jeremy Edwards is the author of the erotocomedic novel Rock My Socks Off and the erotic story collection Spark My Moment (both published by Xcite Books). His work has appeared in over forty anthologies. Drop in on him unannounced (and thereby catch him in his underwear) at www.jeremyedwardserotica.com.