Writing About Panties: Part 1

We call them by different names: knickers, panties, briefs, undies, smalls.  But whatever we call them, these items of clothing are a basic fact of life for women everywhere. I guess the only places where this doesn't apply are those little corners of the planet where people don't wear many clothes at all, except maybe a loincloth dangling from a piece of string. For the rest of the female population, a pair of panties is de rigeur, an essential item  (except, of course, on those occasions when we choose not to wear them). It's probably true to say that most of us regard panties (whether our own or somebody else's) as fairly ordinary things - like socks - and not particularly worthy of special attention.

So why, after saying all this, do I write erotic fiction about panties?

It's an interesting question (for me, at any rate). I've tried to answer it a couple of times, in emails and in face-to-face conversations. The question usually comes from women, not from men. Those who ask it are usually people I know quite well. They know I don't conceal the fact that I write explicit erotic fiction about lesbian sex. Some of them enjoy reading my stories, and these are the people who'll turn to me and say: "Hey, Yasmin, what's the big deal with you and panties?"

My answer is always the same: I write sexy stories about female underwear because I feel the subject is an unexplored kink in lesbian erotica. By 'unexplored' I simply mean that not many authors of lesbian erotica write about it. Plenty of these authors mention panties somewhere in their stories, but the mention is usually brief (please excuse the pun!). The panties tend to get removed soon after they appear in the story. Not many authors use panties as the main theme in a lesbian tale, in situations where underwear becomes the focus of erotic attention for the main characters. It's different, of course, in some parts of the spanking fiction genre, especially in stories where a female character is an adult 'schoolgirl' getting spanked by a dominant 'schoolmistress'. But I think a lot of these panty-spanking stories are written by male authors, or for male readers who get turned on by the idea of adult women wearing traditional school uniforms. I don't see many stories by female authors in which a lesbian spanking scene puts panties at centre stage.

When I first started writing lesbian fiction, I decided to concentrate on three sub-genres, as specialties through which I could build up collections of stories grouped by theme. One sub-genre I chose was bondage, both consensual and non-consensual. Another was the bi-curiosity of heterosexual women, leading inevitably to temptation and seduction. The third was panties.

All three sub-genres were chosen by me after email conversations with my friend Jen Saunders, a fellow-author of lesbian erotica. Jen advised me to focus on specific themes, because this is what she did herself: she reckoned it helped her to write better stories. Bi-curiosity and seduction held an instant appeal for me anyway, because of my own relationship experiences, but bondage wasn't something I would have considered without strong urging from Jen. She said bondage fiction was always in demand and would get me noticed by the online reading community, so I chose it as my second sub-genre - albeit somewhat reluctantly. To my surprise, I began to enjoy writing about bondage. But it has never made the transition from my computer screen to the bedroom I share with my girlfriend.

My choice of panty-related fiction as a sub-genre of lesbian erotica felt a bit weird at first. Also, I figured I couldn't write anything new on the subject because Jen seemed to have it pretty well covered. Stories about lesbian panty fetish were her main output in those days, and she seemed to have the market all to herself. I mean 'market' quite literally, because she was making money from writing custom erotica for private individuals. Her clients were mostly men who paid for kinky tales about lesbians indulging in various kinds of panty play. In some of these stories, Jen and her real-life girlfriend Karen turned up as principal characters, in situations where they seduced the customer's wife while all three of them kept their panties on. Jen often added bondage to the mix, some of it quite heavy and sadistic. Her clients really loved this stuff and couldn't get enough of it. Some of them even wanted to buy Jen's unwashed panties, but she never went down that route.
 
The first piece of erotic fiction I ever wrote was a softcore lesbian story called Train Ride which was essentially about British school uniform panties, or 'school knickers' as we used to call them. Jen Saunders had originally asked my sister Trish to write this story, but Trish passed the assignment to me. I enjoyed writing it, and Jen went totally wild about it, and I got plenty of feedback from readers after it was published online in 2005. What I liked most about the story was the challenge of making panties seem as erotic to female readers as they obviously are to large numbers of men. Judging by the very positive comments I got from women, I succeeded in this objective.

I soon had a little portfolio of lesbian panty fiction and discovered, again to my surprise, that the topic offered enough ideas for new stories to keep both Jen and me happily scribbling away. Jen sent one of her custom erotica clients over, and I was soon giving this guy what he wanted: stories about gay and bisexual women enjoying sex while their underwear stayed on. Like Jen, I agreed to appear as an occasional character in the narrative, in scenarios where I made love to the customer's wife or girlfriend. But I went a bit further than Jen and agreed to write myself into explicit scenes in which the customer himself was part of the action. So in some stories the guy had sex with me, and then with his wife (both she and I would still be wearing panties!). It all got very kinky and a bit messy, but it was strangely amusing and I had no problem with it at all. The guys in question paid a nice amount of money for this stuff. One customer even paid extra after I agreed - after some hesitation - to bring my sister Trish into the storyline (not only as co-writer, but as an additional character in the sex scenes). Trish helped me write some of the scenes involving her and me but we couldn't take the assignment seriously. Although we're not in a real-life incestuous relationship it's a taboo we've discussed without fear or embarrassment in the past, most notably 23 years ago when a particular situation arose, so it's not like we suddenly became shy about writing ourselves into a sibling incest tale. Writing those scenes was just one big laugh for us, because Trish peppered the narrative with lots of in-jokes that only she and I would recognize. I think the customer noticed our little game, because he asked for certain parts of the story to be rewritten. He was, however, extremely happy with the final version and (allegedly) showed it to his wife. Later, he asked for a sequel, but Trish and I had already agreed between ourselves that one story about 'lesbian panty incest' was enough. In any case, Trish had her own erotic fiction project involving elves and orcs and sexy Xena-type characters.

So, although I write in the genre of lesbian panty fiction, I'm not actually a panty fetishist. For me, panties are functional rather than erotic. I put them on in the morning, and I take them off at night. I like wearing them on cold days because they keep my butt nice and warm. I like buying new ones from my favourite brands, and I like receiving them as presents. Nonetheless, it would be a lie if I said panties don't turn me on occasionally. I have to say I do enjoy looking at attractive women in their underwear, whether in real-life, on TV or on the internet. Hardcore visual pornography doesn't do much for me, but a picture of a cute female ass in tight panties is very sensual and can often push my buttons. And it goes without saying that I adore the sight of my girlfriend Bobbi in her 'smalls', especially when she doesn't realize I'm staring at her. But the crucial aspect for me is that the panties must have a woman inside them. On their own, they're just items of clothing which don't give me any kind of sexual buzz.

Jen Saunders is different. She is a most unusual lady. I am not quite sure what to make of her. She is the only woman I have ever met who has a genuine panty fetish. And I do mean a full-on fetish, not just an occasional kink. I could say more about this. One day, I will say more, but I'll need to get her permission first. The key point is that Jen, unlike me, writes lesbian panty fiction because she finds it massively arousing. It's not just a literary sub-genre - it's a big part of her sexual existence. She boasts that her fetish is the reason why her stories were so much in demand from her customers - those panty-obsessed guys knew she was just like them, but a rare female version. They knew she enjoyed doing weird stuff like sniffing underwear from a laundry basket (something she openly admits to). They knew she enjoyed writing panty fiction as much as they enjoyed reading it, and this gave them an extra thrill. When she sent a client a customized story, she often included a little note describing in graphic detail how she masturbated while writing certain scenes. She once told me in an email that she only added these notes to keep the guy on the hook, to ensure that he came back for more stories. She complained that it was such a big effort for her - a gay female with no heterosexual experience - to share such intimacy with men. But she said it was necessary, a surefire way of holding on to her clients, whose payments funded her excessive drinking and smoking. She often told these men other intimate things, such as what kind of underwear she was wearing while writing their stories, and I think she rather enjoyed doing it. I suggested (half-jokingly) that she was a hypocrite, a closet bisexual who enjoyed teasing men via email. She wasn't amused.

In another blogpost I hope to include a sample of Jen's lesbian panty fiction, and also some samples of my own.

[to be continued....]

My e-book anthology of lesbian panty stories is available for download. Click here.

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Writing lesbian BDSM: a personal view

I've always enjoyed writing lesbian bondage fiction. Soft or hard, consensual or non-consensual, the whole girls-only BDSM thing really fascinates me - but only as a theme for a story. Away from the keyboard it's a topic that has played almost no part in my life. I say almost because I've occasionally indulged in the kind of vigorous lovemaking that some people might call 'rough sex'. This was mostly with men, not women, but that's another story for another day. Even now, I am not averse to giving or receiving a firm slap on the bottom when fooling around with a playful girl. But I'm no spanker, and neither is my partner Bobbi. Nor is my sexual personality dominant or submissive. My stories of cruel mistresses and pretty slaves are not drawn from personal experience and derive entirely from my imagination.

Whenever I've written a BDSM tale I have simply chosen a scenario, switched on the computer and seen where the narrative takes me. But I would be lying if I said this kind of stuff doesn't turn me on. Writing about bondage has always felt a little bit exciting, like dabbling in a taboo. Some of my  kinky stories were certainly more arousing to create than others, and my fingers would leave the keyboard and go wandering down the front of my pants. Btw, I heartily recommend stroking as a useful way of dealing with Erotic Writer's Block. It usually works for me, anyway ;-)

The consensual bondage storylines were always my favorites. Writing them never failed to turn me on, even if I didn't always go as far as touching myself. With non-consensual stories it mostly depended on what kind of mood I was in. If I was feeling depressed or angry, I could complete a fairly sadistic tale without getting aroused at all. Sometimes I would finish writing and just end up feeling more pissed off than when I started. But if I was feeling happy and relaxed, I could get aroused by pretty much anything I wrote, even if it was something that came close to being extreme bondage. There was no pattern to any of this. When I sat down at the computer to write an erotic story - whatever the theme - I never knew if I was going to get aroused or not. I remember one occasion when I was writing custom erotica for a client. I got terribly bored with typing the narrative for a non-consensual lesbian bondage scene, but then everything perked up when the scene changed to male/female domination. It was extremely hardcore heterosexual action and it really turned me on. This happened at a time when I was supposedly a 'lesbian', having told everyone I was done with guys for good. Like I said: no pattern to it. A classic case of Go Figure...

It was always interesting to get the opinions of my chief proof-readers: my sister Trish and another author called Jen. Trish has always steered clear of hard BDSM in her own stories but she grudgingly agreed to read my preliminary drafts. I would give her a printed copy and she'd come back and say 'Well written, but too nasty'. Jen on the other hand is a total bondage freak in every sense and always gave my so-called 'nasty' stories a big thumbs-up. She was never shocked by anything and reckoned there was a considerable demand for hard lesbian kink among female readers of erotica. Maybe she was right. I saw her a few months ago and told her I was intending to publish my old stories as a series of ebooks. She asked me if I would do the same with some of hers, all of which are brilliantly written and exceedingly kinky. Look out for an announcement about Jen's stories in the near future.  

Over the years I've toyed with ideas for a lesbian bondage novel. I actually made three attempts, each of which fizzled out after a couple of chapters. The first was a historical tale featuring the Egyptian queen Cleopatra as the exotic captive of kinky Roman ladies. The second used the well-trodden idea of a women's prison with harsh rules. In both of these the bondage was non-consensual, but in the third novel I switched to a consensual theme based around a research institute where weird sensory experiments were performed on willing female volunteers. At some point I might publish all three as mini-novels in ebook format. I haven't done anything with them for a long time but recently I gave them a re-reading and, to be honest, I was taken aback by the severity of the BDSM scenes. My first thought was that I couldn't imagine writing such material now, because I've assumed my tastes in literary kinkiness have mellowed somewhat since my long break from writing. But last week I penned a new tale of consensual bondage and, to my surprise, it became quite 'hard' in terms of what the dommes were planning to do with their submissive slave-girl. It's a very short piece, like flash fiction, and it will appear on this blog in the next day or so.

I'm currently collating a few of my longer bondage stories for publication as an e-book anthology which will hopefully appear on Smashwords in January 2013.

Yaz xx

Writing Erotica: a family affair?

Over on Twitter my wonderful webfriend Ms Quote recently sent out a poignant question to her fellow erotic authors:
“Do your friends and family know you write erotica? If so, what do they think?”

I replied in a couple of tweets which Ms Quote later summarized on her blog. Here's what she wrote:
“Most of my friends know I write erotica,” Yasmin says. “My sister encouraged me to start, mom finds it amusing, and granny is none the wiser. My mom describes my erotic stories as ‘quaint,’ even the ones I think of as explicit. Hmmm. Not sure what she means by that.”
“Quaint”? Either Yasmin’s mom hasn’t read her books or maybe she’s more hardcore than Yasmin gives her credit for being.

Ms Quote is very perceptive. She's absolutely right: my mother is indeed worthy of the label hardcore. My sister Trish and I used to think of our dear Mama as open-minded, a genuine free thinker, like the hippy chick she evolved into in the 1960s, but hardcore is surely closer to the truth. How many women of her generation, I wonder, would gleefully read an erotic story - written by her own daughter - in which the main character was obviously herself. Yet that is precisely what she did, back in 2003 or thereabouts, when she was on the cusp of her sixtieth year.

The story in question is The Girl On The Bridge, one of my sister's fantasy tales about heroic female warriors in an imaginary land. It revolves around a beautiful senior lady with long, silver-white hair and a graceful figure. This character behaves flirtatiously with two handsome young men before interacting with them in a very intimate and totally inhibited way. As with most erotic fiction written by Trish the sexual scenes are very explicit, with all kinds of jaw-dropping kinkiness going on, but it is right up there among my all-time favorites.

Due to personal circumstances I didn't get to read The Girl On The Bridge until the summer of 2004, but I already knew of it from telephone conversations with Trish and our mother (whom we call 'Mama', rhyming it with 'La-Marr'). When I did eventually digest the story I really loved it, and I could see why Mama loved it too, and why she was happy to identify with it. Even the difference in age between the main character and her younger lovers reflected Mama's own relationship choices in the early years of the new millennium.

Without delving into too much detail, or breaking confidentiality, I can safely say that our mother has led a colorful life. It's almost like she never gave up the old hippy philosophy and chose a life with flexible boundaries and not many rules. I think both Trish and I followed in her footsteps, even if we plowed our own little furrows and went in different directions. Neither of us can be described as living a conventional life, at least not in the way such a life has a template or stereotype. It was inevitable that our mother would be a massive influence on how we turned out, because she was always a lone parent who raised us by herself without much help from anyone.

So, yes, I reckon our mother qualifies as hardcore, at least in terms of her attitude to the erotic fiction we write. The fact that Trish and I have always discussed the topic so openly with her, telling her about our latest storylines, probably makes us hardcore too. On a note of vanity, I am pleased to report that Mama's favorite story is my own Kath Personal, an oddball tale of voyeurism and bi-curiosity, which I've recently included in my lesbian anthology Smooth & Tight.

At the other end of the tolerance spectrum is our granny, whom I also mentioned in my Twitter conversation with Ms Quote. This venerable lady, still very much alive in her big old house, is my paternal grandmother, my dad's mom (Trish and I had different fathers). But she has always been 'granny' to both of us. I dread to think what she would do if she ever saw our naughty stories. Profound disappointment wouldn't quite cover it. Granny is quite a religious person and a staunch adherent of tradition. She goes into a mad frenzy if we walk out into the street without covering our heads, so I can barely imagine what she might do if she saw our names turning up on an erotic fiction website. I expect she would attack us with the antique cavalry sword she keeps in the basement!

And so we come to Trish, my sister, who is three years older than me. It goes without saying that she has no problem with my being an author of sexy stories. Her only gripe about my writing is my reluctance to explore heterosexual themes. She reckons my portfolio of fiction is too narrow to give full rein to my creativity. I understand what she means, but I really only want to write lesbian stories. This isn't because my lover is a woman, nor is it due to a lack of practical knowledge about heterosexual intimacy (my relationship history pre-2002 defines me as bisexual). It's simply a matter of personal choice. I enjoy creating stories about beautiful women making love with each other or indulging in kinky stuff like spanking and bondage. I don't feel any urge to create similar tales featuring male characters.

In my own past I've enjoyed moments of intense intimacy with men, but I'm unlikely to draw on these experiences when writing a story. I do, however, intend to share some of them on this blog, partly because I'm aware that not everyone who visits here is exclusively interested in Sapphic sex. This will meet with the approval of Trish, which is very important to me. In any case, I am sure she is right about the need to broaden the scope of my writing. Creating lesbian stories is what really turns me on, but blogging about my heterosexual experiences will be a kind of compromise.     

Incidentally, Trish reckons she wrote me into one of her stories, in the guise of a dancer called Liana who performs a sexy routine for the Three Vixens (a trio of scantily-clad female warriors who appear in a series of tales). Trish says she based Liana on me, because I was dancing professionally when she wrote the first version of this story in the mid-1990s. Personally I'm not convinced, because Liana is a pale-skinned redhead who looks nothing at all like me. My own theory is that she's a composite character, a blend of me, Trish and our mother, subconsciously created by my sister as a literary nod to the fact that all three of us worked in dance at various points in our lives. The story featuring Liana is called Dancing With Vixens and will appear in an e-book anthology I'm compiling at the moment. The Girl On The Bridge, previously mentioned, will be published as a free download on Smashwords.

My sincere thanks to Ms Quote for starting the Twitter conversation that prompted me to write this blogpost. Please visit her fab website A Good Woman's Dirty Mind and follow her on Twitter.

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Writing erotica

People start writing erotica for all sorts of reasons. Some come to the genre as fully-fledged authors of non-erotic fiction who decide to add more spice to their tales. Others just like the idea of creating a sexy story as a turn-on for their readers (and for themselves).

In my own case, I began writing erotica to relieve the intense boredom of convalescing at home after a long illness. That was in late summer of 2004, a few weeks after I returned to the UK to live with my sister Trish. I didn't have much prior experience of writing, except for a couple of months as a rather hapless freelance journalist, but I felt I was up for the challenge. It was Trish who actually nudged me into it, asking me to be chief proof-reader for her sexy stories about elves, orcs, dwarves and heroic warrior women. I enjoyed the task, and found it quite easy. Sitting up in bed, with a red felt-tip in my hand, I happily trawled through heaps of handwritten drafts, some of which went back fifteen years or more.

Then, one day, Trish suggested I should write some erotica of my own. She handed me the rough outline of a story she had been planning to write for a lesbian fiction website. I accepted the assignment and spent a lot of time on it. The result was Train Ride, a kinky little tale of female bi-curiosity, lesbian seduction and soft cotton panties. It was published  on the site and immediately received positive feedback from readers. Buoyed by this encouragement I decided to continue, so when Trish asked me to finish one of her fantasy tales (set in an imaginary Tolkienesque world) I was happy to do it. The storyline existed only as a rough draft but I rather liked it: a young female warrior seduces a sexually frustrated older woman in a roadside inn. I finished it in two days, gave it the title A Different Kind Of Meat, and presented it to Trish, who published it online alongside her own stories. Flushed with enthusiasm I carried on writing, and proof-reading, and putting stories on the web, even after I got well enough to take on a part-time job.

I decided at the outset to write fiction with exclusively lesbian themes. It's no coincidence that the default setting of my sexuality had been moving from 'bi' to 'gay' for several years, since the late 1990s. My most recent intimate relationship before my illness had been with a woman and I felt a deep yearning to stay on the same path, in both my writing and my personal life. My sister wanted me to broaden my horizons to include hetero fiction, but the genre held no real attraction for me, even though I had enough practical experience to describe in detail what goes on between a man and a woman. I did write a few stories with male/female sex scenes but these were specific assignments for a 'custom erotica' service where the reader defines the storyline.

Both Trish and I stopped writing at around the same time, five years ago, when our day jobs and other commitments left little time for anything else. We now no longer live together, nor are we even on the same continent. When we met up a few months ago, at a family occasion in Turkey, we discussed the possibility of publishing our stories in e-book format. This was how the Polly Patkin website started, taking its name from one of the more polite nicknames bestowed on me by my girlfriend, who calls me 'Polly Patkin' whenever I have a clueless, brainless moment. The site was originally to be called 'Lazy Lucy', a nickname I've had since childhood, but I'm not as lazy as I used to be (whatever anyone else might say!) so I ditched the idea.

Since setting up the website and beginning the long task of re-formatting our stories I've started writing erotic fiction again, in a small way, to see if I can still do it. It feels slow at the moment but if I get something finished I'll announce it here. I'm slightly rusty, like the Tin Man after the rain got into his joints. My girlfriend, who at 35 is six years my junior, assures me that an hour or two of creative writing is good therapy for a 40-something woman. 'You need to keep your mind active at your age,' she says, with a smirk and a sly wink. The trouble is, I'm not sure she's joking!