The place of humour in erotic fiction

I don't write what I'd call comic erotic fiction (though in a sense, since we have a happy ending, all my erotic fictions are comedies). But there is a definite place for humour, I think.

For instance: where does horseplay turn into something else? You might be tumbling around with your best friend, pushing and shoving - and you suddenly realise you've got turned on. That could be uncomfortable - but it could also be a marvellously funny episode if it enlightens feelings you've had for each other but never articulated.

I've just written a wrestling match that turns into something else - and I hope it is funny.

Sometimes, humour is a way of fencing - little sabre thrusts of witticisms intended to keep your social opponent on their guard. It can be a way of deflecting attention you don't feel happy with - or even keeping your own feelings under control. Shakespeare's comic heroines are particularly good at verbal fencing - Katharine in The Taming of the Shrew for instance gives every bit as good as she gets, deflating Petruchio with her wicked puns - wordplay as swordplay.

That kind of humour can give an otherwise unmemorable character a real zest and animation - like putting sparkle on a Christmas card.

Then I also like to hide 'easter eggs' for my readers. For those of you who don't play computer games, an easter egg is a little bonus - a hidden level, an image or message - that you have to be quite smart to access. You can play the game without ever knowing it's there.

So I occasionally put in a little historical reference, or name one of my characters after a fictional character from another book (I'm hoping to have a minor Jane Austen character show up some time in a Regency novel), or borrow a couple of lines from a poem of the period. You don't have to get the joke to enjoy the novel - but if you do happen to know, it adds a little spice.

Why I write what I do

I don't like being asked what I do.

"What do you do, Anna?"

"I'm a writer."

"Oh. What do you write?"

I usually say "Whatever pays." Last week it was an e-book on stock trading, a couple of articles on Istanbul, and three chapters of a book based on the life of Emma Hamilton. Come out with that little lot and I can see I'm losing my audience...

And also, I write erotica.

That gives many people the wrong idea. An awful lot of men seem to think that writing erotica means I'm 'available'. (Judging by the average attractiveness of the men who think this, they also seem to believe that erotica writers are blind ...)

So, why do I write erotica?

Well, as above; it pays. That's one reason.

Secondly, I find it an interesting arena in which to play slightly naughtily with different concepts. For instance, a voyage through the senses, each one taken separately. Or the idea that through acting, we're able to access different parts of ourselves. I like to be naughty and introduce historical characters in cameo roles (I'm just researching Daniel Solander, a Swedish botanist who worked in London in the late eighteenth century). For me, this 'naughtiness' as a writer is profoundly satisfying.

If you like this kind of writer's naughtiness, by the way, may I recommend Kingsley Amis's 'The Alteration' - a marvellous work of alternate history that is artful, arch, and thoroughly entertaining?

I write historical erotica and it's an interesting challenge to immerse myself in the life of a period, whether that's eighteenth century Europe, the Camino de Santiago in Chaucer's time, or Ottoman Istanbul. (By the way, one of the most challenging aspects is getting the clothes right; did eighteenth century ladies wear knickers? Do men's shirts unbutton down the front or did they have to be taken off over the head? Just how do you get a man out of his braies? It does help if you know some re-enactors.)

I enjoy writing strong female characters. It's actually highly enjoyable to lead your heroine along a path of sexual self-discovery. There's certainly more than a little feminism in what I write.

Erotica has less pressure than 'literary' fiction. I don't have the mind-freezingly oppressive thought that I'm not matching up to Shakespeare, Milton, John Updike, Jane Austen. They didn't write erotica. I do also write other genres, but I enjoy erotica because it's an open field - I can be inventive in my plotting or narrative structure, I can enjoy a little escapade.

And lastly... I was relieved to find that the late lamented John Updike found writing sex scenes something of a turn-on. It's not just me, then!