Writing Erotica

My writing gig for Scarlet Girl has been bringing some interesting questions re my writing career and goals to mind. The thing is, I'm not ashamed of writing smutty stories, my writing has always had elements of smut in it, quite frankly. I've always said that a quality sex scene improves almost any story, with my tongue only slightly in my cheek. 

But, I do start to feel slightly tawdry and paperback-shelf-at-Target when churning out fireman and police office sex scenes. Like, come on, cliche. To that end, I've so far been striving to write as far from cliche as possible, looking for new and unthought-of places and situations for these little interludes to occur, trying to find ways to make trysts between a poor helpless female and the big handsome man who saves her seem less trite and overdone. It's been a challenge. I've also been looking for ways to make these more like my regular style of writing, to craft them as if they were any other short story and not just meant to tittilate as much as possible. As in, just because they are sexy stories doesn't mean they shouldn't also be well written, literary, artistic, and up to my usual standards.

For example, one of the stories I'm proudest of at the moment is called Ashwood's Anger, and it's a super hot punishment piece, Victorian setting. I'm pleased with how the writing came out, I think the characters have some life to them though, admittedly, a piece like this is going to be a bit two-dimensional, the sex is hot, and the setting is one that I love to write in anyway, so it allowed me to flex those writing muscles and meet my deadline at the same time. 

Here's a little excerpt, although you can read the full version here:

“Head up, Jane. Let me look at those breasts you were so keen to show to Lord Mortimer. Arch your back, that’s it. Don’t make me ask you to do these things, you know much better than that.”

Jane arched her neck back and looked towards the ceiling, thrusting her breasts outward as she did so. The cool air of the room away from the fire raised her nipples to hardened points, and made her shiver. She heard him drawing closer, could feel the heat of his gaze as it dragged from one end of her body to the other. Then, as light as a feather, the rod whispered down her skin, grazing along the valley of her breasts and down around her stomach until it tickled the insides of her thighs.

“Now then,” he said. “I’m going to ask you for the truth of what you did. If your answers please me, I shall be kind. If they do not…”

The rod came stinging down across her breasts and Jane could not bite back a cry of pain and surprise.

At the moment, the stories are being posted under a psuedonym, since I wasn't sure if it would hurt or help to have that kind of writing directly linked with my name. Cause people can be weird. But I've been leaning more towards the idea that I should just own it, use it as an opportunity to hone my writing, make these stories the best they can be, and mine the archives later for pieces that I can submit to other, paying, markets.  

Thoughts?