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Anne Tourney, BDSM and Romantic Erotica Author
anne_tourney@hotmail.com
Listen to
the Podcast Interview (2007) with Anne
Anne Tourney has been writing erotic fiction for over ten years, and
her newest book is called Hard Blue Midnight. Her stories have appeared
in the Best American Erotic, Best Women's Erotica series, and Best New
Erotica series, as well as Sacred Exchange, Zaftig: Well-Rounded
Erotica, Embraces: Dark Erotica, The Unmade Bed, Clean Sheets, Scarlet
Letters, and Slow Trains. She has published dark fantasy and horror in
Dark Regions, Dark Testament, and Suspect Thoughts. Check the links at
the end of this interview to read some of her stories.
SENSUOUS SADIE: Congratulations on publishing your first book! Please
tell me about it.
ANNE TOURNEY: "Thank you - it's been a long time coming. I've been
publishing erotic short stories for years, first on the internet back in
the early days of rec.arts.erotica and alt.sex.stories, then gradually
in small magazines and anthologies. But my dream has always been to
write erotic novels. I like long erotic fiction because it allows you to
portray a character's sexual development over time. I'm fascinated by
the way people's personalities transform as they expand their sexuality,
and novel-length fiction allows you to explore that.
"Hard Blue Midnight was published as part of the Black Lace
series, under the pseudonym Alaine Hood. It's the story of a woman who
is investigating the disappearance of her great-aunt, an erotic
photographer who went to Paris in the 1930's. I majored in French
Literature in college and was always intrigued by the creative, openly
sensual atmosphere of pre-war Paris. I love fiction that mingles the
past with the present, so I decided to take a contemporary heroine and
see how her life would be changed through an investigation of her family
history. Of course she has lots of erotic adventures along the way,
including a brief relationship with a dominant man who turns out to have
sinister motives.
"In the end, however, she finds a relationship that more
realistically meets her needs. The novel is largely a fantasy, but I did
try to get in a few true-to-life insights into the nature of a
submissive woman, and the challenges that she faces in confronting that
part of her sexuality and reconciling it with her day-to-day routine.
While I wanted to make the BDSM scenes arousing, I also tried to convey
some of the comedy and disillusionment that arise whenever a fantasy
becomes reality. "
Sadie: I first discovered your writing in your
story "Come for Me, Dark Man" in the book of
spirituality oriented BDSM stories "Sacred Exchange."
(link to this story below). How did you come to write this particular
story? What do you see as the spiritual elements in it?
Anne: "Come for Me, Dark Man
started out as a ghost story, with a contemporary heroine whose music
teacher is seduced by the ghost of a blues guitarist. Later I decided
that the dual storylines diluted the power of the central relationship,
so I cut out the contemporary portion. Again, this is a story set in the
1920's-1930's, a period that I'm strongly drawn to, for some reason. I
don't really believe in reincarnation, in a religious sense, but I do
believe that people can somehow acquire strong 'memories' from periods
of time before their birth.
"When I wrote Come for Me, Dark Man I was trying to evoke
the raw sensuality of blues music, and to bring that into the life of a
sexually repressed, middle-class widow. I've always loved freight
trains, and the idea of riding on the rails, so I brought that into the
story, too. But I think there are two central images that drove me to
write that story: the image of a tall, dark, shabbily dressed man
towering against the sun; and the image of a train rushing past the
overgrown backyards of identical crackerbox houses. I'm not sure where
those images come from, but they're very compelling to me. Sometimes I
think that fiction writing is all about getting to the heart of those
fleeting images, giving them substance and depth, and presenting them to
other people. It's a way of making an essential kernel of yourself
visible to others."
Sadie: You are a prolific writer of erotica, including some
"BDSM-lite," as you call it. How would you characterizes your
stories? What do you most enjoy writing?
Anne: "Although I don't really like the term 'literary erotica'
(sounds so hoity-toity), I'd have to characterize my stories that way,
because the balance between sex and story usually lies on the story
side. If there's any theme that I've tried to pursue consistently in my
writing, it's the theme of transformation. Often this transformation
takes on a religious or spiritual dimension, because I believe that
eroticism is the fleshly expression of spirituality. I wrote about this
in Come for me Dark Man, but it's most clearly articulated in a
story called The Book of Zanah, where I tried to fumble around
with the idea that the flesh and the soul are one and the same thing.
I'm not a philosopher, but one of the things I like to do in fiction is
to bring the central concepts of philosophy into the lives of everyday
people.
"When it comes to writing erotica, I'm really more interested in
writing about sexuality than about sex, if that makes any sense. I like
writing about ordinary people, and sexuality is a way that ordinary
people can reach the extraordinary. Of course, most of us don't have the
time or energy to have transcendent, exalted sex more than once or twice
in a decade, but we all have imaginations, and desires, and explosive
fantasies. We all have the potential for transformation into something
glorious, even if it only happens in our own minds. Who knows? Maybe
that's the best place for it to happen."
Sadie: Strangely enough for a sister writer, I find erotica somewhat
dull to read (except yours of course!). I think you've found much of
erotic fiction tedious as well. Considering that you write erotic
fiction, that's pretty funny. What do you make of this?
Anne: "A lot of writers begin writing because they can't find the
kind of fiction they want to read, and that's how it started for me with
erotica. When I was in my early twenties, I wanted to read
three-dimensional fiction that was sensual and arousing, not just
because of its physical descriptions, but because of its language, its
imagery, and it's narrative depth. Nowadays there are many wise,
inventive authors who are publishing the kinds of stories that I would
have loved to read back then. At the time, however, I couldn't find much
contemporary erotic fiction that reflected my own life.
"My first encounter with that kind of fiction was an anthology of
fiction and poetry published by Yellow Silk. For the first time I
was reading musical, powerful, creative erotica about people I might
meet in the grocery store or at the library, and I loved it. I read and
re-read that book until the covers fell off. One of the stories from
that anthology, Susan St. Aubin's Cynthia, is probably what got
me started writing erotica in the first place. It's a beautiful, lyrical
story about a young woman who makes love to the ghost of a woman who
died of breast cancer. I had never thought that erotica could blend so
many diverse elements, with such grace and simplicity. When I read that
story, I thought, This is what I want to do. This is how I could make
a difference."
Sadie: You approach BDSM as "a fundamentally private, personal,
and spiritual experience," saying that "I've gone through
periods of being fascinated by the drama, fashions, and visual intensity
of the scene, but in my heart it's always something intangible and
transcendent that I'm looking for." Can you expand on this?
Anne: "I'm a very private person in all respects, so I suppose my
interest in BDSM is another manifestation of this. I think that anyone
who's getting into the 'scene' for the first time and trying to make it
more than a fantasy has to pass through the flash and color and drama
first. You can't help it; that's the most visible public expression of
dominance and submission. But I believe that the desire to experience
sexual submission really begins deep in the psyche, in childhood
experiences, in very old fantasies and memories. You have to rediscover
that somehow, if you want to find the truest expression of your own
desires.
"I've spent much more time trying to rediscover those impulses
through fiction than I have through real-life experience. I've written
very explicit fiction describing sadomasochistic sexuality, but I've
never done much of it personally, especially not in public. I'd probably
be too embarrassed and intimidated. I'm the classic example of the
writer who doesn't experience a fraction of the things that she imagines—and
doesn't necessarily want to. One thing I do want to experience, however,
is a profound emotional connection with someone who understands the
spiritual side of power exchange. I hope that I've been able to do that
by publishing some of my stories."
Sadie: What kind of advice would you give to someone who wants to
bring a sense of the spiritual into their sexuality?
Anne: "Having the desire to bring a sense of the spiritual into
your sex life means that you're already on your way. I think that desire—the
sense of longing, of reaching for transcendence—is the essence of both
spirituality and sexuality. You find tidal waves of that longing in any
spiritual tradition. I grew up with Christianity, and the context for my
spiritual experience of the erotic has always been Christian mysticism.
In books like The Cloud of Unknowing, written by an anonymous 14th-century
mystic, you feel the immense power of the author's desire for God, and
that desire is so strong that it reverberates through your own body.
That reverberation becomes even more powerful when you realize that the
desire runs both ways—God longs for the human spirit as much as the
human spirit longs for God. That longing can be harsh and rigorous and
demanding, but it can also be tender and joyful. I think that the sexual
practice of dominance and submission is a reflection of this spiritual
exchange of power: the submission of the soul to something greater, the
loss of the individual self in something vast.
"For a lot of people, myself included, bringing together the body
and spirit is a process of reconciliation, of self-acceptance. It's
taken me a long time to feel that I had a right to think of myself as a
'spiritual' or 'religious' person, because I couldn't find a place for
my sexuality within my religious beliefs. Eventually, I built that place
through my writing. I believe that religious practice and erotic
experience should be part of a continuum, but unfortunately, they're
often considered mutually exclusive. To a large degree, I believe that
this breach between sexuality and spirituality was caused by
misinterpretations (often deliberate) of original sources. If you go to
the source materials of any religious tradition, if you read the early
scriptures and look for the core of truth at the heart of those
writings, you always get back to that sense of yearning, that desire to
touch the eternal. That's what's important; that's what radiates."
Sadie: Is there anything else you'd like to share with our readers?
Anne: "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about
sexuality and spirituality. It's important to have a place where you can
feel safe discussing who you are. Fundamentally, I'm most myself in my
fiction, but you've given me the chance to let my hair down in public.
Thank you very much!"
Sadie: Thank you!
Anne's BDSM Books under her pseudonym Alaine Hood are
Hard Blue Midnight and Switching Hands and can be found on
www.amazon.com
Other Short Stories
Come For Me, Dark Man (*Sadie's Favorite, from Sacred Exchange)
http://sensuoussadie.com/fiction/annetourneycomeforme.htm
How to Come on a Bus (*also very entertaining)
http://www.fishnetmag.com/fiction/1997/05-02/how_to_come.html
The Blood Virgin
http://www.suspectthoughts.com/virgin.html
Pink Oleander
http://www.slowtrains.com/issue3/tourneyissue3.html
Sacred Exchange: Stories of Spirituality and Transcendence in
Dominance and Submission
Edited by Lisabet Sarai & S. F. Mayfair
Available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/
Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex,
and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene. Read an excerpt at http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html
. She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn,
Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as
well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com
or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com
. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information
freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing
in most venues.
Copyright 2004 Sadie Sez Publications
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