Sex & Music
An Interview with Alison Tyler

Alison Tyler describes herself as a "shy girl," but on the page she is anything but demure. Over the last two decades she has penned over 400 delightfully playful and dangerously explicit erotic stories. She has also written 20 smutty novels and edited several erotica anthologies, including the readers' favorite Best Bondage Erotica. Slave to Love, a collection of steamy tales about erotic restraint, is the latest book to showcase Tyler's talent as an editor and writer. Cleis's Chris Fox spoke with her about Slave, music, and writing about sex.

Chris Fox: Most erotica writers have a story about how they started writing erotica—for example, they needed to break a spell of writer’s block, they penned their first story for a lover, or maybe they answered a "call for submissions" ad in the sex classifieds. How did you start writing erotica?

Alison Tyler: I've been writing erotica since high school. For no sane reason, I took three years of Latin. And I spent those years in class writing stories about my friends fucking their favorite rock stars. I'd ask a few key questions (who? what? where?) and go from there. So I'd write about Sting taking my friend Carrie on a drive to the beach and making love to her in the sand. And for Sharon, I’d create an X-rated encounter with Roger from Duran Duran. For Katherine, I wrote about Bon Jovi… It passed the time, and my friends got a thrill reading about themselves in star-fucker situations. (I'd often tuck the stories into their lockers.) I never had a clue I'd be writing in the genre for a living.

CF: When did you start publishing your stories?

AT: I went to college in L.A. and studied art history (a very useful major!), worked on a radio station and at a newspaper, and I began a long-distance relationship with a musician who happened to have a huge appetite for porn. When my letters veered that way, he claimed I wrote better than the stories he was reading in his magazines. So I started submitting pieces and sold my second story to Playgirl.

But, really, I'd write these stories even if nobody read them.

CF: You're hugely prolific. After writing dozens and dozens of erotic stories, how do you keep the sex in your writing fresh?

AT: Sex can always be new. Even in a long-term relationship. I've been with Sam for more than a decade, and we are still finding untried activities that we like. I try to bring the same openness to my writing.  And as I've gotten older, I have different ideas of what’s sexy. Yes, I've written about fucking for 20 years, but my tastes have changed somewhat. My ultimate goal is to write like the Rolling Stones. You always know you’re listening to a Stones' song, but each one has a unique sound.

CF: Do you stick exclusively to erotica—or do you ever write in other genres?

AT: I've written nonfiction articles for travel websites, regular magazines, software companies, weekly newspapers… I started out writing restaurant, movie, and concert reviews. But my favorite game is erotica. I bring sex to almost all of my work. In fact, one of my first published pieces was a review of a Scorpions concert. My editor loved it because I hardly mentioned the band at all. Instead, I focused on the fact that the people behind us in the crowd were having sex. Really.

CF: How would you describe your new erotica anthology, Slave to Love?

AT: Kinky and sexy and impossible to put down. From Marilyn Jaye Lewis's darkly erotic "Daddy’s Girl" to the more bubbly and high-spirited "The Discovery" by Rachel Kramer Bussel, the collection covers a range of provocative and sexually-charged pieces.

CF: When you set out to compile the book, what kind of stories were you looking for?

AT: Surprise me—that's what I want authors to do. Give me something I haven’t seen before. Or take me on an unexpected trip. The authors in this book definitely met the challenge. Saskia Walker turned in a lovely piece called "Watching Lois Perform." I have to say, she is one of my all-time favorite writers. Shanna Germain is another contributor who makes an editor’s job dreamy. I know when I see her stories in my "in box" that I am going to be pleased. R. Gay's "Ordinary Love" is delightful. Thomas S. Roche's "Under My Thumb" is one of my all-time favorite bondage stories. The fact that it's named for a Stones song and features a rock star makes me that much happier.

CF: Slave to Love follows two volumes of Best Bondage Erotica, which you also edited. How is Slave different?

AT: The concept of playing with power and rules runs through the stores in this book, but this isn't a collection of solely down-in-the-dungeon tales. (Although, there are several dungeon stories, such as Michelle Houston's alluring "Cowboy’s Dungeon.") The title is from that delicious Roxy Music song, and I wanted to have a similar element of desire in the book. The urgency. The longing.

CF: Are the stories in Slave pure fantasy, or do you think they’re something people can act out at home?

AT: Definitely, people might "try this at home." I think Slave to Love would be the perfect way to invite a partner to play in a more creative manner. I know that when I first wanted a boyfriend to spank me—or first admitted it, anyway—I handed over one of Anne Rice's Beauty books with the specific pages folded over. Sometimes erotica is fine staying safe on the page and in one's fantasies. And sometimes the genre can be effectively used to push a person’s personal barriers.

CF: Like the story with the butt plug carved out of a piece of ginger root—ouch!

AT: As far as the ginger goes, check out www.spankingblog.com. I am always reading about figging on that site!

CF: Back to music. It seems clear that, for you, sex and music are closely tied together. Does music influence your writing?

AT: Music puts me in the mood to write, and it also takes me back to important times in my life. Music is often featured in my stories, like in "Ten Minutes in the 80s." But even if I don’t mention songs by name, I feel a rhythm running through my books that echoes the music I listened to while writing a story or novel or compiling a collection.

CF: So, do you have a favorite sexy song?

AT: No. Not just one:

The Cure's "Lullaby"
Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er"
Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"
The Rolling Stones' "Miss You"
Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street"
Tom Waits's "A Sweet Little Bullets from a Pretty Blue Gun"
Nick Cave's "Up Jumped the Devil"
David Bowie's "Oh You Pretty Things" (Which is where the name for my press, Pretty Things Press, comes from.)
Prince's "Kiss" and Parliament's "Flashlight"

CF: What can you say about your erotic fiction collection, Exposed?

AT: That I'm truly honored Cleis allowed me to put together a collection of my short stories! This book features stories I've penned over the past two decades, and I think the book shows a range of my writing styles.

CF: Do you think you have two more decades of sexy stories inside of you?

AT: As the Magic 8 Ball says, "Without a doubt."

More books by Alison Tyler

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