BookWenches

Making Babies… ahem… or Characters 

Hi BookWenches! 

I’m Aubrey Leatherwood, writer of contemporary erotic fiction, and I am ecstatic to hang out here today and tell you a little bit about myself and my voice. 

One of the greatest compliments I’ve received as a writer was this one about my main character Nicole in my Phaze short, Dime. Bobby said, “I found myself looking at her as almost friend as well as a fictional character.” This makes me proud mainly because I've always believed that we can all start at A and eventually get to B but we care about the journey when we care about the characters. Breathing life into characters is my number one priority when developing a story. So how do I do it? Or rather, how do I *think* I do it? Let’s take a quick step back. 

My journey through writing erotic fiction began in junior high school before I had ever been kissed when I wrote a story about a couple made out (got to second base even!) at a drive in. We didn’t even have a drive in theater in my small town, but I’d heard about them and I desperately wanted to be kissed, had a splendid imagination, and well, had a burgeoning libido hot enough to probably merit being on a Homeland Security watch-list. Somewhere during that time I got a hold of my mother’s romance novels and I consumed them, utterly devoured them, day after day even as, separately, I started to discover my own writing voice. 

I’m not sure when those two parts of my life intersected or when I discovered the world of erotic fiction beyond writing stories about a boy who puts his hand up a girl’s shirt, but I can say that in college I did my French thesis on French eroticism in the nineteenth century. Which, I guess, means that by the time I was twenty, I was an erotica geek (if there is such a thing).  

Which brings me to the most important piece of advice I can give anyone who wants to create believable characters: Embrace your inner dork. I don’t care how cool you are, you have an inner dork, and it is strong.  It comes out in awkward moments and you cover it, maybe well, maybe not so well, but you do, and you try to repair the damage it causes. But, it is part and parcel of what makes you you. So I’m likely to write a story with quirky characters, normal mostly, but real. Guys and girls that sometimes misinterpret signals. Guys and girls that have trouble sleeping. Guys and girls that struggle with weight. Guys and girls that go dumb when brought into contact with their love interest. True enough, I do love creating physically gorgeous people, people I want to stare at incessantly in my mind, however it’s important that those lovelies remain accessible to readers.  

The People You Know; The Sex They Have, my first anthology, is all about people who are attractive sure but it's more about peple you know, as the title suggests. These people have the same hang-ups you might have or a cousin or a friend. In “Hall Monitor”, Gayle works out so much “Because I’m always two lazy days from being fat.”  In “The Kiln” we have Lucious, a super hunky, super manly guy who’s infatuated with Tammy who works side by side with him in a brick-making factory. Lucious admits to not being much of a drinker and Tammy has a hard time talking about her feelings and so frequently does so through the language of work. Here’s an example: 

“What is it, Tammy?” His tone was soft and solicitous.

“I feel like I’ve got too much sand.” She moaned. Tammy was rarely so expressive. She plopped down on a stool near the wall.

Lucious thanked the good Lord that he understood her these days. She spoke in brick and he was slowly learning it. She felt unsettled, like she couldn’t collect her thoughts. She felt like she should have her shit together, but she didn’t.

He walked over to her but was smart enough not to touch her. “Why?” he asked.

“Why are you mad at me, Lucious?” 

Finally, in “Sahara’s on a Plane to Munch,” Sahara has found herself drawn to and mesmerized by Ingo, a man with a very, very different background than her own. He’s extremely smart (or so says her Global Finance professor), he’s sexy beyond belief, and… heartbreakingly… he and the concept of clean don’t get along. Ingo could have been perfect, but I wanted him to be real. By weaving in something me and many of my girlfriends have witnessed on some level when visiting the home of a young love interest for the first time, Ingo did become real. I also got the funniest scene I’ve ever written when Sahara, our heroine, prepared for some seriously sweaty moments gets the surprise of lifetime when she realizes the man has apparently never met cleaning materials!

I joke about accepting your inner dork, but it’s important to take a real look at yourself and the people around you. Be observant and diligent in your surveillance (not so much that restraining orders are required) and you will notice characteristics and nuances which will help you to apply definition and depth to your beloved characters. In Imperfection, my full-length novel about one sexy couple preparing for their 25^th wedding anniversary required a lot of soul searching, discussion with friends, acceptance of personality traits that are both commendable and not so commendable, and comparisons of our various visits to the gynecologist. Don’t ask… Just trust me, or read one of my books, you’ll see what I mean. 

Thanks for having me,
Aubrey Leatherwood

http://www.aubreyleatherwood.com/