Page 18 - AVN March 2016

INTERVIEW | | By Kay Brandt
The Dirty, filthy, explicit, taboo, raunchy,
perverted, and totally obscene—
no, I’m not talking about X-rated
movies. I’m talking about books.
Nasty, naughty, twisted books that
travel far beyond the boundaries of
cinematic porn into the vastness of
sexual fantasy. Call it whatever you
want—romance, erotic-romance,
contemporary, new adult,
fantasy—it’s smut. Blow
your mind, shock your
senses, make you sweat
and need a cold shower
type of smut. Writers of
the anything-goes genre
indulge their creative
freedom and write whatever
explicit idea comes to mind,
often exploiting popular trends
to the fullest. Trends like sleeping
with your siblings, or with
multiple breeds of shifters. How
about being impregnated
by Big Foot, raptors or
dinosaurs? Write it and
they will come. This is
what authors of romance
and erotica live for.
Pornographers ain’t
got nothin’ on the totally
depraved minds of those
who write smut books.
Burning Pen Catching up with publishing guru Selena Kitt
seen has to be Taboo II. Not the first one,
”One of the most influential porn movies I’ve
which was more a mother/son sort of
thing, but the second one, where the
whole family got involved.
—Selena Kitt
Kay Brandt: It’s hard to imagine anyone not knowing who you are, but just in
case, give us your personal blurb:
Selena Kitt: I’m Selena Kitt—New York Times bestselling bad girl of erotic fiction!
Okay, I’m not really bad—I just write that way! I’ve been writing erotica since
2006 and publishing it since 2008. In that time, I’ve published over thirty novels,
and countless anthologies and stories. I’ve started a publishing company, three
book promotion companies and have recently taken over as head of the Erotica
Readers and Writers Association. I have five-hundred authors on my roster, many of
them New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, and sometimes I look around and wonder
how in the heck all of that happened?
You’ve been many things. How did you go from midwife to author of very taboo erotica?
I guess I’ve always followed my own path, whatever it might be. I became a doula and a
midwife because I wanted to have my own babies at home and hated how medicalized we’d
made birth in our culture. I became an erotica author and publisher because I looked around
and couldn’t find a home for what I was writing. I knew that there was an audience for
the erotica I was writing—even the uber-hot sex-in-every-chapter books and the taboo
erotica—I just needed to find it. Unfortunately, erotic romance publishers were drawing
the line at the taboo and weren’t interested in stories that didn’t end with a happy ever
after, so I had to find my own way. That’s when I decided to just start my own publishing
WHO’S WHO
And I think we should all
get to know each other a little
better. The divide between X-rated movies
and literary porn should be erased and embraced as
one hot bed of sin. Authors are well aware of porn
and porn stars, but how well do we know them?
One of the dirtiest minds I’ve met since I started
publishing my own erotic books is the illustrious
Selena Kitt. She’s a legend in erotic literature,
known for her taboo stories and bestselling books,
like Babysitting the Baumgartners and Under Mr.
Nolan’s Bed. Her books have sold millions of copies
worldwide and she is a New York Times and USA Today
bestseller. Selena Kitt is a savvy business woman,
too, and the owner of eXcessica Publishing. She
also owns Eden and Excitica, which are sanctuaries
for banned books and authors who can’t sell their
material through traditional distribution, like
Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Ms. Kitt likes to post
a constant stream of naughty pictures over social
media just for fun, and once a year she gets overly
excited about the Academy Awards on Twitter. She’s
a woman who isn’t afraid to celebrate her love of sex
and sexuality, and I’m thrilled she let me ask her a
few questions.
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company!
If you were a porn star for a day what would be your ideal movie to star in?
Anything that involved a girl-girl-guy threesome! It’s my favorite thing to write and it would be the sort of
movie I’d love to take part in. Make a sandwich out of me and I’d be a happy camper!
Where do you see the ebook industry in five years?
We’ll all have microchips implanted in our heads and will be able to download books straight to our brains. Ha,
I’m just kidding—but five years ago, if someone had predicted that people would be reading books primarily
on electronic tablets or their phones, that would have sounded crazy, too. So I won’t predict hover boards for
ebooks (I know we’re all disappointed that 2015 didn’t deliver Marty McFly’s version!) but I will predict that
ebooks will continue to capture more of the reading market than they currently have. I also predict that the “big
five” publishers will probably be more like the “big three” by then, and while print won’t have disappeared,
paperbacks and hardcovers will have a much smaller market than they do now. I also think interactive ebooks
will be more popular by then.
What’s your favorite porn movie? And why?
I don’t watch porn. Ha, just kidding! Honestly, it’s really too hard to pick just one. It’s like trying to pick a
favorite author. Why limit yourself? I have eclectic tastes when it comes to pretty much everything, so picking
just one is impossible. However, I will say, for nostalgia’s sake, one of the most influential porn movies I’ve seen
has to be Taboo II. Not the first one, which was more a mother/son sort of thing, but the second one, where
the whole family got involved. Probably because it was one of the first adult videos I was ever exposed to, and
because it appealed to that naughty side of me that’s always been drawn to taboo topics. I guess I am a bad girl
after all!
Kay Brandt is a writer/director of adult film, and best-selling author of romance-erotica books. Find Selena Kitt’s books on
Amazon.com.