I'm so excited to have Kitty Thomas join me on AsianCocoa's Secret Garden today! Kitty's new novella Awakening was released in August.
AsianCocoa: Welcome Kitty. It’s a pleasure having you here on the blog today. Please tell us a little about yourself and why you became a writer.
Kitty Thomas: I'm not sure there is a reason I can give on why I became a writer. I think it's one of those innate things for a lot of people. It's sort of like how little kids who kill stray animals become serial killers. People who have stories in their heads all the time and have a tendency to start writing them down, become writers. It's just inevitable.
AC: Your new book Awakening was just released this month. Would you tell us a little about it? Why did you want to write a story with a mermaid heroine?
KT: Awakening is about a mermaid named Nerina (literally means sea nymph in Greek) who swims too close to the shore and gets caught in a fisherman's net. The people on the island eat mermaid fin as a delicacy, but Kyros, the master of the property where she's caught, decides to keep her instead. In the book there is a legend that if a human can awaken a mermaid's sexual desire, the mermaid will turn human and be forever at the mercy of the human's lust. Nerina believes it's a scare tactic to keep merfolk in line. But Kyros believes in it wholeheartedly. Mermaids really have no frame of reference either for love or sex, so Kyros has his work cut out for him. Nerina is afraid that when she can't turn human for him, that he'll have her killed.
I wrote a mermaid story because my cover artist found a great image. She said: "OMG, Kitty you HAVE to write a mermaid story so we can use this image for your cover." Ten minutes later I came back to her and said, "I think I just got an idea for one." So Awakening wouldn't be here without my cover artist. Ironically we ended up using a different cover image than what was originally picked out.
AC: You’ve published 4 other books since your incredible debut novel; Comfort Food was released in October of 2010. How do you get your incredible stories to paper (or computer screen) so quickly? Can you describe your writing process to us? KT: Most of these ideas in one form or another have been percolating in my brain as fantasies for longer than I can remember. In fact, the novella I just finished, The King's Pleasure, (completing the set of three), is a story like that. It still has to be edited and formatted, but I'm hoping to have it out by sometime in October. The entire opening scene was part of one of my "bedtime stories". I have all these stories in my head that I fall asleep while they play, and a lot of my books start out as those stories. They change a lot from my brain to the page sometimes. So that's part of why it happens so fast. A lot of these stories, the rough draft is already in my head and has been for years. The other part is that I just write a lot and I don't second guess myself. Editing is for second guessing, not writing. So, while all my work is professionally edited, I have more work TO edit much more quickly because I just sit down and do it.
AC: You write mostly dark BDSM erotica. Do you think that BDSM is becoming more main stream? Why or why not? KT: I honestly don't really class my writing as BDSM erotica. I consider it dark erotica that deals with the psychology of ownership. That might seem like splitting hairs, but BDSM is a consensual practice and what I write isn't about "consent". It's about power and surrender. This isn't to say that no story ever starts or ends with consent or that I won't write anything consensual, but it's about the totality of ownership in a fictional context where such things can be safely explored. I think BDSM is a very different thing. And while I'm sure my work appeals a lot to BDSM practitioners, I'm sure most of them would agree with me that what I'm writing isn't exactly what they're doing. My work may have many BDSM trappings and look similar on the surface, but I don't consider it BDSM.
Re: the mainstreaming of BDSM, I'm not sure but I think what you're really asking is: do I think erotica that pushes more envelopes and takes us out of the Ozzie and Harriet world is becoming more mainstream. And what I mean, of course, is overt power exchange. I'm not really sure if it is or not, but I don't understand the question. I'm not saying I don't comprehend what you've asked me, I just don't understand why BDSM is or ever could be controversial to anyone. Maybe it's just the way my brain is wired but I see dominance and submission games in nearly everything human beings do. And it's been like this throughout history. Human beings are mammals. Most mammalian sexuality is based on hierarchies of dominance and submission. People just get a little more creative about it. But to me a whip or bondage gear isn't the THING itself. The thing is the need of one to submit and the other to dominate. On the surface we all say we want egalitarian relationships. And maybe some people do. But I think what we really mean is that we want fair and caring/loving relationships. Otherwise the majority of women wouldn't be so sexually attracted to dominant badasses and sexually repulsed by men who are "too nice". (Which isn't to say that maledom and femsub is all that is out there or all that's okay, but it represents the social majority and it's what I write. So no judgment on other sexualities is intended in this answer.)
KT: I'm not sure I can frame it as "which character was the hardest to write about", but I can say which book was the hardest to write, and that's Comfort Food. I opened a vein for that book. Emotionally it drained the fuck out of me. Later I realized it was because it was so personal. I didn't realize until after I'd written it but the whole book was largely a metaphor for how M and I weren't communicating at the time, at least not verbally. It was a rough period in our relationship and Comfort Food was what came out of that.
With favorite and least favorite characters, I'm pretty fickle. My favorite is usually whoever I'm writing about at the time. And least favorite... I don't write characters I don't like. Even villains who I wouldn't like in real life, I like them as characters because of what they contribute to the story. Like Lucas, the villain in Tender Mercies. I loved him as a character because he was just so scary and gave this wonderful contrast for when Asher bought Grace and took her out of that situation. If Lucas hadn't been so awful, it wouldn't have been such a relief to Grace (or readers) when Asher comes along and turns out not to be the monster she feared he would be.
AC: What was the last amazing book that you have read? KT: Room. I found the book because someone compared Comfort Food to it. Of course Room and Comfort Food are very very different books in a lot of ways, but I can see where the comparison came from.
AC: Other than writing, what other things interest you?
KT: Psychology. How people think and how ultimately predictable we all are. Except crazy people. But even they follow their own bizarre internal logic, so even they can be figured out if you have their secret decoder ring.
AC: Is there anything else you would like to share with your readers? Are there any new projects you’re working on?
KT: Right now I'm in edits for The King's Pleasure. It's about a half-gypsy named Abigail (yes, she was purposely given a non-gypsy name), and a king named Niall. She is caught stealing bread in his castle and rather than allowing his guard to chop off her hand for it, he takes her as his personal slave. The book has a lot of worldbuilding for a novella with regards to their culture and how different it is sexually from ours. They have wholly different conceptions of sexuality and privacy from what we do. The King's Pleasure will round out my 3 novella series and will also be combined into a print anthology, so my readers who still read in print or just like to have my stuff on their shelves, it'll be available in that format. After a lot of 1st person stories, The King's Pleasure is back to 3rd again.
I'm also about halfway through The Last Girl, which is my first full-length novel since Tender Mercies. It's told in first person, present tense by Juliette, the main character. I know a lot of people don't like present tense, and many don't like first person, but I really think it's the only way this particular tale could be told. It makes it very immediate. It's a vampire story, which is fun to do because I love metaphor and vampires are really all about metaphor. I really shouldn't be but I am utterly in love with Christian.
For those who felt my writing has gotten a little tame with Awakening (and I agree that the mermaid story is "kitty-lite"; it's just what that story called for), The King's Pleasure ramps the dirty meter WAY up. (I'm not sure what it is about me and books with the word "pleasure" in the title, but... I go a little crazy.) And The Last Girl is rather dark and in some ways reminiscent of Comfort Food, but still a very different story.
AC: Thank you so much Kitty for stopping by the blog and answering my questions.
For more information on Kitty Thomas:
Giveaway Time:
Kitty is giving away an e-copy of her fantastic novella Awakening (my review) to one lucky winner. Open Internationally.
To Enter:
Leave a comment or question for Kitty with your email address.
Entry deadline: Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 at 11:59pm (PT)
Winner will be announced and emailed soon after and will have 48 hours to respond.
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