BEDTIME STORIES
I'll be posting the final part of this interview later this week, together with a file of the complete interview from start to finish. I also have another exclusive free story which will be online very soon.
Thanks to everyone who has already purchased a copy of the new book. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did with the writing.
Love Thom xxxx
Story 7: The Dark Room
Kevin: “The Dark Room” is the longest and most technically accomplished story in the book. It’s actually a murder mystery and packs a wallop at the end, once the reader realizes that is actually happening underneath all that sex tension. Is this your answer
to Basic Instinct, Mr. Wolf? You’re a tricky bastard.
to Basic Instinct, Mr. Wolf? You’re a tricky bastard.
Thom: As you know Basic Instinct is my all time favourite film and has inspired me more than any other. The Dark Room was intended to be one of about six stories that would have made up a collection of erotic noir called Dazed, Beautiful and Bruised, very much in the style of Basic Instinct, Body Heat and The Fourth Man. I thought it was a great idea and was really excited about the collection. However, mainstream publishers get very nervous when porn writers touch on issues of sex, violence and murder. I had problems with both my earlier books Words Made Flesh and The Chain. The erotic thriller collection just wasn’t worth doing once the publishers imposed their “rules” upon what was and wasn’t allowed. Thankfully, without a publisher telling me what to do now, I have more freedom in the content of my stories and my next book will be a very erotic thriller.
Kevin: Strangled with a red jock-strap—what a way to go! How’d you come up with that one?
Thom: I thought it was a great gay porn equivalent of the beautiful blonde strangled with her own silk stockings. I had been watching a lot of Italian giallo movies, which feature some gloriously eroticised murders scenes, and they also fed into my thought processes when I was writing The Dark Room. I love the imagery of the sexy young boy strangled in a dark room with his own jock strap. It’s so over the top it’s ridiculous but it works wonderfully in the genre of an erotic thriller. Sharon Stone has a great line in Basic Instinct 2, “People die in my novels all the time. I have to think of new and interesting ways to kill them.” That’s the fun part of being a writer.
Kevin: I guess in every town there’s a club like Spurt and a guy like Lee Ottoman, the promiscuous pin-up boy who meets his end in “The Dark Room.” Where did you first go for sex? A good looking man like you must have had an easy time of it.
Thom: I hate to disappoint you but I must have been well into my mid 20s before I discovered clubs like Spurt and dark rooms. I grew up in a tiny fishing village on the Northumberland coast and the nearest gay scene was 20 miles away in Newcastle. I first started going to gay clubs in the early 1990s but it was actually very conservative then compared to clubs nowadays. We still had really ancient obscenity laws in the UK at the time and clubs could be closed down if there was a hint of anything sexual going on. There used to a place called The Gardens where guys who hadn’t managed to cop off in the clubs would go to afterwards for some very late night cruising. It was a sleazy little park down by the river. I hated it. It was quite a dangerous place. Guys were beaten up all the time and there were a couple of murders around the time I used to go there. I had a friend who was addicted to the place and I would often end a night out, sitting on the steps down to The Gardens, waiting for him to finish off so we could share a taxi home.
Story 8: Too Far Gone
Kevin: Porn comes with its own sets of cliches, which you always avoid so skillfully. In this tale the blowjob, often treated as a mere preliminary to anal action, assumes a sensational importance, it is by far the most described and elaborated part of the story. Our narrator craves the taste of Kyle’s cock in his mouth; he literally has to have it. Any thoughts?
Thom: Yes, porn can be quite formulaic and rigid; defined top and bottom roles with a precise order of action – blow job, rimming, fucking. That’s not a criticism. Sometimes, as reader and a viewer, I want formulaic stuff. The excitement comes from what you know is going to happen and the anticipation of it. But sometimes it’s good to shake it up. In reality I wouldn’t adhere to such strict rules. Some days a blow job might be the main event, or even just a wank. It shouldn’t always be about fucking.
I’ve often been tempted to write a very realistic sex story, touching on the real practicalities of it, but have never yet cracked it. In real life we’re not put off by an unexpected fart while pounding away, or the occasional mess upon withdrawal, but I don’t think anyone wants that in their porn. Most people want glamour and perfection in erotica. I prefer something that falls somewhere in between the two.
Kevin: “Too Far Gone” takes place in a quiet hotel in an unnamed “urban village” I imagine somewhere in the US or Canada or England, but maybe it’s any place where men are on the prowl trying to find sexual release. We don’t know where they are, the name of the city, the name of the hotel, even the name of the speaker; is this to concentrate our attention on the raw sex between them? A seriously hot story—and not a twink in sight.
Thom: Yes, the story takes place in anywheresville. It could be America, or Europe or Australia. It’s just two lonely men getting off together in a hotel. It’s actually inspired by a hotel called the Orotava Palace in Tenerfie. If anyone has ever been they would know it is exactly how I describe it and if you have a room on the back of the hotel, you look down directly onto the gay village, which on a weekend gets very busy indeed. But I didn’t want to be that specific in the story. This could be happening in any city on any night, anywhere.
Not a twink in sight? Guilty again. I might have to write some twink stories to readdress this balance. The mature men are getting all the action.
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