How Do You Write All That Kinky Stuff?

If there’s a question I get more than any other about my writing, it’s about how do I write sex. Sometimes the focus is how do you write gay sex, but more often than not it’s how do you write all that steamy/kinky/OMG stuff? The answer to both questions is the same: imagination.

Also, balls.

Let’s address the imagination portion of the answer first. I think people expect me to say “research” and then link to sites, and it’s true that there’s an aspect of writing kink/sex which requires some homework. When I first began writing graphic gay sex, I did watch some porn—not for technique but for logistics of how far a body can bend, if a mouth actually reaches, etc—but mostly I lurked on online forums where gay men talked, sometimes argued with each other about sex. I listened to and asked questions of gay male friends. I studied gay sex/fetish sites vs. straight sites. I read some articles and books about sexuality—well, read some more. I’d already consumed plenty, but I topped off.

Honestly, this all took about forty-fifty hours tops, unless you count porn I watched just for fun. Which I don’t. The research part is not a big deal. Anybody could do it. The imagination part, that’s a lifetime of work.

If you look back to pictures of me from my twenties and early thirties, you will see a woman wearing cotton flowered sundresses—that she made herself—and a whole lot of long-haired Iowa wholesomeness. I have to tell you, that was a hell of a smokescreen. My husband doesn’t permit much discussion of what we do in the bedroom, but I will say it was better than those sundresses. What has gone in my head since the first blushes of adolescence, though, is another tale entirely.

I remember, vividly, playing Barbies and simulating not just sex but non-con and what I now know was an attempt to break out of the princess pattern. I had a one-armed male Barbie—Shaving Ken—who had real hair that immediately went to shit, making him appear wild, untamed, and very sexy. He was always the bad guy, and he always got the girl. Usually all of them. Neutered Ken “won” on occasion because those societal norms, they press hard. There was no same-sex contact, because, to be frank, I’d spied my own sense of openness on that front and clamped down so hard it wasn’t until I began writing gay romances my own bisexuality was finally allowed to bloom again. But there was plenty of hanky panky with my Barbies.

I was aware I thought about sex and played out sexual roles with my Barbies more than was “normal,” but I didn’t care. Sex was a hugely taboo topic in our house. There was no normalizing, no talk about masturbation. My mother caught me once very young and acted as if I had brought huge shame to the family, so I kept it quiet from then on. Yet I thought about it all the time, well before puberty.

Sometime around eleven Barbies became dissatisfying, and I began to write stories down instead of playing them out. Romance was always a theme, and quickly so was sex. I was as fascinated by our contradictory attitudes about sex as I was the act itself. While I wanted to experience it, even as I went through junior high into high school, I was socially awkward and ostracized, and even if I hadn’t been, I was very picky. With poor sex education, my understanding of sexually transmitted disease was poor, but my fear of unwanted pregnancy was highly developed. Add to that several awkward and unsatisfactory encounters, plus mild physical and significant mental sexual abuse by an adult family friend, and I entered college a hot, hot mess for sex in my own life.

But man did I write about it.

I started young. I remember in eighth grade writing highly graphic and erotic material which I left in the girls’ restroom for others to find. I’d already established a reputation as someone who could write on demand—in seventh grade I wrote stories for people about other people, or themselves, or whatever was asked of me. In eighth I’d moved to a new school, and I took to stealth story depositing. I thought I was quite clever and daring, because no one new it was me, but I had to end it when my lit teacher found them and gave a big lecture about how she hoped no one was letting a boyfriend do this because it was wrong. It hadn’t occurred to her these were stories.

I stopped putting my stories in bathrooms, but I kept writing them.

I’ve been writing stories, always with sexual elements, for thirty years, but it took almost twenty before I started trying to share them with others, and I only shared the “nice ones.” My stories were always sensual, but I definitely tempered them to what I felt was the acceptable standard—and no wonder they always fell flat to editors and agents. Meanwhile I kept writing erotica that I didn’t share. Those were never finished stories—they lacked a sense of plot or purpose. I had great voice and considerable skill, but my muting of so many things inside me kept me from breaking out.

Now we come to the balls.

The period of 2004-2009 was basically my Fuck You period. I was getting sicker all the time, no one ever could tell me why (they still can’t), and I still wasn’t published. I had several personal disappointments and betrayals during that time as well, and it all coalesced into a huge middle finger in my head. I shut off the Internet and much of the world, I put my head down, and I worked. I wrote gay romance. I wrote contemporary and fantasy. Above all, I wrote sex. I didn’t sugar-coat it, didn’t hold back. The result is my backlist and upcoming releases.

The tension of my formative years between sex and speech, a lifetime of watching our culture twist women and men inside out to be sexual but only this way and at that time, rules absent of logic and full of contradiction—this combined with losing the last vestiges of need to play nice with the world led me to not back down when my cute little romp about a college kid and a trucker got dirtier and dirtier. Why not, I thought? Why the fuck not.

I write kinky stuff not because I’m flying a freak flag but because I don’t think it’s freaky at all, and I’d like to contribute to normalizing it. I write about intense sexuality because sex is risk, always—physical and emotional—and that makes for great story. I write about kinky stuff because I love the rawness of it. But above all what I love most is showing that people who love passionately and differently do not need a special clubhouse.

And when I say that, I don’t simply mean people who practice BDSM or polyamory or any specific sexual act or practice—I’m writing, frankly, to anybody who’s tired of having sex and sexuality thrown up like a wall we have to climb or tiptoe around or pretend isn’t there, except when society decides for ten minutes that it is. I like sex. So do a lot of people. Let’s celebrate it.

That’s my answer to how I write the kinky stuff. I just do. I’ve always thought about sex, been fascinated by it, and I don’t like how we get wiggy about it. I think our preoccupation with fear and restriction does great harm to out culture and our society. I kind of love being the mild-mannered Iowan, mother and wife in yoga pants and sweats writing normalized steamy sex. It’s one of the best headfucks I can think of, and it’s always a great time.

As it happens, I would argue this theme is very present in Double Blind, the book I’m here to pimp today. The book isn’t as erotically-focused as Special Delivery, but it’s very honed-in on the idea of being who you are, not who the world tells you to be. It definitely does a lot of sex and sexuality normalizing, culminating in a literal playground for that kind of freedom. I don’t think we consider how much it costs us to limit ourselves, to conform to norms and strictures which exist not to protect us but simply because we can’t be bothered to upgrade our social software. It hurts all of us, as individuals and as a culture.

Sex is a revolution, and it has been since time began. Sex is power and joy and danger. Embrace it with both hands. Kink or vanilla is your call.

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DOUBLE BLIND

Book Two in the Special Delivery Series

Know when to show your hand…and when to hedge your bets.

Randy Jensen can’t stand to just sit by and watch as a mysterious man throws money away on the roulette wheel, especially since Randy’s got his own bet going as to the reason this guy is making every play like it’s his last day on earth. The man’s dark desperation hits Randy right in the gut. Half of him warns that getting involved is a sucker’s bet, and the other half scrambles for a reason—any reason—to save the man’s soul.

Ethan Ellison has no idea what he’s going to do with himself once his last dollar is gone—until Randy whirls into his life with a heart-stealing smile and a poker player’s gaze that sees too much. Randy draws Ethan into a series of wagers that leads to a scorching kiss by midnight, but he isn’t the only one with an interest in Ethan’s vulnerability. Soon they’re both taking risks that not only play fast and loose with the law, but with the biggest prize of all: their hearts.

Warning: This story contains high-stakes poker, gangsters with a weakness for kittens, foursomes, and kinky consensual sex.

Available March 4, 2014 from Samhain Publishing and wherever books are sold. This book has been previously published and has been revised from its original release.

Buy links: Samhain, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads

Excerpt on Heidi’s website

Read Carissa’s 4.5 Star Rated Review on DOUBLE BLIND: Here

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 ABOUT HEIDI CULLINAN

Heidi Cullinan has always loved a good love story, provided it has a happy ending. She enjoys writing across many genres but loves above all to write happy, romantic endings for LGBT characters because there just aren’t enough of those stories out there. When Heidi isn’t writing, she enjoys cooking, reading, knitting, listening to music, and watching television with her husband and ten-year-old daughter. Heidi is a vocal advocate for LGBT rights and is proud to be from the first Midwestern state with full marriage equality. Find out more about Heidi, including her social networks, at www.heidicullinan.com.

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