Literotica Authors 12: IsabellaEmily

For about five years I have been conducting a series of interviews with authors on Literotica. This is the 12th in the series, with the author IsabellaEmily. She is one of the few writers I've encountered who has a rating of 4.5+ (the standard to have a story labeled "hot") for every one of her submissions, and after reading a few of her stories I became hooked on her writing. I think you'll appreciate the insights that this author has shared with us.

I hope that you enjoy this series of interviews. Please feel free to send me your feedback, including suggestions of some of your favorite authors you would like to see interviewed. These are the words of the authors themselves; I have conducted a light edit only for formatting, typos, and consistency.

Your Literotica profile and the two essays you've posted here about your sex life and writing already tell us quite a bit about you, but is there anything else about you and your background that you would like your readers to know about you?

Despite the fact that I love sex and am fairly adventurous when it comes to sexual exploration, I am really an average person. With very few exceptions most people who know my husband and I in real life have no idea about the sexual lifestyles we live. We used to joke about what our bedroom would look like to someone if we both died suddenly at the same time. We have since made arrangements with close friends to remove the sex toys, outfits, bondage gear, and assorted sex play paraphernalia from our house if that happens, a deal that would be reciprocal if necessary.

I got my love of reading and writing (and horror movies) from my parents. They were both voracious readers, movie buffs, and amateur writers as well. (I also got my love of the outdoors from them). My mother wrote poetry and hosted a neighborhood book discussion. My father wrote for several automobile journals, as well as writing science fiction stories. I grew up exposed to all of that, and it rubbed off.

By the time I entered my freshmen year of college I had over one hundred short stories written and stored in folders on my bookshelves. And one more fun fact that's only sort of about me, is that my husband also writes (we met in a writing group in college), and he published a story here on Literotica years before I did. But he still only has one story up, and as of this interview I have over forty.

Do you remember when you first discovered that you liked reading erotic literature? How did this come about?

When I was eighteen, I found a paperback book hidden in our basement. It was probably close to twenty years old at the time, one of those late '70s erotic novels that are nothing more than a bunch of sex scenes tied together with a loose plot. Even though I recognized that the novel wasn't very good as a story, I was mesmerized by the sex. I'd encountered sex scenes in novels before, but never the idea that the entire story could be about sex.

That novel aroused both my imagination and my body and encouraged a bit of self-exploration, which resulted in a lifelong love of masturbation. (That's a true story, I was definitely a late bloomer who spent her early twenties playing catch-up). I was familiar with porn, but I wasn't much interested in it. But I discovered that written sex could be descriptive and delve into pleasure in a way that movies or magazines couldn't.

I loved that novel and read and reread it over and over. But at the same time, I hated how lame the story was and how many opportunities were missed to describe the pleasure and feelings in more and better detail. And suddenly it dawned on me that I should just write my own sex story, featuring exactly the kind of people I wanted to read about doing the kinds of things I wanted them to do.

Your stories on Literotica are all posted within the last couple of years. Were you writing erotic literature before you started posting your stories on Literotica? What prompted you to write your own?

I've been aware of Literotica for nearly two decades, and first made an account only to save stories and be able to interact in the chat rooms. I write for a living, working out of my home office. For many years I wrote erotica just to entertain myself, as a way of taking a break and letting my mind wander for a bit, while creating something sexy to take a mental break. Occasionally I would share those stories with my husband or with a close friend, never really intending to let them 'escape' into a place where others could read them.

In the Literotica chat rooms one afternoon I was chatting about one of my kinks and was asked how it got started. I shared the story, and the guy I was chatting with encouraged me to write it out as a story and submit it here. I started working on it, not entirely sure I would be comfortable submitting something so personal, but I discovered that outlining and writing it was really fun.

When it was halfway finished I took a break and wrote another short erotic story to sort of test the waters before I risked sharing something so personal. I figured if the first story was ignored or not liked I could take comfort in the fact that something personal to me hadn't been rejected or ignored. But I got some nice feedback on that first story, and that made me wonder if I could write something even better if I wrote something I was really passionate about.

It took me a few more months to work on it, and then several more to get up the courage to actually 'submit' it (A Wet Summer Night) and its follow up (A Wetter Summer Night). Response to those two stories helped me find an audience that actually likes the same kinks that I do, and that emboldened me to keep writing and sharing.

You state on your profile that you write from home for a living, but it's more technical work and not as creative as your erotic writing. Do you intersperse your work with your erotic writing during the day, or are you more compartmentalized and work on one and then turn to the other?

A mixture of both, but I lean more towards compartmentalization. I enjoy my paid writing, but it sometimes becomes a bit tedious, and doesn't always let me take creative risks. So it's nice to be able to cut loose for a few minutes every once in a while and write something filthy. I try to dedicate my mornings to writing work and my afternoons to writing erotica, but sometimes I'll have a deadline to focus on meeting, or I'll be close enough to finishing something that I don't want to stop and the whole day will be work.

Other times erotic inspiration will strike, and I'll spend a few minutes outlining an idea or a few hours writing something out. I do try to write Monday through Thursday, and take three-day weekends, but even that's not regimented. Sometimes I'll work all weekend, and sometimes I'll spend all day Tuesday in the pool.

No matter what I'm writing, I'm doing it in my home office with white noise going and the world shut out. But inside the office I do try to help myself get into the different headspaces required to be either professional or erotic. I always have some sort of white noise going. If it's paid writing my white noise is an actual white noise machine that muffles the outside world so I can concentrate, unless I find something more fitting. I'm writing a paid outdoor piece now and I'm listening to forest noises as background to concentrate. If I'm writing erotica, my white noise tends to be a thunderstorm soundtrack. I find thunderstorms intensely erotic, and anyone who reads my stories can attest to how often storms are happening while my characters have sex.

Additionally, I get into a sexual frame of mind by dressing sexy in some small way, like sexy panties under my jeans and ditching my bra. Those little things help with my headspace. I also find the freedom of writing erotica to be relaxing. No real deadlines, no need to meet or keep under a certain word count, and no pressure to connect all the dots of a professional assignment. One of my current erotic stories (no title yet, but it'll be the one about Gabriella and Mistress Isabella) is a bit intense, and I'm writing it while wearing a collar, with black nail polish on my finger and toenails. It's not much, but it certainly helps me get into the frame of mind that I want to create for the story.

You publish in a wide number of categories, but most fall into the Incest/Taboo and Fetish categories. In your essays on your sex life and writing, you talk some about your interest in these two topics. But can you tell us more about how you first developed interest in these? How old were you, and how did these interests develop? Was it reading erotica, watching porn about them, or something else?

In my college years I was exposed to three different kinks that became ingrained in my psyche, and definitely inform to varying degrees all of the rest of my kink and fetish pursuits. Two of those are voyeurism and exhibitionism (two sides of same coin for most people I imagine). The third is my interest in peeing. And all three are wrapped together for me. I'm much more a voyeur and exhibitionist when it comes to pee play, rather than wanting to pee on someone or be peed on, but I have happily done both of those with various partners.

The story about how I first made the connection between peeing and arousal and letting someone watch that vulnerable moment and being able to watch them is published here as A Wet Summer Night. That story is a very honest telling of the night that connection was made, and I was eighteen and fairly inexperienced when I lived through those events, and erotic experiences at that age can be very powerful. Similarly, the story My Desperate Diapered Day explains why I love wetting and desperation so much, but unlike the story that's something I discovered when I was in my early or mid-twenties.

As far as incest I have no real-life interest in having sex with a relative, nor do I have any real-life experience with it. The closest I've come to that would be a few encounters with my cousin's wife (the real-life Rachael from A Wet Summer Night), who played a prominent part in the discovery of my pee kink way back when she was just his girlfriend. I have also maintained a very teasingly flirtatious relationship with my husband's sister, that started when she lived with us for two years a while back. She is the real-life inspiration for Skylark in the Skylark Solution series.

But my cousin's wife and I haven't done anything sexual (aside from some knowing winks at family gatherings) since before she became engaged, and even though my husband's sister is also openly bisexual the three of us have agreed that she and I crossing that line would be a complication that none of us want. However both of those women have played prominently in my fantasy life (both day dreaming, and masturbatory) for years and years. But they are both related to me only by marriage, so it's not a family attraction.

The primary thing that draws me to incest, is the way I can use it to blend romantic and emotional love with sexual discovery. A recurring theme in most of my stories is someone crossing a new sexual threshold for the first time. And since I most want to write about sexual encounters with some emotional weight to them (not necessarily romance, but not necessarily one night stand hook ups either), incest is a natural fit for that sort of storytelling. The characters already know and love each other, and even if they already have plenty of sexual experience, the sharing of sexual pleasure with a family member can be brand new. And those are the opportunities that the incest genre gives me as a chance to explore as a writer.

I explored this a lot in my ongoing Sharing A Bed With Daddy series, about a grown woman discovering a sexual relationship with her own father, even though both of them are already fully functioning and sexually experienced adults before their first night together.

In short the peeing kink in my life is definitely real and I can explain exactly where it came from. The incest kink I have is mostly fantasy, largely fueled by the emotional sensations that such an encounter would bring, more so than any real desire to have a sexual relationship with a blood relative.

Most of your stories are single-chapter stories, but you do have some with multiple chapters. How do you decide when to continue a story in multiple chapters? Is this something you decide before you start writing the story, or is it more in response to getting a positive reaction to a particular story and you continue it? Or some other reason?

All of the above!

I always planned for Sharing A Bed With Daddy to be two parts. However, reader response let me know people would definitely be interested in reading more about those two characters. I'll keep adding chapters as new ideas hit me, and I won't stop until I run out of ideas for those two. I'm writing part six right now and have an outline for part seven. I outlined the Skylark series as three parts, but while writing I discovered that I had enough ideas to fill five parts.

Sometimes I plan on just doing one or two chapters and readers respond so enthusiastically that it's fun to create more story. That's what happened with the Natalie's House stories. And some stories are just one and done sort of tales, since I can't imagine there's anything left to add, like Sucking Six Feet of Stiff Dick.

And some stories I'll keep going even if no one reads them. The Nurse and The Nanny and Merri Thanksgiving are very personal stories to me, and I'll keep adding installments to that saga even if no one cares about them but the real-life Merri and myself.

Most readers read erotica in order to be aroused, and many (hopefully!) are also looking for a good plot. I was impressed when I first came across your stories to see that (I believe) every single one has a score of 4.5 or higher, the standard for being designated "Hot" by Literotica. How do you balance the need for plot in your stories with the "hotness" factor necessary to get attention on Literotica?

It's not something I intentionally work to balance. I don't write something and then think, "It needs more plot." Or, "It needs more kink," as I read back through it. I just genuinely write the kind of stories I like to read, working to make the characters and settings more developed than just setting up people in a place where they can fuck. I want the plot and setting to appeal to people, but I also want the sex, including the sexual buildup and the sexual afterglow, to be the most appealing part to the readers. After all they come here for something erotic!

I was given advice when I published my first story here, that said to ignore the ratings, and while the fact that so many love what I write is encouraging and flattering, I don't try to write anything to get a good rating.

I'm aware how lucky I am. There are writers here who are far more talented who don't have the same 4.5+ rating streak that I do. I'm not trying to be super humble or fish for compliments. I work hard at creating good stories and I'm proud of the fact that they're as well received as they are. But I'm very aware that I've tapped into a group of loyal readers who share my kink and genuinely seem to enjoy reading what I enjoy writing, and it's pretty amazing that I've been able to cultivate a little community of like-minded perverts within the overall Literotica community. Sooner or later my streak will end, and I'll be as happy that it happened as I will be if it continues.

As for plotting, unless I'm writing something that I truly lived through, I usually start with the characters and the story, and then work in the sex as I write. However, that's not always the case. A Cock and Cunt Licking Caregiver was inspired by an idea about a bedridden person experiencing oral sex in a situation where they couldn't move their arms or legs and had no choice but to lay there and accept whatever pleasure was offered at whatever speed it or intensity it was given. Those sex scenes almost wrote themselves and the plot was what came next.

The Adventures of an Aunt-Eater series was inspired by me hearing someone talk about an actual ant-eating aardvark during a science interview on talk radio. I heard the word "anteater" and my perverted brain thought, "Now that would be a cool title for an incest story."

Do you believe your stories were always so good from when you first started writing, or has your writing improved over time?

I think the story quality has remained consistent, but I've gotten better at the way in which I describe the sex and tell the story. My earliest stories here make me cringe when I read through them because I constantly see ways in which I could have described something better or paced the story flow differently to better serve the characters and the sex.

I imagine in six months I'll read something that I'm going to submit later this week and see fifteen ways I could have done it better. However, when it comes to writing an erotic encounter between two or three characters, I think I've gotten better and better with each story. I worry less about whether people will accept a certain kink or fetish than I did when I started. That has been very freeing and has allowed me to just let the story go where it goes as I write it, instead of trying to steer around certain things.

I'll also add that I rate and comment here with a lot of grace because I'm a writer myself. One of the first things I do is check the authors profile and if it's their first story I give them the benefit of the doubt to try more of their catalogue before passing judgement. Practice makes all of us better.

And as long as I've chased down a rabbit trail from your original question, I don't see other authors here as competition. As the saying goes a rising tide raises all ships. If someone reads a story on here and loves it, they're much more likely to want to read another story, and the next story they pick might be mine, or yours. That's also something I keep in mind when writing, because I wouldn't want a great author here to remain undiscovered because one of my stories made someone log out of Literotica instead of clicking on the next story.

When you're not busy writing your own stories, what are your favorite kinds of stories to read on Literotica, and why? Do they generally fall into the same categories in which you like to write, or do you enjoy reading other types?

There are certain categories or key words I'll search for, looking for specific kinds of stories. And I often start out by going into the categories I tend to write in because those are the ones I enjoy. However as I read my mood tends to shift and I'll range out into other categories and explore.