I’m reading Ray Bradbury’s ‘Let’s All Kill Constance’ and there is an interesting devolpment that has made the 160 odd pages of boredom seem worth it. An actress from the 30’s did an unusual thing to keep acting. Since Hollywood even then was looking for the Hot New Thing, Constance would reinvent herself every year. She didn’t pull a Madonna where she got a haircut and a new religon. Constance would undergo a Lon Cheny transformation, get a new name, new mannerisms and pretend to be another actress she created. It’s like what vampires do when they pretend to die and show up six months later as their ‘son’, except Constance was doing this every year. Fucking brilliant.
Porn does something similar. When a porn actress is no longer the Hot New Thing, they do some plastic surgery to make them the Hot New Big Boob Girl. If you watch porn for four years, your favorite hot lady will either retire or get really big boobs. It’s the closest a porn star can come to reinventing herself and don’t ask me why, but it works. I wonder if there is a second teir of porn watchers who only get aroused when the female no longer resembles a human? Why else would Ashlyn Gere do what she did to herself? http://www.ashlyn.com/
Anyhoo, it got me wondering about erotica writers. I have watched them come and go. I have a few ideas about why they leave, but I was wondering if there is a reinvention process for old erotica writers. Some of us just create new identities which on the Internet, is terribly easy. I’ve been Arthur Thomas, Purple Herald and once for a few weeks, Brenda Mckean. Each new identity allowed me to shed the stories associated with my old names and start fresh. Internet Erotica is odd in that people associate authors with stories in such a brand loyalty way that if you ever write one story outside their interests, they will stop reading your stories. You’re their porn pimp and damn it, if you give them a black girl one week, they’ll live in fear that you’re blacking their porn from here on out.
Other than creating new identities, I am speculating on what else an Internet Porn Writer can do to renew interest in themselves and yet bring in readers who know the writer, and stopped reading their stuff. Brag about the creative writing course you took? Show pictures of your new deluxe keyboard?
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