While
working with authors over the past 25 or so years, I’ve come to meet people who
ranged the gamut of life. Some were the
uber successful 1% class, writing about money, leadership, and their
lives. Others were victims of
unthinkable suffering, from incest and orphans to those who experienced loss of
family, friends, children, parents. I’ve
also met people from a variety of career backgrounds, including entrepreneurs,
CEOs, doctors, lawyers, poets, teachers, students, unemployed, ministers,
etc. One woman I had met several months
ago left a lasting impression. She ended
up not becoming a client of the PR firm that I work for, but her story
fascinates me.
She’s
an escort who wrote a series of novels about a woman who used to be an
escort. She writes under a pseudonym with
a bio description that features her as an ex-escort. Because she still entertains clients, she
can’t go public. Plus she doesn’t want family and friends to know what she did -- or still does.
She
hoped her novels could be promoted on their own merits, without playing up the
angle that she used to be an escort -- and not mentioning that she’s still in the
business. It’s hard to walk away from an
opportunity to exploit such an appealing strength. Will anyone be excited to talk to an erotic
novelist just simply because of the nature of the series – or will they want to
talk to an escort who pens what rings true to her?
We can’t
sell what we’re not, and we shouldn’t run from who we are. If you sleep with others for money, own it
and use it to empower your writing career.
If you don’t want to discuss the thing that people really want to
hear, then don’t write a book expecting people to like it without fully
understanding where it came from.
On
the other hand, why can’t we just appreciate the books on their own? We should be able to separate an author from his/her
work, but what a story it makes to have a beautiful blonde reveal
things that most of us don’t get to actually experience.
Some
of the best novels, I believe, are based on an author’s background and his or
her life experiences. They write what
they know. Life informs them, shapes
their views, and provides emotional unrest that inspires their escape into a
fictional terrain. With novels, we can
see anything, do anything, be anything – but I believe the root of good fiction is a
deep connection to either reality lived or reality denied. In this case, she is what she is writing
about and people want to hear from the escort more than the writer.
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