Mary Anne: Certainly. Erotica is an area of literature that focuses on sexuality, but it's still literature. It can be done well, or it can be done badly, as any attempt at literature can. When it's done well, it can inspire, arouse, evoke great emotion, and make people think. These are all important characteristics of serious art.
S: How would you differ your works from the works found on the more commercialized sites with advertisements such as "5000 Sexy Stories Here!"?
MA: Some of those sites do have good stories...but very few. For the most part, the stories on those sites were quickly cranked out, often by people who don't even identify as writers. I find many of them painful to read (and in fact, rarely bother, as it's difficult getting past the twenty spelling and grammar errors in the first paragraph).
S: How/Why did you start writing erotic literature?
MA: I started as a result of reading bad erotica, actually. I was reading the newsgroup alt.sex.stories when I was a college student, and I remember thinking, "I can do better than that!" My first attempt was pretty bad, but the readers liked it a lot, and their reaction encouraged me into continuing with my writing. The tremendous feedback you get as an erotica writer is extremely helpful.
S: What effect does erotica have on its readers?
MA: It can turn you on, it can turn you off. Readers have written to me telling me that my stories made them laugh ("Fleeing Gods") or cry ("Jinsong"). They can make you think -- I've gotten several essays written on the ethics implicit in "Diana". They can make you angry -- occasionally readers send me very angry mail about my story "Chantal", or about the interracial relationships in "Radhika and Matthew" and "Season of Marriage". Erotica can also be a source of comfort at times when you're not expressing your sexuality physically; the body has needs, and sometimes it can help to express them mentally, if not physically. I get a lot of mail from soldiers overseas thanking my for my stories. Of course, it can also frustrate you as well, depending on your temperament.
S: Although there is always an age verification, many teenagers still sneak in to adult websites. What effect do you think erotica has on minors?
MA: I generally believe that children and teens have a pretty good sense of what literature is appropriate to their age. I read a lot of books intended for an adult audience as a child, and until I was about fourteen, I tended to just skip over the sex scenes -- they weren't interesting to me. When I did develop an interest, scenes like the one in Alexei Panshin's _Rite of Passage_ were invaluable to me, giving me a true and beautiful picture of adult sexuality, and one that was far healthier than the misinformation spread on the playground.
My government requires that I post a warning on my pages that the content is intended for adults, and I do so -- but I believe that intelligent teens can judge for themselves whether that literature is appropriate.
I'm only going to speak to text here, by the way. You would do better to ask an artist/photographer about the effect of visual images on minors.
S: In general, do believe erotic literature to be a good thing or a bad thing?
MA: Oh, outstandingly a good thing. How could we not talk about sexuality, one of the major elements of being human? Outlawing erotica would be like outlawing literature on death -- sure, death is big and powerful and kind of scary, just like sex, but nobody suggests not writing about it.
S: How would you differ erotica from pornography?
MA: I don't know that I think they're that different. You can have good erotica and good pornography; bad erotica and bad pornography. The distinction I usually make is the pornography = sex stories, whereas erotica = sex stories with characterization and style. Erotica tries to do more than porn attempts.