If not for Istanbul... #WritingLife #Inspiration #Serendipity

Lisabet Sarai was born in Turkey.

Not literally, of course. (In fact, my birth certificate reads “Wisconsin”.) However, the author known as Lisabet Sarai would not exist if not for a serendipitous encounter during my first and so far only visit to Istanbul.

It was the late nineties. My husband and I had traveled to Turkey on a combined business/pleasure trip. We spent four days in the legendary metropolis that straddles Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus Strait, exploring the ancient sites, shopping in the bazaars, interacting with the distinctive inhabitants (including the many stray but well-fed felines), and enjoying the savory, surprisingly spicy food. In our hotel, which had originally been two tall, narrow houses in an historic part of town, our window framed a near-by minaret and overlooked a ruined haman (bath house).

One evening when I was sitting in the lobby, I noticed a book swap shelf with titles in many languages, reflecting the diversity of Istanbul’s visitors. Travel offers many opportunities to indulge in reading, so of course I took a closer look. I picked up an erotic novel by Portia da Costa entitled Gemini Heat.

 

The book sucked me in from the very first page. It was a perfect match to my personal fantasies. Aside from being searingly hot, I found it intelligent, well-written and delightfully diverse, full of all sorts of arousing situations including anonymous sex, same-sex attraction, ménage, dominance and submission... pretty much everything except homoerotic scenes.

Gemini Heat was part of Virgin Books’ ground-breaking Black Lace imprint, marketed as “Erotica for women, by women”. In later years, Black Lace repositioned itself as a publisher of erotic romance, but at the time, the editor Kerri Sharp was trying to create a distinctly different style of erotica, targeted at literate women with sensual and adventurous tastes. In fact, at the end of the book I found a questionnaire, aimed at determining just what the readership enjoyed.

At that point, I’d read quite a lot of erotica, especially of the BDSM flavor. I’d also written a number of explicit fantasy stories. I’d never really considered publishing any of my work, however. I mean, I’ve been writing since I learned to hold a pencil. Up to that point, I’d created short stories, reams of poetry, a couple of plays and two unfinished romance novels. Somehow, though, publishing was never a goal for me.

When I read Gemini Heat, my first reaction was “Wow!”

My second reaction was, “I’ll bet I can write something like that...”

So I did.

When we returned from our trip, I wrote three chapters of Raw Silk and sent them off (snail mail!) to Black Lace in the U.K. It was really a bit of a lark; I never expected anything to come of it, especially when I received a post card acknowledging my submission and warning me that due to the number of manuscripts Black Lace received, I was not likely to hear anything for a few months.

Imagine my astonishment when I got an email from Black Lace, only a few days after the post card arrived, offering me a contract!

Of course that was not the end of the story. Indeed, that was just the beginning. I had to actually write an 80K word novel, something I’d never done before. Then I had to deal with an editor who was renowned for her strong opinions. (I recall that she made me change every single use of “panties” to “knickers”!) Plus I had to hustle when the publisher warned me that I was in breach of my contract by submitting a book that was only 75K words. Who knew the 80K was to be taken so literally? I wrote two more chapters to fulfill my commitment, while seriously ill with the flu. 

And when Raw Silk was eventually released, I discovered I was hooked. I wrote another proposal for Black Lace, which was quickly rejected (the editor complained that the heroine was too timid, not sufficiently “kick-ass”). I finished the book anyway, and sold it to someone else. I found that sharing my erotic visions in writing was intoxicating – indeed, addictive.

I’m still doing it.

Next year will mark the twenty-five years since the first edition of Raw Silk. In fact, I’ll be reclaiming my rights from its current publisher, and plan to have a grand anniversary celebration. I don’t think I’d ever have enjoyed this long and satisfying (if not exactly remunerative!) career as an erotic author if I hadn’t picked up that Black Lace book in Istanbul.

I’m so grateful that I did.