Review Tuesday: Rock My Socks Off by Jeremy Edwards

[I'm mining my review archives as I work on promo for my new release. But if you missed this book, do get yourself a copy! ~Lisabet]

ROCK MY SOCKS OFF by Jeremy Edwards

Accent Press, 2010

ISBN 978-1907016011

At times, sex is the mirror of the soul. Sexual congress can be a spiritual experience, an act of rebellion, an expression of need or an existential confrontation with one's own mortality. The erotic genre explores the multi-layered nature of desire―its meaning for the individual and for society. Erotica can be inspiring, enlightening, shocking or educational.

Sometimes, though, it's just plain fun. Jeremy Edwards' novel ROCK MY SOCKS OFF is a prime example.

ROCK MY SOCKS OFF is a breezy tale featuring a brilliant, gorgeous and unrelentingly horny astronomy professor named Normandie Stephens. (“My parents called me Brittany, and when I turned sixteen in a sea of other young Brittanys, I said 'Fuck this' and swapped it for the next French province over.”) If there were a Nobel Prize for lust, Normandie would win hands down. Jacob Hastings is the lucky journalist who catches Normandie's eye at a grad student party and eventually wins her heart (with many and varied clinches along the way). Normandie desperately wants tenure―almost as much as she wants Jacob―and over the course of the book they concoct a half-way accidental scheme that wins her national acclaim, almost destroys her career, and brings them into contact (and I use the term advisedly) with a collection of other equally randy characters. These include Normandie's department head Kate (a savvy and salacious bisexual cougar) , Jacob's photographer Susan (superficially shy but with a deep appreciation of the erotic―at both a professional and personal level) and the dumb but charismatic dance club god Brandon.

There's a lot of sex in the this book. In fact the thin plot has little function other than to provide the sexual superstructure. This is clearly intentional rather than an artistic flaw. I have read other examples of Mr. Edwards work and I know he produce a realistic story with non-trivial conflicts if he has a mind to. ROCK MY SOCKS OFF is a romp with a capital R. Everyone gets off, all the time, in a wide range of environments including in the traditional utility closet, on the department chair's desk, at a roadside rest area and in the audience of a TV game show. All the while, Jacob and Normandie engage in witty repartee, emphasizing the fact that Jacob is as enamored of Normandie's prodigious intelligence as he is of her pert ass.

In some ways, this book reminds me of classic Victorian erotica like The Pearl. It is pure wish fulfillment. No one is ever too tired to fuck. No one ever gets jealous. There's enough cock and pussy for everyone. Normandie is an educated man's dream (well, she'd be my dream if I were an educated man!): articulate, self-confident, funny and horny, with a streak of mischief a mile wide and a huge wardrobe of candy-colored bikini panties that are perpetually damp.

Curiously, my most serious complaint about this book relates to the sex scenes. They are frequent but often very short, a paragraph or two. Not only are they brief but they are also short on detail, emotional or physical. There's little time to build up tension. When a character itches, he or she scratches―or gets a partner to do so.

The characters are revealed almost entirely through their conversation. We rarely if ever get a glimpse into their minds or hearts. Even Jacob, the point of view character for most of the book, rarely shows us more than his whole-hearted appreciation for Normandie.

On the plus side, I liked the fact that sex in this tale means more than just fucking. In Mr. Edward's fictional world, sex is a whole body experience. Oral sex, groping or kissing can be just as satisfying as whole hog penetration. Probably half the sex scenes involve something other than intercourse. Furthermore, the characters enjoy bringing each other off almost as much as they like coming themselves. Not every scene is symmetric and that's just fine with everyone involved.

If Jacob Hastings reflects his creator at all (and I suspect that he does), Mr. Edwards really adores women. Jacob is not in the least submissive, but he's almost awed by Normandie and willing to let her take the lead. He has a healthy attraction to other women as well, which Normandie encourages. She's smart and experienced enough to know that his attitude is rare and precious.

'You're not a little boy who's trying to compete with me, and you're not a big boy who's trying to own me, and you're not a selfish boy who wants me to just shut up and fuck. ...Do you realise how special that makes you?'

Mr. Edwards paints a delightful picture of a relationship grounded on mutual respect and mutual horniness. The result is satisfaction for all, including the reader.

If you're looking for deep insights or revelations, don't buy this book. On the other hand, if you're in search of some good-natured, cheeky entertainment, I recommend it highly.

Breaking Up the Word Monopolies

By Jeremy Edwards (Guest Blogger)

Picture me at my desk, writing my latest erotica piece. I draft, I revise, I revise, I revise, and I revise.

Then, at the point where I feel like I ought to be just about finished, I face up to a reality that I recognized long ago: despite my extensive vocabulary and active dedication to keeping the text fresh, my story is sure to contain overused words. Yes, even though I try to keep an eye on this throughout the writing/revising process, I’ve learned that until I specifically scour the manuscript for words I’ve used once (or thrice) too often within the piece, class must not be dismissed. Because, inevitably, something that was the mot juste on page 2 also ended up being the mot juste on page 4, and perhaps again on page 5. It may indeed be the best word each time; but I have to analyze whether its use on three separate occasions detracts from its impact, or from the gracefulness of the story—and, if so, whether there’s anything I can do about it.

A few years ago, my software-maven wife pointed me toward a free program called Simple Concordance [http://www.textworld.eu/scp/index.html]. And when it’s time to play the “find the overused words” game with a given story, I use this tool to help light the way, by generating a list of all the words in the piece in decreasing frequency order. At the top will be the, which naturally I’ve used countless times (though the program will, in fact, have counted them). At the bottom will be all the words I’ve used only one time apiece.

This list is invaluable. But Simple Concordance can’t do my complex thinking for me. And so I spend hours using the list to direct my attention to words that may call out for replacement on the grounds of overuse. Obviously, it’s not as simple as how many times a word has been used; it depends on what the word is, how it’s used (in terms of meaning and also sentence structure), where it’s used (how close to a previous and/or subsequent appearance), and whether there are any acceptable (if not necessarily perfect) substitutes. And most of these judgments are very subjective.

Ignoring workhorse words like a and she (but not as: I may want to change one of the as’s to a while or a when), I scan the list for significant words with repeat incidences. Sometimes as few as two occurrences will bear investigating in the manuscript (for one thing, to make sure they’re not a mere sentence away from each other, where this isn’t desired). Several instances of a concrete word like office won’t raise my eyebrows if the story is, for example, set in an office (though even here it might be worth considering alternatives like room or executive suite). But I usually feel that a powerful intangible like ambivalence should, ideally, not appear more than once in a short story—unless I’m deliberately drawing attention to the concept’s repetition, as in “She sensed my ambivalence ... Now it was no longer ambivalence, but confusion ... This time she was the ambivalent one.” Speaking of which, the concordance program thinks “ambivalence” and “ambivalent” are two completely different words; but I know better, and I concoct my manual-search strategies so as to account for related forms. Thus I often search on abbreviated letter strings to catch related words: “imag” to catch image, imagine, and imagination.

Yeah, it seems I’m inclined to have my characters imagine a lot. But I’ve been through this routine enough times that I know where to turn when I’ve let my imagination run too wild: my folks can envision or visualize for a change. As that example illustrates, this process has taught me to pay more attention to the second tier of my vocabulary, if you will—the words I don’t turn to often enough when drafting prose because, for each of them, there’s an overexposed synonym that has preferred status in my vernacular. In working to bring second-tier words to the fore, I’m breaking up some of those near monopolies!

Of course, it’s better to give a prima donna another encore than send in a shaky understudy of a word. In erotica, for instance, anatomical terms present a special challenge, as I am by no means the first to observe. I try to remain aware of my anatomical options, but tone and aesthetics will sometimes call for reusing a term rather than sounding a false note with a synonym that doesn’t have the right feel.

I find the overused-word assessment and solution routine quite tedious—to be honest, I dread this chore. But though it’s by far my least favorite part of the story-crafting process, it is by no means a thankless task. With every story, I’m aware of the rewards I’m reaping for my drudgery, as I see the vocabulary becoming richer and the prose enjoying a greater variety of shapes and textures. And then there are those satisfying moments when I realize that instead of substituting one word for another, I can improve a sentence simply by removing the overused word. That dog-eared word wasn’t adding anything to begin with, and the sentence is tighter, and better, without it!

Sometimes the best part of writing is erasing.

[The Simple Concordance screenshot was generated from the final version of my story “Ménage à Denim,” which appears in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 9. In order to fit more of the “interesting” words in the picture, I’ve truncated the top few lines, where you’d find the and friends.]

Click here to expand. Use the "Back" button to return to the blog.

BIO: Jeremy Edwards is the author of the eroto-comedic novel Rock My Socks Off and the forthcoming erotic-story collection Spark My Moment (both published by Xcite Books). His work has appeared in over forty anthologies. Drop in on him unannounced (and thereby catch him in his underwear) at www.jeremyedwardserotica.com .