but my boss says i have to keep one so i get it.

my name is regina watts and i write dirty dirty fiction. i also write something called “transgressive fiction” which is a thing where when you tell people that’s what you write they immediately regret asking you what kind of fiction you write. then they say, “what’s that” and you explain “well a classic example is lolita by nabokov” and still only about 1/3 of people will understand well enough to politely change the subject. to be honest a better example (imo) is say the room by selby jr. orrrr atrocity exhibition by ballard. i was thinking about those two books a lot while writing industrial divinity, which painted blind publishing is releasing in q3/q4 of this year. it’s possible it would be safer if i said something like fight club but that’s the kind of story like the matrix where it’s just a big old red flag if somebody likes it or references it too much these days. i don’t know why it has to be that way. i like fight club and the matrix a lot but i’m embarrassed to admit it in public.

anyway, i wrote the first draft of another book last year that worked out to being almost 400,000 words long and i said holy shit, that’s a lot of words. so i edited it down and got it down very nicely and was just starting to hit a groove in the long drawn-out process of cutting out some of the more hardcore scenes of the book in order to market it as transgressive fiction instead of, you know, smut. this was oh uh maybe february of 2020 and if u are a human being alive on the planet i don’t need to tell you that um well a lot of plans got interrupted for a lot of people? and my favorite paul simon song has been ruined forever, but whatever. people are literally dying and that’s way worse than never being able to listen to “julio down by the schoolyard” without thinking it was some kind of weird psychedelic prophecy about the coronavirus and shutting down schools.

so long story short i haven’t left my house in almost three months except to take walks and two times to go downtown on brief errands and in that time i wrote another novel, industrial divinity, because painted blind publishing was expecting something from me but the in-progress, previously 400,000 word book now seems also very prescient and seems to be in need of application to the current circumstances if-you-see-what-i-am-saying. this is all a bunch of boring writer talk for “i bent over and jammed my fingers down my throat until i vomited up an ~85,000 word novel to exchange for the ~400,000 word one.” so i presented this to painted blind publishing and they were like “boy regina this is actually really interesting, let’s talk about publishing it.”

and i said they could as long as they gave me more time on the mammoth i’m still in the middle of skinning and butchering, and they did, but after we talked for a while, well–the thing with this big long book is that i wrote it specifically in the style of the marquis de sade but you know it’s like, that’s sort of hard to market because it’s these ridiculous swaths of long farty philosophy and then big gratuitous sex scenes, usually involving, uh, well, unconsenting parties or underage people or other stuff that is today you know um a little P R O B L E M A T I Q U E. but that’s why it’s transgressive fiction u kno? transgressive fiction usually contains inherently erotic elements that challenge your moral disposition, sexuality, self, etc. based on my research (not THAT kind of “research” you fucking perv real research like reading biographies) i don’t think the marquis was morally identifying with his hot evil characters until later in his life. he fully understood the trope of punishing characters who fail to socially conform, and that’s why justine‘s eponymous lil protagonist gets oh sorry spoiler alert struck by a lightning bolt while inside her sister’s house, which is absolutely one of the most hilarious endings of all time. justine fails to conform to the evil morality expected of her in her evil world and so god punishes her for it in the context of that evil world. the marquis created a fictional universe, like the dc or marvel or twilight universe, where the defining factor isn’t superheroes or vampires but libertines almost superhuman in their capacity to give and receive sexual violence and do it without consequence.

and that, my friend, is some shit i admire. some trailblazing work there, inspiring. that’s really the kind of work i’m doing here with my in-progress book familiarity but simultaneously why i’m hesitant to release it, because i mean who doesn’t consider the divine marquis erotica? do i really want to be associated with transgressive erotic fiction?

so i made a penname, my magickal motto, soror vitam a.p.m., soror vitam for short. i got really into magick while writing familiarity and also specifically into sex magick. and after finishing industrial divinity, which is effectively about a sex worker, i somehow got to thinking, ‘am i a hypocrite?’ because, like, i was so hung up on the erotic aspects of my work being somehow disgraceful to me, but i didn’t have a problem writing transgressive fiction that wasn’t erotic. no problem with things like drugs or murder. what was my problem with sex? what was my problem with the most natural way to expand consciousness and develop intimacy between two people and in heterosexual couples literally create life?

the problem is that i’ve been writing erotica for years and years and years and yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars and maybe two people know. and because of that it’s been like this side hobby for a long long time and i did do a super brief ghostwriting thing which is where i learned the discipline to write so much. but it was like damn if i can write so much i should just write for myself, so i did. and then all this virus shit happened and i finished industrial divinity and i had be my bully which i’ve been sitting on for years. for about that same length of time i’ve been passively studying posts in the /r/eroticauthors subreddit and after finally looking at a few of the data collections on there it was just like…oh!!!! kindle unlimited is like netflix, but for books! that’s why all these shorts do so well on there: it’s like bingereading. holy shit, i get it, duh.

so that’s the story of how painted blind publishing founded painted blue publishing and how i also developed this penname, regina watts (o sorry u thought this was my real name??? lol hope not) to sell my erotica. what i wasn’t expecting was to have such a strong immediate response. there have been almost 5000 pages read of the first four episodes of be my bully in less than a month. it’s incredible. back when i was really young (just a mere griswald girl myself) i got my start publishing short stories on deviantart and now in retrospect it’s like damn girl you coulda got that MONEY. but it’s okay because now i’m getting that money and it’s so nice, dude, honestly. thank you so much for reading this blog and learning a little more about me on the way. i promise future ones won’t be so long and stupid but like i said the boss told me i had to so here you go.

BUY BE MY BULLY EPISODES 1-4 ON AMAZON OR READ THEM FOR FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED BECAUSE YOU’RE CHEAP but it’s ok i still love you thank you for reading xoxoxo