Marley Quinn

One of my readers referred to me an "ethical smut" writer the other day, and I immediately thought, yes! That is what I am. And that got me to thinking, and therefore, writing, as is the case when you're an author.

But it's not a term I've ever heard before, so I thought it deserved to be explained in more detail.

Note: Ironically, the people I hang around with in real-life are mostly quite conservative and would never read the kind of stories I like to write.

Q: Isn't smut just another form of pornography?

Yes and no.

Visual portrayals of sexual acts, which is what most people think of when they use the term "pornography," involves real people debasing on camera themselves for money. Furthermore, the pornography industry is rife with horrifically abusive practices, including drug addiction and predation on powerless people.

Meanwhile, writing a book doesn't involve any real people at all, only my imagination and the imagination of the person reading it. And zero drugs are involved, at least on my end.

That being said, I do believe that there is an intentional effort by big-name mainstream publishers to push literary smut onto children and people too young or immature to be reading it.

These companies are now deliberately publishing extremely graphic books with cartoon covers with pastel colors (such as the novel "Icebreaker") to make them more appealing to young adults and children (as well as to lull parents into thinking they're innocuous).

Furthermore, more and more of the sexual acts (aka "smut") being portrayed in literature is of the darkest kind - involving things like harassment, sexual assault, stalking, violence, emotional manipulation and the like.

There are bestselling books on the shelves of mainstream book stores today which featuric horrific acts of abuse dressed up as harmless fun like middle-aged women seducing underage school boys.

These are the kinds of stories you'll see being pushed on platforms like TikTok and Instagram as well as brick-and-mortar bookstores. I consider all of this highly unethical and therefore, yes, a kind of pornography.

But that's not the kind of stories I write.

Q: Smut shouldn't be in books at all!

I'm sorry, but I disagree. Although I really don't like the term "smut" because it sounds dirty.

Not all sex is dirty. I think we can all agree that a loving and physical intimate relationship between a married man and woman is not dirty or wrong or unethical or sinful. In fact, most religions celebrate those kinds of unions.

But that being said, if I brought a camera into the bedroom and filmed something like that, then yes, that would be wrong. So isn't writing smut pretty much the same thing?

Again, no. The reason I call myself a writer of ethical smut is precisely because my stories explore healthy, wholesome, and often loving physical relationships between people. Admittedly, they don't all involve husbands and wives, but what I write about are usually joyful (if sometimes clumsy or awkward) relationships between people.

That is why a reader called me an author of "ethical smut" and I decided to adopt the moniker, even though I dislike that term smut. The two words seem to be an oxymoron, and yet for me, they're not.

So why write stories about healthy sexual relatiosnhips? Because that's how we learn. Books are a safe way to do all kinds of things, including travel around the world, ride through the air on a dragon, be a secret government agent, solve murders, and yes, explore and understand what physical intimacy can be like.

I'm not saying my stories are right for everyone. But I am saying there is a need for the kinds of stories I write.

I'm not here to push my books on you, and you won't find them in bookstores or on TikTok or even on Amazon. There's not even a link to buy them in this post! But try and understand that some people out there might benefit from imagining what a healthy sexual relationship might look like.

Q: You call yourself ethical, but I saw one of your stories, and the premise was messed up!

I suppose I could exclusively write about two devoutly religious virgins having sex for the first time on their wedding day, but the world's a big place, and not everyone is going to find that situation relatable.

I've written more than 30 stories of the NSFW type (aka containing "smut") across all kinds of genres and situations.

I've written sci-fi stories about lonely men turning to robots for comfort in the vastness of space. I've written Westerns about horse veterinarians falling in love with rugged cowboys. I've written stories about people in long-term relationships becoming disillusioned with their choices. I've written stories about people falling in love with their roommate, only to discover they had a checkered past.

I've also written a lot of stories about teenagers, including those who get a crush on their teacher or their volleyball coach or their next-door neighbor or even their cousin.

And so on and so on. Maybe some of these are right for you and maybe some are not. But they all describe realistic situations that happen in this world.

What separates me from a lot of other "smut" writers is that I always treat these situations in the most ethical way that I can.

Even if it's the tale of a young woman on the street who was forced to turn to prostitution, I never exploit these characters. I never have awful and twisted things happen to them to give the reader a sick thrill or derive some kind of messed-up salacious pleasure at seeing them suffer.

Some of my stories are quite light-hearted indeed. Others involve much more serious situations. But no matter what the situation or set-up or relationship, every single one of my stories has an underlying theme of love, hope, and the kind of values that I think even the most devoutly religious person could agree with, even if the plot is too "spicy" for them to handle.

There might not always be a happy ending to my stories, but the characters WILL be better people by the time it's over.

Q: I still think what you're doing is wrong!

Well, that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. I'm not asking you to read my books, so if they're not right for you, please avoid them. And I definitely agree that they're not suitable for kids, which is why I always mark them specifically as containing ADULT material.

Q: Why do you even bother to write that nasty stuff?

Several reasons.

First, I genuinely feel called to write them. That may not make sense to you, but it is what compels me to sit in front of my keyboard and hammer out these stories every single day.

I didn't grow up reading "smut," and in fact, I probably read maybe one or two stories with an explicit scene in my entire life before I started writing them. I always imagined myself writing fantasy (like Tolkien and Piers Anthony) or maybe cool sci-fi adventures (like Asimov), but somehow, that just wasn't in the cards for me.

I should add here that I really don't make much money writing this stuff. Writing one business article a month generally earns me more than all my smut put together.

Two, there is a genuine problem in the world of dysfunctional relationships between the sexes, whether that's marriage, the lack of raising kids, or just the dating scene. Everywhere I look, I see nothing but unhealthy depictions of male-female relationships.

I see hookup culture, hostility on dates, the promotion of pornography, selling yourself on sites like OnlyFans, and abuse everywhere in mainstream forms of entertainment, whether that's TV shows, movies, or books. Unless you're shielding yourself inside a 100% Christian-approved bubble, the nasty shit is everywhere.

What makes it even worse is that depictions of healthy relationships are getting harder and harder to find.

When's the last time you saw a mainstream depiction of a faithful husband who isn't mocked, two people going on a date and having a good time, or even someone saying that their boyfriend/girlfriend sexually satisfies them? Maybe you've seen it, but I can't find it.

All I see is constant infidelity, rage, paranoia, suspicion, doubt, and every other kind of emotion that is the antithesis of people forming a deep and lasting intimate bond. On top of that, there is a constant stream of violence, stalking, sexual assault, and emotional abuse that makes it seem like its "normal" or at least commonplace.

It's disgusting. Even though I support the artistic freedom to depict abusive relationships, where are the depictions of healthy, loving relationships? They're almost completely gone from mainstream culture. And I don't think that's a coincidence or "responding to what the market wants" or anything else like that.

I believe there is a deliberate push to destroy existing relationships, prevent new ones from forming, and crush all desire and natural instinct for people to procreate (have children) as well as form intimate physical bonds with someone they can trust.

My books, as insignificant as they are, push back against that. There is an ongoing war against what might be termed "traditional values," and I'm fighting to preserve them, as odd as that might seem at first glance.

Lastly, as I've said multiple times, I don't think my books are "dirty." I think they describe messy-but-realistic situations. And they always have an underlying moral theme.

Q: If you're so high and mighty, why do some of your stories contain underage characters and stuff like incest?

First of all, as a real-life human being, I first started engaging in sexual stuff when I was "underage." It was with another "underage" person and there wasn't anything illegal or unethical about it. And I think that's true for the majority of people when it comes to their first experiences.

Teenagers can and do get crushes on the "wrong" kind of people. And so I think those stories need to be told. But again, my stories always have a moral theme, so the end result isn't about someone's soul or life getting crushed but learning an important lesson and coming out as better people by the time it's all over.

Secondly, the term "incest" is a rather loaded term and can mean all kinds of things. If you've actually read my stories, you'll know that I often like to deliberate "push the line" on what seems initially like it's going to be something grossly immoral but, in the end, turns out to be far more ethical than you would've ever guessed.

In other words, I employ the old writer's trick of delivering a twist in my stories. You know, a surprise that you didn't expect?

So yeah, at first glance, a loner 40-year-old guy falling in love with a 15-year-old girl seems like it's going to be a creepy pedophile story at first, but then voila, it turns out to be something else entirely at the end. Seriously, read one of my stories all the way to the end and see if I haven't changed your mind (without changing your values).

Lastly, I just personally resent people telling me what I can and cannot do. If you're telling me it's impossible to write an ETHICAL and MORAL story about a brother falling in love with his own sister, guess what? I'm going to do it. In fact, I already did do it. Don't tell ME what's impossible because f-u, I will show you how it can be done.

In fact, probably half the stories I've written started with me saying to myself, "People think X is an inherently unethical situation, so how can I write a story that ends up proving them wrong?"

Call it a writing challenge, if you like. I literally wrote a story about a teenage girl trying to seduce her teacher and by the end, you'll be cheering on the both of them! Ha! Yeah, it's edgy and probably something you've never, ever seen done before in literature, but that's how I roll.

Lolita, on the other hand, is a sick and disgusting book. Flowers in the Attic, although much better written, is also a book about a morally bankrupt and disgusting family. Anyone can write degrading stuff. It takes a real pro to come up with scenarios that seem awful but then are secretly heartwarming and wholesome at the end.

At least that's how I see it :)

Q: Well, you've made your case. But I still am never going to read your books.

No problem-o!

All I'm asking is that you at least consider that it might be possible for ethical smut to exist, and that someone (namely me) is doing their best to write it.

By the way, I also write PG-13 books without any "smut" in them at all. What can I say? I really like to write!

Do you remember those Choose your Own Adventure books from the 1980s and 1990s? I sure do.

A couple of months ago, I started wondering whether it would be fun to write an NSFW story in that format. That way, instead of the story just unfolding in linear fashion, the reader could have a say in the plot.

Well, I ended up writing that story (link below), and it's called "Fire at the Gym." It's about a young man who isn't succeeding very well at life. He's a janitor at the college where he earlier dropped out. But when a fire breaks out at the gym where he works, he's got a chance to save a lovely lady (or two), but only if he makes the right choices!

Initially, my plan was to make the story in eBook format because you can embed hyperlinks. And I did end up creating that book, which took way too much time, but it ended up being quite messy when using an eReader.

I initially wrote the book in an interactive-friendly scripting language, and it turned out that that "playing" the story that way ended up being much more fun.

Normally, the app lets you do all kinds of cool stuff like keep track of objects the reader has acquired, etc., but I decided to forego all that in lieu of keeping it faithful to the original CYOA format, where the only variables were the choices made by the reader.

If those kinds of books were your thing, or if you enjoy interactive fiction, then please enjoy my story "Fire at the Gym."

PS - There's nothing to download, and the game/story is free to play.

--Marley