Fourplay Fetish Feature: An Interview with Jim Loftin (aka Jim Lyon)

♥ Thank you so much for taking the time to join us, Jim - we are so very delighted to have you! For those readers who have yet to encounter your own work, can you give us a brief introduction?

I write under the pen name of Jim Lyon, a name I borrowed from my maternal great-great grandfather. Primarily my books are in the femdom genre, but often the dynamic is F/f rather than F/m and occasionally I include some gender-bending or fluid sexuality to spice things up. I’m not particularly keen on many of the tropes and stereotypes often associated with femdom literature. You won’t find cruel and arrogant mistresses mentally and physically abusing groveling submissives in my stories, just relatively well-balanced people with a penchant for kink all over the spectrum.

So far I have written four novellas―Femdom Kismet, The Accidental Domme, Virtual Reality Mistress, and Mistress Stephanie’s Strays: A Polyamorous Story of Domination and Submission―and three anthologies, Ten Shades of Submission, Femdom Alchemy, and Dommes, all of which are available in ebook and audiobook editions.
 
♥ Along the same lines, what can you tell us about Wordwooze Publishing?

Wordwooze Publishing would be best described as a boutique publisher that specializes in well-written erotica in both ebook and audiobook formats. Wordwooze is a made-up word lifted from Fritz Leiber’s science fiction comedy The Silver Eggheads―Wordwooze was a brand of computer-generated fiction that lulled readers into a woozy euphoria.

It started out simply as the publisher of the audiobook editions of my own books, and then the publisher of my ebooks as well. By that time it was starting to look and feel like a real publishing company, so I decided to start looking for other authors who wanted a simpatico publisher that would publish their books in both ebook and audiobook formats. I’d like to claim that I was an astute well-connected entrepreneur, but that wasn’t how it went. I just got lucky and was in the right place at the right time.

A couple of authors whose work I was familiar with, and liked, submitted manuscripts to me, which I subsequently published. Slowly I started growing a stable of authors and a portfolio of fairly decent erotic books in a variety of genres. One day I was approached by M. Christian, a prolific erotica author who writes in a staggering number of genres, with a proposal that would prove to significantly change my vision for Wordwooze. He asked me if I’d be willing to publish just the audiobook editions for two of his books, Finger’s Breadth: A Gay Thriller and Skin Effect: More Science Fiction Erotica.

I agreed to his request and later published several of his other books in both formats. Drawing upon this experience, several months later I had an epiphany of sorts when I realized that audiobooks shouldn’t just be part of our publishing package, but a standalone option. Since then business has been booming. Now my author pool includes a growing number of Indie authors.  

♥ If it’s not too personal of a question, where does lifestyle experience end and vicarious fantasy begin within your fiction?

When I was much younger I was active in the BDSM scene to an extent. To be totally honest, I’d say I was more of a dilettante than a lifestyler. So I have some real-world experience and familiarity with the kinks that I write about; perhaps not as in-depth as readers might assume when they are immersed in my wicked fantasies, however.

♥ On that note, is there a personal fetish or a fantasy that you have yet to explore in your fiction? Along the same lines, is there one you are surprised none of the Wordwooze authors have yet to explore?

Although I haven’t added anything to it in quite a while, I have a folder on my computer full of ideas for possible stories or books. Perhaps the one most likely to see the light of day involves a woman who discovers both her Sapphic and dominant affinities while dabbling in a LUG (lesbian until graduation) lifestyle during college. That’s the basic hook; the story has yet to be fleshed out. Aspiring kinky writers out there are welcome to borrow the concept since there is no guarantee I’ll ever do anything with it.

As for being surprised about certain kinks that haven’t been tackled by the authors I have published, collectively they have such a lengthy and wide-ranging publishing history that I couldn’t possibly know every fetish that has been addressed by them in some way.
  
♥ You have been published for a number of years now, with several stories available. What was it that prompted you to begin writing?

I have a degree in Journalism, so writing has clearly been an interest for a long time. I even wrote a short play, and got the opportunity to direct a production of it, while in college. During the early days of the Internet a lot of amateur-written erotica websites with various fetish focuses popped up and I started frequenting some of them. Typically the stories were not very well written, so it wasn’t long before I realized that with my writing experience I could probably do a better job. I began writing kinky stories and posting them on a variety of websites, and eventually landed a part-time job as the story editor for one of the naughtier websites around at the time, Ownme.com.

Some years later, when ebook erotica started to take off, I wrote my first femdom book and began shopping it around. On a Thursday I sent my manuscript for Uncharted Territory (now Femdom Kismet) to several publishers and by the following Tuesday I received an offer to publish it. I was dumbfounded and ecstatic. My professional erotica career was launched with surprising ease and I’ve never looked back.

♥ With reader reviews so crucial to generating exposure, what are some of the weirdest or most wonderful reactions you’ve had from readers of your own work?

A reviewer of my first book, who generally liked it and gave it a high rating, went off on a rant about my use of words such as prescient, cacophony, amorphous, germane and outré, essentially suggesting that I should dumb-down my word choice because it was erotica. Upon his second reading of the book (presumably he liked it if he read it twice) the offending words didn’t bother him as much, he admitted.  

♥ With so many authors relying on self-publishing, what attracted you to set up Wordwooze Publishing, and how have you gone about building such an impressive array of authors?

I initially started Wordwooze Publishing simply to publish my own work, first the audiobook editions of my then-published books, and followed by my subsequent self-published ebooks. As it started to grow and take on the look and feel of a traditional publishing company, it really wasn’t much of a leap to start thinking about taking on the work of other authors. Since by then I was enamored of having all my books available in both ebook and audiobook formats, I figured that other authors would be as well, so I decided to make that the differentiating feature of my publishing venture. Indeed, virtually every author who has come on board with Wordwooze was lured in part by the opportunity to have their work published as an audiobook.

As I mentioned earlier, to a large extent I was initially just lucky that a few good authors submitted their work to me. I suppose I can take credit for having high standards and rejecting most of the submissions that I received. It is almost comical how bad some of the manuscripts submitted to me were, but others were well-written enough just not particularly original or erotic.

Without question, the turning point in Wordwooze Publishing’s growth was the decision to offer author’s audiobook-only contracts for their books. This opened up a vast pool of excellent self-published authors who love the idea of having an audiobook edition but for one reason or another don’t feel up to audiobook self-publishing. I have yet to meet an author that doesn’t like the idea of hearing their writing brought to life by a good narrator. So now, instead of waiting for submissions or referrals, I can discretely contact authors whose work I am familiar with, and like, and invite them to send books for me to consider the feasibility of making into an audiobook.

♥ Finally, looking towards a brighter, more fantastic 2017, what can readers look forward to seeing from Wordwooze next?

For the immediate future we are mostly focused on publishing audio editions of books available in either print or ebook formats. Currently the twenty books listed below are in production and should be released sometime in January or February. Our target is to secure the audiobook rights to another fifty books during 2017 and bring as many of them as possible to market by the end of the year. We will also continue to publish ebook/audiobook combinations as opportunities present themselves. The only combo in the pipeline at the moment is Shawna Hunter’s Master May I?, the Kindle edition of which should be on sale by the time this interview is posted. There is also a possibility that we may publish a Louis L’Amour novel and other books of similar vintage in the same or related genres for another publisher. That is only in the talking stage right now, so whether it will materialize is not knowable.

Presumably some Indie authors will be reading this interview, so I encourage them to drop by http://www.wordwooze.com/ to learn what we can offer them, and if they like what they see, contact me through the site to ask questions or submit manuscripts for consideration.

AUDIOBOOKS COMING SOON FROM WORDWOOZE PUBLISHING!

• Written by Billierosie―Dommes & Submissives: A Femdom Anthology; Fetish Transcendence; Memoirs of a Sex Slave: The Confessions of a Submissive Woman; and Enslaving Eli.
• Written by Sakinaa Davies―Tinder Surprise: Pegging and Begging
• Written by Shaun Putaine―Trust Undiminished: Undiminished Book 2
• Written by Devi Ansevi―Their Wish List: Soulmates Book 1; Fate's Arrow: Soulmates Book 2; Schooled to Obey (Lily's Training Book 1).
• Edited by Devi Ansevi―Lust by the Sea: A Paranormal Erotic Anthology; Lust in Tooth and Claw: A Paranormal Erotic Anthology; and Lust on the Wing: A Paranormal Erotic Anthology.
• Written by M. Christian―Dirty Words: Provocative Gay Erotica; Filthy Boys: Male-Male Erotica.
• Written by Jim Lyon―Dommes: Femdom Erotica
• Written by Shawna Hunter―Beauty and the Bitch: A BDSM Lesbian Romance; Master May I?; Their Wild Little Girl; Their Meddling Aunt: Sequel to Their Wild Little Girl.
• Written by Jane Brooke―The Widow's Secret: Kismet in Wyoming (A Contemporary Romance).)

♥ That's quite a selection to kick off the year! Thanks again for taking the time to join us.