Five Minutes With: George Pappas, Author, “Monogamy Sucks” and “Dear Hef”

Pornography and its online formats almost killed the erotica fiction genre. Kindle and the ebook, however, resurrected the craft again, says George Pappas, author of “Monogamy Sucks”, published on Kindle in 2010. The romance genre and its sub-categories which include erotica are now driving the adoption of smartphones and tablets for ebook. A combination of Twitter marketing, blogging and media appearances earned the novelist The Farthest Reach Award 2012 For Book Marketing Excellence. Pappas, a former journalist, also authored “Dear Hef” and a short piece for  “Indulgence: Tales of the Cirque Romani”.

Q: What do you think will become of books?

I think book will always exist in one form or another. We’ve seen recently how quickly avid readers will embrace new technologies to enhance their literary experience. I love print books, but I believe the relative ease that Kindle and other e-reader innovations offer readers to create their own digital book libraries will actually contribute to the increased interest in books in the future.

Q: What is your favourite book? By author/photographer, designer or publisher?

This is a difficult to answer. The two most influential books on me as a writer are Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” and Anais Nin’s “Henry and June”. Miller’s and Nin’s eagerness to explore erotic subjects in a serious way that were considered taboo at the time (1930s and 1940s) has always impressed me. Miller’s frank and brutal honest prose and Nin’s sensual, erotic and insightful diaries and description of her own sexual awakening have impacted my own writing. I say this humbly, but I view my novels “Monogamy Sucks” and “Dear Hef” as my attempts to write modern versions of Miller’s and Nin’s seminal novels.

Q: Erotic fiction, as a market ‘category’, used to be published in short story form. At a push, as a novella. The popularity of pornography and later, video, Internet and other more virtual formats, threatened this genre at one point (“Uproar as erotica publisher Black Lace withdraws from market”, The Guardian, 7 July 2009). Can the ebook, and Twitter as the marketing tool, save it? How does this affect the storytelling?

Erotic fiction is and was never in danger of fading in popularity. Of course, e-books and Amazon Kindle in particular have contributed to erotica’s recent resurgence, but erotic fiction was always very popular even in the past when great books like Miller’s, Nin’s and Vladamir Nabokov’s “Lolita” were banned.

Q: What was the last book you read? Or published!

The last book I read was Armistead Maupin’s novel “Further Tales of the City”.

The last book I had published was my most recent novel entitled “Dear Hef” released in September 2011. It explores the dark side of Internet hook ups meets Hugh Hefner and Playboy cool. It is also funny, sexy and explicit in detailing my character’s online adventures and how he e-mails Hef the details (or what he calls his “Playboy Training”) as a clueless fan.

Q: Finally: Kindle, PDF, HTML – or print?

Actually, I’ll have to say Kindle. Amazon Kindle is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the book industry and will change how books are read and consumed for now and the foreseeable future.

http://monogamysucks.wordpress.com
Amazon: Monogamy Sucks: A Swinger’s Tale
Amazon: Dear Hef: E-male Adventure of a Playboy in Training
Amazon: Indulgence: Tales of the Cirque Romani