There are certain sexual relationships that are taboo. They are even taboo to those who read erotica. One of those is sex with tentacles. It’s something people don’t talk about don’t read. It’s more an anime thing than a book thing. Hentai is the proper name for most tentacle sex things, but hentai implies that one of the partners is unwilling.

Last summer, Storm Moon Press put out an open call for lesbian tentacle sex. Typically it’s written in the male/female form and not in the lesbian form. Writing tentacle sex for lesbians was a challenge in and of itself. I had never written tentacle sex, but the challenge seemed intriguing enough that I wanted to try it.

So I did.

I wanted to make my tentacle sex different though. I wanted it to be 100% consensual, because I’m huge into consensual sex, and I wanted it to be sensual and not wham bam thank you ma’am. Tentacles, or anything weird or abnormal, isn’t accepted as real erotica.

It’s quite interesting. And I’m noticing this trend with sales of my tentacle sex story. There are hardly any. I think we’ve maybe sold fifteen copies of it and had a few more lend it on KU. It’s a bit crazy. People are so hungry for erotica, for things that are “abnormal” with BDSM, but once it crosses the line from human to human they are no longer interested in it and it becomes something scary.

It becomes something they don’t want to touch with a ninety million foot pole. It’s crazy! Who knew writing tentacle erotica was such a bad thing?

What I think part of the issue is that society doesn’t allow people, and women in particular, to explore their sexuality in any way possible. What’s really all that different between a tentacles and a dildo? Not all that much. But people aren’t allowed to like what’s not normal in a sexual relationship, things need to be kept vanilla.

I read a lot and even the BDSM I read is pretty vanilla. It’s the same story retold by different authors over and over again. Female sub, male Dom, female has some history of sexual assault with her previous Dom and the current Dom is the only one who can fix it through magical sex that makes the sub realize just how awesome sex is and how wrong she had been previously because of her sexual assault.

Aside from me sitting there going, What the Fuck is this Crap! And This author CLEARLY has never known anyone deeply who has experienced sexual assault, it’s a story that has become vanilla. It’s the stereotype, it’s the form, it’s really the only way many people will read BDSM stories. BDSM is no longer the outlier, well, this form of BDSM. I do still think real BDSM stories are still in the outlier because hardly anyone writes them properly.

Tentacles and sex is very much what BDSM used to be, although I doubt it’ll ever make a breakthrough like BDSM did. Until then, I might write it on the side. It really was a fun challenge to take on. And if you’re interested in reading a sensual tentacles and sex story with virgins, coming out, and societal commentary, check out my short story Loneliness Ebbs Deep.