Writing a porn novel? It helps to have the right muse

By Jonathan Asche Jonathan Asche is a novelist and guest writer for our blog post today. Something a bit different for our readers. You don’t have to have a muse to write, but it helps, especially if you’re writing porn. My initial inspiration for writing my latest novel, Dyre, wasn’t a man but a movie, the 1969 thriller Paranoia, starring Carroll Baker.  In this Umberto Lenzi-directed film, Baker plays a wealthy widow who is seduced by a young drifter (Lou Castel). Before she knows it he’s taken over her life, controlling her with drugged drinks, compromising photos and fear.  She suspects her life’s in danger, but her cries for help are dismissed as—you guessed it—paranoia.  But, as they say, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t someone isn’t out to get you. This has long been one of my favorite movies, a delirious mix of tawdry glamour, sexual debauchery and unapologetic sleaze—all ingredients that would make it ideal for a gay porn retelling. Change the wealthy widow to a rich widower, make the young drifter younger and hotter (and hung, naturally), and the book would practically write itself. That’s what I thought until I started writing it. When I first started working on the novel, my muse was porn star Gabriel Clark (a.k.a. Gabriel Lenfant), who I envisioned as the young drifter character. I recall that I’d even toyed with naming the character Gabriel at one point. Yet as inspiring as Gabriel was (and his videos were inspiring the fuck out of me at this point in time, especially this one), the novel just wasn’t coming together. The problem, I realized, was I had made the young drifter character—the Gabriel character, as it were—too much of a romantic figure rather than an homme fatale. He needed to be the seducer, not the seduced. He needed to be a little rough around the edges, projecting his sexuality a little more nakedly.  So I scrapped my first attempt and re-conceived the character.  I also adopted a new muse:  Quinn C.  Jaxon. Quinn had caught my attention before. All it took was one look. Quinn is a dancer, but he’s likely better known as a model, and it’s easy to see why. The face alone is enough to make people stop in their tracks—those green eyes, the smile that’s as mischievous as it is friendly—but Quinn is blessed with more than a great face. Much, much more, as the accompanying photos prove. Writing the book went a lot more smoothly the second time. Readers of the resulting novel might notice the description of the title character bears a striking resemblance to a certain dancer/model, though Quinn, who identifies as straight, probably wouldn’t do half the things Dyre does in the book (though there are rumors to the contrary). Although Quinn’s image had factored heavily in the writing of Dyre, I didn’t initially consider it on the book cover, my reasoning being that his photos would be outside the production budget. But if Quinn C.  Jaxon was unattainable, Kurt Madison, the name he used when he was was strokin’ it for RandyBlue.com, was very reasonable. He couldn’t be shown in all his glory on the book cover, but luckily the Internet isn’t as restrictive as book retailers. I hope you find him just as inspiring as I do.

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