Ann Douglas

interviewed by Antheros

Ann Douglas (ann_douglas a-t hotmail d-o-t com) is one of the veteran erotica writers of the usenet, and, while most have retired, she's still active, writing her signature-style erotic short stories and fan fiction. In this interview she talks about her life as an online writer.

Antheros: It seems that you were writing before you started posting to the Usenet—at least gauging from your earliest posts in Google's archive, dated June 1994. First of all, what led you to writing in the first place? Did you started to write for yourself, or did you already have posting to the internet in mind? How did you start to post your stories? Was your first story already posted to alt.sex.stories or did you begin some place else?

Ann Douglas: In the period between high school and my first attempt at a story, some 20 years, I hardly wrote anything more complicated than a letter to a friend. In the late 80’s we got our first computer, a Commodore 64 and had our first online experience with Q-Link (the Commodore based precursor to AOL) and local BBS’s. In was on the latter that I first discovered online erotica. Although I must say, the majority of adult stories that I found were gay in nature, but I found I loved a good story regardless of the genders involved. Still then, even more than today, most gay erotica was little more than the stroke variety. Just enough to provide a visual long enough for you know what? One series that I do remember, and still have copies of, was a set of gay Robin the Boy Wonder stories that would prove a major inspiration later on. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Hidden among the small mountains of gay material were a few (very few) lesbian stories and, if you were lucky, some lesbian pics as well. Remember, however that these were the dark days of 300 and then later 1200 baud dial up modems. It was on one of those BBS’s that I struck up a email friendship with a woman whose handle I now forget. Somehow in our correspondence we decided to add to those slim pickings by trying to write a story for each other. So I sat down and wrote my very first erotic story for an audience of one. It was the first version of what would later be the Ann Douglas story, “Prom Date” — later rewritten once more as “Prom Night”.

A second story later followed which unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) has been lost in time. It was a little darker tale of a spoiled rich girl caught speeding in her brother’s car, which she had borrowed without getting permission and had been reported stolen. She spends the night in jail convinced that her family’s money isn’t going to get her out of this one. Faced with the prospect of being the cell-bitch of a bull dyke or giving it up to the lesbian Captain of the guards, she chooses the latter. The morning comes with her release because if she really stopped to think about it, her family was never going to let her go to jail. When I later began to write, I decided not to try and reconstruct this story.

I’m convinced that there was a third story but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was about. All of these stories, appeared under the handle AnnD.

Jump ahead a few years and we trade in our Commodore for a real PC and a friend introduces me to the Internet. We were using Pipeline.com back then and I really thought it was just another BBS. The idea that the Net was world-wide totally escaped me. It didn’t take long to discover alt.sex.stories and I thrilled by the amount of MF and FF stories I found there.

A: This was back when the web was just starting, since you started posting in... When, was it really in 1994?

A.D.: I started in May 27th, 1994.

After a while, I felt a little guilty about just taking so I figured I’d try and reconstruct my earlier stories and post them as a sort of payback. What that would turn into, or that it would last over twelve years was something I never could have imagined.

Totally ignorant of PC’s at the time, I actually posted my first story under my friend’s real name, not realizing that would show in the newsgroup. After that, at least until I learned to do it on my own, I had him post my stories to prevent further mishaps. As in my BBS Days, these went out, at least at first, as AnnD stories.

A: Why did you pick erotica as your genre? Was it a natural choice, or were you influenced by being a reader of alt.sex.stories?

A.D.: Well, I’ve always liked reading erotica and as the saying goes, “write what you know.” I’ll be the first to admit that, despite being the product of a good Catholic school education, I seemed to have went from precocious to promiscuous rather easily. Still, my contemporaries and I were of the last generation to have come of age sexually without the specter of AIDS and we were riding the last waves of the sexual revolution. I’ve been bisexual since I was sixteen and had my first encounter with an older woman around that time. I’m not going to go into a lot of details about that except to say that if there was an aggressor in the incident it was me, not her.

As for writing, I’ve always been a good listener and throughout my life I’ve been constantly amazed at the things other people have shared with me. The result being a prolific amount of story ideas and personalities to populate them. One thing though, I never write about real people, famous or otherwise. That doesn’t mean, of course that I can’t create a fictitious version of a person.

It’s also important to note that none of my stories should be taken as autobiographical. They are, a mixture of imagination and various life experiences, both mine and people that I’ve know. In fact, a number of stories over the years have been the results of being sent the fantasies or what might have been of people I’ve never met. They just inspired me and stories were born.

A: Why do you actually write these days—is it for the feedback, for fun, a catharsis?

A.D.: It’s certainly not for the feedback. (grin). Contrary to what many people might think, I actually get very little response to my stories. Most of it comes from a small group of steady fans and then the occasional note from people here and there. The quality of many of these notes occasionally makes up for the quantity, going far beyond the simple “your story made me hard” that I sometimes get. I know there is a question about user comments later on so I’ll leave anything else about this till then.

Which leaves us with catharsis and fun. I don’t think I’d call it catharsis per se, but the ability to lose oneself in a world of your creation goes a long way towards taking your mind off other things. It’s better than getting wasted when life throws you a curve and a hell of a lot cheaper than therapy.

So that leaves us with fun, which it certainly is. Creating characters and stories for them to live is indeed a blast. Especially when you can base some of those people on real people and make their lives just a little different than they were in reality. I call a lot of these stories “what might have beens” where I take a real life situation, and then just give it a different ending. My husband is a prime source of many of the older woman / younger man stories as he has a particular attraction to that genre.

A final reason that I like to write, and have done it for so long is perhaps the main reason I keep coming back to it. Through my stories, and the responses they invoke, I’ve gotten to meet (at least online) so many interesting people and learn about their lives. Over the years I’ve corresponded with people of all genders, ages and nationalities and have learned so much about their lives. That, makes the effort I put into my stories worth it.

A: What was all that with the "greatly exaggerated reports" of your death? The "Ann Douglas passed away" hoaxes?

A.D.: In March of 1995, a notice was posted to the newsgroups under my email address stating that I had died in an automobile crash the day before. The poster identified himself as my husband and used my real name in the report to give it authenticity. The reality of it all was that the whole thing was a rather poor joke perpetrated by an extended family member who had access to my computer, passwords and for reasons I’m not going to dredge up again had a grudge against me at the time.

None of which I was aware of until the next day when I logged on and found well over a thousand letters of condolences addressed to my husband. The hoax was explained easily enough, but the damage was done. Specifically the use of my real name. I was also taken back by the response of so many people as the additional messages that came over the next few days citing relief that it had all been a hoax more than outnumbered the condolences. I had no idea, based in large part on the tepid amount of replies I usually got to each story, that so many people were actually reading them.

The whole thing continued to spiral out of control for a while, with mention actually being made of it in a real world Internet magazine a few months later. Eventually all the hoopla died down and things got back to normal. Although I should mention that a year later, some other Net-dweller with an even more poorly defined sense of humor resurrected the story, but thankfully that time people recognized it for what it was.

A: How important has anonymity been to you? You seem to have started posting through an anonymous remailer, but later your real name was brought up in the hoax, bringing even a comment from deirdre.

A.D.: Anonymity is indeed important and I’ve always tried to keep at least one wall of separation between Ann Douglas and my real life. As you can imagine from the “Ann Is Dead” hoax, that hasn’t always been possible. In the beginning, I posted under the name Ann D, a pen name that in retrospect might have been a mistake since I received, and continued to receive over the years, letters asking if I was really a guy in disguise. Ann D evidently was taken to be Andy by many readers. That and the fact that a number of them expressed doubt that a woman would really write erotica.

Also at this time, I had tried to increase the wall of separation by using the anon.penet.fi remailer. But seeing a number instead of even just Ann D left me cold for some reason. I guess ego finally kicked in and I wanted to see my name, or at least some version of it, on my own stories. So Ann Douglas was born. Ann is my middle name by the way and Douglas my maiden one.

But to get back to the original question. Yes, anonymity is important to me but it seems not enough for me to fade to black after my real name got blasted all over the Net. Then again, it’s not like I’m really famous or anything like that. In the ten years since that happened, not one person has come up to me and said “it’s you!” Then again, the old rule that used to apply when you where somewhere you weren’t suppose to me and ran into someone you knew might just be coming into play. “I didn’t see you and you certainly didn’t see me.”

A: You've been writing for a long time. Have you felt your style change? How do you think your prose evolved?

A.D.: I have a style? Seriously, yes I have seen the way that I write change over the years. When I made the decision to try and write, I really wasn’t certain how to go about it. It didn’t take me long to learn that I preferred to write from the perspective of the characters rather then first person (even if they were fictional) accounts. Subject matter was something that took a lot of thought in the beginning too. After the first two short stories, I began to take a look at all the different topics people wrote about and used to try and do at least one story in each of them. I remember finding that incest, especially mother and son, seemed to be highly popular. Now that was hardly my thing, but a challenge is a challenge and I read a lot of them trying to see what I liked and disliked about them, at least story-wise. What headed the dislike column was the fact that there seemed little or no motivation for what happened between the characters other than they both were horny and the other was available. In approaching my mother/son tale, I tried to find a reason for them to act like they did beyond that. I’m not sure if I really succeeded, but it turned out to be one of my most popular stories.

If I had to pick the first story that I was really proud of, it would be “Foreign Affair.” It was the first story that I actually plotted out beforehand, rather than just sitting down with a general idea and see where it went. Not that that doesn’t work out well at time too. The whole premise of “Foreign Affair” was built around the two dozen or so phrases I copied from James Clavell’s Shogun that I understood. It was in doing that that I finally realized how much fun creating a story could be.

Back in the beginning, most stories were written in a day or two. Nowadays, they take a month or so on average. The longest time between beginning and end was two years for the story “Roommates.”

Generally, a story begins with either a character, or a storyline. Sometimes with both. I’m always watching people and when I see or meet someone that inspires me, I sometimes job down a few lines about them and save it for future reference. Then, later on, I may have an idea for a storyline and will look into that file and see someone there that might just fit the story.

For example, the two girlfriends in “Joy and Happiness”; were based on two young women who sat across from me on the subway two years before I wrote the story. When I decided to do a threesome story using a character I had introduced ten years before, the two girls from the train seemed a perfect match.

It’s always fun to watch other people around you and even more so to imagine them in a compromising position. I can’t walk past two girlfriends of almost any age without picturing them, at least for the moment, in bed together. Or that interesting older woman on line at the DMV, what would she think if she knew I was picturing her topless and on her knees, giving oral gratification to a teenager.

A: You announced your retirement and came back, more than once. What was behind those decisions, both of leaving and returning? Is writing inherent to you, something that you can't stop doing?

A.D.: There have come a number of times in the last twelve years that I’ve felt that I was just drained and had nothing new to write. Also, based on continuing lukewarm response that my dwindling free time could be best spent on other pursuits. Then I would get a letter from someone that really touches me, or I’d get a story idea that I just couldn’t ignore. Or maybe at times I just feel I need the distraction that creating a new story entails. For whatever the reason each time, retirement doesn’t seem to stick.

A: You've been through most of the netquakes; the earlier attempts of net censorship in the mid-90's, anon.penet going away, the demise of dejanews, etc. Did any of them affect you?

IA.D.: ’ve already addressed anon and dejanews really wasn’t something that I used. The Communications Decency Act in 1995 did make me take a big step back and re-evaluate my hobby. At the time, at least until the smoke cleared, I took the cowards way out and stopped posting to the newsgroups. This was before I had a web page. What I did instead was create a private mailing list for my stories with the idea that a member outside the USA could repost it in the groups if they liked. When the act was struck down, I went back to the newsgroups.

More than the governments attempts to regulate what we could read or post, I found our own attempts to do so even more offensive. I’m speaking of the creation of alt.sex.stories.hetero the year before. It was a blatant attempt, in my opinion, by some people to exclude gay stories from the newsgroup under the banner of making it for male/female stories only. Of course the lesbian stories could stay I was told.

I was quite adamant at the time that I would never post to such a group. There are many stories I’ve seen posted over the years that are not to my taste. A few would even turn my stomach. But the simple solution was — don’t read them. That’s what kill files were for.

A: What authors and stories influenced you the most, and why? Both printed and online stories.

A.D.: I’m going to skip this one, I’ve tried it three times now and just can’t put it into words.

A: What do you look for when you are reading a story?

A.D.: Well subject matter is the first thing that grabs my attention. You generally read what you also write so Lesbian fiction and Older Woman stories usually top the list. Fan fiction about characters I recognize usually garners a look and then it’s anything that looks interesting. I have over 53,000 stories in my personal archive so it’s rare not to be able to find something to read.

As to what I look for in a story, well it’s pretty much what I try to put in my own. Believable characters, both original or established, and a storyline that leaves you saying, “yeah, that could’ve happened.”

As to writing styles, again I prefer stories from a character’s perspective to first person narratives. But as with all things, there are always exceptions to that rule.

In the end, it’s the storyline that interests me the most rather than the sex scenes. After all, no matter how creatively you word it, there’s only so many ways “A” can go into “B.” It’s how the characters get to that point that I enjoy the most.

A: What do you seek when you are writing a story? What makes you smile to yourself and think, "this time I got it right"?

A.D.: When the characters become three dimensional and I can say, “yeah, that could happen.” And if I could take out the sex parts and there would still be something there to read.

A: Which stories you wrote you like the best?

A.D.: I gave up on this one when I couldn’t narrow the list down to less than 25 and still felt I was leaving some out.

A: Feedback from readers is always interesting; it can be a priceless compliment that makes your day--or even more--, but it also can border the bizarre. I suppose after all this time writing you must have some interesting stories of feedback you received, would you mind sharing a couple?

A.D.: I really don’t save individual feedback but I can comment on generalities. Yes, a large amount of it does fall into the simple “hot story” notes. On the other end of the spectrum falls well thought out letters, bringing a smile to my face. But if I had to pick two comments that have meant the most to me, it would be when someone says that I had inspired them to write their own story or that they normally don’t read a certain type of story but had read this one because I had written it. And that it had given them something new to think about.

A: The question of autobiography and writing is another one that seems to pop into author's minds easily. Your stories may not be telling experiences that you had, events that happened to you, but how much of your self do they contain? Do you let much of your soul--the feelings you have, the way you see the world--into them? Do you end up letting your soul leak into your characters, making them feel and behave more like you than if they were just "random characters"?

A.D.: I would have to say that a large number of my characters do have bits and pieces of me in them, but I do make a very strong effort to give them diversity and not see the world only through my eyes. In fact, there are time I go out of the way to make one of the act in a manner that I could never see myself doing.

A: You don't seem to have written either flash stories or novels. Have you ever thought about trying either format? I suppose your stories just fall naturally in the average length that they have.

A.D.: Story length is something I have been asked about more than a few times and my answer is that each story seems to find it's own length. I'm not exactly sure what a flash story is so I can't answer that. As far as novels go, I find that I have a limited attention span at times and have been know to lose interest in a story if it goes on too long. Another reason why I don't write longer stories is that sometimes another idea will pop into my head and I can't wait to explore that one as well.

A: I've noticed that writers tend to be, and to become, good observers of life; we start to pay attention to things that most people miss, small gestures, the way people behave. Watching life pass by (and creating on it) becomes a hobby. Have you always been like this-- an observer, building stories out of glimpses of life?

A.D.: Long before I penned my first story, I was an observer of life and the people around me. I have to confess that much of that was centered on women around me and the possibilities that they might have an interest in other women. But even if not, I found early on that watching other people was better than the best soap opera.

A: Do you read much non-erotica? Actually, do you read much these days?

A.D.: I've always read a great deal, having learned to do so at a very early age. Comics were a constant companion in my youth, as well as science fiction. I'd sooner read the novelization of a movie than see the movie first, that way I can form my own images in my mind and then compare them to what wound up on the screen. I've always had a passion for history as well, both my own country's as well as world history. I sometimes think that if I was more disciplined when young I might've made a respectable history teacher. As far as the amount of things I read, I have a natural reading speed of about 100 pages an hour for most text and tend to read at least a book a week. Not counting things from online that I download to my palm pilot and read off that.

A: You seem to follow a certain... it's not a script or a formula, but many of your stories build up in the same way. The characters are introduced, with depth, and the reader starts to understand what they are feeling and the current situation of their lives. There's an event that brings the main characters together and leads to a sexual encounter. I said this isn't a formula because it doesn't give the impression of being done consciously, doesn't give a feeling that stories are repeating each other, but that this is your style. There are exceptions, many, like Creative Interlude. Have you noticed so?

A.D.: There are a lot of times when I sit down to write that I have no idea when I'm going to say of where the story is going to go. I may just have a single scene in mind, be it a beginning, something in the middle or even the end and I just see what happens as I pound away. Of course this sometimes leads me to a dead end and I have to backtrack and start over at times but it makes for some interesting stories. Many times, the dead end, will wind up in another story where it works. Of course there have been a few stories that I have planned out in detail beforehand, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Creative Interlude was indeed just a sudden inspiration which didn't follow any rules. The same held true for Morning Ritual which was just something that I knocked off one morning in an email for a friend and never considered posting as a story until more than a year later.

A:What is the appeal of fan fiction to you? Is it the amusement of picking existing characters and playing with them?

A.D.: I think the appeal of good fan fiction, is to see the characters you love go beyond what might be acceptable in the medium they appear. The sort of story they might get to do if they appeared on unrated cable. Note I said good fan fiction because its been my experience that there's more bad than good, the main reason being that the characters are stretched so far out of the norm as to be almost unrecognizable. After that it becomes late night satire rather than a good erotic story.

(c) Copyright 2006 by Antheros and Ann Douglas. All Rights Reserved