TwoLips Reviews Interview

with Ora Le Brocq

I had the pleasure of meeting Ora Le Brocq on my loop last month. Steampunk is a very popular genre right now, and I got a chance to get a more fleshed-out explanation of the many variations of it. During our interview, I found out some juicy tidbits about this wonderful author.

Welcome to TwoLips Reviews Interviews, Ora.

Q. What do you hope every reader gets out of your book?

Ora:  A sense of having read a good rollicking adventure, and an agreeable erotic frisson.

Q. Is there a story behind all your pen names?

Ora:  I thought it unusual enough to stand out, plus it is gender neutral. Or at least I thought it was…

Q. How long have you been a writer?  How much time did it take from writing your first book to having it published?  Did you have any other careers before devoting yourself to being a full-time writer?

Ora:  Unfortunately, I’m not a full time writer, though I wish I were. I do have a part time job and I’m barely keeping the wolf from the door financially. The old cliché of the penniless writer is alive and kicking.  The gap between starting to write my first book and getting it accepted was five years… Five very long years. 

Q. What’s the biggest surprise you’ve discovered about the writing process?

Ora:  How hard it can be when you don’t have an inspiring idea. I know some writers can sit down and simply write to order, but I’m afraid I can’t. I have to have an idea that I really like and can get enthusiastic about, because once I have that the basic plot simply unfolds and away I go. (That makes it sound very simple. It isn’t, as I have to edit ruthlessly over the following months, but at least I have something on the page to edit, rather than a blank sheet and a feeling of failure).

Q. Which book was your favorite (so far) to write and the hardest to write?

Ora:  My favourite is my latest, Steampunk Erotica. I love Victoriana and science fiction, and the book blends both together.

The hardest to write was Alice’s Sexual Adventure in Wonderland, which as you can guess from the title was a take on the classic Wonderland story by Lewis Carroll. It was hard for two reasons. Firstly I was trying to write in a different style as I was echoing the prose of Lewis Carroll himself, which is rather more ‘personal’, even ‘chatty’, when compared to my own style. I presume Carroll was writing as though telling the story to an audience, and of course the book did start that way.

Secondly, I was never very happy with the way Alice’s Sexual Adventure in Wonderland turned out. I just felt that it was somehow lacking… I had lots of ideas that never seemed to work properly; they got lost or diluted, and so I do feel that it was, in some ways, a failure. Hopefully this doesn’t matter to the reader coming in cold to the book, knowing nothing about it, and Alice did get a good review atBookWenches, but I still feel that I failed with it.

Q. Do you do anything special to celebrate when a new book comes out?

Ora:  Not really, the sense of achievement is enough for me.

Q. What interested you in writing a steampunk novel? Can you tell us some about steampunk, as many readers and authors don’t know what it entails?

Ora:  O.K. Take a big breath, because this may take a while. Steampunk is easy to define, yet hard to define. It’s easy because if you look it up online you’ll find lots of it, mostly revolving around the aesthetic elements of Steampunk – and that means (usually) a Victorian ethos (clothes, vehicles, buildings etc) inlaid and blended with advanced technology, (computers are made of brass and polished wood, airships with lasers attached fly across the sky, and women wear long, flowing Victorian dresses and bustles but have cybernetic implants and a socking great laser rifle over their shoulders).

In Steampunk fiction you’ll quite often find strong female characters, mad inventors, and several diabolical masterminds. The problem is, you get these in other genres as well, so what does Steampunk have that makes it uniquely Steampunk?

Funnily enough, there is a debate going on at the moment on what constitutesSteampunk. You can find it online by Googling ‘Steampunk debate’. The debate runs until the end of June, after which the organizers hope to draw their conclusions.

So far, many in-depth discussions have been posted on other Steampunk sites concerning what constitutes the genre, or even if there is a genre at all. Some have said it’s the aesthetic, (modern or advanced technology housed in Victorian designs, corsets, goggles, derring-do etc), and hence you can have Steampunk computers, watches, clothing etc. (Check them out on Google images; you’ll be amazed at the innovation).

One interesting response claimed that Steampunk isn’t a genre because there is no single element to it, unlike, say, science fiction, which has advanced technology or a futuristic setting, or a crime novel that has a mystery at its centre. Another post I read complained that too many works were coming out that claimed to be Steampunkand weren’t – they were taking some of the ‘props’ such as airships with lasers, but they left behind the ‘soul’ of the true Steampunk. But in that case, what is the ‘soul’?

Hopefully, all of the above gives you some idea of how complex a problem a simple attempt at a definition can be. I tried to strip down what Steampunk is to get an answer and didn’t really get anywhere. I asked myself if I could remove the various elements that tend to define Steampunk in order to find out at what point the genre caves in on itself and fails. What is there in the genre that, if you remove it, renders the whole thing meaningless? What exists within Steampunk that cannot be transferred to any other genre? That way, I thought I could say that ‘X’ is integral to the genre, and therein lies the definition.

However, if you remove the airships, the characters will simply use another means of transport to get from A to B: a train, plane, car, flying saucer etc. So advanced transportation doesn’t define Steampunk. If you look at the clothing in Steampunk – corsets, stockings, frockcoats etc – and remove those, you could replace them with modern female fashions (think of goth/alternative/modern styles, such as a leather miniskirt, crop-top etc, and a simple formal suit for men) and again you have no real definition to work with.

Is Steampunk simply the idea of an alternative past giving rise to an alternative present? Not really, as many other works have covered the same ground without being anything like a Steampunk story. Is it the adventure, a thrilling tale of derring-do against an evil mastermind? Again, many other genres have this as a central ingredient, (just think of the James Bond series as an example), so I didn’t think that could be it, either.

So, what is it? I came to the conclusion, and this is purely my own interpretation, that while the aesthetic side of Steampunk is essential, what eventually seals a story as being Steampunk is the marriage of aesthetic design with the concept of rebellion.

By this, I don’t just mean rebellion against the evil mastermind, though of course that is important. It’s also the rebellion against unfair convention, which is probably whySteampunk is so great for strong female characters: they can rebel against the sexual and gender repression of Victorian Britain and thus become, for the modern reader, a strong, identifiable character.

But more than this, Steampunk itself is a rebellion against established history, what we know about a certain time and place. It’s a rebellion against the confines of reality, the confines of peer pressure, the confines of society’s prejudices and concepts. In this way, Steampunk is about the rebellion of the mind against the cultural filters that affect us and which we don’t even know that we have.

Steampunk thus allows us to explore the real and mundane in a very unreal and exotic manner, to see the world afresh, and to realize how we are pinned down and categorized by assumptions so deeply embedded in our thought processes we don’t even realize they are there. From the big rebellion of re-imagining our past, (pro-active women, noble men, insane inventors, death rays, etc.) we can rebel against our present (cultural biases and controls that infect us without our realizing it) and hopefully become better people for it. And I hope that some of that will start to work its way out of Steampunk Erotica II.

Sorry, I seem to have gone on a bit….

Q. No problem.  Have any authors inspired you?  Who do you have on your “keeper” shelf?

Ora:  I think all authors have inspired me in the sense that I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to try and write and emulate the success of the authors on my shelf – by ‘success’ I mean the success of writing a novel and of having it accepted.

As for “keepers” on the shelf… I adore a good whodunit, so Agatha Christie, P. D. James, Colin Dexter, etc. are all there. In humour,  I like P. G. Wodehouse, Tom Sharpe, and Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, so we’re also moving over to science fiction and fantasy. In that vein, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series was astonishing. Am I revealing anything about myself with this list?

Q. What dictates the “heat” level in your writing?   OR   How do you determine the “heat” level in your stories?

Ora:  I try to show sex as a rip-roaring experience where anyone can give in to their passions without fear of the consequences. There’s no guilt, no disease, no bigotry over sexuality, and no unwanted pregnancies. As such, the heat level does tend to be quite high as anything goes… Of course, this does compromise the books somewhat as all my works have, so far, been set in the Victorian era, which looked down on all forms of sexuality as being degraded and sinful, so the realism of each book is diminished. I get around this by imagining a ‘sideways’ Victorian world in which such attitudes did exist, but were easier to circumvent.

Q. Are any of your characters based on real people or events?

Ora:  Quite often the villains in my books are those who wish to impose their own world-view on others, and I’m sure we’ve all met people like that – those who bully, intimidate or use their authority to force others to accept a version of the world that the villain wants. I then just exaggerate this ten-fold and as the enemy emerges.

I think the heroes are all versions of what we’d like to be – brilliant, clever, totally at ease with ourselves etc. My first heroine, Lady Jane, was also inspired partly by the deductive/investigative brilliance of Sherlock Holmes, though of course he, alas, never existed.

Q. Would you ever collaborate with another author?  Who would you choose and why?  OR Who is your “dream” partner?

Ora:  Oscar Wilde, but two things prevent this. Firstly, he’s dead, and secondly I wouldn’t have the intelligence to keep up with his wit and prose.

Q. What do you feel is the biggest misconception about writing erotica?

Ora:  That it’s the same as porn. After that you get labeled and sneered at as someone not worth taking seriously.

Q. Do you ever fear you may be going too far with a particular love scene and if so, how do you rein the scene in?

Ora:  I have been worried when doing a hot scene between the villain and another, as frequently in my work the villains use sex as a way of controlling their victims – and I have been concerned that this can get close to emotional, if not actually physical, coercion. (It was even more complicated in my first book, Ripping Times, when the villain sexes his victim to death!)

However, I trust the reader to know that the villain is not representative of most people, and that they are acting immorally in trying to use sex as a form of weapon, so hopefully the reader will be satisfied when the villain gets there comeuppance in the bedroom.

Q. What qualities does the “perfect” hero have?  Is there such a thing as a “perfect” hero in your opinion?

Ora:  In reality, no, we are all flawed in some way. In fiction, of course, I can have men and women who are truly equal in intelligence, bravery, integrity, etc.

Q. Which character is the most like you?

Ora:  I think a lot of my characters are, in essence, different parts of me writ large, so in a sense none of them are really like me, alas.

Q. Have you ever thought of venturing out in new avenues with your writing?

Ora:  I would like to try a good murder mystery, but they are very hard to do.

Q. Can you give us a peek into projects you are currently working on?

Ora:  A sequel to Steampunk Erotica, in which Mina continues her fight against the alliance. She’s going to be pushed to the limit, not only in her battle with the enemy but also in her love life, as she finally begins to admit to herself that she wants to make a future with… But you’ll have to find that out for yourselves. After that I want to do the third and final book in the series. I also have an idea for a 60’s Avengers style erotic makeover, any maybe something set on a paleontological dig… Down and Dirty Amongst the Fossils? So I may work on one of those before completing theSteampunk trilogy as I’m feeling Steampunked out.

Q. Where can interested readers find you?

Ora:  I’m on Twitter and Myspace, so do come and say hello.

Q. How difficult is it to separate the author from the person?

Ora:  Very easy. Ora is more of a free spirit than I am.

Q. Are you a member of any author groups - RWA, critique groups, etc.?

Ora:  No, I’ve always just plugged away all on my own. That makes me sound very antisocial but I see writing as a very private thing; I don’t like anyone even looking over my shoulder while I work, though that is partly because my first drafts are awful and need extensive work to get them up to an acceptable standard.

Q. When you complete your novels, do you breathe a sigh of relief or do you feel sad the experience has ended?

Ora:  Even though I enjoy the writing, I am always relieved when it’s done. It means I can have a rest.

Q. What do you think is sexier, an implied love scene or the actual scene from the first kiss to the grand finale?

Ora:  If it is a love scene, I think implied is better and should focus more on the emotion. If it’s more of a lust scene, however, then follow it through to the end in intimate and enjoyable detail.

Q. How much does a reviewer’s reaction mean to you as an author?

Ora:  It’s always nice to be praised, and so far Ora has got a few decent reviews in, but my other writing identity has been reviewed twice and slated twice. You just have to hope you strike a chord with the readers, who after all, are the ones who matter.

Q. What other creative outlets do you have besides writing?

Ora:  None, I’m afraid. I can’t paint or sketch, I’m tone deaf, I can’t do anything practical with my hands such as sculpture, and I can’t act. Writing is it, for me.

Q. If you could choose anywhere in the world to set up your desk and write your next book, where would you like to be? What’s so special about this place?

Ora:  I really don’t mind. As long as I have access to the Internet and a good library to do any research, I’m settled.

 ~ TwoLips Pillow Talk ~

Q. What’s better to have….length or width?  OR What’s more important: length or girth?

Ora:  It’s a sad fact of life that if you want length you end up with width, and if you want width you get length… or, more likely, nothing at all!

Q. What makes YOU blush?

Ora:  Finding out someone is attracted to me.

Thank You Ora for spending time with me. This is the second time I’ve gotten to chat with you. I look forward to reading Steampunk Erotica and the sequel.

 ~ Hales for TwoLips Reviews Interviews