Good morning, all!
Today we are delighted to be hosting
Mindi Flyth, an author who specializes in dark, erotic stories featuring magical and scientific transformations of arrogant men into sexy, helpless females. When not writing about transformed men, she's usually writing about transformed women, covering such erotic fetishes as bimbofication, breast expansion, and more.
Our very own Samuel has already reviewed
Changed into a Pregnant Latina, and will be offering up his thoughts on
Changed into an Asian Schoolgirl next. In the meantime, please allow the lovely Mindi to introduce you to her world . . .
♥ When did you begin writing and what prompted you to write stores in the genre of erotica and gender transformation?
I think I posted my first erotic stories on the Capst AR (age regression) Shorts site, way back around the turn of the century. I was rather young at the time, but I already had age regression fantasies along with a lot of other weird transformation kinks. I think I started publishing stuff on
Fictionmania not long after that. I didn't know what I was doing in those early stories, and the standards of the genre didn't seem very strict, so frankly I didn't try too hard. As a result, there's a lot of stuff in my early stories that makes me cringe.
I've had transformation fantasies for as long as I can remember. I'm transgender, and many of my fetishes involve gender transformations. I tend to get kind of obsessed with a particular fetish for a while, until it fades and one of my other fetishes takes over. Every now and again I'll discover a brand new fetish, and that's always fun.
• I agree with you when you indicate in your bio that your “erotica features transformations described in such vivid detail that you can almost feel them happening to you.” In your two novelas that I have read so far, this definitely is the case. How did you tap into this ability to describe gender transformation in such vivid detail?
I took a great creative writing class in college, and I remember the instructor telling us to focus on the sensory details of a scene and make the reader feel like they are really there. That stuck with me. When I write a transformation, I'll try to really imagine what it would sound like, what you would really feel happening under your skin, etc. Those details make all the difference for me.
I also have a ton of fun with metaphors and similes. If you say that as Bob's hips became wider they made a sound like a roomful of old men cracking their knuckles, it's a lot more vivid than just saying his his hips went pop.
Sometimes a quick "POOF!" transformation is fun, but generally I like to really draw it out. It's like sex. If something feels that good, why rush it?
♥ The idea of having to start life over in an unfamiliar, frightening, but also strangely thrilling new form is quite titillating to many of us. Can you say a little more about the origin of this fantasy?
Sex fantasies can have a lot in common with horror movies. In both cases, we sometimes take pleasure from things we would never want to happen in real life. We enjoy sexual fantasies about losing our identity and being degraded and helpless, and movies about people being chased around by monsters and serial killers, partly because these ideas frighten us and we want to take away their power.
But transformation fantasies also present the allure of escaping from all the complications and obligations of your life. We spend our lives stuck as the people we are, and the fantasy of being forced to start over is always going to have some appeal. The bimbo fantasy can be especially appealing for intelligent or neurotic people, because it just gets exhausting having your head be full of questions and doubt and jibber-jabber all the time. As a dumb blonde all of that gets switched off and you just get to be pretty, uncomplicated and horny.
♥ Besides your writing, can you tell us a bit about your life to date; what you have done for a living, what are your interests and how did you happen to arrive at this point?
I'd prefer to keep most of the details of my background private. But I had been a professional non-fiction writer for a while and I only kept writing fetish fiction as a hobby, because I felt compelled to do it. I never imagined making a living at it, but late last year I read some of those articles about people who were paying their bills by writing dinosaur erotica and so on. I'd gotten a lot of good reviews on Fictionmania and I really enjoyed writing transformation smut, so I decided to start publishing eBooks and see what happened. The response has been great so far! I am so grateful for every sale and good review, you wouldn't believe it.
♥ Can you say a bit about your interest in transgendered individuals and how you gained such apparent expertise in this area?
Well, I am a transgender person. For years I was regularly going out to clubs and stuff, but I'm reaching that age where clubs start being more exhausting than fun and I was looking for some new way to express myself. I think my years of getting dolled up in drag and going out have helped my writing. I know what it's like to feel like an ugly guy who can't get a date, and I know what it's like to wear a minidress in public and get hit on by clueless, horny guys.
If everybody had to spend one year as a hot girl and one year as an ugly guy, I think the world would be a much, much better place.
♥ Which authors have influenced you the most?
Well, I can't say I'm consciously influenced by anybody. Growing up I read a lot of Fitzgerald, Salinger, Vonnegut and William S. Burroughs, but I doubt my stuff would remind anybody of theirs. I think there's a sprinkling of John Collier in my stories, and probably a lot of TV guys like Joss Whedon and Rod Serling. I grew up on that stuff, and I still love it.
As far as transformation erotica goes, there aren't many writers out there who really excite me. That's part of the reason why I started writing this stuff. I do remember really enjoying a Fictionmania story called Stuck, by a writer named Emma. It's about a man who has a magic pebble that he can use to turn himself into a little girl. The danger of being stuck as a little girl gives him a sick thrill, so he starts hiding the pebble from himself, and stuff like that. Something about the twisted psychology of that was really appealing to me.
In a funny way, I think one of the biggest inspirations for how I write my transformation scenes came from a wordless animated cartoon called Transformation into Beauty, by an anime artist named Mashiro. We see this guy on a train change into a beautiful bride for no obvious reason at all, and the cartoon really lingers on all the details as his pants transform into a big poofy skirt and so on. We just spend all this time with this terrified guy as his clothing and body transform, bit by bit, and he ends up as a beautiful girl in a big white princess dress, getting stared at by the other commuters. That cartoon inspired me to take my time, letting the reader experience each aspect of the transformation in stages.
♥ Do you have some other writing ideas you are fleshing out now or new stories or books "in the oven" for release in the near future?
Tons. I am working on my first erotic novel and I have ideas for dozens more stories. Even when I'm not writing my brain is just cranking out smutty fantasies, pretty much 24/7.
♥ For the past several months, as evidenced by your self-published stories on Amazon.com, you have proven to be an extremely prolific author, garnering some excellent book reviews. Are you turning out stories at a rapid rate now, or were these “in the can” and waiting for posting?
A bunch of the stories I'm publishing now are based on stories I posted on Fictionmania, but they are considerably revised and often expanded a lot. In one recent case, I expanded a story by about 9,000 words and I gave it a completely different ending. I am working on some original stories now, but I still have a few more older stories I'll be polishing up and turning into new eBooks.
♥ When did you first begin to write professionally?
In terms of the erotica, just a few months ago. I wish I'd started much sooner! I've been telling my friends, write porn! Getting paid for your sex fantasies is the best way to pay your rent, ever.
♥ Do you work from a pre-planned outline or do your stories simply unfold as you write?
Usually I'll cook up an idea for how the whole story is going to go, then as I'm writing it will evolve and my original ending won't fit anymore. I'll think I'm finished but as the days go by I'll keep having new ideas, so I'll go back and add some of those in.
I work hard to make every story as good as I can make it, but because it's erotica I do allow myself a little license to be self-indulgent for the sake of sexiness. If something really turns me on I'll usually leave it in, even if it doesn't really advance the plot. I don't imagine too many readers will complain if the story comes to a complete halt so we can get sweaty for a few pages. (Of course if something just does not fit I'll cut it, no matter how hot it is.)
♥ Where do your wonderfully creative book covers come from?
I just find photos with a creative commons license, and then I'll do a bit of photo collage and move stuff around until I like the results. I've learned the hard way that even if a cover looks great to me at first, it can look horrible a week later. So now I try to wait a while before I go public with a cover. Some of my early covers look just awful to me now. I'm actually working on revised covers for a few of them.
I am learning as I go, so it's nice to hear that you like them.
♥ Will you continue to write in this genre, or do you have some other plans?
I plan to keep writing as long as people are reading! I'm sure I'll do other things, but I don't see why I'd quit doing this. If people are interested, at some point I'd love to try writing scripts for video projects. The idea of watching actors act out my fantasies sounds like a big pile of fun.
♥ You touch on the interaction of gender and sexuality. In your own life did you discover any surprises about the nature of the relationship between these two areas?
Growing up, I was only attracted to women. I'd had maybe two gay fantasies ever, which I think is probably less than most straight teenage guys! Then when I was in my early twenties I finally admitted to myself that I was transgender, and I suddenly found myself attracted to men too. They say nobody ever "turns gay," but that was almost what it felt like for me. It took me a while to figure out that I'm bisexual, that I'm mostly attracted to women but I can get really turned on by guys too. I wasn't just pretending to like girls when I was straight, and being attracted to guys wasn't just a weird phase either.
Obviously I enjoy putting my characters through a more extreme form of that, where their sexuality suddenly changes and they often do get stuck only being attracted to men. That's really sexy to me, because it makes the man's change more final and severe, in a way. He's not just a girl. He likes dick now, and he has to deal with that. Some of my readers don't like that aspect, they get annoyed by the endless, loving descriptions of dongs. They like the boob stuff, but then they're like, "What? Again with the dongs?" If you're going to read my stuff, it helps to be at least a little bisexual yourself!
♥ Is there anything else you wish I had asked you?
Well, I'm not sure what the question would be, but I would like to say that there are a lot of fantasies I can't really explore because of Amazon's censorship policies. They are really vague about what they won't allow, but if they don't like something they'll refuse to publish it or they'll take it down. That gets frustrating. There have been rumors for a while that they're going to do a big crackdown and get rid of self-published erotic eBooks completely. I am living in fear of that happening, but for now eBook publishing is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I always say, this was just what I needed, just when I needed it.
A heartfelt thanks to Mindi Flyth for agreeing to join us today, and to Samuel for taking the time to arrange the interview and bring us all together!
