RIP Anne Rice, the godmother of naked sex slave smut

The obituaries of Anne Rice uniformly remember her as the author of the Vampire novels.  The few that mention that she also wrote erotica do so only as an afterthought.   

But for me, Rice will always be the author who wrote unabashedly delightful novels about naked sex slaves.

 

Her Sleeping Beauty Trilogy, written under the pen name A.N. Roquelaire, was so hot that when I innocently picked up The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty in the Barnes & Noble where I spent most of my lunch breaks at the time (the early 1990's) and started thumbing through it, I literally dropped it on the floor. 

The trilogy reimagines Sleeping Beauty as a naked sex slave in a kingdom of naked sex slaves. It is slight of plot and characterization, but  oh so pretty.  Beauty is a sweet, innocent masochist who is turned on by humiliation, and by being spanked, and by sultry stories her friends tell her of being anally penetrated by a carrot.  Beauty stands for all of us. 

(Rice published a fourth book in the series, Beauty's Kingdom, in 2016.  It had none of the courage of the first three books, and is overall a plodding, politically correct read.) 

 

Rice also wrote a novel called Exit to Eden, under the pen name Anne Rampling.  A cover blurb on a recent edition of the book sums it up:  "They will explore their most forbidden desires, including love." 

At first glance Exit to Eden is similar to the Sleeping Beauty books. It is set on a sex island.  Some people volunteer to be naked slaves.  Other people pay to dominate them.  It has some scenes that could be set in Beauty's kingdom.  But despite that, it doesn't have much explicit sex in it.  It is less erotica and more love story, and a great one at that, in which two people who happen to be kinky learn to be their full selves through their love of the other.

(The book was made into an almost universally panned movie adaptation, which added Rosie O'Donnell and Dan Akroyd as undercover cops who infiltrate the sex island to chase a MacGuffin. My favorite part:  A hot slave keeps following Rosie O'Donnell around, begging her to use him.  When he asks her one too many times how he can fulfill her fantasies, she says in exasperation, "Go paint my house."  And he does!  He's actually a rich investment banker!  Now that's a love story.) 

The Beauty books and Exit to Eden were a huge inspiration for Mindgames, my own much darker novel about naked sex slaves.  Beauty showed me that it's possible to create a novel that expresses your deepest sexual fantasies, and Exit to Eden demonstrated that such a novel can be well-written and have a strong plot and deep character development.  For that I will always be grateful to Rice.

Rest in peace.