Episode Fourteen: Jenny Raven Uncovered, interviewed by Helene Noire

Jenny: Welcome to Girl Talk with Jenny Raven. Episode 14 Jenny Raven and Ellen Noir. So welcome to this podcast with me, Jenny Raven. I’m thrilled, I’m excited, I’m delighted, because our star guest today is actually me. A couple of weeks back, my good friend Elenoir and myself cooked up the idea of Ellen interviewing me. And she, of course, leaned in to that challenge with gusto. So I’m gonna hand straight over. Helen, how are you doing?

Helene: I’m very good. How are you, Jenny?

Jenny: I’m very good. I’m very good. I’m most thrilled. I’m sure we’ll talk about this, but I’ve got my Instagram back or a new Instagram, and I’m super thrilled about that.

Helene: I’ve got lots of questions about your Instagram. Actually, for this podcast, I’m kind of very curious about how you make it happen and what drives you. You can hold that in the back of your mind for when I actually ask the question later. But Jenny, a few months ago, you invited me onto his podcast and you. I was so thrilled to be invited onto the podcast because you asked me about me and it was so nice. So I’m so happy to be able to ask you about you and listen and tease you and enjoy all of your answers. But to begin with, to get us warmed up, I’m going to ask you some naughty questions. Please don’t be upset. I have slightly flipped some of the questions.

Jenny: Okay.

Helene: Some of them you will be familiar with and some of them are a bit new.

Jenny: Okay. I’m slightly terrified.

Helene: You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but we’re going to start. We’re going to start, you know, tepid. You ready?

Jenny: I’m ready.

Helene: Okay. Journey Raven. Hot or cold?

Jenny: Hot.

Helene: Red or black?

Jenny: Red. When I was a teenager. Black. Now?

Helene: Rubber or something harder?

Jenny: Ooh, rubber.

Helene: Tickle or stroke?

Jenny: Stroke.

Helene: Satin or lace?

Jenny: Satin.

Helene: On top or somewhere else?

Jenny: Somewhere else.

Helene: Me too. PVC or rubber

Jenny: pvc?

Helene: Hard and fast or soft and slow?

Jenny: Very soft and slow. Me too.

Helene: Watch or be watched?

Jenny: Be watched.

Helene: Stockings or tights?

Jenny: Stockings.

Helene: Ripped or delicately peeled for removal?

Jenny: Very delicately peeled and with great slowness.

Helene: Give or receive?

Jenny: I would like to say both, I think ultimately give.

Helene: Fingers and thumbs or something bigger?

Jenny: Oh, fingers and thumbs.

Helene: Always nice or sometimes nasty?

Jenny: I think I’m an always nice kind of girl. I suspect we have to define nasty, actually, but yeah, let’s go with nice for now.

Helene: Do you know what? I know this is the warm up questions, but as always, in every single One of our conversations, we have the most brilliant detours. That’s some really interesting detour. The sometimes nasty detour, because it’s kind of raped fantasy spanking. It’s permission to be nasty. And whether that’s erotic or not, we should come back to that, I think.

Jenny: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, absolutely, 100%. Because I think, you know, my kink. Some people might say that’s a little bit nasty. Weird. You know, there’s room for everything and everyone. But, yeah, I think. Yeah, let’s come back to it.

Helene: Let’s come back to it. Okay. Favorite naughty word.

Jenny: I think what I should probably go for is the word that creeps into all my writing more than anything. And there’s actually three. But I think probably it’d be either sensual. Erotic, probably. Sensual, really?

Helene: That. Just. That. Just the notion of sensual. The broad description of sensual gets me going.

Jenny: It implies, like, duration. Like, why play around for 15 minutes when you can play around for 15 hours? Right. I mean, in order to do that, you have to go into a sensual place. You can’t go into a horny, horny, you know, let’s get mad place. You can’t sustain 15 hours of that regularly, at least. So, yeah, sensual and erotic.

Helene: Three items that always feature in a fantasy.

Jenny: Lace top, stockings, heels, and fingers.

Helene: I think maybe there was a conversation where one of us would have said the word fingers and the other one would have gotten.

Jenny: If we’re gonna go for back, you know, a good word I’ve always found very, very hits hard is fingering every time.

Helene: Pause while we just go to the loo. Right. Preferred erotic medium. Photos, videos, or words.

Jenny: I mean, as a writer, I should probably say words, but I think particularly erotically filmed video does more for me. But it’s quite rare. It’s very hard to find that kind of content because we’re dominated by the male gaze. Yeah.

Helene: William. Yes, I agree. This is always my problem. That’s why I love writing, because it’s our. It’s our gaze, isn’t it? Okay, then. Boys or girls? Speaking of girls. Solo Twosome. Threesome and awesome.

Jenny: I mean, threesome for sure. But I. You know, I’ve not had an enormous amount of experience there. I have had some, but I actually like. I like being with a person. Then I can give and get attention. I don’t like the split of attention. It kind of. It loses focus for me. I like to connect.

Helene: I find.

Jenny: Hard to connect with two people.

Helene: Yeah, I find it’s fun to write with three because it just sort of gives you literally more to play with.

Jenny: But in real life, yeah, I suspect the dinner before is delightful because it’s all about the anticipation, but the experience, you know, amazing. I’m sure it is. You know, and mine have been amazing. But when I look back at my life, I think it’s been those moments where I’ve profoundly connected that have been the ones that stood out.

Helene: I mean, that’s really interesting. That will kind of like move straight onto my first set of questions, really, which is there’s real life, which is obviously your experience, and then there’s what you write about and there’s obviously. Well, speaking from my own experience, there’s a gap between the two. And so I guess my question to you is a sort of both a philosophical and a practical one. Why do you write?

Jenny: So I’m. You know, the very short history is I’ve always had a passion for erotic content. And during the pandemic, I started writing partly out of a minor dare and a bit of boredom because we were all in lockdown. And Jenny Raven became an entity. She ended up with a website and then Instagram, and suddenly I was inhabiting, on a daily basis, this version of me that was usually just available in the bedroom. And I quite enjoyed getting up on a Tuesday morning and sitting at my computer in full Jenny Raven energy. And that’s just lingered. And so when I write, I get to be Jenny without, you know, having to be in the bedroom. I can still go into the bedroom as Jenny. So I think I’m. It’s partly that. It’s partly a kind of sensual exorcism of getting a certain energy out of me. It’s a way to. And I really believe this quite passionately. It’s a way to explore my psychology and my, you know, why I am the way that I am and to discover, you know, what I really enjoy and what other people seem to enjoy about my work. And, you know, I went to a reading of erotic stories recently, and I was really struck at how different the voices in the work was. And even in my very narrow niche of, you call it trans lesbian, trans erotica, the differences in Voices in the Writers is quite dramatic, particularly between European uk, where I am, and American as well. There’s quite a big kind of divide there as well, which is surprising.

Helene: Can you say a bit more about that? What do you mean by that?

Jenny: Yeah, so I think that, you know, the Americans have, you know, they have a different patriarchal system. And I think, you know, I can only speak for myself, but my genesis as Jenny began very early at age 5, and I knew there was this kind of like girly energy inside me that wanted to come out and play, didn’t understand why she couldn’t come out and play and so got locked up and it all kind of fused and became what it is in my teens when it started to profoundly interconnect with sexuality and love and passion and lust and longing and all of those things. She became a big part of that heady mix. And culturally that was from the north of England in, in. In the 80s. And I, I just think we have a very different culture in the UK to what America. Like, we don’t have, you know, the football teams and the cheerleaders and there’s a big kind of mummy and daddy thing that seems to be prevalent in American erotic culture that doesn’t quite hit over here. It doesn’t. You know, I’m sure there is a version of that, but it seems to be quite prevalent over there. And so it is. It’s got a just different vibe. It’s kind of telling the same story, but it’s a different vibe. And I think, I think also what I try to write is a little bit is, you know, I’m not comparing myself to any other writer at all. I’m just talking about what I try to do, which is to try and connect what it was like to be a teenager and a young person with lots of confusion and angst and then insert into those stories compassionate companions who would kind of say, not only is it okay, but smile and wink and say, come on then, let’s unpack your Pandora’s box and see what’s in there. And we’ll really take all of your unmet fantasies and needs and desires and will play with them to the fullest extent. And it always really boils down to a kind of hug and an embrace and a meaningful one at the end, you know, after all the fun and games have happened. There’s a kind of deep and profound connection between the characters that isn’t exactly love, but it probably is in a different sort of way. And, and that’s quite important to me because this is not about one night stands. This is not about casual relationships. It’s about a deep and profound understanding and connection between people who accept who we are in the exploration of an erotic space. So I guess you know the answer. All of that is interesting, isn’t it? All of that is like me exploring my youth and what it all means and not really about the act itself, which I think is what Most people read the stuff for.

Helene: So listening to you, obviously I know quite well now I sort of feel quite emotional listening to you because I know, I know what a lot of you, the references are that you’ve, that you’ve just mentioned, but really what sticks out of when you talk about that is that you’re sort of, you’re writing your best friends, the best friends that you couldn’t have as Jenny, that you can’t have as Jenny because you’re not sort of out in the world, you know, publicly as Jenny. So you’re writing like the fantasy version of what your best mates would be like if you were a Jenny. And then also like, oh God, this is like dark. But you know, often when you have sex with somebody, especially if it’s a one night stand, the afterwards is always fucking awkward. I always hate that, that it’s always not worth having a one night stand because it’s like that, oh, what do we do now? And you’re writing, you’re making it tidy, you’re making it loving at the end. And actually it’s kind of like you’re fixing, you’re fixing the scar, whatever the scar is, you’re sort of repeatedly fixing the scar. And I wonder if that’s why Oliver’s right actually, because you’re sort of trying to, yeah, fix the scar, to heal the wound.

Jenny: Yeah, I think that’s very true. You know, whatever our core wound and constellation of wounds around the core wound is, we’re exploring that and rewiring our brain around what it means. So there are writers out there who knock out a story every week and they’re writing to a formula that they know will work. And for me that’s just too much hard work. And that again, you see it in visual porn, in video porn, where you can see they’ve got the, you know, the beat sheet of every hole’s a goal. And you know, we’ll do these things in this order with these shots and it’s always the same. And that doesn’t particularly interest me because it doesn’t allow me to go back, as you rightly say, and, and examine my wounds and attempt to understand them and perhaps even fix them. I mean, there is definitely a therapeutic part to this. And you know, I’ve listened to enough therapists in the past to know that re examining a trauma and wrapping different meanings around it will in some ways begin to heal the trauma or at least the manifestation of the trauma in the presence. So, yeah, I haven’t really thought about that, but I Think that’s probably, probably what I’m doing. Mm.

Helene: I mean there’s that sort of relationship between what you end up doing in your writing, which is sort of wrapping, wrapping your arms around yourself and going, it’s all right, we can do this. Because one thing I love about your writing is it’s so horny. I mean, I do quite a lot of preambles, quite a lot of cha. It’s all situation based. I’m interested in the clothes, I’m interested in the detail and his hair and. And I know that you’ve in the past beautifully have told me really sort of honestly like mom just cut, you know, you need to kind of cut the chase of it. And I, I’ve tried. When I have done it does nothing for me. So for me, I do love the, the. The sort of like fingers under the table, waiting anticipation, sweaty hand, anticipation of what I know is coming. Whereas you. And it’s interesting because when I read porn that’s written by men, I often think that male written porn. And I’ve been reading a lot of. I’ve been gave on Literotica quite a lot recently just to see how they write their alien stories, for example, and the ones that. Written by men is literally in second paragraph. It’s like she’s got a pounce down her mouth, dick’s inside her, whereas mine is much slower and yours is somewhere in between. So Jenny is always crazy horny. Her and Ruby a crazy horny from the beginning. So you know that sex is coming as soon as it possibly can. And then as soon as they enter a room, we’re down to business. And actually you managed, you always manage to sustain it really well through the whole of the whatever £7,000, 7,000 word story. But it sort of straddles interestingly sort of male gaze and a female gaze sort of male approach. But female gaze, which is always. She’s fascinating.

Jenny: Yeah, it’s interesting you say that. And you know, some of the longer stories, they’re much more drawn out but they still have these like erotic bombshells that keep going off. And you know, that one book I wrote, I really wanted to call it, you know, edging or something, you know, put the word edge into the, into the title because it felt like it was, you know, 50,000 words of right on the edge until the final, you know, 5,000 word chapter where we went crazy and. Yeah, so it’s an interesting perspective for

Helene: sure, because also might be erotic with. What’s interesting about writing erotica obviously is it’s not just about the sex, it’s about the idea. It’s about what idea? You’re constantly trying to find ways of titillating the reader because you don’t know who your reader is. So what else can I throw in that will be sexually exciting to this person who’s reading it? Sufficient that they’ll carry on? I suppose then that’s like a really good lead into my next question, which is, when you’re writing a story, where do you start?

Jenny: So I tend to start with a very simple premise. And like the last. The last book, which is called Finishing. Finishing School for Girls, was a going back into the late 90s to meet the young version of one of the characters in my other books. I decided to write some Genesis stories and I decided that we could, you know, he could fess up to his best friend, that he’s going to go to a sixth form college which is all girls, and can she help him become a girl? And that was all I kind of needed. And I know we’re going to talk about Ruby in a minute, but Ruby just went bring it on and just caused chaos. And I just kind of followed the story of where these two personalities would go. And again, you know, coming back to what you said earlier, it’s like, what would I. What would I have done in that period in the 90s? You know, I would have sought out a friend and I would have said, come shopping with me. And then we would have gone back to either her bedroom or my bedroom and we would have had a fashion show. And what happened then? I don’t know what might or might not have happened with. I have one friend who probably would have done that with me back then. And what we would have done in that room, I don’t know. I know I would have been exploding with sensual energy, so I would hope that there would have been an opportunity to explore it. But I don’t know because we were young, we were 17 and it was before the Internet and we didn’t quite know what was what. It was the height of the AIDS epidemic. So, you know, sex equaled immediate death if you watched any of the commercials on tv. So we were all terrified, just building up in that tension as well. So that’s really the premise and it doesn’t really like. It’s interesting, isn’t it? There’s a kind of big idea of what’s going to happen, but it’s the characters that make it so compelling. And, you know, all of my, all of my books are kind of parts of a Much bigger story and I really need to get on and complete some of those bigger arcs because, you know, Finishing School for Girls is all set up for in a later book for Ruby to rock up at the school as a sex therapist to do a sex therapy lesson and really, really put Sasha on the spot in front of all the other students who will have all set up and they’re all, you know, a little bit naughty and a little bit on the queer spectrum. And then of course the headmistress, which it’s like, it’s just. You couldn’t write it, could you? Like head mistress.

Helene: Yeah, there’s, there’s innuendo everywhere you look.

Jenny: When you start looking. Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s so, it’s so rich. And I think again, one of the things that’s really interesting, what it speaks to is like, like we’re such sexual creatures and it is everywhere around us and yet we never really talk about it, we never really acknowledge it, even down to like sometimes you’ll see a woman dress in a particularly provocative way and about it and I’m not putting any shade on her at all. Like good for her for going to that place if that’s how she wants to be in the world. But there’s this kind of weird agreement that, that we deny our sexuality. I suppose that’s a way of protecting society and people in society from inappropriate behavior. And you know, that’s completely right. But you know, like all of these things, there’s a balance, you know, and if we can’t let it out, it kind of goes a bit bad.

Helene: You’ve just reminded me of like a profoundly erotic experience that I had once, which I’m thinking I might just weave into a story. But it’s, it was exactly what you’re talking about. I went to, I went to a tango class, right? I was, I must have been like 25, 30. I thought maybe I’d meet some hot guy, right? So I go to his tango class and it’s in the top floor of a pub and I’m paired for no good reason given I’m 4 foot 11. I’m paired with a woman who is a young girl. She must have been a teenager. Her mum probably sent her like, get out of the house, you gotta do something interesting. So she would have been like 18, 19. And she was wearing a low cut top and a bra. I could just see like the outline of her bra. And I’m a boob person and she had these breasts and literally my face was in her breasts and I was older, right, and she was younger. And I’m pretty much straight with some Ben’s kinks in the way towards women. But this girl, you know, we were tangoing and her tits were in my face and I literally was like, I did not know where to look. And I really wanted to say, please, like, I’m having all these thoughts and like, can we just talk about your boobs? Because they’re amazing and you know, like, you can’t. You’re not supposed to say. And yet it’s there. And I think it’s a really, like, it’s a. It’s. It’s the next thing we need to address in society, probably, you know, And I’m looking at the pictures of the women at the Grammys and they all look amazing with their amazing bodies and glittering beautiful outfits and chains and diamonds and blah, blah. And the boobs, oh, my God, the boobs on display. I mean, how are you not meant to look at them? But it’s weird. It’s so provocative, actually, when you really just look at the pictures, they’re totally provocative. And I just think, I do. There’s a part of me that is a bit prudish and I just think, just put it away. I don’t know if I need to be accosted by your boobs every time I look at you. And maybe, I don’t know, I think

Jenny: that’s partly, like, from my own experience. It’s a trigger that for me, in that experience, I want to be around that. I want to reach out and touch and kiss and lick and do all the stuff. And I know I can’t. So one of the logical things to do is then kind of like turn it into a bad thing because it’s really hard to go. I really, really, really want all of that and I know I can’t have it. And it’s one of those weird teasers that we’ve normalized in society to say, look at all this amazing stuff and you can’t have it. And then we wonder why we have problems and why, you know, why pornography is. Whatever the statistic is 65% of the Internet or whatever, that number is a staggeringly high one. Why? Why we have mental health issues. Why people do terrible things. And I’m not, I’m not. I’m not normalizing anything. I just. It’s always. Even as a child, even as a young person, I was struck by. It was Page Three Girls in the sun. And, you know, I was like, what on earth is the topless woman doing in the newspaper, like, what on earth is that all about? If we’re simultaneously then told and it’s not very good for you. And I remember in the 90s, I’m sure you’ll remember this, the wonder bra ads, like, just giant, like, massive billboards of supermodels, boobs in bras. And I’m going, wow. Like, wow.

Helene: And.

Jenny: But what do I do with that? So it was a frustration. It’s difficult.

Helene: It is genuinely. It is genuinely difficult. And obviously, like, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, you know, you sort of start. If you’re not careful, you start to go down the road of, she’s asking for it. Rape, men, irresistible. You kind of get into all those kind of territorial words that are a bit scary. You don’t want to go down that route. But at the same time, it’s like, you wouldn’t give an al. You wouldn’t, like, put a glass of wine in front of an alcoholic and just walk away. You’d be wondering what’s gonna happen next. And actually, the sort of deep, sexually provocative imagery that we see all the time is confusing. It is confusing because it’s like saying, here it is, and you can’t have it in us. Seems is unfair, I think.

Jenny: And I don’t know about you, but I had the experience of, like, all that stuff existed, and I kind of ignored it. When I was 7, 8, 9, I was aware of it, you know, and then one day, suddenly, puberty hit and everything flipped, and I was suddenly surrounded by this overwhelming volume of erotic imagery. Not just volume in quantity, but volume and intensity. And there was no guidance. There was no attempt to explain it. And I really struggled. I really, really struggled. And, you know, I hit puberty before almost everybody in my generation. So I became. I was a big young man, and I didn’t know what to do with it. And, you know, I was shamed quite badly. And I just. You know. And that’s where Auntie Jenny, who is part of my Instagram kind of Persona, that’s where she came from. Because I always. I wanted this older woman who would say, it’s okay, like, let me help you. Like, you don’t want to do anything you’d regret. Let me explain how things work. And if you want to play in this playground over here, I’ll come and help you. I’ll buy. I’ll help you buy some clothes, and you can. You can be her, and it’s okay. And that seems to have resonated with Internet users, you know, Because. Because of the comments that I get, all wanting to interact with Auntie Jenny, because I think this thing happened to so many of us at age 10, 12, 14, and we. We didn’t have that older woman to. Because either mum got it. Like today, you know, it’s trans and it’s. You know, there are cool mums that will go, my son is now my daughter. And it’s not. Not for everybody, and perhaps not even for the majority, but at least it exists for some. Whereas in my generation, it didn’t exist, period. Like, nobody’s mum would say, oh, brilliant, my son’s a daughter and let me go shopping with you. It just was not so. It all. It was this calamitous explosion of sexually provocative imagery and nowhere to place it. Yeah.

Helene: So then. So then. Okay, so that’s really interesting. So in your writing, your young Jenny writes young people, Sasha and Ruby, and we’ll talk about Ruby in a set. But on Instagram, in effect, Jenny is anti Jenny.

Jenny: You.

Helene: I see you as anti Jenny in those. I think that you are being your again. You are being your. The auntie never had. There’s a theme. So. So let’s talk about, then, your Instagram and TikTok, and, yeah, let’s move to that. And we can always talk about the writing again.

Jenny: So. So I’ve had. I’ve had one TikTok and one Facebook, both of which have managed to survive, although TikTok is on its last legs. I think I’ve had maybe five or six Instagrams. The first one got banned almost within a week. The second one was banned on the same day, and I eventually figured out how to get through it. And then around 2022, I started, wait,

Helene: don’t speed through that. They got banned. You know why they got banned? What did you post?

Jenny: It’s where erotic content becomes vaguely pornographic. Like there’s an obvious visual stuff that you cannot do on social media. And I would never do that, but I would get close to implying that. And so I think, you know, whatever AI filters they have in place picked it up. And there may have been other things I did in the early days, like following too many people too quickly, posting too much too quickly. And I think the strategy is slow and easy as you begin an account. I suspect they’ve got, you know, bots that are looking at new accounts for the first month, and then they’ll probably, you know, put those resources elsewhere. I don’t know that. I’m just. I’m just guessing it, but then I kind of Figured out how to not get banned and occasionally I get a post flagged and Instagram would take it down and. But I got very, very good at basically not tripping over that. And then I got to 45,000 users or 42,000 users before Christmas, and then out of nowhere, boom, it’s gone. Just deleted. You know, there was no way to get it back. And it hurt. It hurt a lot. Because that had been an outlet for me that I created lots of relationships and friendships, business opportunities. And it became very apparent, like you said, that Auntie Jenny, like an anti. An agony aunt that we might read in the newspapers. In the 90s, I was regularly getting DMs from people asking for advice. And, you know, where possible, I would try and offer advice which largely boiled down to don’t do anything too drastic unless I think there are some people who are born literally in the wrong body. And, you know, you should do whatever is needed for you for your life. But I’m not one of those people. And I speak to other people now who I get the sense are not fully trans. They’re just somewhere in between and want, you could call it non binary. There’s lots of different, you know, words for it. And my advice is always just, do you, like, wear whatever you want, walk however you want, speak however you want? Do you. But do you really need surgery? And if the answer is yes, by all means, go for surgery. But I think there might be some kind of, like, social pathway pressure. I don’t think anybody is exerting pressure, but it’s a kind of expectation that you maybe go down this pathway that I don’t think is necessarily the right choice for everybody. It is for some people, and I applaud that. So we have lots of chats around that and also about partners and how to talk to partners about it. Because that is a very, very big theme. Like, I can’t tell my wife of 22 years, you know, the kids have left home. And what I’ve noticed is that of my generation, so Gen X and elder millennials, there’s been a kind of resurgence in them. So maybe it’s because, you know, they become financially independent, they’re no longer like, pursuing the big career. They’ve achieved broadly what they want to achieve. Maybe they’ve, you know, they’re either at the end of their mortgage or they have paid off their mortgage, the kids have left home and they’re now in the now what phase. And all of the things that they didn’t do in their teens and their twenties are now boomeranging back and they want to explore it, and they’ve got this giant problem, which is. But what do I do about my wife of 22 years who doesn’t know or maybe knows and has said, never, ever do that again and banned it, or maybe knows and says, don’t tell. You know, I won’t ask, don’t tell. And how do you navigate that? And there is no singular pathway, but I do think, you know, we have one life and you should live your life. And I say this being totally hypocritical myself. You know, I’d love to sit here and say, I’ve got it all sorted. I absolutely don’t. But I have seen other people who’ve managed to sort it, and I think there are principles and pathways to that. I just wish I had the courage to go fully down all of those pathways myself, and maybe I will one day. And this is part of my journey, and writing the books, this podcast, all of this is part of my journey to living that fully integrated life as Jenny Raven.

Helene: Do you think that the categories, sort of binary, non. Binary, trans. Do you think they’re useful or. Because when I talk to you, I always feel that you’re curious, you’re sexually curious. And I. But then I suppose I. Yeah. What do you think about the.

Jenny: Do you think they’re helpful? So, yes and no. I think, like, as human beings, we need shorthand, like, to be able to say, helen, you know, and I can describe your visual appearance. You know, it’s not loaded. It’s just like if you’re meeting somebody in a pub, it just is helpful to have, you know, some kind of descriptor. And so I think we need, as human beings, it’s helpful to have a descriptor. But I think that’s largely, you know, you can largely characterize people as, you know, female, female presenting, male presenting, you know, trans, female, trans, male, and, you know, somewhere in between, you know, they’re a little bit gay. I’ve exclusively worked almost all of my life with gay people, and they’re horrendously. Like, they are really rude when it comes to labeling other people. It’s always playfully and it’s always out of fun. And I think a lot of the time the fun and playfulness gets taken out of it. I think it’s not helpful when the label becomes an identity, because I think nobody is a particular identity. Like, I’m not trans. I’m not a woman. I’m sometimes female presenting. I’m sometimes male presenting. I’M sometimes female presenting in the bedroom. And so not one label doesn’t fit me. I’m heterosexual male that sometimes presents female and sometimes a bit more over this and sometimes a bit more so the label that becomes an absolute. And I just think it’s just easier for us to just relax a little bit and just like be with the person. Like, my name’s Jenny, like, refer to me as Jenny. I don’t need the she, he, her, him, all of that. And I think if we all took a kind of chill pill and stopped being offended when people, you know, got it wrong. Because most people don’t want to offend anybody. And if they do want to offend you, they’re gonna offend you. Like just because they got your pronouns wrong, they’re gonna go out of their way to offend you. And you just go, brilliant, thank you for letting me know that I don’t want you in my life. There is assholes everywhere. So, you know, remove them from your life. Don’t try and convert them. You won’t, they won’t work. So yeah, I look, I don’t want to offend anybody. And if somebody wants to be she, he, her, him, I will do my best. I’ll probably get it wrong. Call me anything you want, I don’t care. I’m me and I’m good with being me. And the truth is if you call me she, if I’m female presenting you, call me she. I’ll probably get a little bit of a kick out of it. But if you call me he, I’ll probably snigger as well.

Helene: Tell me because we have much longer left. Tell me about writing and the practicality of Kindle Amazon Selling Audio Recording Audiobooks Production Pipeline Go round you up Presco

Jenny: so I’m quite techie and I knew that in order to do all of the stuff, you don’t really need any expensive tools. And in fact, you might not even need any paid for tools whatsoever. So my process is assuming I’m going to have an audiobook. At the end, I’d write the story and let’s assume, you know, that’s perfect. We’ll not talk too much about editing. As you know, it’s a challenge because the act of writing is sometimes so overwhelmingly erotic, it’s hard to not reach a conclusion. And that’s part of the joy and pleasure of the whole experience. So I’ll write a story, I’ll then probably go away for a while and then I’ll reread it just to make sure I’M happy I might put it through something like Grammarly to see if it spots any weird typos or weird weirdness in the text. Often one of the things I’m looking for at that point is repetition because we tend to use certain things over and over. And I use a website that is like a glorified thesaurus to come up with new words when I might have used the word erotic too many times. So, you know, I find myself using words like diaphanous. And so it’s finished. And then I will. I use a platform called Reedsy, which is free, to format the books and it’s really just a copy and paste. It’ll create the chapters and it will create the front matter and the back matter. And I use Photoshop to create the book covers myself. But there are book cover software tools out there and it’s probably worth paying a little bit ofmoney on fiverr.com to get an actual human designer, you know, whether it’s $25 or something like that, to do a really nice cover. And also say do it in a way that this is going to be a series of books. They’ll probably use AI to generate an erotic image. It can’t be too naughty because Amazon won’t let it. But if you look at all the erotica books on Amazon, you’ll quickly see kind of where the boundaries are. And it’s usually no more than a bit of lingerie.

Helene: Did you, in order to sort of like just get to the point of getting onto Kindle, did you look at YouTube videos or did you just kind of figure out yourself?

Jenny: I just figured it out myself. I mean, I kind of knew instinctively that it’s just a file. It’s like, it’s just like a word processor file. It’s just a different kind of file. So once you’ve done all of that in Reader, you can upload the book cover as well and the blurb. I would use AI to write the blurb now because it’s so good at it. So I just load the whole story into ChatGPTP and say, give me a blurb for an erotic book. It would give me two or three passes, I tweak them and it’s usually astonishingly good. And then I export it from Reedsy and then I put it into kdp, which is Amazon’s kind of platform for selling books on Amazon. And it’s kind of like a wizard driven thing. You upload it, you say what categories you want to be in. It is a little bit nerdy and it’s definitely a platform that feels like it was built in 1815, but it does work. And there’s like three pages of things you’ve got to tag through, set a price. You can either be part of Kindle Unlimited, which means people can rent your book and you get paid per page that they read, or that you can have it to just be bought. I tend to do KDP because at this point in my erotica career, what I want is an audience. And if it’s free to download and read, then I’m more likely to get people to do that. And then when you hit publish, it goes off into the cloud. And I think, I don’t have evidence for this, but I think a human being reviews it and they will probably look at the title, the image, the tagline and the blurb. They won’t, I don’t think they look at the content of the book. And I’m sure AI is going to be checking book content at some point to make sure it’s not problematic. And then if it passes all of those, it will appear on Amazon 24 hours later, or it will get bounced back to you, or it will go in the dungeon. And the dungeon is a weird place where it’s on Amazon, but you can’t be found by searching. And what you often have to do is unpublish the book, go back, change the title, change the tagline, rewrite the blurb, and resubmit and publish. A good example is the last book that I wrote, it had a tagline which was something along the lines of, you know, for naughty girls who have a secret in their knickers. And I just took the word knickers out so it says naughty girls who have secrets in the. And removing the word knickers just got me through. And now it’s no longer in the Amazon dungeon. And there is a tool. I’ve forgotten what it’s called. I’ll put it in the blurb of this podcast, which is another free tool where you can check whether your book is in the dungeon or not. So that’s the kind of pipeline for the books. If you want to do paperbacks as well, you can. You just have. And again, Reedsy will create the paperback book. You’ll have to do a cover, which is a bit more complicated. And that’s where, again, if you’re good with Photoshop, it’s not too difficult, but you might want to get somebody on Fiverr who’s gonna do the COVID You can do a paperback, you can do a hardback and it is, it is quite delightful to see your book in shiny, shiny full color and hold it in your own hand. One word of warning is whenever you publish anything, give it time and then go back and reread it and you will see mistakes that you didn’t see in the writing and in that redrafting stuff will just jump straight out of you and you go, blimey, that was not a great sentence. And you’ll probably tweak and rewrite. And then that kind of dovetails into the audiobook process because by its very nature, when you do the audiobook, you have to read it out loud. And that’s when you sometimes notice things that you didn’t notice when you were reading and not saying out loud. And the process I use for the audiobooks is I use 11 labs and I record my own voice doing a performance of the book. I put it through 11 labs to change my voice into Jenny Raven’s voice and, and then edit it together. It’s very long winded and it’s absolutely not financially viable. But I do it because I enjoy it. It’s, you know, other people have Porsches in their Gao Ribes that they spend 20 years tweaking and never drive. I have an erotic career doing audiobooks of smut.

Helene: Question then. So you’ve done all of that. Brilliant. You spent all this time writing a book, you’ve managed to put it on Kindle, you’ve successfully avoided the dungeon. All the pitfalls of writing. How do you find an audience?

Jenny: It’s a good question. And I think honestly the answer is social media. And that’s, you know, I can see that in the metrics in visitors to my website. I’ve also got a store on my website, which I set up using a free platform. They get 5% of my sales or whatever it is, and the sales go through the roof. When social media is kick. When I say go through the roof, I’ll sell two audiobooks a day. But unlike Audible, where they’ll take a big chunk of it, I will get 100% of 95% of that money. And I don’t think I’m anywhere near scale at the moment. I’m nowhere near where I could be doing 25 times what I’m doing at the moment if I was a bit more prolific. And it all comes from Instagram. Absolute. I mean, anybody who knows anything about erotica will tell you it’s a numbers game. And really, you need to be in that kind of like, category of having 50 books and you’re like, the perfect scenario is somebody reads your book and goes, oh, I love this. Can I have another? And they go, oh, there’s 50 of them. I know, just work through all 50 over a year or two years and you get paid for all of those. And in a perfect world, and you know, my experience is people are happy to pay. I mean, some people will do Kindle Unlimited, but some people are happy to pay. And they respond to the, the notion of pay me 199 or give Jeff Bezos almost all of the money. And they, they kind of go, naji, I’ll support the author. And there is also the things like, again, if, you know, somebody shares their Amazon account with their wife, they can’t buy it through Amazon.

Helene: That’s like maybe part of the question. So obviously writing erotica is a kind of quite a private enterprise and you don’t want necessarily your best friends literally, you know, knowing about the, of your undersides, how wet they are.

Jenny: Yeah, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting thought because, you know, I have that same thought as well. And, and it comes back to what we were talking about earlier about coming out of the closet. And as you know, my coming out of the closet as a neurotic writer was in part me saying to you, I actually do that. And then you kind of going, oh, so do I. And then it’s like almost everybody in my life now knows about Jenny Raven. Not everybody, but I would say 95% of the people in my inner and not outer circle, but mid circle. No. And everybody, everybody has sniggered and gone brilliant. Love it. Nobody’s. Nobody said anything negative about it.

Helene: But yes, same. I would say same. But I have also said I don’t want to read it.

Jenny: Right. Yeah. I mean, nobody. I think that the flip side of that is nobody said to me, I want to read it. They’ve all gone brilliant and not asked could they read it. That doesn’t mean I haven’t gone to their website and bought and downloaded it all. Also.

Helene: That’s also respectful. It’s a bit like, you wouldn’t show everyone your boobs, would you?

Jenny: No. I mean, well, I would, but exhibitionism is part of, you know, it’s like being seen. I don’t mean quite literally I want to take off all my clothes and walk down the high street. Yeah, but that kind of like this thing in me I want to show, whether it’s with just one person or with a thousand people, is this thing inside me that wants to come out and play and part of that is just to be seen.

Helene: Yeah, it’s the why write? Question. You write because you’ve got something to say. You want people to. You want people to. You want people to hear what you’ve got to say. It’s a safe medium to do it, and I guess then that’s a good place to end. What advice would you offer a writer considering entering the arena?

Jenny: Well, I, you know, I interviewed on the. On the jennyraven.com website. When I began the journey, I started interviewing lots and lots of writers who were in my space, and they all basically say pretty much the same thing, which is just do it. Just do it. If you’re drawn to it, if you find yourself wanting to do it and find yourself typing into a word processor, just. Just do it. Don’t think about it, Publish it, and then do it again if, like, do it if you’re enjoying it. I don’t think, apart from E.L. james and maybe a few other people, nobody’s getting rich writing erotica. You may, if you become really prolific and you spend two years doing, like, a book every 10 days or 14 days, you may get to the point where it could pay you better than McDonald’s would on a, you know, a national minimum wage. And it might be even a lot better than that. I don’t really know, particularly if you start working in audio books and other affiliated or associated things. So there is definitely a career path, but I think it’s a fool’s errand to go, I’m going to do this in order to top up the retirement fund. So do it because you want to do it. And I know we had planned to talk about Ruby and. And, you know, Ruby. Ruby is like, there is a real person who is Ruby, but she’s a highly fantasized version of it. And it’s allowed me to unlock and play in that space with that person who becomes very real to me. And so I’m able to have kind of like sensual romance without strings attached, without danger. And that’s very fulfilling, too, and fun and playful and, you know, I think it’s healthy other people might have a different view, but it seems to help me and it seems to make my life more enriched. So do it because you’ve got a kinky bone in you and you want somebody to finger your kinky bone and enjoy every moment of it.

Helene: Great advice, and I actually totally echo that from my own experience. Okay, final, final question. What advice would you offer someone to best live their lives on film? What would you add to what you’ve already said,

Jenny: so I think so what, what is the best way to embrace your feminine? And I think you can expand that like embrace your non heteronormative, whatever that means. And I think the first thing to say is everybody is really different. We’re all the same, but we’re all also really different. And that’s where the categories I don’t think are helpful because they won’t. Nobody fits in any one category. It’s finding out, it’s interrogating what is the cost of an unlived life. And that’s what wanted me. I think in 2023, when I put myself into therapy, one of the big questions I had is there’s this version of me that is unexpressed and it was causing me some significant mental anguish. And my therapist encouraged me to explore it ethically, you know, with as much buy in from my partner. That was a bit of a rough journey, but actually the final bump of the journey was very. It was like dropping into a bed full of pink feathers. It was quite easy and very welcoming and accommodating in the very end. But my emotional journey that I’d written in the future was going to be very rocky and would end in terrible, terrible things. So I think it’s understanding what you want from your life, understanding what that unlived life looks like and understanding that that is also a fantasy that when you get to might not be real. And that was my biggest lesson, was I had this fantasy life that I wanted to live. And when I got permission to do that, and when I say permission, I mean my partner effectively said, do whatever you want. Just stay safe and know that I love you. And at that point I went, oh, actually I’m not as interested in that thing. It comes back to the teen thing. It was the denial of being able to do was, you’re bad, you’re wrong, you’re naughty, you’re, you’re weird. All of those labels kind of drifted away with the, okay, you can do anything you want. And then I discovered, actually, I’d just like to watch Netflix tonight and I’ll do a bit of writing tomorrow and I’ll do this other thing on Thursday and maybe I’ll fool around and have a bit of fun doing this other thing at this other time. But it wasn’t an entire lifestyle shift that I thought it would be. It comes with its own tyranny because of course it leaves a vacuum now. I’ve not got that thing to be worried about or stressed about. So there’s you know, as I’ve learned with all therapy and all life skills, like, you peel the onion back and there’s another layer below. But I’m definitely not in a state of existential, erotic, feminine angst anymore. I have permission to go to that place. I don’t feel the need to go to that place very often. And when I do, I can. And, you know, sure, I would like to explore it more, and I’m sure I will. But the tyranny of being like, in my own head about it has. Has dissipated. So I guess my, you know, my advice is, particularly if you’re Gen X, if you’re millennial, if you’re in a relationship, there will come a point where either you go, I have to lock this away and throw away the key, or you say, do you know what? It’s time to open up the box and share it with my partner. And know there may be a cost to that. But my experience is, she knows, probably doesn’t care as much as you think she might care. And if she loves you legitimately, like I’ve spoke to a lot of people and the way I’ve characterized it now is if you can help your partner see that this is just like erotic cosplay, you know, you may not need to do it very much, like two or three times. And maybe that’s. That’s that part of you exercised. Yeah. So it’s the denial of it that’s maybe driving it less than the actual thing. Maybe not. And again, I go back to my earlier point. Everybody’s different. So I’m really talking about my perspective. And, you know, Jenny, I’m sure I’ve had conversations about this. Jenny can go into a coma and disappear for very long periods of time, sometimes like five or six years. And then suddenly, unexpectedly, she comes back like a wrecking ball and says, hello, girls, I’m back. And suddenly all I can, I’m literally thinking and breathing. 247 Jenny thoughts as she’s whispering in my ear despicable things that I just a delightful, delicious and deliriously I want to do right now. And then she can get in the way. So, you know, I, you know, we’re not all jocks and we’re not all cheerleaders. Most of us are somewhere in that in between spectrum, including partners who may also have not shared their entire, you know, thing, whatever their thing is. So the journey can also begin with, darling, tell me about your unmet sensual needs. Maybe they don’t have any. Maybe they’re too scared. To tell you, but create the environment to open up the conversation. And you may be surprised.

Helene: I mean, every time I talk to you, I just think I want to applaud your, like, honesty, bravery, and your ability to just keep kind of discovering yourself. I mean, that’s what it is. It’s. Of course you’re very lucky that you have a partner. That said, darling, I love you, go do, do, be who you need to be. Just do you want to do it over there? But it’s fine. Whatever you want to do, do it. That’s wonderful. You’re very, very lucky. But I suspect that even if your partner hadn’t have said that, you’d have still felt the relief of just. Of just vocalizing and verbalizing and say, well, even whatever it is, this is who I am. Whatever your response, my kind of truth is I just need to be this. I need to say. I need to. I need to say into the room, make it real. Because it’s so weird in my head. And just the act of making it real, whatever the consequences, was really good for you. Although I love the fact that you’ve now. You’re now worried you don’t have enough to worry about. God, I could obviously talk about you for hours. I’ve got like, we only asked you half the questions. I didn’t even get to take a thing off the list. Maybe we’ll do a part de.

Jenny: I think we’ll do a part deux at some point in another three or six or 12 months or sometime. I’ve enjoyed every minute of this conversation and I can’t wait to get it post produced and on to onto the podcast.

Helene: Me too. Take out.

Jenny: Thank you girls for listening to my podcast. I really appreciate you listening all the way through to the end. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, then please consider going over to my we*****@********en.com and join my mailing list. Then you’ll get information about all of my very, very naughty things that I send out on a regular basis. You’ll also get access to a couple of my free stories. You can either read them or better still, you can experience them as an audio journey where I will directly encourage you to dress up for me in your favorite costume and do very, very, very unspeakably naughty things. I can’t wait for you to send me photos of that experience with me. So please do join up the jennyraven.com. Sa.