Khul Waters - erotic romance writer
Who is Khul Waters?
I am a 65-year-old Australian and was a high school teacher for most of my professional life. Born and raised in Sydney, I have taught in many places in eastern Australia. I have also taught in England and Hong Kong for extended periods of time.
I write in the genre of erotic romance in order to express the joy I find in life and in love. I began with short stories and poetry that mostly seemed to focus on one theme: the nature of love between men and women.
Specifically, I am intrigued by the nature of Dom / submissive relationships. Not the stereotypical leather and whips type but the need for many men to take a dominating role in lovemaking and for many women to take a submissive role. My stories feature this pre-occupation and have been published by eXtasy Press.
Paving the Road to.....
"How in the name of Hell did a quietly spoken, 'respectable', male teacher like you end up writing erotic-romances of all things?!" you ask, shaking your head in sadness / in confusion / in joyful amazement.
I smile at you and reach, confidently, for a well-worn cliché, "One step at a time...." and, while you sit there in awe of the power I have over language, I make reference to your Hell theme and follow up with another treasured writing tool, a paraphrased cliché, "The road to erotic-romance writing is paved with good intentions, you know." I nod in recognition of my own deep wisdom before beginning to describe how that road came to be.....
It began when I was just a teenager. (Yes, that long ago!) I had begun to collect failed, good intentions soon after puberty hit me and continued to add to that collection as the years passed by. By the time I was in my 40s, I already had a small mountain of them in my head and this stockpile had begun to teeter precariously inside my conscience. I decided that I needed to use them up somehow! Turn them into something else! Re-cycle them! I wanted more space in my head! And I wanted to avoid being buried under this excess of failed, good intentions. So, during my 49th year, I took a long, thoughtful look out of my bedroom window at the Road to Hell, which had many years earlier come right at me before veering away at the last minute when I had finally managed to do something right, and I saw in its example the solution to my problem.
And, just as importantly, writing, also, gave me the opportunity to consider what was not really me – those ideas and beliefs that had been imposed upon me or that I had accepted without question or without careful consideration.
I removed a lot more clutter during this introspection.
During this slow and somewhat painful process, I realised that I wanted those whom I loved to be able to read about the love that I had for them and to read about my take on the love they had for me. I wanted to share what I found awkward to say out loud. I have never found it difficult to show the love that I feel but I am, in this one respect at least, a typical male as I find speaking about my innermost thoughts and feelings difficult. Writing them down is far easier for me.
I continued to write poems and short stories about these beliefs and values so that I could examine the nature of the love that I felt so strongly but, from that point on, I also did it so that I could share it with those I loved.
“I can create a road just like that! I have enough of my own failed, good intentions. If I learn how to pave, I can do it! Hmm, but I'd better make sure that mine goes in a very different direction. And to do that, I'll need to give it a different purpose!”
I decided to use my paved road to write, to write about what mattered to me. I began to crush my stockpile of failed, good intentions and glued all the small pieces together with my many past regrets.
Slowly, I built small sections of tarmac on whose surface I began to write about loving relationships, about shared intimacy, about love and lust, and, occasionally, about opportunities lost.
And I made sure that I reserved some room for both regret and for guilt over failed relationships. Even though I was unaware of it, my paved road was already curving around to face its destination, erotic-romance.
When I began writing on my road, it was solely for my own benefit. I now had the cleared head space and gave myself the time to examine all of my core thoughts and feelings and to judge which were truthful reflections of me. I was keen to discover what I genuinely valued, what I believed in strongly, what I would joyfully spend my remaining life struggling to honour or to perfect or to protect.
Yes, you are right! Intimacy doesn't have to involve sexual desire or, as I lower my voice to whisper, the sexual act, itself. However, making love to your partner is one of the wonderful ways to share intimacy. For love-making not to be part of a loving relationship or, in the case of a romance writer, for it not to be made part of a description of a loving relationship, then each of these is made into something less joyful, less complete. Each is forced into becoming coffee without the aroma.
So, I became an erotic-romance writer because successfully describing the aroma of coffee pleases me as much as describing the taste of it does and I was unwilling to offer only the lesser experience to my readers.
About 10 years ago, I set myself a goal to become a published writer because I believed that what I had created in these fictional situations did successfully re-create the loving intimacy, laughter and eroticism that I was joyfully living. I succeeded in this goal.
Then, I went back to enjoying my wonderful life and the love of the woman who allowed me to feel this joy and such deep contentment.
Tragically, almost four years ago, she passed away from an invasive cancer and I wandered lost, grieving and alone in the desert far away from my road and the loving words she had inspired me to write upon it.
Slowly, the love and support that my family gave to me brought me back so that I am now, once again, mostly in the world. Recently, I realised that I could now walk upon my road again, even if I washed its surface clean with my tears every so often.
The latest writing that I have placed upon my road is an unpublished, as yet, novel, titled To Meet Her Needs. It is my tribute to the loving, passionate person she was, to what we were so fortunate to share, to what she allowed me to feel and to what she will always be to me.
If you choose to read one of my stories, my hopes are that, when you finish it, you will smile even more as you become aware of the warm smile that my loving, erotic-romance has left upon your face and that you will, also, become aware that it has made your own joy in life and in love begin to pulse inside your body.
If you do experience these wonderful feelings, then I can indeed regard myself as being an effective writer of erotic-romance. As a bonus, I will have a successful, good intention to store away. And all that paving will have been worthwhile.
Khul Waters
