Charlie J Forrest

Molly and Harper over at the It Girl Rag Doll podcast have done a very interesting couple of episodes on the closet, and the various ways of being in and/or out of it.

I’m going to elaborate a little on my experiences of coming out, or at least part of me coming out, yes that bit, my willy. It’s a bit of a big topic so I’m going to break it down into three bits. 1) Why, 2) Why not 3) Fuck!

When I first started publishing erotica, all of six months ago, I started out with a female pen name.

Why?

Well, truth be told I didn’t really think it through. When it came to creating a name to write erotica under I was slightly blown away by the “Oh my God! I can be anyone!” thought. The fact that this thought immediately led onto considering a female pen-name is something I’m not going to think too much about right now. but what I would also say is that a big part of my decision was due to trying to do the ‘done’ thing. Note I don’t say the ‘right’ thing, because I wasn’t setting out to make a statement, I just wanted to write and sell stories. Of course there’s no absolute consensus on whether writing under a pen name that differs from your gender (and boy does that term get confusing in this context) is a good idea or a bad idea but, in the absence of any reliable information on what the best course of action was, I turned to Reddit.

And so Charlotte was born.

I’m not seeking to blame that particular online community for what I did, but I would just say that, when your starting out with something new and scary, it can be very tempting to look at the people who are shouting loudest and assume that:

A) They know what the hell they are talking about &

B) What works for them will necessarily work for you.

So those, as they stand, are my reasons excuses, for putting my first titles out under the name Charlotte. In the next post I’ll look at why this was a bad idea from an ideological perspective.