The Melanie Russell Interview: "There's also something so beautiful about a man (or anyone really) giving themselves entirely to their partner."

"It just boils down to strong women. Physically, mentally, intellectually - doesn't matter what kind of strength, but I adore writing it."

Melanie Russell is one of my favorite erotica writers. Her stories are fast-paced. Her characters are relatable. The scenarios she creates are scintillating.

She describes herself as “an Aussie-based erotica writer with a love of everything dirty, filthy, and depraved.”

Her books include Locked Down with My Crazy Obsessed Stalker, Under Addison’s Feet, and her most recent book, A Song of Submission. I have done a deep dive into the plot of her facesitting classic, Tied, Tortured, and Facesat by the Girls Next Door at my other substack, How to Make Money Writing Erotica.

On her substack, she also publishes many on-going series, including Spacebound Sex Slave and Down the Bunny Hole.

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1. What made you decide to get started writing erotica?

I grew up doing what a lot of people did my age - fan fictions. AO3, Wattpad, and Writing(dot)com, etc. That, alongside a pair of supportive teachers fostered a real love of writing and literature.

I dabbled in erotica here and there, but didn't really start writing it seriously until 2021, during one of the many Covid Lockdown periods in Australia. My 9-5 had slowed down a lot, and I found myself with far too much time on my hands.

I started wasting days entrenched in yet another play through of the Mass Effect trilogy when my long-term partner said, 'Why don't you give writing erotica a real go?'. I think I shut down my game, turned to her, smiled, and started laying the groundwork then and there. It seemed like such an obvious idea, yet it failed to dawn on me until she spelled it out. Commissions seemed a good starting point - immediate feedback, a chance to hone skills, and a little extra pocket money. Everything after, I just stumbled blindly into.

2. Where do you find the inspiration for your stories?

When it’s for a commission, the inspiration usually comes from the client! Sometimes those ideas are so good I want to expand on them in my own work. Occasionally, I'll trawl erotica or literature websites and ideas will spring from there, and sometimes when looking for an image for a cover, I'll see a photo that sparks a fire. A few of my more odd or niche fetish stories (such as the Crazy Obsessed Stalker series) have come from bizarre dreams. And of course, like every other writer, smut or not, personal experiences inform a few choices.

However, an unusual amount of ideas assert themselves when I'm driving. I'm not a car person, I don't find driving cathartic like some people do - it's a chore. Maybe it's the time to think it affords me? Maybe I enjoy it more than I realize, but for one reason or another so many ideas, concepts, and sometimes entire stories, come to me on the road.

3. What is your favorite fetish to write about?

This is an easy one - Femdom, or really any subset of BDSM. Something about the power dynamics, and often the power inversion is really intriguing to write. This isn't exclusive to my NSFW stories either, power is just a theme I really enjoy writing. It (if I'm being real with myself) just boils down to strong women. Physically, mentally, intellectually - doesn't matter what kind of strength, but I adore writing it. There's also something so beautiful about a man (or anyone really) giving themselves entirely to their partner.

4. Many of your stories, such as “Turned Into Her Panties,” “Sorority of Stench,” and “The Sweaty Succubus,” involve “grossdom” or men having to smell or lick a woman’s sweaty body parts intimately. What is it that attracts you and your readers (myself among them) to grossdom?

Grossdom is such a curious one for me. It's not even particularly my cup of tea, though like most kinks, I can very much understand the appeal and the logic of why people enjoy it. Though, it is fun to write - disgust and humiliation are such immense emotions that are a lot of fun to explore, just as power and control are.

I think, like most kinks, the appeal of grossdom is multifaceted. There's the usual stuff - the breaking of taboos, the exaggeration of power dynamics. Imposing something gross asserts control, whilst accepting it signifies total surrender, sometimes total adoration. Then there's the sensory aspect - people have always been drawn to smells in sex.

5. In your series “The Wrong Spa,” which is available on Substack, you wrote about a futanari going to a sex spa in a cyberpunk future. Can you describe for our readers what a futa is and how futa erotica has become more popular recently?

Futanari stories are easily a third of my commission output these days. I, at first, assumed it was just word of mouth - a few clients asked it of me, then I posted those stories, and then others with similar interests came looking for me. But it's more than that. Futanari content is exploding across the erotica sphere.

Futanari is a Japanese term which broadly points to intersex or androgyny. But the word itself has taken on a much more specific meaning when it comes to NSFW content. Whilst it can mean any combination of body, mind and genitalia, it is almost entirely focused on female-presenting individuals bearing a male appendage, and very often, it's huge. Unrealistically so. As thick as a mans arm, and as long as a subway sandwich. This is largely traced back to the rise of hentai, especially in the West, as far as I know.

There's probably a couple of textbooks worth of reasoning as to its recent rise - I think part of it is a breakdown of old, antiquated gender-based taboos. It's probably mixed in with the recent rise in popularity for adjacent concepts such as femboys, muscle girls, and so on. I have no idea, but I'm here for it. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations!

6. How do you feel about writing in second person versus in first person? Do you reserve writing in second person for certain genres? Do you usually pair second person writing with present tense?

Second person perspectives are actually really fun, and sometimes challenging to write. Growing up as a big reader, I didn't encounter it too much, except in the old 1980s and 90s 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books, and I don't think it's at all popular. But I've found it to be really interesting to experiment with in erotica. It puts you, the reader, immediately in the characters place, and when spicy stories are all about the experience, the feeling, and the sensations, I think it works beautifully. Writing in the present tense only adds to that. When you read it, you can live it right here, and right now.

I've been doing it a lot with my Sci-Fi and Fantasy Femdom stories, and the reception to it has been very warm! It's influenced a number of commissions and clients too.

That being said, I barely touch second person outside of erotica. I think for the most part it's sidelined for worthwhile reasons. It's a bit clumsy, and the word 'you' becomes ever-present and everywhere.

7. What kind of literature and what authors do you enjoy to read?

Personally, I don't actually consume much erotica at all, which one might find odd, and truthfully, I do too. But I think I just enjoy writing it more than reading it. With that being said, a big shout out to Ranch Hand, G.G Wylde, Zatanna Dark and JA Martin - all terrific authors in their own right, style, and sort.

I do read though, and quite often. I'm a sucker for sci-fi and fantasy. Tolkien, obviously, but beyond LOTR - Children of Hurin, & Beren and Luthien to name a few. James S.A Corey's Expanse is certainly up there. Andy Weir, Ted Chiang, William Gibson, China Mieville, and Philip K. Dick have been in my library for forever, just to name a few. I really have a soft spot for classics.

8. Readers can commission bespoke stories from you on Fiverr. What have been some of the most interesting concepts you have written on commission?

Commissions are so much fun. I've learned of kinks and fetishes I never knew existed. I pride myself on my judgement free policy - I don't care how odd, weird or unusual your kink is, chances are, I'll write it (so long as it's legal!).

As far as interesting concepts: I had one client who wanted a Romeo and Juliette style romance set in a Sci-Fi inter-planetary conflict. There was telepathic sex, tentacles, inter dimensional dominatrices, prison breaks, huge ship-to-ship battles, the lot.

Another (which never quite made the cut as the client got themselves banned on Fiverr) was fixated on the singular concept of a woman falling over in cartoon-comedic ways, and getting stuck so their legs would flail about. The proposed story was more-or-less a montage of this happening to this poor, clumsy woman.

I've also had the pleasure of scripting a few visual novels! I have a background in tech and programming, so I was able to leverage that and actually write a story in Python, using renpy and such. I put almost 100k words into that project, and they've recently come back with a new idea. I'm quite excited for that one!

(Just as an aside, I'm actually moving away from Fiverr gradually - they have an immense bot and spam problem, and their fees are quite significant these days. I'm still there for now, but I'm working through Bluesky, Discord and Paypal more often these days.)

9. You publish on both Medium and Substack. What differences do you find between the two platforms?

I'm also on DeviantArt! The difference is entirely in the audience, though I do find Medium to have more in common with Substack, than DeviantArt.

On Medium, I find there's a preference for good writing, depth, story, and predominately romance. I've found a preference there for the 'realistic'. Cheating, hotwives, cucks, bondage, silver-foxes and some BDSM. There is definitely a market for the less contemporary, such as my Sci-Fi and Fantasy Femdom series, but aside from magic, tentacles, and tractor beams, the core concepts are the same.

Those same stories flounder and fail on DeviantArt, where intense fetishism is king. I seldom post grossdom on Medium because it garners next to no attention, but on DA, it's so popular that my readers vote on five grossdom stories in a tense competition every month to see which gets written next. If you compared my DeviantArt posts to my Medium stories, you could be forgiven for thinking I was two different authors. DeviantArt leans more towards art and visual media, so it can be hard to cut through that, but I manage on occasion.

Substack was an attempt to marry the two. Everything goes up there, but that's largely because it's the newest platform for me, and I haven't quite the niche or the attention yet. That might take some more work, but I believe Substack's preferences lie somewhere between the other two. There's a strong love of story-driven romance with yearning and sex and passion, and also a ravenous lust of the taboo. But for all three, my experiences could be unique to me, it's hard to say for sure.

From a technical/platform perspective: Deviant Art's text editor is some sort of fresh hell. Formatting is nightmarish. Medium is pretty bare bones, and I wish it had better planning and analytical views so I could easily see when stories are scheduled in more depth, and so on. Substack outpaces the other two by a country mile in terms of capability.

10. What recent projects or upcoming projects are you most excited about that you would like to plug?

Song of Submission came out not too long ago. It's a decently long, Femdom and Maledom novelette, in which a pop superstar, after a world tour, discovers a lust for being dominated. Her current partner is a very submissive man who can't quite meet her demands, so she goes looking and finds a bull. The bull becomes top of the pecking order, with the boyfriend acting closer to a pussy-whipped slave boy in chastity.

Beyond that, I'm working on a pair of anthologies, Sci-Fi Femdom, and Fantasy Femdom respectively, some stories of which are available on Substack and Medium, but there will be many more new stories exclusive to the book version.

Thanks for the interview! I hope your readers enjoy reading it as much as I did answering it.

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