The Simone Francis Interview: Bringing Our Secret and Sexy Obsessions to Life
"My submissive characters are indulging in their hidden desires. Calling a spanking a punishment is a bit like saying: I’m going to take you to your favourite restaurant as a punishment."
Simone Francis is the author of over two dozen sexy stories featuring feisty women who freely take lesbian and bisexual lovers, kinky sex, including spankings, whippings, and canings. Her stories include women of all ages and some who aren’t even human—horny demons and seductive succubae amongst the characters.
You can find
on Substack, Medium, and her homepage. In addition to writing erotic stories, Simone also publishes fetish photography, writing tips, and photography tips at Secret Obsessions. Her paid subscribers can read her full-length serialized book The Donnington Chronicles, the tale of Celia Donnington’s experience in the world of BDSM at the Hardend House, which is currently being serialized on Substack.
I interviewed Ms Francis by email. Here is what she has to say about erotica, fetishes, writing, and her latest works.
What is the latest project you've been working on?
I am writing a serial story that I am going to release exclusively on Substack about a woman who commissions a painting of herself in the nude. When takes it home, she starts to feel the effects of all sorts of naughty things happening. It’s a sort of reverse Dorian Grey.
Where do you find the inspiration for your stories?
I’m a visual person so a single picture or someone or something I see can spark an idea. This is usually for a vanilla or kinky sex story without the supernatural elements, although The Girl in the Green Dress was inspired by a girl walking down the road wearing, you guessed it, a very sexy green dress. Release Me came from the photograph that illustrates it. As I wrote them, both stories gained a ghostly twist.
I worked in the photographic industry for many years and met a lot of models who were into BDSM and various other kinks. I spent a lot of time talking to them and they were amazingly open about their sex lives. They gave me a lot of ideas for characters and scenarios, and I am very grateful for their candour.
I have to work harder with the supernatural stories. These come from deeper in my imagination. I have always been a fan of Dr Who and loved the TV series, Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected when I was younger. The idea that there are things out there that you just glimpse out of the corner of your eye fascinates me. I like to take these ideas and add sexual elements.
I have also read a lot about myths and legends and my mind always seems to go off on a, ‘what if they were based on something’, tangent. There is quite a lot of erotica in some of these stories but I think they have been cleaned up as they were written down over the years. I’ll bet when they were told around a campfire they were a lot more explicit. I just add some of that back in.
On your website Secret Obsessions, you publish a lot of fetish photos in addition to stories. Did you take the photos?
I didn’t take the photos, but I am very close to the photographer who did. We worked together a lot.
I mentioned earlier that I spent a lot of time talking to models who were active in the BDSM scene. I dislike the idea that all submissive women are labeled as sluts; especially as there is no equivalent word to describe promiscuous men.
This is one of the reasons I have taken Secret Obsessions more towards the illustrated story format is that I want to show some of the women’s motivations for submitting to bondage and discipline. I’m not aiming to preach to people, my stories on Secret Obsessions are still fantasies but they have little nuggets of truth in them.
The photographer I work with doesn’t shoot hardcore. Hopefully, the pictures stimulate the viewers’ imagination, then my writing takes it further.
You have written a number of stories about sex and the supernatural, some involving elements of horror, including the Succubus Collection, Goldilocks Bared, and Sacrifice Yourself to Lust. Do you find some of the same elements are at play in roleplay and fantasy?
I started writing my supernatural stories so that I could take my characters into realms where the unexpected could happen and there were no human social mores about what my supernatural characters could get up to.
I like the idea that there is a parallel world, one that we cannot see, and sometimes beings from that realm cross over into our world. They have their own rules and codes which sometimes conflict and sometimes match the human world. To me as a writer, this parallel world only exists in my imagination and is still coalescing, so I have not yet sent a human character into it or written about it specifically. I suppose if I decided to do that then some of the elements in roleplay and fantasy would kick in but not whilst the traffic is the other way.
I always have some element of consent in my stories as I want my human characters to be pushing their boundaries and I really don’t want to write out-and-out rape scenes. I don’t usually write about explicit, gory horror either. I always find it slightly odd that films will show scenes of supernatural monsters ripping damsels apart but if they got their cock out that would be a big no-no.
What are your favorite fetishes to write about?
That has got to be spankings, whippings and canings within a submissive dominant relationship. By that, I mean where the recipient is naturally submissive and enjoys the discipline—and gets a kick out of the experience.
I use the word discipline rather than punishment because my submissive characters are indulging in their fantasies or hidden desires. Calling a spanking a punishment is a bit like saying, I’m going to take you to your favourite restaurant as a punishment.
So far, all my stories are about female submissives submitting to male and female dominants. I love writing The Master’s Diary and am working on The Mistress’ Diary on Secret Obsessions. The setting, Hardend House comes from my book The Donnington Chronicles that I am serializing on Substack. It is this wonderful fantasy world, there’s quite a lot of humour combined with a lot of very kinky sex. I think the Mistress’ Diary and the story I am writing to publish on Substack are going to feature some submissive men.
On the darker side I also have a character, Millie whose fetish is to place herself in situations that would be terrifying if they happened to most readers, but she gets off doing it. I have just read some research that claimed that sixty percent of women have rape fantasies, but in a controlled, fantasy setting, not in real life. This is what Millie is seeking so she is a great, if somewhat difficult, character to write about.
It’s not really a fetish but I also have a nameless supernatural character who appears in Goldilocks Bared and morphs from female to male. They are also one of my favourites to write about.
Do you find it is different writing for Medium vs Substack? Would you recommend other writers try publishing on Medium?
I think it depends on what the writer wants. There’s a great sense of community on Medium, especially amongst erotica writers and some really brilliant publications. The editors of publications like Tantalizing Tales and Redemption Magazine are very supportive. On the negative side it’s not a great place to earn money unless you churn out shorter stories.
Unfortunately, I think this is encouraging so very good writers to drop their standards and publish daily shorts. Their really good stuff then gets lost in a blizzard of content from them and competing writers.
As a reader I find I lose track of authors on Medium. Substack is a much better platform to publish serials or longer stories. As a writer I’d rather send my stories and articles to a couple of hundred people who have at least expressed an interest in them rather than completely abandon them to the Medium algorithm.
I am trialling including a link to my story on Medium in the preview section of my paid stories if it has been published there. If a reader is unsure about becoming a paid subscriber on Substack but is a Medium member they can read it there. I earn a little bit for the read and hopefully they will come back as a paid subscriber.
And subscribe to Simone Francis’s Substack, view her work at SimoneFrancis.com and Secret-Obsessions.com, and follower her on Twitter at @simone_author.