Dirty words

>> Black Heart magazine editor enjoys
the spunky mix of literature and sex

by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Laura Roberts aka Smut Mistress

Age: 28

Occupation: Writer/editor of Black Heart magazine

Bio: This deliciously sultry NDG gal and Yankee ex-pat first arrived here to study at Concordia and be closer to her then Montreal-based boyfriend. Currently the literary arts editor of Concordia’s mighty Link newspaper, Laura was moved, in 2004, to launch Black Heart magazine, an erotic literature publication catering “mostly to Concordia students and other interested smutty parties, perverts in general, and the sexually adventurous, I suppose.” Go to blackheartmagazine.com to download their spanking new issue, or to stroke to the free erotic updates Laura posts every week.

Is Black Heart magazine catering primarily to women? “Nah, it’s geared towards everybody—although we do seem to get a lot of contributions and letters from women.”

Are her writings inspired more by her sexual fantasies, or from personal experience? “Mostly about things that happen to me in daily life. Hey, I’ve been on a lot of bad dates so I’ve got a lot of weird, silly things to draw from.”

Does she ever find herself getting horny while writing her smut, needing to take a few minutes to take care of some business downstairs before continuing on with her work? “Oh yeah, definitely.”

Does she find the intensity of her work diminishes after masturbating? “Well, after getting myself off like that, I’m more, like, ‘Ah, maybe I don’t feel like finishing this story now.’ So yeah, definitely, if you finish yourself off before you finish the story, the story suffers a bit.”

Similarly, does she find she does better work if she hasn’t been fucked in awhile? Sort of. “When you find yourself ‘wanting it,’ it’s true, the writing tends to be more intense.”

Is writing erotica trickier than other things, given that when erotica is lame, it’s really fucking lame? “It depends if I’m writing a sex scene or more just about the idea of sex, and I tend to write more about the latter these days. But yeah, you’ve really got to avoid using clichés like ‘his throbbing member’ or ‘her secret place’ and other synonyms for vagina, like, say ‘ham wallet,’ which are so awful.”

Is it a big challenge attracting people to her site for a relatively cerebral erotic adventure when the Web is full of truly sexy sites featuring first-rate ball-torture and scatting images? “I think people kind of like the subtlety. In the print version of the magazine, we’ve got photos accompanying everything though.”

Is it hard finding decent writers to publish in Black Heart? “Yeah, but we have a few staff writers who are always good and every once in awhile we’ll get submissions where we’ll go, ‘Wow, this is amazing!’

A few of her literary influences: Leonard Cohen—“he’s pretty much a pervert to my mind”—Charles Bukowski, Jeanette Winterson.

Childhood ambition: To become a postal worker. “I was always playing Post Office as a kid.”

Last book read: Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee.

Musical preferences: Massive Attack, Poe, Portishead.

Words of wisdom: “Support indie smut.”

Comments: Dimwit@openface.ca