This blog represents a fiction cluster that includes Our Street – a children’s imprint, and Lodestone – a young adult line. As a consequence it doesn’t include erotica, even though there is an erotica imprint at CI.

This is a tricky area for writers, publishers, and parents alike. There’s plenty of Literature that contains very dark and adult themes, and we tend to trust the heavyweight nature of it to keep children out. Books with sex and violence in them do appear in the mainstream, and in the adult imprints featured on this blog. However, when the focus shifts, there’s a line drawn. That line can be fairly arbitrary. It’s possible to say almost anything if the book takes a disapproving tone and everyone reading it agrees to pretend that no one reading it could possibly be enjoying the content.

What we expose children to, and what we protect them from, and how we even define children in the first place, is an interesting issue. Amazon has a clear policy that erotic fiction should not include anyone under the age of 18. The reality of history is very different. A mediaeval girl could easily be married off at 12, and it’s hard to do realistic historical fiction when the facts of the past do not square with the moral scruples of the present. This can lead to some strange disparities – historical novels can be quite sexy, and can feature people under the age of 18, and amazon and other self-appointed guardians of our morals manage not to notice.

Of course people have sex in books that are not erotica novels, and even in YA novels sometimes. There are horror novels published by the imprints that show up on this blog, and sometimes the sex in horror novels is darker, more disturbing and more violent than anything that erotica would cover.

As a parent, I deal with this by giving my child books to read and steering him away from ones that are not, to my mind, suitable. I consider myself to be responsible for that. There will come a day when he’s no longer willing to be guided by me, at which point he will have to deal with whatever he finds, on his own terms. I was 14 when I started reading horror – as was normal in my peer group. Legally still a child, not legally allowed to watch horror films at the cinema, but able to read it all the same. And to this day, the books that have disturbed me most weren’t horror novels, they were literary, and more disturbing for being closer to reality and history.

If after that array of random asides, you’d like to find out about our Bedroom Books line, hop over to http://www.bedroom-books.com/ or check out the blog.

And, for purposes of further confusing the issue, the top cover shown in this post is not the cover of a book from the erotica imprint, although it is described as 'racy' while Moon Song has some decidedly erotic sequences but isn't erotica. You can't judge a book by its cover.

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