First published in The Guardian in September 2012
Perceptive reviewers of Crusher (my new novel, shortly available at all good booksellers, somewhere behind the stacks of Fifty Shades) noted it featured one Noel Maguire, a bitter Irish hack consumed with envy of his friends’ success. That’s you, isn’t it, they insist. How could you not envy EL James, the UK’s fastest-selling author? I honestly don’t, because never in a million years could I have written Fifty Shades. That’s a romantic fantasy for women, a story of healing and redemption written from the heart. I’m the least romantic fecker that ever lived – ask my wife Erika, aka EL James. I once bought her a tin opener for Christmas, and my first experience of kinky sex was her trying to shove it up my arse.
Fifty Shades of Grey was a typical overnight success, in the sense that it didn’t happen overnight – it took years of hard work. Erika spent two decades as a production manager in entertainment TV, and she was good at it, but […] Continue Reading…