I remember it well surfing the internet and coming across a website that blew my mind. The sensual words and images left an imprint, so influential was the content of Afroerotik that it inspired me to write erotica.
Believe me when I say I am truly humbled to present to you, the awesome, beautiful and creative lady who paved the way for many – Scottie Lowe.
1. Who is Scottie Lowe?
I appreciate this question because I need the opportunity every few years to re-evaluate who I am. First and foremost, I’m a writer. Writing is what I do to live, it is my voice, my expression, without writing, I’m not Scottie. I write erotica with a heavy emphasis on showing people of African descent in a positive, empowered, erotic light. All of my Black characters are emotionally mature, confident, socially conscious and politically aware sensual beings. It’s imperative for me to infuse my commentary on race and Black history into all my stories as well as show all people of every sexual orientation and gender in loving, autonomous erotic scenarios. I write about interracial sexuality quite often because I want to educate other races about what it means to be black and sexual beyond stereotypes. Additionally, I’m a caregiver, advocate, entrepreneur, academic, a sister with unparalleled integrity, a daughter of heroes, and a mother of a movement to educate and enlighten.
2. Why AfroerotiK?
I started AfroerotiK because I needed to show Black people that being sexual meant more than being “freaky” on Friday and Saturday and spending the rest of the week ashamed and in denial of our desires. AfroerotiK exists because I needed a way to integrate the unique history and culture of Black people into erotic material that arouses without being degrading, insulting, or offensive. It’s imperative that we embrace our relationships as holistic and loving and that means that we have to expand our sexual horizons and explore new and innovative ways to communicate our fantasies with our partners. AfroerotiK is stories, audios, and erotic images that are beautiful, sensual, erotic, daring, and controversial.
3. Is there a difference between porn and erotica, if so what are your views?
There is absolutely a difference between porn and erotica. Erotica is art or literature created to stimulate and arouse all the senses; it’s about love and passion, it’s about the beauty of our God-given right to experience pleasure and ecstasy in a way that isn’t shameful, degrading, or vulgar. Porn is intended to stimulate the organs below the waist without regard for our most erogenous organ, the brain. Porn is crass and superficial, erotica is emotive.
4. A hotel room with two strangers, is this lust, love, desire, or a combination of all three?
A hotel room with two strangers could be lust, just the physical expression of being horny and using the other person to achieve stimulation and orgasm, who the other person is is irrelevant to the experience. It could be desire, where two people meet, experience tremendous chemistry and connection, and are driven by an electric, all-consuming passion that drives them to devour each other sexually upon meeting. The one thing that two strangers in a hotel room can’t be is love. Love is something that grows, develops, and evolves as two people get to know one another. Strangers can experience an intense connection upon meeting but true love takes work, compromise, and evolution as two people learn each other.
5. You have some excellent photographs on your site. How do you select the models and the themes?
First of all, let me say thank you. I am proud of all the various aspects of AfroerotiK expression but the images are particularly close to my heart. I write the stories, I record the audios so I create the pieces in my imagination and make them manifest with my own hand. I have to depend on someone else to help me create AfroerotiK images. My photographer and I have a very symbiotic relationship; I come up with the concept, select the models, plan the poses, design the sets, and direct the models and he uses lighting and his amazing eye to create images that are beyond what I could ever imagine in my mind. AfroerotiK photography is about capturing that intimate moment, peeking into a bedroom and being a voyeur on the fervor and heat that is unique to people of color. It is important to me to show people of every sexual orientation, interracial pairings, and good, old-fashioned Black couples in images that celebrate love, respect, sensuality, and eroticism. I select models that are of every shade, shape, age, race, and orientation in order to expand our sensual horizons and depict the complexity of people that make up Diasporic community. In my photography, you will see nappy women, dark skinned women, larger ladies, interracial images that depict love and intimacy and not fetish and taboo, and same gender loving . . . all dripping with sensuality . . . all created with the hopes that anyone who views them can see the beauty in people who don’t conform to Eurocentric standards of beauty.
6. Have you considered making your current blog into a book?
You never get a second chance to make a first impression so my first book will be In Loving Color, a collection of 12 erotic stories that includes erotic photography illustrating each story. The first four stories champion pure, unadulterated Black love. They are stories about Black couples, loving, exploring and expressing their sensual selves inside of committed, healthy relationships. The second set of stories are all about representing the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Black community to the fullest; showing intelligent, politically outspoken, sexy characters in situations where they aren’t ashamed or depicted as freakish but loving and autonomous. The beauty of these stories is that they highlight the similarities that people of African descent share, regardless of their sexual orientation. Four interracial stories round out the collection and each story addresses race and sexuality head on in a controversial, no holds barred manner. Because the concepts in In Loving Color are so outside of the norm for a typical book of Black erotica, because I’m dedicated to producing a body of work that has hard-hitting social commentary and opportunities for growth and erotic evolution, it’s imperative that I have the photography to accompany each story so that it entices people who would ordinarily shun and reject a book that has stories in it that include some of the topics that are highlighted within. So while there may be one or two stories in the book that don’t sit well with certain readers, the strong, sensual, incredibly hot images will propel people to explore it. And with any luck, those same people who would ordinarily feign indignation and disgust at my book will be lured to explore it because of the photography. I am confident that my strong writing and amazing images will be received well by the public. Once I’ve published In Loving Color, I will then publish the other books that I have either in document form on my computer or rattling around in my head.
7. The sexual fantasy genie appears, what do you ask for?
I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight. I wish for my Divine right partner to come into my life, to love and adore me, to be open-minded and sensual, to understand the difference between seduction and romance, and to be comfortable exploring any and all fantasies we share that are safe, sane, and consensual.
8. Have you read erotica written by black writers from the UK? Yes, in fact, I have.
There’s a wonderful sista named Vastiana who owns a Black erotica publishing company called Brown Skin Books (www.brownskinbooks.co.uk) in the UK who was instrumental and unconditionally supportive as I started AfroerotiK. I was exposed to trans-Atlantic Black erotica through her and I have tried to allow that experience to influence my writing. I am profoundly connected to all people of African descent around the globe and I can only hope that my characters and storylines can be felt by African Americans as well as Afro-Europeans and other Africans around the globe.
9. Sexual freedom is . . . the ability to share your most intense, extreme fantasy with your lover(s) and know that you will not be shamed, ridiculed or rejected. If AfroerotiK can do one thing, it is my prayer that we as a people can come to expand our sexual repertoire to include those things that conservative, repressive society tells us are wrong and dirty with the understanding that anything that does not degrade or harm us, from which we derive pleasure, is okay, it’s really okay.
10. I have to ask, when is the AfroerotiK site returning?
My website, www.AfroerotiK.com, was hacked and destroyed by someone who took offense to the messages I was spreading. I considered that website my baby; it was a part of me. It took a long time for me to mourn its loss because it was not only about erotica; it was about history, culture, intense dialogue and growth. For those that never had the opportunity to visit it, www.AfroerotiK.com was about finding validation and arousal from a community of people who were committed to being proud of their heritage, fighting racist stereotypes of Black sexuality, and pure, unadulterated arousal. Having had sufficient time to reflect on what AfroerotiK was and what I want it to be, I’ve created a vision of the new version that will be bigger, better, and blacker than before. With luck, guidance, and money, AfroerotiK should be back sooner rather than later.
Thank you Scottie, for answering Ten Questions, I look forward to reading your books and the return of Afroerotik.
If you have not read Scottie’s erotica, check out her blog Afroerotik.
