Joy Zelig has been writing erotica, mostly featuring submissive women, for several years now: sexually intense, romantic, power exchange relationships, often with an Ageplay or Roleplay component.
No “adult babies,” no diapers, no cribs.
No incest, no violence, minimal compulsion.
More psychological domination than physical.
A bit of hand, hairbrush, or belt: no whips or crops or canes.
Pinked—or reddened—bottoms, backs, and thighs? Yes.
Bleeding, bruising, damage?
Dear, Goddess! No.
Some of her work has a Fifty Shades of Grey aspect at its core—rich dominant man, submissive younger woman—as in her series in progress The Good Master.
Up until recently, however, Joy has been using her twin brother Jon Zelig—a writer of erotica that generally focuses on Femdom themes—as a screen.
“Frankly,” Joy confessed in a recent interview, “I was embarrassed. Bad enough, I felt, that our parents had to deal with what Jon was writing. Adding in my own work just felt like it would be an additional burden on them.”
What changed her mind?
“We’ve always been doing fundamentally different things. At first, I told myself it made sense to just use one of our names: that would give ‘Jon’s body of work’ a kind of yin-yang feel to it, a kind of balance: Femdom/Maledom. But I think, for a lot of readers, this just ended up being confusing. When people looked for Jon’s work? They were mostly not looking for . . . the kind of fiction that I write.”
Joy is now ready to come out from behind the shadow of her Five-Minutes-Older Brother.
“There’s certainly some overlap in what Jon and I do,” Joy conceded. “He’s been an influence on me. My Ageplay trilogy, ‘Yes, No, Maybe’ kind of flips the script on his Dommy Mommy scenarios: something closer to an FSOG-influenced Spank-Me-Daddy! Theme. I also play with some of the same ‘sliding out of control’ situations: characters get into, perhaps even lobby for, a power exchange relationship, thinking they understand it and have it well-defined—and then things take on a life of their own. I think I’m also a little more comfortable than Jon is with bisexuality and with lesbians, both dominant and submissive.”
Almost always—the intensity of the roles they are playing notwithstanding?—Joy’s characters love and try to take care of each other.
“Otherwise,” she says, “What’s the point, really?”
Currently in the process of outing the books that have always been hers—preferring the term right-branding to re-branding—Joy Zelig looks forward to continuing to add more original books under her own name.