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From: mmtwassel@aol.com (mat twassel)
Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} Interview with Nicholas Urfe--2001 Dulcinea Festival Winner
Date: Wed,  6 Jun 2001 16:10:03 -0400
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Review: Interview with Nicholas Urfe--2001 Dulcinea Festival Winner
l
Interview with Nicholas Urfe:

MT: The more I read your story "Call and Response" the more I like
it. It's a wonderful story, deliciously sexy and ardently romantic,
especially the ending, which suggests a couple made for each other,
always renewing themselves in each other. It is as vivid a portrait
of romantic sexual connection as I have ever read. Definitely this
deserved being named the winner in the 2001 Dulcinea Memorial Writing
Festival. I think Dulcinea would have loved it. Congratulations! You
must be very pleased. Were you surprised?

NU: Surprised isn't the word. Shocked is more like it. 

MT: Where did the idea for "Call & Response" come from?

NU: It's pretty much autobiographical, actually. A scene very much
like that happened between myself and my wife, and I was struck by
how I was at once overwhelmed with images and yet unable to speak, to
articulate any of them at all. Which is silly, for pretty much
precisely the reasons outlined in the story. But I'm a little slow on
the uptake--I didn't figure out quite how silly it was until
afterwards. (And then I told her. At length.)

MT: It runs extremely close to the 1100 word limit. Was that a
struggle for you?

NU: Ha. It was murder. I run on at the mouth. Not to brag--well,
okay, I'll brag a little: I think I might well have the record for
longest story written in a Write Club Duel. --Luckily, I have a feel
for this length--I used to write a lot of magazine columns to 1100 or
1200 words. And pull my hair out every time over trying to fit what I
wanted to say in that teeny-tiny amount of space.

MT: Did you have to trim a lot out? And if so, do you think the story
ended up better for it?

NU: It's hard to say what got cut; I was trimming and sculpting a lot
at the end. I decided I would be perverse and turn in a story that
was exactly 1100 words, darn it, and I wanted it to fit precisely.
(Thank God for Word's word count feature--though Rui claims his count
weighed in at 1099.) I do think the brevity helped my focus a lot--I
tend to digress, like a cat chasing a bit of string. Oh, that
thought's interesting, let's follow that. I had to be ruthless with
this piece. If I'd had a little more room, I might have opened up
more about the wife's "dirty little secrets," as it were. Gone more
into her boywatching, and her boy/boy thing, to balance the
narrator's girl/girl thing. But maybe not.

MT: In the planning and writing of this story, what particular
Dulcinea stories or story characteristics (if any) influenced you?

NU: Horrible confession time: I didn't know about Dulcinea before
this contest. Nat sent me some email letting me know it was going on,
and inviting a submission, and I was thinking of passing until I went
and skulked through her archive. I couldn't be more different than
her in approach and focus and technique, but at the heart of all her
pieces is that amazing relationship--that tussle of equals over who's
on top at the moment that never ends and never gets won once and for
all, that give and take that's the ultimate secret of any long-term
relationship. I saw that immediately, and loved her stories for it.
She managed to celebrate the part sex plays in all that without
falling into the usual self-consciously defensive traps that so many
people can fall victim to when writing about positive, happy, upbeat
sex. For me, anyway, it was an enormous challenge.

Then I thought of the night my wife had asked me, playfully, what
turned me on, and I knew I had the kernel of an idea that could work.

MT: The use of old flames and other lovers is rare in Dulcinea
stories as is the attention to detail and the richness of language.
Were you concerned that the judges might 'dross' your story because
of these?

NU: That's why I'm shocked. When I turned it in I was sure I'd be
drossed out of the running. A good story, maybe, but not quite true
to the letter of Dulcinea. I dickered back and forth over trying to
be more overtly Dulcineaesque, but I was in love with the basic idea,
and I had to do what I did to make the idea work. So I did it. I told
you guys when I turned it in that maybe I hadn't done a great job at
a Dulcinea story per se, but I thought I'd done a pretty good cover
version. The Nick Urfe Band covering the songs of Dulcinea...

But I'm going to quibble with you over "attention to detail." She may
not have crammed as many into her stories as I managed in my stream
of consciousness, but her details were always precise and cannily
chosen.

MT: Do you think that having a story perhaps on the edge of
Dulcinesque was an advantage? In what ways do you think your story is
most Dulcinea-like?

NU: Not knowing what went through the judges' minds, it's hard to say
if that was an advantage. Certainly I'm thrilled and delighted that
they saw past the superficial differences to that core, that
relationship. And maybe it's just the cold medicine making me all
goopy, but I do want to say right now that I really, really, really
love my wife.

But--looking through the various entries, I was amused and surprised
by how many people had played a little loosely with the basic
Dulcinea form--Alexis's bronze winner, which is a lovely tribute in
addition to being a lovely story. Or Dr Spin's naughty "Reprise." But
you've also got a lot of pitch-perfect mimics in the mix--"Trimming
the Sweetheart" and "His Favorite Day," say. I don't envy the judges
one bit.

MT: I love the rich yet apt language you use and the spot-on
attention to erotic detail. It's everywhere in your story. Look at
what happens to the guy's zipper.

 "What turns you on?" she said. Her fingers tugged at his zipper, and
his distracted senses were heightened enough that he could feel the
individual teeth disengaging. 

NU: That's just a precise sense memory thingie. Any time you're
dealing with sensory input, but especially when it's dealing with
sex, it is invaluable to be as concrete and specific and precise as
possible. Sex is so intensely coded--we've got all these ways of
talking about it, talking around it, without ever really speaking to
it. It's way too easy to fall into those cliches without realizing
it. But I'm starting to babble. "Keep it real." There. Let's go with
that.

MT: And later:

 "Well?" she said. His fly lapped open, and her fingers peeled his
burgeoning cock up and out of his shorts.

"Lapped" is just the perfect word. But so are "peeled" and
"burgeoning." Do these words and sentences fly magically into you
head, or do you shake your muse until she gives? How hard is it for
you to write? How long did it take you to do this story?

NU: You're trying to get at a very dangerous place in most authors,
you know. Where's the magic place in your head that the words come
from? I don't tend to poke at it that much. It just keeps serving up
words, and I write them down; long as it keeps up its end of the
bargain, I'm happy.

So I don't do much muse-shaking. I do lots of wandering around. Or
sitting down and reading something that has nothing to do with what
I'm supposed to be doing. I surf the web. Check email obsessively.
And then without warning I'm writing. A lot. Fast.

But all of that is writing time. The time I spent in front of the
computer, punching keys to enter this story in? Maybe three hours.
Maybe four. How long did it take me to write this story? At least a
couple of weeks.

MT: You chose to skip showing the orgasm itself. Dulcinea, for all
her romanticism, rarely "avoided" putting that moment into words.
Here's a passage from Dulcinea's "Welcome Home" which is typical:

 Because of the difficult angle, she couldn't take him completely in
her mouth. But he felt the back of her throat at the head of his
cock, and, ever so gently, the edge of her teeth as she raised her
head. It wasn't long before his muscles tensed, and he shot wads of
heavy cum into her mouth. He could feel her throat working as she
swallowed, and she didn't raise her head until he was finished.

Were you tempted to show the climax?

NU: I honestly hadn't even noticed until now. Um. No, not really; the
climax, in the end--the physical climax--wasn't the climax of the
story, and I didn't have enough room so that it could do metaphorical
duty for the epiphany or realization. Heck, I didn't have enough room
for the orgasm at all. Some pornographer I am. Okay, we're running
long--kill the money shot.

But what I was saying, about details--that bit with the teeth, and
her head. That specific detail suddenly gives you a very specific
image of the position and the leverage and all that. I've almost got
a memory of that very feeling. Very canny, and an excellent job of
putting herself in the shoes of the opposite sex--something she else
did quite well and doesn't, I think, get a lot of credit for.

MT: What, if anything, have you learned from being in this Festival? 

NU: That maybe I should try shorter form pieces more often, while I'm
trying to do justice to my long-winded epic bloviations.

MT: Can we expect more Dulcinea style stories from you?

NU: Hmm. Interesting. Certainly I'd like to do more shorter pieces
that are happy and celebratory and optimistic, but there's the flip
side--the dark side--that draws me in, too. The dissolution of the
self; the obsessive, monomaniacal, desperate need or hunger that
underlies all of this happy positive upbeat talk we engage in about
sex. Um. See, it's been well over a year since my last Indigo
chapter. I've got to get back in that mood.

MT: Once again, thanks so much for particpating in the Festival.

NU: Thanks to you guys for putting it together. Bang-up job. 

==========
Nicholas Urfe's:
the james sisters and indigo are archived at:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/nickurfe/www


2001 Dulcinea Festival Web Site:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Rui_Favorites/www/Dulcinea/

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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