Taboo Kinks Still Exist--Hannah Murray (Santa Daddy)

When I first began thinking about doing a guest blog post here at Romance Junkies, I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about—BDSM romance—and I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I have Very Firm Opinions™ on many things kink related, and I was ready to talk about all of them. Misunderstood kinks? No shortage of topics there. Can BDSM romance be lighthearted and funny? Yes – there’s a reason we call it ‘play’! What about the writer’s responsibility to include discussion of safety and consent? VERY FIRM OPINIONS.
As it turns out, I had too much to say. I had to narrow the field a bit, or this post would be 47 pages and the fine people at Romance Junkies would be all, “We asked for a blog post, Hannah, not a research paper”. And while I’m sure you’d all be thrilled to read a dissertation-length diatribe on how most BDSM clubs in major US cities function in real life (hint: most are unfortunately not owned and funded by billionaire Doms who look like underwear models and can bring a woman to orgasm with a stern look), I’ll save that for another time. But hey, if you want to talk about that, feel free to hit me up on Twitter.
Anyway, after several days of muttering at a blank Word document and thoroughly annoying my family (“Dad, Mom’s doing it again”, voiced by an exasperated first grader, may have been heard once or twice), I finally hit on a thesis statement:
Taboo kinks: do they still exist?
Short answer? Yes, of course. But not quite like they used to. Let’s talk about publishing, and how the landscape looked, say, twenty years ago compared to now. Because boy, has it changed.
I was at a writer’s conference in the early 2000s (God, I feel old), listening to a well-known romance author speak. I had found her books because while she wrote mostly paranormal romances (not my personal fav), they were next level kinky and filthy (totally my fav). At the time she had just signed her first big NY deal, and was talking about how different it was from the small presses she’d been publishing with to that point. To illustrate this difference, she told the audience that her new editor had begged her “not to write butt stuff”.
Now, I have not had any personal conversations with NY editors from which to draw (any NY editors reading this who would like to rectify that can also reach me on Twitter, my DMs are open), but considering all the traditionally published books I’ve read that included such shenanigans, I just can’t imagine that conversation happening now.
Butt Stuff is, for the majority of the folks publishing or reading romance, no longer taboo. Which means most publishers are no longer opposed to printing it, and readers generally aren’t surprised or shocked to see it. Of course, like almost anything else you’ll find in a book, some people hate it, some people are like “meh, butt stuff”, and some people get highly irritated when a blurb and excerpt gave the distinct impression that butt-based shenanigans were a GO only to discover upon reading that the book had no butt related stuff AT ALL HOW RUDE.
Where was I? Oh, right. Butt stuff, no longer taboo.
Another example of a once-but-no-longer-taboo-kink in publishing? Daddy kink.
Back in the early 2000s again (so old), I was having this conversation with my then boyfriend. He was totally, completely, one hundred percent a Daddy, and he was annoyed and a bit baffled at the tendency of some people to conflate Daddy kink with an incest fetish (let me clarify for those unaware, it is very much not). “Your boys get it,” he complained to me, referring to my gay roommates. “Why doesn’t anyone else?”
I’m not going to get into why gay male culture has historically been more accepting of and open to these types of relationships, because that’s a much different post that I am not qualified to write. But he wasn’t wrong about most people not getting it. And back then, I don’t think there was any Daddy kink in romance at all (due in no small part, I’m sure, to the fact that the only romance being published was cis/het, which is another blog post I am not qualified to write). Now? I can’t swing a virtual flogger on Twitter without hitting an author who wrote one, or a reader recommending one, or a picture of a silver fox someone posted with “yes, Daddy!” in the caption. It is generally accepted to be A Thing.
Which is dead awesome, and I will follow anyone on Twitter posting such things. Feed it right into my eyeballs.
Taboos are fascinating to me. Which is why when I was sketching out an idea for a series of BDSM romances that needed a common theme, ‘taboos’ is what I latched onto. The first book in that series is Santa Daddy, and as you may have surmised from the title, it’s a Daddy kink tale with a Christmas setting. “Wait a second, Hannah,” you might be saying. “You wrote a Daddy kink book in a series about taboos when you JUST GOT DONE SAYING that it’s no longer taboo?” Well, yes. Because while it’s no longer taboo in publishing, that is not the only place taboos exist. They also exist in society (something anyone who’s slipped up and called their boyfriend ‘Daddy’ in the checkout line at Target can tell you, ahem), and they exist in our minds. Which is what makes them so marvelously delicious to read about.
Though many things once considered unpublishable in romance are much more acceptable now, some taboos do linger. For example, one mainstream publisher I know of is happy to look at BDSM romance submissions, but they won’t accept stories that include blood play, despite it being a very popular activity in kink circles (I have such a story on my hard drive all ready to go, and it is dreamily romantic and smokin’ hot, just in case any of you NY editors are still reading). And while I of course have not read every BDSM romance out there, I’d be willing to bet my beloved pink Kate Spade purse that watersports and its messier cousins are still on the traditional romance publishing no-no list.
Which brings me back to my thesis statement: do taboo kinks still exist? Absolutely. In publishing, in society, and in the dim, secret corners of our delightfully diverse minds. You’ll see some of my favorite taboos on display as my BDSM romance series unfolds, but I’m curious: what are yours?
SANTA DADDY Excerpt:
Hannah has been reading romance novels since she was young enough to have to hide them from her mother. She specializes in funny, snarky, romance with enough heat to get your Kindle smoking. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband—former Special Forces and an OR nurse who writes sci-fi fantasy and acts as In-House Expert on matters pertaining to weapons, tactics, the military, medical conditions and How Dudes Think—and their daughter, who takes after her father.
The first book of her Perfect Taboo Series, Santa Daddy, is available now from Totally Bound Publishing, and book #2, The Shame Game, will be published in 2021. You’ll find information on all her books on her website, and you can connect with her via email, Facebook, and the afore mentioned Twitter.