Last fall I had the pleasure of once again interviewing erotica author Max Sebastian, author of many hotwife books, including A Lockdown Affair, Anarchy of the Heart, and Killer of a One Night Stand. Max was happy to chat about his newest series, Marriage 2.0 and his work on Medium.
It’s been a while since we last chatted. You’ve been busy with several new titles
including your newest series, Marriage 2.0, where you mix the world of science-fiction
and erotica with a high-tech program that arranges life-changing experiences tailored
to an individual’s sexual fantasies. Can you start by telling us where you got the idea
for this new twist on the hotwife genre? (Or mostly hotwife, we should clarify…)
Back maybe a decade ago, I was chatting with my fellow hotwife erotica author Kenny Wright
about various movies we thought might prove interesting if they had some kind of hotwife or
cuckolding twist. One movie I thought would be amazing with that kind of treatment was The
Game (1997), the Michael Douglas thriller directed by David Fincher, in which a wealthy Wall
Street guy with no heart is given the present of a life experience arranged by a strange
company called CRS. His ‘game’ involves him being set up as a sicko killer, and forced to go
on the run — and (spoiler warning) ultimately the experience gives him a kind of Scrooge-like
redemption. Talking to Kenny, I came up with a shadowy organization that arranges erotic
experiences for married people, inspired by CRS, that would result in improvements in their
relationships long-term. When I came to write it, naturally I focused on couples usually being
given hotwife or cuckolding experiences, since that is what I enjoy writing, but the whole thing
starts out with a straight wife-swap scenario, and there’s hints that other couples not featured
in my stories can find themselves in any kind of erotic scenario, depending on their own
personal tastes — swinging, power games, explorations of various kinks and fetishes, and so
on.
This does seem to be a way to arrive at that elusive element of how a seemingly vanilla
or ordinary couple could get into a more open lifestyle, like hotwifing or partner
swapping. I’ve noticed many authors just skip this development area and we are left
feeling a bit empty when we learn the couple is going to open up their marriage in
some manner. Was this your intent all along, too, in introducing “normal” couples with
marriage problems to this fantasy world?
It’s always interested me how couples get into the fantasy, and how they progress when they
decide (or one of them decides) to make it real. My stories are big on it, because it’s so ripe
for erotic suspense. Marriage 2.0 was definitely a mechanism for getting vanilla couples into
the lifestyle — and the added plus is that it is supposedly all based on their personal (even
secret) desires. There’s a trust thing, where they have to believe that trying this fantasy is in
their best interests, because the ‘science’ tells them it is. But also, the agency can represent a
third party to take the blame if it seems awkward or embarrassing to the couple to get into this
sexy disruption to their assumed monogamy — it’s not the husband that’s pushing this, or the
wife, it’s an independent agency (or if you like, the technology).
Reviews for Marriage 2.0 have been overwhelmingly positive, yet other authors of
erotica have attempted to blend erotica with mystery thrillers or crime novels, to mixed
results. Were you worried the two genres wouldn’t mix well and this could be a dud?
I think it took me a while to get around to writing it after first discussing the idea with Kenny,
because I was still in the early stages of building my readership back then. Then I just really
wanted to write it, it intrigued me. I actually think erotica blends very well with other genres
(and I’ve actually written a hotwife murder-conspiracy mystery series, for example). The
question for us indie authors, though, is whether the readership we’ve built up will tolerate
anything significantly different to your ‘normal’ kind of story. Readers like to know what they’re
getting into when they invest in a book, and the author name offers that certainty, so they
don’t like it if the author goes off and writes something completely different. Thankfully, my
readers seemed to cope with Marriage 2.0 okay, possibly because the sci-fi element is very
light.
Did you write the entire series before putting out the first book, or do you write as you
go?
I wrote Season One all in one go, then put it out as a single book. Season Two and Three I’ve
been releasing two episodes per week on the Medium.com platform, and I’ve actually been writing that as I go. Serialization wasn’t quite so mainstream as it’s become since Season One was released, but there was a 3-year gap between Season One and Two, and the publishing scene changed a little during that time to make it more common.
Marriage 2.0 sounds like it could be a future Netflix series similar to Black Mirror, but a
lot more exciting! In fact you even have titled the books Season One, Season Two, etc.,
do you have any intention of trying to make this into a television series?
Black Mirror is fantastic, but while the technology it examines is different with each story it
tells, in Marriage 2.0 a single technology forms the underlying foundation of the entire series,
with different couples (each with different problems) providing the variety from story to story. I
could totally see Marriage 2.0 as a television show — and yes, I’ve tried to capture the energy
of a TV serial in how I’ve presented this anthology series. But I don’t have currently have
plans to develop TV scripts. I do want to write more seasons of Marriage 2.0, however. In my
head, I want to pursue a few more storylines that involve looking behind the curtain at the
inner workings of Marriage 2.0. I don’t think it would turn out to be quite as crazy as
something like the wonderful Apple+ TV show Severance, but if it works, it would edge
Marriage 2.0 a little closer in tone to the kind of thriller that was its original inspiration.
Do you think something like this could happen in real life?
I think so, to some degree. Funnily enough, last year I had someone from a Silicon Valley-
based VC firm emailing me, who seemed to misunderstand the promotional web page I
produced to push the story on Medium — inviting me to apply for a new investment program
for start-ups in order to take Marriage 2.0 to the next level. I think it’s a little beyond me,
though. I do think it could be feasible for a company to specialize in arranging erotic
adventures for married couples based on questionnaire data they provide revealing their
personal tastes and fantasies. When I came up with Marriage 2.0, I used a little MacGuffin in
the form of Artificial Intelligence in order to explain how the company can determine couples’ true desires and make them real. In the last three years, AI has suddenly come on in leaps
and bounds, so who knows — perhaps that technology could actually work in some way. I
think the fly in the ointment would be achieving a profitable business, though. In my story, the
couples pay what they can afford for the service. Wealthy people can, as a result, enjoy a
more complicated adventure. But I think in reality, Marriage 2.0 would find it difficult to balance
the books in this kind of business.
Some typical scenarios play out with the couples in the series, including with the
video-game addicted husband Ben, and his wife Carrie, who you refer to as a “Game
Widow” after Ben all but completely ignores her, choosing instead to spend his nights
curled up with his video game controller. Carrie ultimately ends up signing up for
Marriage 2.0 in an attempt to save her marriage, which leads to a, well… we’ll lead your
readers uncover that. But do you think something like Marriage 2.0 could save a couple
like Carrie and Ben in real life?
The truth is, of course, that some couples are beyond saving. They don’t generally feature in
my stories, since I usually write about couples who find a fantasy that works for them, and can
then enjoy the thrill ride of pursuing that strange new adventure. I could certainly envisage a
storyline within the Marriage 2.0 universe in which we find a couple whose marriage cannot
be truly fixed. But the model might require some kind of happy ending, or else story could feel
unresolved, which leaves a lot of readers unsatisfied. A more conspiratorial tone might have
the Marriage 2.0 agency trying to cover up its failures, but I haven’t reached that point in the
series yet. Perhaps a hotwife/cuckold writer like Manus Dare or Ben Boswell would be more
attuned to writing about a couple that cannot be saved. I hear there’s quite a market for
vengeful Cheating Wives erotica where things do not end well for anybody, but that’s not me,
I’m afraid.
Without giving too much away, in several stories you return to the premise of not
knowing if the Marriage 2.0 service is “pulling the strings” and creating the events that
happen, which in turn create a fantasy for the couple, or if things are simply happening
on their own, which poses a psychological mind f-ck for the individuals. This is
something I found intriguing (and again, very Black Mirror and Sci-Fi). How did you
come up with that premise?
I think in my head, I tried to think like a corporation that needs to make a profit. How can you
arrange a life-changing experience for a couple without spending too much, particularly if the
couple hasn’t paid a huge amount for their service? The answer I came up with was that a
corporation would attempt to nudge the couple into taking their own decisions to make
changes to their usual sexual routines, rather than setting up an entire elaborate Truman
Show kind of world to get them there. So for some couples, particularly the wealthy ones, the
program might have more budget available to shape the experience with actors and
glamorous locations. But for others, where you need to keep the costs down, the goal would
be to just point the couples in the right direction, and let them do most of the hard work
themselves. For the couples taking part, such an approach could certainly lead to questions
about what is real in this experience of theirs, and what is fabricated. That whole concept
harks back to The Game — but also, some of the very best pure science fiction out there,
such as the work of Philip K Dick, looks into that concept of what is real. In Season Two, the
concept of Marriage 2.0 moved on a little, and some of the storylines reveal the presence of ‘co-ordinators’ and ‘performers’ involved in managing certain adventures, but there were also
hints in Season One.
Like much of your writing (that I myself am a fan of) you tend to put the needs of the
couple first, beyond the needs of the individual. Going back to the video gamer
husband, do you feel that’s really on him if he pays no attention to his wife and she
ultimately leaves him, or decides to cheat on him? I’m not a proponent of cheating, but
in that case where the husband obviously made no effort to maintain a healthy
marriage, would you condone it if she didn’t want to leave him?
It’s complicated, but when you’re writing this kind of story, it comes down to whether you as
the author need a character to be likable or not. Now some readers are going to take an
instant, irrevocable dislike to any character that decides to cheat. I know they do, they email
me about it. But plenty of other readers can see the shades of gray involved in a marriage
that has problems. So yes, if the husband neglects his wife, or mistreats her in some way, or
provides some other justification, I could totally understand it if she responded by cheating.
Sure, she could leave him outright — but if she genuinely loves him, and doesn’t want to
leave, I could understand the temptation to cheat. And to her, cheating might start off as
merely a one night stand. She might not mean it to extend into a full-blown affair. In my video
game story, I set out reasons why the wife might be tempted to cheat. But as the story went
on, I also had to find ways to keep the husband character likable, so I needed some
justification from his point of view. With that done, we can then enjoy the fact that the threat of
his wife cheating on him opens his eyes to the erotic possibilities of wife-sharing. Away from
this story, I happen to enjoy the suspense involved in a story where a husband discovers his
wife has cheated on him. But for me to remain interested in that story, I would have to find
some way to turn it into more of a hotwife arrangement, where trust can be rebuilt within the
marriage, perhaps thanks to the husband realizing that actually letting his wife sleep with
other people is crazy hot.
Expanding on that topic, in your opinion, what is the role of each partner who enters
into marriage? Is there an obligation to at least try and maintain your desire and sexual
attraction to, and for, your partner? Or do you view marriage more like the gamer
husband and several of the couples in your series–once the vows are stated it’s just a
matter of time before the sexual attraction fades and there’s nothing that can be done
about it? (Except of course sign up for Marriage 2.0!)
I think it very much depends on the couple. I think there are plenty of couples who very
sexual, and stay that way until the very end. I think there are also plenty of couples who see
the passion levels fade over time, for perfectly natural and understandable reasons as their
relationships progress and develop. I’m no expert, although I’m well into my second decade of
marriage. I do think our dopamine-driven modern media landscape seems desperate to push
the idea that we should all be having really amazing sex fairly constantly, or else we’re
somehow failures in life. I think when you enter into a marriage with someone, you are
obligated to be straight with them, and not do things that would break their trust in you. But I
don’t think marriage automatically means one party is obligated to maintain an expected level
of sexual attraction or performance. That feels too close to the awful concept of one or other
member of the marriage being some kind of ‘property’ of the other. But, if one party within the
marriage feels unhappy with the level of sexual desire in the relationship, a healthy
relationship would be open to the possibility of talking through the problems, and seeking some kind of solution — and that might be some kind of therapy, or medical attention
(sometimes, for example, a loss of sexual desire may be linked to some kind of medical
condition that can be treated). Marriage 2.0 as a concept recognizes that many long-term
relationships might need a little oomph now and again. It doesn’t judge, it doesn’t moralize, it
seeks to ascertain what turns on the individuals within that marriage, and then find some way
to bring the two together in a mutual sexual adventure.
You’ve been active on Medium a lot–are you actively promoting that platform (or
others) for your writing, or is Amazon still your platform of choice?
Amazon is still the retail giant of the publishing world when it comes to fiction written in the
English language. It is, therefore, very much still my platform of choice — if I stopped
releasing my books at Amazon at the moment, it would basically end my ability to keep doing
this, because most of my income comes from Kindle readers. Having said that, I don’t believe
it’s savvy to keep all your eggs in one basket, and I want my stories to be available to as
many readers as possible, even those who prefer a non-Kindle device, or paperbacks. So I
will continue to release books on Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and other platforms if
there are readers there buying books. Medium is something a little different. Medium started
out as a kind of blogging platform, encouraging people to write and publish articles — mostly
non-fiction. When I started looking into it, what attracted me was the claim that there were 60
million readers actively using it. My thought was that if there’s 60 million people on it, some of
them might find the hotwife concept arousing. So I thought I’d try putting some short stories
on there despite the fact that there wasn’t a lot of fiction there at the time. Medium is basically
a subscription service — you pay $5 a month, and you can read as many stories/articles as
you like. In that, it’s not too different from Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited — but as an author,
Medium doesn’t require you to be exclusive unlike Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. I can post stuff
on Medium and release it as an ebook to the usual retailers. And, so far it seems that posting
stuff on Medium does not result in lower ebook sales, which suggests that I have found
additional readers, rather than merely poaching readers from Amazon and the other retailers.
As far as I’m concerned, my experiment seems to have been working quite well, and along
with short stories, I have found that serializing longer stories at Medium also seems to work
well. You do need to post items fairly regularly on Medium — but that work can still go out as
an ebook, so you haven’t lost anything in doing it. And personally, feeling obligated to post
regular chapters on Medium keeps me very productive.
Related to platforms, are you worried about the future of Twitter, or X, now that Elon has
taken over?
Twitter, X, has been useful, to a degree, in promoting the work of indie authors like myself. But
social media platforms come and go — they always have, always will. Elon hasn’t done
himself any favors buying Twitter to force more people to read his tweets — but what is
happening is merely part and parcel of the “enshittification” of the Internet,
something which has best been described by the wonderful Cory Doctorow. Google,
Facebook, Amazon — they’re all currently eating themselves by bastardizing their services to
try to scrape higher profits. The question is, which platform will be next? Discord? Mastodon?
It’s why I always try to encourage readers to sign up to my mailing list, so they won’t miss out
on new stories even if the social media landscape suddenly changes.
What’s next in your publication schedule?
I’ve been releasing Season Three of Marriage 2.0 since January (2024), with a break for the
summer vacation, and under my current plans it looks like that will continue for most of the
remainder of the year, publishing on Medium and then as ebooks. I’ll probably need a break
from the series after that, and will look to put out some more standard hotwife type stories. I
have plenty of projects in the pipeline, including a longish wife-sharing story set in East
Germany before the Berlin Wall came down. Sounds unusual, but I think it will really work.
Who are you currently reading?
There’s so much good stuff on Medium these days, since a lot of other erotica authors are
now seeking out new readers there, so it’s become one of the best place to find new writers
that you like without spending a ton on books that don’t turn out to be what you want. There’s
a group on Medium in particular called the Authors of Cuckold and Hotwife Erotica (ACHE) —
of which I am a part — that has led me to some brilliant writers I’d never have simply
stumbled upon on Amazon. A few I’m reading right now — Zoey Adams is a wonderful writer,
Paul Garland has become a force in the subgenre in recent years for a good reason, and
Lacey Cross is a real live wire, particularly if you like shorter stories. I’ve also been reading
Kirsten McCurran’s ‘Hannah Surrenders to the Landlords’ trilogy, which is excellent. Kirsten
was one of the authors who got me interested in hotwife erotica in the first place, and she’s
been hitting a rich vein of form recently.
Anything else you’d like to share with your fanbase?
Keep your eyes out for more volumes of ‘Best Hotwife Erotica’ from a group of us including
myself and Kirsten McCurran, along with brilliant writers like Sean Geist, Kenny Wright and
Paul Garland. We put one out in June with a theme of ‘friends and lovers’, and another should
be coming out toward the end of 2024 with a theme of ‘fun and games’. It’s been a lot of fun
to write these short hotwife pieces under a particular theme, then see how fellow hotwife
authors have tackled it.
Links:
Max Sebastian – https://maxsebastian.net
Marriage 2.0 – http://marriage-2-0.com
ACHE – https://medium.com/authors-of-cuckold-and-hotwife-erotica
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