On her popular substack, Sari Botton has honed this questionnaire beautifully, engaging authors on both craft and content. The below answer points to two authors in the sex work lane who have guided the writing of AFTERLIFE OF A KEPT BOY:
I was once given an assignment to write a chapter for an academic textbook about representations of male sex work. In preparation, I read just about every novel, memoir, and bio featuring a male sex worker protagonist/subject of the modern era. None is more emotional and expansive than Bruce Benderson’s The Romanian. I then started reading memoirs by women workers. Whip Smart by Melissa Febos stood out to me as getting the insides and the outsides right at all times—meaning the action and the emotion, intertwined. In that respect it has served as a template.”
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