Ariel Anderssen Has Arrived

(to write stuff)

Hello friends! Here I am, after many many years of trying to make people *watch* my stuff, suddenly trying to make you *read* my stuff too. Sorry. But I’ve just finished writing my second book (working title: Dirty) and while I go through the probably very slow process of getting it to market, I’d be very sad not to carry on writing and being read, because it has become something I love. So this is going to be my place for writing, in between books, and it’s going to be your place for reading what I write, if you feel like it.

I’m a BDSM performer, and I’ve been working as a professional, on-screen submissive for 21 years. My first book, a memoir called Playing To Lose, was published by Unbound in August 2023. It followed my story of growing up secretly kinky in a conservative religious cult (the Jehovah’s Witnesses) and eventually escaping, coming to terms with a sexuality I’d thought of as an insurmountable sin, and turning it into my job. Writing about some of the worst experiences of my life was challenging to begin with, but then sharing my words became addictive, and I found I couldn’t stop, and wouldn’t even if I could. Because I realised that my words had a power to help other people to accept their own sexual tastes, in a way that my photographic work perhaps couldn’t, because that’s not its primary purpose.

I’m going to post every month, and at least some of the content will be free, but I promise that there’ll be at least one thing that only paid subscribers will get access to, in thanks for your support. I’ve not read all the T&C’s yet, but I’m hoping to share pieces of erotic writing as well as fun behind-the-scenes stories from my life as a nakedy kinky model, and some serious stuff about feminism and BDSM and sex and guilt and surviving religion, in the hope that The Guardian will read it and be, like, “OMG babe you need a regular column cos we’ve totally rethought our phobic attitude to sex work and sex workers all because of you and your words and all your haaaaaaaaaaaaaair hun”.

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

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