HEROTICA
Heroes and victims of an underworld reality that is starker than fiction. BY ELENA SCIALTIEL
D
aring, innovative, crude and clinical, Medusa Stone’s novels are inspired by the crime news we are most in denial about, showing the ugliest aberrations of human nature. Medusa Stone is the nom-de-plume of a local healthcare professional who spent a sizeable chunk of her life in the United States and now writes fiction inspired by the true stories she witnessed there. “I write both in Spanish in English, but because most plots are based on the abuse survivors’ true accounts I recorded in America, they are reported in the same language those were originally told to me,” Kathleen, the authoress, says. “I am involved with a charity for sexual abuse victims and I interview many of them. They tell me their stories, and how they feel about it. These GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2020
intimate confessions allow me to walk a mile in their shoes and to write my characters from their point of view.”
Daring, innovative, crude and clinical Her novels aren’t pigeonholed simply as erotica, because their content spans various genres, such as romance, thriller, noir, and fantasy: “In my novels, I don’t just detail a string of sexual encounters. There is a proper plot, with its twists and turns, surprises, conflict and resolution, complications and sometimes redemption.” Of course, sex is explicitly featured as a natural part of life
- and she abundantly warns the potential reader in her elevator pitches - but it is integral to the story and pivotal to the progress of the action. Without sex, the other human pulsions and compulsions she analyses wouldn’t come into play in her world, and wouldn’t smudge playful amorality into criminal immorality: “I explore the fine line between consensual sex and rape, particularly in BDSM. I always make a clear distinction and make sure that the reader is aware of it.” Kathleen wants to convey the victims’ voices for them not to be forgotten, and for what happened to them not to happen again to anyone else in the future. She picked her pseudonym after the Greek myth of Medusa, a beautiful princess whom virgin goddess Athena cursed with serpent hair and petrifying stare 53
