It's a topic in writing that I ocassionally embrace - Angus McCloud enjoys a cigar and is often portrayed smoking one, usually with a malt whisky in his other hand. I've taken it further with other characters, using the glowing cigar as an object of torture to burn a submissive's nipple. I must admit that I like the image, and might look to take it further. But do people find it sexy, or is smoking old hat?
As an ex-smoker and glad to have given up, I never use cigarettes in any of my scenes. But perhaps that's being unrealistic when so many people are still happily adicted. I know that the BBC have banned it in some of their programs, not wanting to advocate by screening characters who smoke. But should I be doing the same? Is it right to self censor? What is the responsibility of an author - to portray reality, the world as it is; or to paint a fanciful picture where certain things don't exist?
Well let me think on that for a second, for that's all it need take...
Hey! This is Jack Brighton! This is Fiction on The Wild Side! Of course I paint a picture that is far from real. My men are always gorgeous like the smokin' hot stud above, their cocks are always big, hard and forever hungry, and it's a long long time since I wrapped one in a condom. It's a fantasy world full of fantasy characters, where the horrors of STD simply doesn't exist. Cigarettes don't either, or so it would seem. I never intentionally did that - just the way my characters turned out. Something to think about for the future, along with the question... Is smokin' hot... Or Not?
Jack