LOS ANGELES—AVN Hall of Famer Joanna Angel can now add "published novelist" to her wildly impressive résumé with the official debut Tuesday of her over 300-page sexual odyssey Night Shift: A Choose-Your-Own Erotic Fantasy, which she marked with a live reading from the book at Barnes & Noble in central L.A.'s popular shopping complex The Grove.
Angel regaled attendees for a solid hour with one of Night Shift's several alternate storylines, involving main character Taryn—a 25-year-old girl who recently began working graveyard at an adult store called Dreamz in Tampa, Florida—starting a fling with a burly, cross-dressing customer named Billy.
Following the reading, Angel took questions from the audience about the book's genesis, the extent to which it draws on her own experiences, and her plans for a follow-up.
She drew a hearty laugh when she explained of her choice for the book's setting, "It's in Florida because I think Florida is a really strange place."
She recounted that the offer to write a novel came after she penned her chapter of Asa Akira's anthology Asarotica. "The publishing company reached out and asked if I wanted to write an entire erotic novel, which is something I actually never thought of doing," she said. "I always kind of assumed my first book that I ever wrote would be a memoir; I've just become so used to people asking me to write about my experiences in porn. I'm actually a little bit bored of talking about myself ... and I'm a pretty narcissistic person.
"So they asked me if I wanted to write a whole erotic book, and I just said yes," she continued, "and they told me they wanted it to be choose-your-own adventure, so I just started thinking of a bunch of different ideas that could lead to different adventures. And I was trying to think of what I could write about that wasn't exactly my life, but I could use the different experiences I've had in my life to write, because you kind of have to write what you know."
She noted at one point, "There is actually a chapter of the book where Joanna Angel comes into the store, and I had a lot of fun with that."
From landing the deal to completing the book took Angel a mere four months, she revealed. "I did this pretty fast. They asked for a pretty strict deadline, and I work well under pressure. So yeah, I just did it. I spent a couple of weeks writing an outline and like a map—especially with the choose-your-own adventure format, you have to see where things are going, where things are going to end—but after I did that, it really came pretty easily to me, I just kind of sat down and wrote. I think the hardest part was when I would write an entire path and then when I'd be finished with that path, I'd have to go all the way back and kind of start over but go somewhere different. That was kind of difficult because you get really attached to a character and their story."
Among the audience members was trans superstar Buck Angel, who heaped praise upon his sister-in-surname for her handling of the Billy character and her branching out into the literary world in general. "I appreciate what you wrote about the cross-dresser," he said. "It was very compassionate, and I love that. You did a great job, because it could go the other way. You were very respectful. I think it's an important book, because people always think porn stars can't do anything else, so it's actually a big deal I think for the porn industry to have somebody like you be out there and doing things other than porn."
Asked whether she'd like to turn Night Shift into a movie, Angel said she would, but qualified, "I don't want to make it into a porn movie; I'd like it to be a real movie—like that one that's outside," referring to the just-released Fifty Shades Freed, whose promo banners heavily decorated the movie theater next door.
As to her plans for future written endeavors, she mused, "I'd like to write another book. I thought of maybe just taking the different characters in this book and writing entire books about them, and maybe write like a prequel or a sequel of what happens after it, so it all kind of goes together like comic book style. But this is a new adventure for me, and I'm very excited to be in the world of publishing."
Angel has slate of readings planned over the coming month in promotion of Night Shift, including one this evening at 7:30 p.m. at Los Feliz's Skylight Books (1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027). Her remaining appearances are as follows:
2/18 The House of Scorpio Bookclub, Brooklyn, NY 6:00 PM
2/21 Bluestockings, New York, NY 7:00 PM
2/24 Atomic Books, Baltimore, MD 7:00 PM
3/1 Hustler Hollywood, Las Vegas, NV 6:00 PM
3/13 The Pleasure Chest, Los Angeles, CA 8:00 PM
Night Shift: A Choose-Your-Own Erotic Adventure is published by Cleis Press and available at booksellers nationwide and on Amazon.com.
