Justine Elyot's first Mischief novel is Kinky, about a BDSM club called Kinky Cupcake, where anything goes in the world of pain and pleasure, where sex and spanking with strangers helps bring Rosie discover just how much fun kink can be. You can visit Justine's website and follow her on Twitter as well as Facebook.

How long have you been writing erotica? What made you get started?

Funnily enough, this month I'm celebrating the five year anniversary of posting my first erotica story on the internet. I have to confess that I started by writing fanfiction. I was reading a lot of it at online archives and often finding the sex scenes a little formulaic so I decided to try my own hand at it. Having said that, it took me seventeen chapters to get to the first sex scene—but once I did, that was that. Wall to wall sex scenes. I forgot all about the plot. Well, not quite, but almost.

I love your line, "The first rule of kink club, apparently, is that you don’t talk about kink club." How did you get the idea for a book centred around a kink club, called Kinky Cupcake?

Kinky Cupcake first appeared in an earlier story, a short novella called The Science of Submission. I based it very loosely on the late-lamented London coffee shop Coffee, Cake and Kink, but obviously its remit goes quite a way beyond what that establishment used to offer. Once I'd written about it in the earlier story, I thought it had almost limitless possibilities and couldn't resist a revisit.

I'm sure everyone wants to know: What research, if any, do you do when working on a book like Kinky?

I've had an interest in BDSM all my adult life, so I've accumulated all sorts of knowledge from reading around the kinky blogosphere, not to mention all the erotic fiction I've absorbed and, yes, there is some personal experience included too. When it came to Kinky, I specifically researched bondage furniture, because there's so much lovely new stuff coming on to the market all the time and I like to keep abreast of these issues. I invariably spend far too much time surfing sexy underwear shops too.

What's different for you in writing BDSM in public versus in private? Do your characters have more freedom in the former?

I like writing both kinds, but there is a difference in the emphasis, I think. When writing public scenes, there's the additional element of the pleasure of shame which always adds something extra special to the dynamic for me. On the other hand, there's a particular thrill in having your characters deepen their relationship and find out more about each other during the course of a private scene. Both can be equally intense.

What do you think of all the media around Fifty Shades of Grey and the idea that female submission is somehow shocking? Have we come a long way in terms of understanding BDSM?

Now there's a multi-layered question! To answer the simplest element of the question first, I think it's great that there is a lot of media around erotica at the moment because it's been too little discussed for too long. It's regrettable, though, that a lot of the discussion is predicated on strange and ill-informed attitudes towards BDSM. Yet again, we have the old, old story of women being judged and shamed for their sexuality, but a lot of the judging is coming from peers—including other women—this time, instead of the church, the patriarchy and so on. I don't know a single female submissive (and I know quite a few) who wouldn’t identify as a feminist. The two positions are not mutually exclusive.

 Having said that, there's another discussion around Fifty Shades accusing it of being a poor or distorted representation of D/s practice, and I don't necessarily agree with that either. Fifty Shades is a fantasy, not a documentary and, judging by the degree of satisfaction readers are clearly deriving from it, this is understood. If it comes to that, I don't think the Marquis de Sade represented BDSM relationships very accurately either.

What's next for you?

In terms of Mischief, I have my novel Game out next month. For anyone who read On Demand, my Black Lace book, it's the further adventures of Sophie. And very adventurous she is too.