Dirty pages 📖

What if one of your closest friends or your most trusted work colleagues actually had a secret side to them that you weren't aware of.

Well, it's more common than you think.

Hello, I'm Art Simone and I'm on a quest to uncover the interesting sides that ordinary looking people keep hidden, because what's.

The fun of hiding it? Let's get it out of the shadows and celebrate it.

The tricky thing is I don't know who I will be speaking to or what they're concealing from us. I'll get to know them, ask three questions, and from there I'm confident we can figure it out together. Welcome to conceal it with me, Art Simone, Our guest is here.

Roll the time.

Hi.

I'm John, I'm fifty. I used to live in Sydney, but now I live in the UK. I've been a writer for thirty years. I'm married, I have two step children. I like traveling and I like reading a lot, and I mean a lot. I don't think Art will guess what I'm concealing, because I even managed to conceal it from my best friends.

Hello, John, how are you going very well?

How are you?

I'm doing very well, So we've never met before. This is very twenty twenty. We are meeting through the wonders of technology. I'm talking to you all the way in the United Kingdom. Now, how long have you been in the UK?

For three years? Oh?

Okay, okay, fairly recent then, yeah, okay, three years? Am I alowed to ask you what brought you to the UK? Or is that delve into your concealingness?

No? No, I can be very open about that.

I caught a plane, you bitch.

All right, Okay, so a plane brought you to the UK. Good for you.

For me lived in Sydney. I won't hold that against you, but I'm glad you got out.

Sorry.

I love Sydney everyone, and I love every place in the world. It's my favorite. I'm looking at you through this beautiful screen at the moment. You've got glasses, you've got a bit of a stubble, bit of bed, wearing a nice tablecloth.

Sorry, I mean shirt.

It's wonderful, you know, just look like everyday, wonderful, pixelated person in front of me. I'm going to ask you three questions. So question number one, John, what was your favorite subject in school?

Oh? That's as tough one. I wasn't very good at school. I wasn't a very good student at all. I think probably i'd have to go with biology, maybe, I mean, yeah, biology, how we tick, why we work, that sort of thing.

Oh, I just think of biology and cutting up rats. But I know, I mean that could work too. And you're saying earlier that you love reading. Yeah, and you're a writer. I wasn't very good at English, and you're a writer.

Now I know.

It's bizarre, amazing.

Now anything can happen, Anything can happen, dreams can come true, guys.

Question number two, do you have a favorite superhero?

I do, but.

It's so boring. It's Superman. I mean it's I mean, he's got to be the most boring superhero you can have. He's pretty much indestructible.

Why do you like him?

I like the inevitability of him, I do. I do like that.

I like the complication of the dual life, but I do like the inevitability of his power is strength never.

I can't even write that word inevertability. He never yes that word?

Okay, biology Superman, I can't piecing it together. A Question number three, and the final question I have for you is who is your favorite musical artist.

Well, I've gone through three major crushes through my youth for music, and the first was Kiss, and the second was Culture Club and the third was Bowie. So there was a kind of a theme running through them.

Yeah, flamboyance, costumes, makeup, excitement, right right, right, Okay, Okay, so we like Kiss, we like kissing rebellion in school. Good guys, superhero, This is really hard today. Normally there's like little hints in there, this is okay. And you're in the UK and you're a rider and you're okay, and you've hitden it you said, even your best friends

Yes, I'm one hundred and eighty five years old and my makeup is extraordinarily good.

Sarcastic, I'm writing that down.

Okay, you know me as John, but actually un Natasha Walker. Under the pseudonym Natasha Walker, I published three erotic novels, The Secret Lives of Emma Beginnings, The Secret Lives of Emma Distractions, The Secret Lives of Emma Unmasked. They went on to sell sixty thousand copies in Australia.

What how many hats are we wearing today?

You've actually got a real double life here.

Oh my god.

All right, so we've just found out that no, John is not the inventor of makeup, which is a real shame because I thought it could give me a discount. But he is instead a writer who writes erotic novels under the name of a lady.

He's got a he's got his own drag name. I'm so confused.

Also, how many kilometric pens is he used to write these books? You must go through a lot of pins.

I needs me all right.

So we've just met John, but we found out that John is also Natasha Walker. He was sickly writing erotic novels under that female pen name. Oh my god, it's so exciting. There's so many hats here. How did this start? How did this happen? Did you just wake up one day and decide today I am Natasha Walker?

What happened?

Well, what happened was that I was a writer who was getting absolutely nowhere with my work. I had an agent, I landed an agent. I was like, yeah, I'm going to get somewhere now. But nothing happened. But I had written quite a lot of very rude stories many years before, and my agent was asking around, going, please, have you got anything else, anything else you can show me because the book you've given me I love, but I can't find a publisher for right And so I gave her

It's like, what is this muck?

Exactly what I think in my pigeon hole right now, you filthy man.

So I took them away, but about a week later, on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald was the story about fifty Shades of Gray, Yes, bursting onto the scene and having this enormous publishing contract with Random House, and suddenly the world went paorn crazy.

So there I was with a big.

Pile of pawn and my agent ran off to every publisher in town and they snapped it up.

You said, you like fifty Shades of Gray vibe ha. So what made you write all this erotic fiction in the first place.

It was a kind of competitive spirit. My girlfriend at the time was working this really dull job and one of the girls that was working with her, her boyfriend, was writing these erotic stories and sending them in and so all the girls were reading them, and I was I was kind of jealous. Really Enviously, these incredible power over this room of girls, and so I wrote my own. The problem was that they were very critical that you've got a whole lot of girls in the room and

So you're like, all right, you've been your homework's been handed back to you. They said, absolutely not fix this, This would never happen. So in these books, you're writing from a female's perspective as Emma, but you're also writing from Emma's perspective as Natasha Walker. Why make it so complicated? Why did you create Natasha Walker?

Yeah, So one of the things that happened when I've got the book contract was that it was a really women led movement. Fifty Shades of Gray. They weren't aimed at men like a most erotica in the history of writing has been aimed at men. This was squarely aimed at women. And so the publisher really wanted to publish me as as a woman. They thought it would be

By life story, Actually.

Emma, Emma is a thirty year old married woman who seduces an eighteen year old neighbor next door.

Oh, she's the girl next door. Did not all with the boy next door?

Yeah?

I mean in the first Emma book there was one hundred page sex scene.

One hundred pages. Jesus Christ, I can't even last that long. Oh my god, there'd be like a four part series.

Jeez.

How many descriptive words do you have to use in one hundred page sex scene? Or is it just so descriptive as like and then he took off his sock, and then he took off the other one, and then then he just stood there for a bit and looked at her, and she was just having a good time. And then anyway, Actually, I think I could write a hundred page It would be very good, wouldn't be engaging, but you wouldn't see what's coming. There's always surprise in

What's going on? What's my tone of voice? Who are you?

But how do you even like get yourself in that mindset? Or do you just write everything like yeah, I'm writing this job. It would just slap another name on it.

Pretty much my whole writing life is so far has been writing from the point of view of a woman. I don't know whether that's just that's just how naturally whenever I have a character in my head, it's generally the strongest character that I'm dealing with is a female character. And so far I've written, I've published five novels, and all five novels have a strong female lead.

So basically, you're kind of a drag queen. I'm putting it out there. You're kind of a drag queen.

Just you don't look like one, but you're still kind of getting in drag.

Mentally, I'm probably just a drag queen. So have you ever tried drag? I have to ask you, Well, I'm wearing it now.

This is this is my.

Restaurant tablecloth, as you referred to it earlier.

Yes, very pizza.

Hut, it's beautiful now okay. When they sat down, they said, oh, do you want to try, you know, like going under a pseudonym, you know, a female name.

What was your reaction? Were you like, oh, it's fine, or were you like, I don't know.

I first wrote my first novel when I was twenty one, and Natasha Walker happened when I was forty, So I was desperate to get published, to see my name on the front of a book. In one sense, I was dying inside because all I wanted was my name on the front of a book, and I wasn't going to have my name on the front of the book.

But on the other.

Side, my professional life was booming at the time, and I thought it probably best not to be known as the porn guy at the same time, so having a pseudonym might be might actually work for me.

So just your agent knew?

Who knew that when you were like in the closet, essentially in the library.

My parents knew, my wife knew. Before I even signed the contract, I kind of went up to my boss at the time and said, I don't want to bring the company's name into disrepute. By my behavior outside of work. But I've done this thing and they want me to publish it, and I'm going to use a pseudonym to protect myself and my family and the business. And they're like, you know, can I do this? And he just laughed. He loved it. He thought it was the best idea ever.

Oh it's tough for you, isn't it.

You walk past the bookshop and you know there's a Natasha Walker and you say to the person, she.

Must be a cool chick. She just be pretty cool.

But I totally get it because I'm a fool, like, you know, narcissist. But I've managed to just live through my drag name. But it could be really hard. You spent your whole life being wanting to be published writer and then you know your name is it on the book? But maybe just an idea, you could legally change your names to Natasha.

What do you think I think I should by?

Now? I was interviewing writers at the time too, so I was interviewing her best selling authors, and I just wanted to scream at them saying I'm a writer too.

Guys.

Take me seriously, Come on, guys, I've got a book two it's really popular. They were like, yeah, all right, like you, Kasha, Yeah, what's that like? Have you ever told someone to like prove it?

Prove it? You be like, oh, I'll write something now, I don't know what.

Yeah.

I had a few encounters where people just laughed. They just laughed so much and they thought it was funny and they had no sense of it being true. And it was a few days later that count to me and going, wait, it was true what you were saying.

After you go and tell them, do they go and have a little read? Do they let you know?

Most people, thankfully, people I know well decided for their mental health, not to which I think is good. I'm pleased. I remember a friend of mine gave it to his mum and she devoured them. That was awkward.

I would love you to like hand the books to someone without saying anything like did you like it? Like, oh yeah, that Natasha Walker. She's a dirty bitch and you well surprise trick jar, trick chair. I'm tashi now with Natasha Walker? How did you pick this name? Where'd it come? From, you know, because there's a lot of ways you can pick a name. Did you live in Walker Street and your first pet was called Natasha?

What I wanted was because the title was strong, it was Secret Lives of Emma, and I really wanted a dull name. So the name wasn't the thing. It was just the title of the book was the thing. And I created a spreadsheet of boring names and made a list of them.

I just want to say, if Natasha Walker, a real life Natasha Walker is listening right now, we love your name. And it's very special, Okay, very special. It's really unique. Okay, if you're out there, Natasha.

Okay.

So people didn't know who Natasha was. They couldn't see her face, they didn't know what she looked like, they hadn't spoken to her. Was there ever a bit of a witch hunt of people trying to work it out and be like, you know, fool like me right now? Many people actually guess correctly, unlike me.

Within the book community. Definitely, because I was working in the book industry at the time, because it's very small industry really, and the number of writers who know each other and people were there were suggestions because it was

I had people come up to me.

One person't come up to me at a dinner and pretty much declared that I was Natasha Walker to the group that I was standing in, and I pretty much had to say, under, there's no chance that I had any time to write. Everyone knew that I was very busy at the time. Their business I was involved with was booming at the time, and I was taking on more and more work, so it seemed plausible that I had no time to write this kind of smut. So

It's me, guys, I'm a treasure.

And then what happens when you know someone wants to interview Natasha about a fabulous book, like You're like, no phone interviews, no phone interviews. Do you put a voice changer on or can you do a very convincing lady voice.

That was the worst part of it. I mean I did.

I absolutely considered some dark room interviews with me and drag with wonderful silhouettes. I didn't say no, I said I'd think about it. It was difficult because there's so much promotion needs to be done for these books at the time, and I think things would have gone even better if I had been able to do interviews. But no, because of the pseudonym, it just became text interviews and email interviews and that was really all I could do, which was a real bummer.

Just go so so my phone credits run out, goers I can't call, but you know, maybe just you know, send me a letter.

I'll write a letter back to you.

When did you decide to finally like start telling people because it was a secret, it sold lots of books. You said, yeah, I reckon I could come clean that I John M.

Natasha.

Well, publishing is a very much a rollercoaster, and I enjoyed an incredible high, and everyone in the industry could see that the low was coming. There was a rush for porn. Every woman on the planet was reading porn openly on buses and on trains, and suddenly it was as if no one had ever read porn before, and that reading porn was just publicly unacceptable, and so the market just dropped and fell out. So I saw the end.

A narcissist comes out, baby, it's what we like. I knew there was one in there like me. Oh, he said, I need to be on TV too.

Fuck you, Natasha, Fuck you. It's not about you anymore. It's me. It's me.

So does that mean you have you stopped? Is there no moditor Natasha Walker? No more dirty pages?

Yeah?

Well, efficiently, there's no more dirty pages. I dropped Natasha Walker at that time, the whole world dropped erotic fiction.

At that time.

Charity shops were filling up with copies of Unwanted fifty Shades of Gray, and suddenly it was just overwhelming and everyone just pulled away from it and just gave it up. So there hasn't really been a market for it. I think for Australia it ended abruptly when Tony Abbott admitted to reading the book in his in his Budget Smuggler as well on holidays. I mean that was a real dampner that that really was a cold shower for the whole of.

I really kill it. Yeah, Bloody, Tony Abbitt.

I need to think about this because you know, maybe I want to write a sexy book.

One day.

People couldn't know that I possibly was writing a sexy book. So if I was to write a sexy book, I'd need another name, and I've already got two names. But I'm going to do a third name today. My pen name could be Anita Root.

That could work.

Lovely, Amanda Rene, Amanda play with that could be a good one actually, or just like Aphelia Cox, it was a book that said, you know, it was called The Damp Pillow by Philia Cox. That'd be pretty good. So John isn't the inventor of makeup. No, it's hands out that he was hiding behind a female pen name and writing erotic novels about women for women.

Dirty Dirty, Dirty Given.

Listening to an iHeart Australia and Kiss production Concealed with Art Simone. Listen for free on the iHeart app and listen to your art's content and for some sexy fashion inspo, check us out on the socials. Just search for Concealed with Art Simone. I look really good today, I promise ma