James’s profitable obsession

E.L. James didn’t know much about kinky sex when she started writing Fifty Shades of Grey, said Rachel Cooke in The Observer (U.K.). “Well, I’d read a few things about BDSM [bondage and discipline, sadism and masochism], and I thought, ‘This is hot!’” says the neophyte author. “I thought, ‘What would it be like if you met someone who was into this kind of lifestyle, and you didn’t know anything about it?’” James, 48, was working for a TV production company at the time, and would race home to write every evening. “I became obsessed. Friends would ring and say, ‘What are you doing?’ And I’d say, ‘I’ve just got to finish this chapter.’” Writing the sex scenes wasn’t erotic—not for the author, anyway. “It’s all about mechanics—whose hand goes where? I’d phone my husband, who has an office in our back garden, and we’d lie there, fully clothed, just working out the choreography. It was hilarious!” The resulting book has now sold 60 million copies in English alone, making James a multimillionaire. None of it seems to have turned her head. “Having worked in TV all my life, I’m very aware of how monsters are created, and I don’t want to be one.”

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