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The ‘Real Fifty Shades’ that isn’t just for girls

40 million sales in, and with ever more alarming demands flying around Irish bedrooms, men are wondering what could be next.  As it turns out, something we can read, too.

The phrase, ‘You want me to what?’ is being uttered by terrified, semi-naked men in their bedrooms with increasing regularity these days thanks to the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon. E.L. James’ story of love, romance and slapped arses has turned some 40 million women into sexually liberated shameless husseys and with the trilogy still holding the number one, two and three spots in book charts across the world, it’s showing no sign of letting up.

Not only has James’ series given a welcome boost to the DIY trade by triggering a surge in demand for rope and cable ties, it has also been credited with bringing about a key change in how we humans consume books – it prompted ebook sales to outstrip printed book sales for the first time last month.

Problem is, what are we supposed to do while Christian Gray is busy making your girlfriend hate you? Well, hot on the heels of the trilogy in the ebook charts is Can You Keep a Secret? by Katie Collins and Robert Carry.

A clever piece of marketing means the book is pitched as ‘The Real Fifty Shades of Grey’ with a Shades-eque cover to match. But while it does share themes like sadomasochism and the idea of a young woman being indoctrinated into extreme sexual practices with E.L. James’ effort, this is no work of head-in-the-clouds female fantasy writing. Can You Keep a Secret? is a biography and the protagonist is a real life girl from Dublin.

The book charts the bizarre trajectory Katie Collins’ life went from mid-teens to early 20s. The story begins with a 14-year-old Katie stripping on webcam for an audience of strangers she met online who at times numbered in the dozens. She soon graduated to meeting some of these people and by her late teens she was, basically, a sex addict. She started clocking up the numbers and was soon meeting and sleeping with scores of guys each week. The book reveals how, on one occasion, she went through three guys in the one day – none of whom knew about each other.

Not content with the traditional man vs. woman style of sexual interaction, Katie began searching for ever more extreme sexual scenarios to throw herself into. Katie discovered the secretive swingers’ scene and her wild behaviour escalated. After some nervous encounters with experienced swingers, she threw herself into the anything-goes lifestyle and quickly became the most popular girl on the scene. Within weeks, she was taking centre stage at seventy-strong group sex parties. Katie went on to experiment with women and have sex with up to ten men in one night.

Submissive by nature, Katie then moved into the world of Sadomasochism. The book reveals how she once handed herself over to a group of leather-clad ‘doms’ at a fetish party held in a makeshift S&M dungeon in Dublin’s south inner city. An actual fetish party in an actual dungeon. They had gimps and everything.

The sex scenes come thick and fast at times, but Can You Keep a Secret? is more than just titillation. It delves into what drove Katie to approach sex in the way she did and it makes for an interesting psychological profile. The book also shines a light into the darkest corners of Ireland’s secretive swinging and S&M scenes. It’s not a world you would want to see in person, but it’s pretty interesting from a distance.

Unsurprisingly, the book is taking off in terms of sales. Right now, it’s in fourth place on the iBooks chart with only the three parts of the Fifty Shades trilogy ahead of it. That makes it the best selling ebook by an Irish author.

Don’t let the Fifty Shades-style cover fool you – Can You Keep a Secret? falls firmly beyond the fictitious ‘mummy porn’ genre. Rather, this is a brutally honest and sometimes unsettling real life account of a young girl’s journey into the sexual underworld.

Note: ‘Katie Collins’ is a pseudonym. Her real name has been changed to protect her identity and the identities of other individuals depicted in the book.

You can learn more about the book by visiting the Can You Keep a Secret? website, therealfiftyshades.com. Can You Keep a Secret?, priced €3.99, is available to download from the iBook store and from Amazon.com here.

You can follow Katie Collins on Twitter @thereal50shades and author Robert Carry @carrier11.

Entertainment website thedailyshift.com interviews Katie Collins:

Can You Keep A Secret?: Interview with Katie Collins

The Daily Shift‘s Roisin Peddle chats to Katie Collins, author of bestselling e-book Can You Keep A Secret?…

Ringing up a complete stranger to talk about their sex life was always going to be nerve-wracking. However, when the stranger has done things straight from the depths of the darkest and most depraved fantasies, the nerves are even greater.

Luckily, Katie Collins proves to be not only lovely, but down to earth and more than willing to chat about her experiences. Her book, Can You Keep a Secret, co-written with journalist Rob Carry, has shot up the iTunes book charts. Labelled the Irish Fifty Shades of Grey, there is a huge difference between EL James’ romanticised tome and Katie’s story: hers is true. (Oh, and the writing’s better).

Katie (not her real name) grew up in a troubled home. Her parents both battled addiction issues and her childhood was far from stable. Afflicted by self-harm and isolation, she soon withdrew into a world of chat rooms.

Beginning with stripping off on webcams, Katie soon found herself drawn deeper into extreme sex. In the prologue of Can You Keep a Secret, we meet Katie while she is being dragged around on a leash by a friend, Karina, at a S&M party, before being strapped to a table and whipped by a couple.

So how does someone go from ‘vanilla’ or normal sex to the extreme practices that she describes in her book?

“It felt like a natural progression,” she says. “Because I was always open to trying new things, it just happened.”

Katie describes how the Irish underground sex scene is thriving, albeit in secret. She doesn’t know specific figures- “I’d be curious to find out”- but it attracts people from all walks of life, including so-called ‘pillars of society’. She met gardai, teachers, surgeons to name but a few during her time in the scene.

Nowadays, as a retail manager, she sometimes sees people she had swung with.

“They don’t want to see me, so I pretend not to see them,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with it, there’s nothing illegal about it, no-one’s getting hurt-unless they want to! Yet if someone’s in a profession, they could lose their job.”

Katie, who in her early twenties became one of the youngest girls on the scene, decided to leave her wild days behind after becoming concerned about the ever-extreme lengths she was going to get her kicks. Also after a persistent suitor, she was starting to worry for her safety.

Her first relationship after leaving the scene was difficult for both parties. Katie candidly admits that their sex life suffered.

“He was insecure. He knew about my past too- that didn’t help,” she says.

For Katie, getting out led to other challenges as she had to adjust to a different type of sexual experience. She found it difficult at first not to detach herself from sex.

“I was never into ‘lovemaking’,” she says. “I’ve never been a big romantic. Respect, yes, romance, no.”

She says that the swinging scene can be difficult for women. Her friend Karina often formed emotional attachments to the men she slept with and found herself getting hurt.

“They expect a good time,” she says. “You can’t have them because that’s not what’s on their mind. [Some people] couldn’t separate the emotions from sex. I found that was the key. It is unnatural to do that, so it is hard.”

Women were not alone in finding it difficult to detach themselves. Men also wanted more from some of the women they slept with.

“Some of them do,” Katie says, citing the example of ‘Greg’ whose pursuit of her partly prompted her exit from the scene. “[But] I think it’s easier for guys to do it. But a lot of guys suffer from ‘stage fright’.”

Katie used alcohol in order to steady her nerves at parties, but says she never saw any heavy drug use at parties.

“People were always smoking [cannabis] but I never saw any hardcore stuff,” she says. “I don’t even smoke, so I never asked about it.”

However, there was a darker side to the parties. In the book, Katie recalls one party which was organised by ‘Thomas’ who acted in a predatory way. While Thomas claimed that he organised parties with a number of girls, Katie later realised that this was untrue and he was a solo operator. At the end of the night she saw him have sex with a barely conscious girl.

“Since the moment I met him, I thought he was the creepiest thing I’d ever seen, before he ever opened his mouth,” she says. “He would literally pounce on them.”

Katie says that most people in the swinging scene are honest about their intentions and that Thomas was an exception.

“For the most part, people are OK,” she says. “It was only his parties.”

The book arose out of a chance meeting with a journalist, who wanted to write about the underground sex scene in Ireland. Fascinated by her story and buoyed by the success of his article, Katie was approached about doing a book.

Now in a relationship, Katie says her past doesn’t seem real.

“I’ve read back over the book a few times,” she says. “It’s as if it never happened to me… It’s crazy.”

Can You Keep a Secret by Katie Collins and Robert Carry is available on iTunes for €3.99 and is published by Y Books.

*Lead image via therealfiftyshades.com