American novelist John Updike backs e-mail sex service

London, Dec 15 (ANI): American novelist John Updike, renowned for writing sex scenes, has backed a new online service that e-mails 500-word slices of erotica, written by former Penthouse writer Catherine Hiller, to women's mobile phones.

The author, dubbed the 'laureate of lewd', has found a protegee in Catherine who is the lead writer for a new "ebook" service, called Ravenous Romance.

In fact, Updike, whose bestselling novels such as the Rabbit series, Couples and The Witches of Eastwick blend high literature and low sex, has written a promotional blurb fro the service.

Updike called Hiller's first online offering as "good, brave and joyful writing".

In the last 50 years, Updike has won many literary accolades, including two Pulitzer prizes. And last month he was given a lifetime achievement gong by British magazine Literary Review which gives Bad Sex in Fiction award every year, for which he has been nominated four times.

It was when Hiller, a New Yorker who studied at Sussex University in the 1960s, was researching her doctoral dissertation on Updike's work, that she met the author.

"She is his protegee and John was happy to help her on this new e-venture," Times Online quoted a publishing source as saying.

The source added: "He thinks the world needs some good sex now, and, for better or worse, a lot of people are finding it through the internet. At least this site is literate."

Ravenous Romance's publisher Holly Schmidt also agrees with Updike's assessment that "sex is like money: only too much is enough".

They are hoping to send out erotic stories by up to 150 authors, by the end of the year.

Schmidt said that the tales did not reflect her own taste, but was hoping to attract major writers to pen their own tales of "hot love", including Updike and fellow New Englander Stephen King.

When asked what exactly was the difference between soft pornography and the "erotica" that she was selling over the web for 99 cents a day, Schmidt said: "A better vocabulary." (ANI)