What inspired you to write Cherry. Did you have scores to settle?
No scores to settle at all! I was approached by Kathleen Kiirik Bryson, who was the editor of what was then a soon-to-be-launched imprint for sex writing by dykes. She had read some zines and odds and ends that I'd written, and we knew each other because I had interviewed her about her books for a homo website called www.RainbowNetwork.com. Anyway, she liked my stuff and said that she was looking for someone to write a dirty novel. I had written a non-fiction book a few years previously, but I'd never written a really long story before. Although my real interest in fiction is more literary (yeah, right!) here was someone offering me the chance to publish a novel, not only that but to author the first title in a new imprint. Most new authors never get that kind of opportunity, they often struggle for years, getting piles of rejection letters and lots of discouragement. Even though I would be writing what is generally regarded as trash, and even though the deadline was scary (three months to produce 80,000 words alongside my full-time very demanding job) and even though the money was - to put it bluntly - shit, I thought it would be a terrific experience, so I jumped and I'm glad I did.

You started your writing career as a zinemaker, were they sexual in content? What motivates you to communicate about dyke sexuality?
Some of my earlier zines had sexual content, but most do not, they're more about pop culture than cliterature. The two zines that stick in my mind are Kink and Fuck. Kink was a free zine, the first I authored by myself. It ran for ten issues over about two or three years from 1996. It had sex stuff in it, like dirty stories, little accounts of real life sex, badly drawn pictures by me, plus other odds and ends. I made it because I had just got back from a trip to San Francisco where I had lost my dyke virginity, been beaten black and blue at a dyke sex party (and loved it), met a load of queer punks, and really needed some place to address these things. Up until that point I had quite a straight life (well, relatively, my boyfriend was then a drag queen) and I didn't know many dykes. Kink gave me a way of meeting them cs I'd ask cute girls to write for it, and give it away free at clubs and gigs. It really helped me break into a scene that is usually very wary of dykes who have boyfriends. Oh yeah, I should say that Kink started when there was very little dyke-produced sex stuff in the UK. I wanted to make it free too, cs most porn is really expensive. Kink eventually ended because I felt restricted by the sex theme and wanted to write about other things.

Fuck was a Story Zine. I've just finished that series but for five years I produced these little one-off fold-out-A3 zines about various things that caught my eye, for example the Versace murder, the Millennium Dome, heroin, Scott of the Antarctic, English spa towns, blah blah. These zines usually have an element of personal writing in them and Fuck consisted of accounts of real life sexual experiences I'd had, including getting my face kicked in during a drugged-up threesome, to teenage fumblings, to very vanilla romantic sex.

As for what motivates me...I like reading and writing about things that are forbidden. Sex is mythologised, aggrandised, hidden, cloaked in taboo and ignorance. I like to make public things that are real for me - it can be sex, work, love, death, being a bit loony, the stuff behind the mask of polite appearances - I think it is empowering, the truth is liberating.

How accurate is the book's depiction of London's lesbian scene?
It's all made up. However, the scene can be a vicious, tawdry, tacky wonderland. Plus I've met many lesbians in my time who are total nightmare women, so I based some of the scenarios and characters on all that.

Were you as sexually gung ho as the main character Ramona when you entered the dyke scene in England?
Yes! Like Ramona I was totally ready and gagging for it. I'm a lot calmer now though, more focused on work and domesticity. I should say that Cherry is not autobiography, some of the sex may be written because I know about how it feels first-hand, but the book is 100% fiction.

Is it inevitable in this kind of story that Ramona experiences a comeuppance of a particularly nasty kind? Is it a necessary part of the character's development or just moralising?
Cherry is genre fiction, there's nothing deep about it so try not to read too much into the plot, which I think is basically a skeletal structure on which to hang the sex. Ramona goes through a wake-up call type experience because the story has to climax in some dramatic way, plus it gave me the opportunity to allow her to be rescued romantically by her best girl Dipper without descending into bodice-ripping territory. I suppose I wanted to show how the scene can corrupt people. I'm interested in the way that some dykes come out and completely reinvent themselves to fit into LaLaLesbian Land. It makes for very shallow, fucked-up people, and Ramona is basically a charming misfit badass bitch who nearly becomes a nasty little A-Dyke.

Did you achieve what you wanted with the sex scenes in the book?
Yeah. Some critics have said that it looks as though I sat down and decided how the sex would be before building a story around it. That's almost true and I think it's fair enough in a book like this. Whilst I'm proud of the high quality of my writing, Cherry is a sex book, not high art. On the other hand, I get emails from people around the world who read it and told me how much they love jerking off over it. Hurrah! Also, in some ways it was gratifying when the book got seized for obscenity by Canada Customs last year - if a whole country thinks my book is disgustingly rude I must be doing something right.

Who are the other writers you admire?
My favourite book of all time is Please Kill Me, Legs McNeill's brilliant oral history of New York punk. It is hilarious, moving, though-provoking, inspiring, real, everything you want in a book. I am also a big fan of two important queer-friendly imprints: Serpent's Tail/High Risk, which I think has been shamefully discontinued, and the Semiotext(e) Native Agents series. Look out for these books, they are edgy, cool and totally fucking fantastic. Otherwise, old school writers I adore are Tom Wolfe, whose writing changed my life when I was a teenager; Flannery O'Connor for her crooked view of the world and Truman Capote for his society bitchiness. New school writers I love and envy are: Ann Rower, whose autobiographical fiction is sublime, as are the memoirs of Michelle Tea and her mentor Eileen Myles (I caught a Sister Spit show in San Francisco in the 90s and that was also a great influence). I love Gary Indiana and David Sedaris. Two writers you may not know are Frances Gapper, who is a very talented, droll, surreal short story writer, and Martin Wong, who beautiful, hip, understated pieces for Giant Robot, one of my favouite magazines. I want to add that I LOVE the editorial in magazines too and read millions of them including The National Enquirer, Scandinavian Living, Vanity Fair and Jane. Repeat after me: Trash is good.

Finally, please visit my website, www.CharlotteCooper.net it's my online zine and I update it with new features every month. Plus there's loads more information about Cherry and my other books and zines on it too. I love to make new friends and to talk about my writing, so e-me today.