Naked Foxx has stories to tell

A lifelong naturist, Naked Foxx is a photographer, a vlogger, and an advocate for the mental health benefits of naturism.

He's also written a book, Off The Record.

For the podcast, Naked Men Talking, I caught up with Naked Foxx to talk about the book.

In the conversation, we talk ADHD, sex scenes, and the power of being honest about who you are.

Listen to an audio version of the podcast on Spotify, or watch a video version of the podcast below.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Why was writing a book a project that you wanted to get your teeth into?

As I've gotten older, I've kind of reopened my bucket list. And it's one of the things that I never thought that I'd do.

I had a bit of a health scare a couple of years ago. And I think that really spurred me on to try and do these things in life that are a bit more challenging.

I've always been a storyteller. I started out in radio and then I did some TV and then onto YouTube and social media. So I've always been a storyteller and I think it's probably how I make sense of life. My brain runs on curiosity and emotion and I'm not very good connecting face-to-face with people so I think storytelling is that way for my head to kind of keep that social contact with people and even though I've never been much of a reader I think my ADHD stopped me from reading.

I had a lot of bad experiences as a kid - especially being ridiculed by teachers when you can't read, made to stand up in front of all the class and read when you can't read and you just feel ridiculed. I think you carry that failure with you, later into life.

I always had that mindset that I can't read, so I'd never be able to write. Then, last year, I wrote a short story. It took some doing and it was my first attempt - it was literally a pornographic movie in print. It was a short story based on a personal fantasy of mine.

A friend of mine, who is an author and an editor and a copywriter, he asked if he could read it. He was like, Colin, this is actually pretty good. You need to self-publish it because I think you'll be surprised at the reaction. I published it and it did really well it was a number one bestseller on Kindle on Amazon it was like the first ever thing I'd written just this little piece it was like a wet dream book and it got to number one on Kindle.

When you actually do something where you get some positive feedback, I think that's priceless for feeding your kind of self-confidence and self-belief more than anything else.

That's where the inspiration came from to write Off The Record.

Let's talk about Off the Record - it's a romance set in the theatre world of London's West End and you begin the book with a dedication to Caden. Was he the inspiration for the story?

Let me be very, very, very clear that the story is not about Caden. It's not fan-fiction. The dedication that you're talking to is literally a quiet thank you to him. There's no link between Caden and the characters in the book at all.

I think sometimes someone, whether it be a person or a place or an experience, can spark creativity. In this case, it was Caden and something about him caught my imagination.

I'm not going to deny that there was a huge amount of fantasy involved, but I think the fantasy helps me to shape the character of Aiden in the book. But it definitely stopped there and it became about the storytelling and not about the real person.

Are you drawing on any personal or real-life experiences for this, or is this pure fantasy?

The experiences are not me, but they're definitely mine, if that makes sense. So they're my interpretation of experiences - they're not autobiographical, but I think emotion does sneak in to a lot of the story.

The story dives into all these messy emotions that we have as humans - attraction, infatuation, and love, and fear, and desire, and risk, and consequence. And underneath that there's the deeper things like vulnerability and trust and shame and guilt and power and truth. And again, it's all things that we experience as humans.

What was the process of writing the book like for you?

I had the story in my head for months before I even saw the person that inspired the final version of it.

I spent weeks developing the characters. That was a really good flow because I spent a lot longer developing the characters than I expected to. The more I went into it, the more I understood that I had to have the characters on paper and their whole lives and personalities and even down to where they lived.

I was in London, actually looking at the properties where these people lived. I wanted the readers to feel this connection with them, that's why I felt I had to go into so much detail.

I wrote the ending six times. The ending was in my head as part of the original story. And when I wrote it, it just didn't read right. When I read the whole story through, I would get to chapter nine, and it literally just didn't feel right for the characters. So I wrote it how I thought it should end given what happens to the characters.

This is a romance but you have got a couple of juicy sex scenes in there. Were the sex scenes fun to write?

I learned from that first short story how not to write about sex in the next one.

A lot of the language that was used and the descriptive phrases were very cliche in that first attempt. When you watch porn and you read porn, my head was just full of these cliche phrases, which is what I used.

In Off the Record, the sex scenes were very different. They were more about connection rather than choreography. Even though you have to write in the choreography because the reader has to be visualising what's going on as well as trying to understand the connection between the characters.

I've always been fascinated by intimacy - how it reveals truth and fear and passion and that's how I try to make it different in this book, not to shock but just to make it something real.

You're so immersed in the world of naturism and very public about your experiences and exploration - are your audiences on your various platforms going to be a little bit disappointed that this book doesn't really lean into that at all? There is no naturism in this book. Are they going to come away feeling a bit short-changed?

The book's not about physical naturism, but I think there's a degree of emotional naturism going on between the characters. There's two people learning to take their emotional clothes off, two characters that are very different in the way they react to the world.

Every chapter peels away another layer until they are eventually both completely exposed emotionally, maybe not physically. And so I think for me, the same vulnerability and embracing vulnerability that you get from being physically naked is I think what these characters are facing by being unpeeled throughout the story until they're both emotionally naked at the end.

I think the sequel probably has to have some kind of naked beach scene just to make up for it.

What do you that people feel when they're reading Off the Record?

I'd like it if they recognised parts of themselves in the characters - to connect with that vulnerability of the characters and that desire and the risk that comes with being honest about who you are. I think you enjoy the book more when you become emotionally connected with the people that you're reading about.

Gareth Johnson is the host of the podcast, Naked Men Talking - available on all platforms.