, while my kids were at school all day learning how to read and running around the playground at recess, I was at home doing dishes, folding laundry, and writing filthy erotic short stories under several pen names for $75 a pop. When I told someone I was busy working on a freelance job, it was equally likely that I meant I was writing a profile for a local business magazine or crafting an X-rated fiction about naked people doing fun and terrible things to each other. I was a peddler of smut, a purveyor of sex, a teller of tawdry tales.
And I was damn good at it. I’ve never added this to my LinkedIn profile, which is a shame, but it’s tough to find the right words to describe this role, wedging it somewhere in between “staff reporter” and “school volunteer.” Also, most people don’t think too highly of erotica.
But I was proud of the work I did, and I still am today. What I heard from my editor, and subsequently from the readers, was always the same: this feels real. This feels like something that could happen to a normal person on any random day of the week.
This feels like something that could happen to me—and it’s very, very hot. were full of regular people: quirky characters with backstories (sometimes only hinted at but there all the same) who felt uncertainty, shyness, desire, excitement. I wrote about imperfect bodies living in average homes doing normal jobs.
I wrote about long-time couples and new friends and sometimes strangers, about threesomes and .