Very few genres have their writers picking and choosing—often very carefully—what words they can, should, or must never use. In erotica, word choice basically comes down to two questions: what’s appropriate to the story, and how important is it to work around limitations.

Believe it or not, certain editors and publishers have a verboten word list that includes certain slang terms or spellings. The question of whether to argue with them isn’t an ethical one. Your preference for cum rather than come or your use of pussy when the editor doesn’t favor it isn’t really the question. Your main dilemma is simply this: how much you want to see your work published? Editors will insist you take it out or publishers will often change the word without your permission, so really, how attached are you to these words?

For the record, I believe an anthology should be consistent in its spelling—so while I respect a writer’s preference for come instead of cum I don’t blink, or blink that much, when my publisher suggests a change so the word is the same in every story. In the second instance, if an editor or publisher simply doesn’t like a word … well, I suggest the editor go into therapy, and that the rest of us simply try not to sweat it when they take the word out. And we can always just not work with them in the future.

Now appropriate word choice: that’s another matter. Certain words either aren’t correct or don’t feel correct in the context of a story. The problem could be historical. For example, the word sex as a term for female genitalia is tolerable when you’re doing a historical piece, but when your character is a Gen-X, Y, or Z person, how appropriate is it? It might be technically correct, but sex is often used as a safe way of describing what’s between a woman’s thighs. My own rule is to use terms that feel right for the character. If someone is depicted as repressed, using words like cunt or twat is jarring. Same for an older man using clumsy slang for his own genitals, like member.

I applaud people for doing research, by the way. Nothing adds a flavor of realism more than slipping in a good word choice for sex or the active biology of sex. One of my own favorites is a 19th century term for female genitalia, Old Hat, because it was frequently felt. Yes, you may wince.

One thing I like to see in a story has little to do with the words of sex and more to do with the view of sex. Assuming that characters in a story set in Nero’s Rome view sex the same way we do today can result in some clumsy word usage. Certain types of sex were rare or seen with disfavor—in the case of Rome, noticing or even admiring women’s breasts in a sexual context was a sign of weakness. Just look at the Pompeii mosaics; the prostitutes depicted—no matter what they were doing—kept their boobies wrapped. Therefore, you wouldn’t want to spend too much time waxing poetic on some Roman woman’s tits if your story was set in that time period.

The bottom line is that certain words and ideas work and others don’t. The trick to picking the right ones has little to do with the power of them at this moment or your own personal preference as it does with their relevance within the story. Naughty words shouldn’t be ones that reach the modern libido but instead be used to continue to keep the reader within and enjoying the story. Because when you get down to it, an erotic story isn’t about the words but rather what you are saying with them.

Writing the story is the most important element of getting your book published, but there’s something right below that: drafting an effective cover letter—or cover email, as this is a digital age.

So here is a quick sample of what to do and not to do when putting together a cover letter to go with your story. That being said, remember that I’m just one of many editors out there, each with their own quirks and buttons to push. Like writing the story itself, practice and sensitivity will teach you a lot, but this will give you a start.

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Don’t Do What “Bad Johnny Don’t” Does: 

Dear M. (1),

Here is my story (2) for your collection (3), it’s about a guy and a girl who fall in love on the Titanic (4). I haven’t written anything like this before (5), but your book looked easy enough to get into (6). My friends say I’m pretty creative (7). If I have not heard from you in two months (8) I will consider this story rejected and send it somewhere else (9). I am also sending this story to other people. If they want it, I’ll write to let you know (10).

I noticed that your guidelines say First North American Serial rights. What’s that (11)? If I don’t have all rights then I do not want you to use my story (12).

I work at the DMV (13) and have three cats named Mumbles, Blotchy and Kismet (14).

Mistress Divine, Goddess of the Multiple Orgasm (15) 

[email protected] (16)

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(1) Don’t be cute. If you don’t know the editor’s name, or first name, or if the name is real or a pseudonym, just say “Hello” or “Editor” or some such.

(6) Gee, thanks so much. Loser.

(7) Friends, lovers, Significant Others and so forth—who cares?

(8) Get real—sometimes editors take six months to a year to respond. This is not to say they are lazy or cruel; they’re just busy or dealing with a lot of other things. Six months is the usual cut-off time, meaning that after that time you can either consider your story rejected or you can write a polite little note asking how the project is going. By the way, writing rude or demanding notes is going to get you nothing but rejected or a bad reputation—and who wants that?

(13) Who cares?

(14) Really, who cares?

(15) Another sign of a loser. It’s perfectly okay to use a pseudonym, but something as wacky as this is just going to mark you as a novice. Also, cover letters are a place for you, as a person, to write to the editor, another person. Put your pseudonym on your story, but don’t sign your cover letter with it.

(16) Email address—this is great, but it’s also very obviously a work address, which makes a lot of editors very nervous. First of all, people leave jobs all the time, so way too often these addresses have very short lives. Second, work email servers are rarely secure—at least from the eyes of prying bosses. Do you really want your supervisor to see your rejection from a Big Tits in Bondage book? I don’t think so.

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Do What Johnny Does Does:

Hi, Chris (1),

It was with great excitement (2) that I read your call for submissions for your new anthology, Love Beast (3). I’ve long been a fan not only of werewolf erotica (4) but also your books and stories as well (5).

I’ve been published in about twelve Web sites, including Sex Chat, Litsmut, and Erotically Yours, and in two anthologies, Best of Chocolate Erotica (Filthy Books) and Clickety-Clack, Erotic Train Stories (Red Ball Books) (6).

Enclosed is my 2,300 word original story, “When Hairy Met Sally” (7). I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it (which is a lot) (8). Please feel free to write me at [email protected] if you have any questions (9).

In the meantime best of luck with your projects and keep up the great work. (10)

Molly Riggs (11) 

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(1) Nice; she knows my real first name is Chris. A bit of research on an editor or potential market never hurt anyone.

(2) It’s perfectly okay to be enthusiastic. No one likes to get a story from someone who thinks your project is dull.

(3) She knows the book and the title.

(4) She knows the genre and likes it. You’d be surprised by the number of people who pass out backhanded compliments or joke about anthologies or projects thinking it’s endearing or shows a ‘with it’ attitude. Believe me, it’s neither: it’s just annoying.

(11) Real name. I’d much rather work with a person than an identity. I also know that Molly is not playing games with who she is, and what she is, just to try and make a sale.

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There’s more, as said, but this at least will keep you from stepping on too many toes, even before your story gets read. If there’s a lesson in this, it’s to remember that an editor is, deep down, a person trying to do the best job they can, just like you. Treat them as such and they’ll return the favor.

The inclination is natural, I suppose: we go to school to learn just about anything else, so why shouldn’t there be a class or book or seminar that will teach you how to be a better smut writer?

Without getting too heady, the idea that there’s a special—perhaps secret—way of getting you from bad to good, or unpublished to published, or unpaid to paid, is a bit disturbing. Ruminating a bit too much on it can make it all a bit like a paranoid fantasy, like there’s a trick or a jealously guarded connection that allows other people to make it and keeps you out. But take my class, buy my book, attend my seminar and you too can learn the secret to successful erotica writing … just don’t tell anyone.

Without gnawing off the hand that feeds me, I feel guilty teaching writing classes. Standing in front of a room full … well, a few dozen, tops … of green writers, all of them eagerly waiting for the secret makes me want to confess it all for a sham, and in so doing spill my guts on the real true way to become a better writer, of erotica or anything else.

Not that a class or two can’t help, especially any classes that highlight some of the less-than-fun elements of a writer’s life. If you’re lucky, you might find the right kind of class, book, or seminar that gives—quickly and honestly—the sad facts of finding a market, writing a cover letter, formatting a story, dealing with publishers and editors, and so forth. Those kinds of books and classes can definitely help with the paperwork side of writing, especially since screwing any of it up can stop your story from even being read, much less considered. But they can’t make you a better writer.

The worst of these kinds of classes and books are what I call Frog Killers. You’ve probably heard the analogy before: you can study how a frog is put together by taking it apart, but you can’t put it together again afterwards. A book or class that focuses on picking apart a story—usually to a ridiculous set of specifications and standards—usually does nothing for new writers but make them hideously self-conscious. They write but then freeze up, panicking that they’ve forgotten the character transformation, that the story isn’t emotionally engaging, that there’s no conflict (man vs. man, man vs. nature, and whatever that other one is), that there’s no clear A-B-C structure, and so forth. With this oppressive laundry list in their heads, yelling at them louder than their nascent creativity, no wonder budding writers can feel like deer caught in headlights. This is why, when someone’s resume indicates that they have a degree in creative writing, I look at them like they’d stormed a hill under heavy enemy fire. It doesn’t make them better writers, though, even though they might be able to tell you—to ten decimal places—why their story is worth publishing.

The other kind of book and class you might stumble across in your search for guidance is the philosophical one. To be honest, I like these much more than the Frog Killers—more than partially because it mirrors my own idea that writing is more magic than science. These kinds of teachers approach writing as art, usually with a series of literary touchy feely exercises that will stretch and tone your currently saggy imagination. The only problem with these is that they can all too often retreat from the idea of writing as being work, taking away the 90% perspiration in exchange for the 10% inspiration. Creativity is one thing, but you still have to get the damned thing down on paper.

As far as I know, the only way to be a better writer is … drum roll, please … to write. Not much of a surprise, is it? Some classes and books might be good for the basics, and for the nuts and bolts of the business. Forums might be fun; newsgroups might be a diversion, but the only thing that will make you a better writer is to do it, and not stop doing it.

It’s a nasty rule, but aside from a few very rare exceptions, your first story will suck. It will suck painfully, forcefully, and with great vigor. So will your next one, and your next one, but eventually you’ll get better: your language will begin to flow, and you won’t be thinking about writing but will instead be telling a story. After that, you’ll find yourself enjoying the process, nodding at little turns of phrase or a well-toned paragraph. Later you’ll feel tears on your cheeks when you put THE END on something that worked out perfectly, beautifully.

Do you get where I’m going? No one can really teach you that, just like a paint-by-numbers kit won’t turn you into Picasso. The only way you can really get better as a writer is to try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, try and get a bit better, try and get a bit better, try and do something good, try and good something better, try and make something great ….

So what are you reading this for? Get back to writing.

Even before writing about the sex in a sexy story you have to set the stage, decide where this hot and heavy action is going to take place. What a lot of merry pornographers don’t realize is that the where can be just as important as the what in a smutty tale. In other words, to quote a real estate maxim: Location, location … etc.

Way too many times writers will makes their story locales more exotic than the activities of their bump-and-grinding participants: steam rooms, elevators, beaches, hot tubs, hiking trails, space stations, sports cars, airplane bathrooms, phone booths, back alleys, fitting rooms, cabs, sail boats, intensive care wards, locker rooms, under bleachers, peep show booths, movie theaters, offices, libraries, barracks, under a restaurant table, packing lots, rest stops, basements, showrooms — get my drift?

I know I’ve said in the past that sexual experience doesn’t really make a better smut writer, but when it comes to choosing where your characters get to their business, it pays to know quite a bit about the setting you’re getting them into.

Just like making an anatomical or sexual boo-boo in a story, putting your characters into a place that anyone with a tad of experience knows isn’t going to be a fantastic time but rather something that will generate more pain than pleasure is a sure sign of an erotica amateur.

Take for instance the wonderful sexual pleasure than can come from screwing around in a car. Haven’t done it? Well you should because after you do you’ll never write about it — unless you’re going for giggles.

Same goes for the beach. Ever get sand between your toes? Now think about that same itchy, scratchy — very unsexy — feeling in your pants. Not fun. Very not fun.

Beyond the mistake of making a tryst in a back alley sound exciting (it isn’t, unless you’re really into rotting garbage), setting the stage in a story serves many other positive purposes. For instance, the environment of a story can tell a lot about a character — messy meaning a scattered mind, neatness meaning controlling, etc. — or about what you’re trying to say in the story: redemption, humor, fright, hope, and so forth. Not that you should lay it on so thick that it’s painfully obvious, but the stage can and should be another character, an added dimension to your story.

Simply saying where something is happening is only part of the importance of setting. You have to put the reader there. Details, folks. Details! Research, not sexual this time, is very important. Pay attention to the world, note how a room or a place FEELS — the little things that make it unique. Shadows on the floor or walls, the smells and what they mean to your characters; all kinds of sounds, the way things feel, important minutiae, or even just interesting features.

After you’ve stored up some of those unique features of a place, use special and evocative descriptions to really draw people in. Though quantity is good, quality is better. A few well-chosen lines can instantly set the stage: an applause of suddenly flying pigeons, the aimless babble of a crowd, rainbow reflections in slicks of oil, twirling leaves on a tree, clouds boiling into a storm … okay, that was a bit overdone, but you hopefully get my gist.

Once again: location is not something that’s only important to real estate. If you put your characters into an interesting, well-thought-out, vividly written setting, it can not only set the stage for their erotic mischief but it can also amplify the theme or add depth to the story. After all, if you don’t give your writing a viable place, then a reader won’t truly understand where they are — or care about what’s going on.

It may come as a surprise, but far too often authors—people who are supposedly very comfortable with words!—have days when they just don’t want to write at all.

It’s a common mistake writers make when they begin to think about social media, marketing, and all that other fun stuff: this idea that words are the be-all and end-all for them. They force themselves far too often to script tweet after tweet, Facebook post after Facebook post…until they just can’t write another line of original content, even if only to say “Look at my book!” Worse, they come to feel that because they’ve burnt out on writing tweets and posts and marketing copy, they have failed. They think about all the potential readers they have lost; markets they haven’t tapped; piles of beguiling words they should have written—because are they not supposed to be endless fonts of text? (Spoiler: no.)

Fortunately for you if you’re one of these writers, there are some great options for social networking that don’t require you to write a word. They are wordless yet powerful, simple yet evocative, easy yet  poignant.

In short, Facebook and Twitter are not the only games in town when it comes to keeping yourself and your writing in the public eye.

I’m talking about using pictures rather than words. Using Flicker, Instagram, Pinterest or Tumblr to make your point, catch your Twitter followers’ imaginations, engage them emotionally in a way that leaves a favorable impression of you in their minds. An image-sharing tool like these can help you reach out to others, and save you a thousand words of writing, every day.

There are quite a few image-sharing venues out there—and while your mileage and social media needs may vary, in my experience they’ve basically boiled down to just one. Allow me: Flickr is ridiculously clunky and doesn’t share well with others—just spend a few minutes trying to either find an image or a keyword, or pass along a photo. Pain. In. The…youknowwhatImean. Instagram is fine and dandy for taking snapshots of your dinner, your dog, your kids, your whatever…but when it comes to sharing what you snap, or using images from other sources, it’s not exactly user-friendly.

This basically leaves us with two choices, if you want to save those thousands of words: Pinterest and Tumblr. I’ve tried both and the choice was extremely easy to make—it comes down to one thing: sex.

Let’s face it, when you’re an author of erotica and erotic romance, you are dealing with—in one way or another—characters having sex. Like lots of erotica authors, I’ve learned to (sigh) deal with platforms like Facebook that will wish you into the cornfield for showing—or in some cases even talking about—something as threatening as a nipple. We deal with Facebook because we have to. But an open-minded image-sharing social media venue is a bit like Twitter: the more the merrier.

Pinterest doesn’t like sex…at all. I used to have a Pinterest account but then I began to get messages, here and there to start, but then tons: each one about a posted image of mine that was removed due to the dreaded Terms of Service. A few were obvious, but then the images they were yanking became and more innocent. Bye-bye Pinterest.

Tumblr isn’t perfect—far from it—but even after being purchased by the search engine deity Yahoo, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times it has caused me any kind of headache. Mostly they will reject anything that really pushes a button—think of the deadly erotica sins, but with pictures, and you know what I mean (hate speech, rape, bestiality, incest, underage, pee or poo, etc).

In a nutshell, Tumblr is easy, fun, and—best of all—a rather effective social media tool that also neatly and simply integrates into Twitter and Facebook…and, no, I do not own stock.

The way it works couldn’t be less complicated: you can create any number of Tumblrs—think folders—(even with an “age appropriate” warning if you want), and then design them with any one of a huge number of themes. From your master dashboard you can see—and tweak —all the separate Tumblrs you’ve created. The themes are a blast, and the interface takes very little skill to navigate.
As for what Tumblrs you should create…well, that’s up to you. Like food? Make a nice edibles Tumblr (and they have an app that lets you to take shots of your meals if that’s what you’re into). Like history? Create a vintage photo site. Love sex? Well, it’s pretty obvious about what you can do with that.

Where do you get your pictures? You can certainly take them yourself or upload them from your various devices, but where Tumblr becomes a real social media machine is in reposting. Once you create your account just look for other Tumblrs by interests or keywords and then hit that little follow button. Then, when you look at your dashboard, you’ll see a nice stream of pictures that you can like, share, or repost to your own various Tumblr incarnations. Plus, the more people you follow, the more people will follow you.

Just to give you an idea, I started—rather lazily—my dozen or so Tumblrs four or so years ago and now my main one, Rude Mechanicals, has over 5,000 followers. You can imagine the reach you could have if you really put some work into it.

And if you want to see how far that reach extends, you can go back and look at your posts to see how many times they’ve been liked or reposted. It’s harder to tell when it’s a reposted picture but it can also be very heartwarming to see that, for instance, when you post about a good review or a new book announcement, dozens of people liked your news or, even better, shared it with their own vast audience.

What’s also fun about Tumblr is the auto-forward feature. It’s not perfect, as there are some periodic glitches, but all in all it works rather well. When you set up your separate Tumblrs you can then select an option where—if you choose—you can also send any image to Twitter or to Facebook.
That increases the number of people your image will potentially reach. It can even go to a Facebook page you’ve created. Neat!

One trick I use is to click the handy “like” button to create an inventory of images and then—once or twice a day—go back into my list of likes to repost them to my appropriate sites…with or without Twitter or Facebook reposting as I see fit. Tumblrs also feature RSS, which means you can subscribe to one of them through an aggregator like Feedly.

What’s also neat about Tumblr is its flexibility: you can post images (duh) but you can also embed video (from YouTube or wherever) and post text, quotations, links, chat streams, and audio.
Let your eyes do the walking and let the images they find do the talking. Image-sharing tools like Tumblr are a super easy way to fulfill your need for social media presence without having to write anything.

Here’s another old favorite. It’s not quite an article but as it is about writing … and the special people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing…

LOVE

“You could have stayed with me,” he’d said the first time I went to Seattle to see him, but stayed in a motel. I hadn’t even thought of it, and so the disappointment in his eyes.

I never went back. After he got promoted there wasn’t any point.

You could have stayed with me evolves into a fantasy in which those four days play out differently: an invitation made earlier, my discomfort of staying in someone else’s house miraculously absent. Fresh off the plane, strap digging into my shoulder (I always over-pack), out of the cab and up a quick twist of marble steps to his front door. A knock, or a buzz, and it opens.

A quick dance of mutual embarrassment as I maneuver in with my luggage, both of us saying the stupid things we all say when we arrive somewhere we’ve never been before. Him: “How was your flight?” Me: “What a great place.”

Son of a decorator, I always furnish and accessorize my fantasies: I imagine his to be a simple one-bedroom. Messy, but a good mess. A mind’s room, full of toppling books, squares of bright white paper. Over the fireplace (cold, never lit) a print, something classical like a Greek torso, the fine line topography of Michelangelo’s David. A few pieces of plaster, three-dimensional anatomical bric-a-brac on the mantel. A cheap wooden table in the window, bistro candle, and Don’t Fuck With The Queen in ornate script on a chipped coffee cup.

Dinner? No, my flight arrived late. Coffee? More comfortable and gets to the point quicker. We chat. I ask him about his life: is everything okay? He replies that he’s busy, but otherwise fine. We chat some more. I say that it’s a pleasure to work with him. He replies with the same.

I compliment him, amplifying what I’ve already said, and he blushes. He returns it, and then some, making me smile. My eyes start to burn, my vision blurs, tears threatening. I sniffle and stand up.

He does as well, and we hug. Hold there. Hold there. Hold there. Then, break – but still close together. Lips close together. The kiss happens. Light, just a grazing of lips. I can tell he wants more, but I’m uncomfortable and break it but not so uncomfortable that I can’t kiss his cheeks. Right, then left, then right again.

But his head turns and we’re kissing, lips to lips again. Does he open his first or do I? Sometimes I imagine his, sometimes mine. But they are open and we are kissing, lips and tongue, together. Hot, wet, hard.

But not on my part. Wet, definitely – in my mind it’s a good kiss. A generous and loving kiss. Hot, absolutely, but only in a matter of degrees as his temperature rises and mine does in basic body response.

Not hard on my part, but I am aware of his. Between us, like a finger shoved through a hole in his pocket, something solid and muscular below his waist.

Does he say something? “I want you,” “Please touch me,” “I’m sorry,” are candidates. I’ve tried them all out, one time or another, to add different flavors, essences, spices to that evening. “I want you,” for basic primal sex. “Please touch me,” for polite request, respect and sympathy. “I’m sorry,” for wanting something he knows I don’t.

“It’s okay,” I say to all of them, and it is. Not just words. Understanding, sympathy, generosity. All of them, glowing in my mind. It really is okay.

I’m a pornographer, dammit. I should be able to go on with the next part of this story without feeling like … I’m laughing right now, not that you can tell. An ironic chuckle: a pornographer unable to write about sex. Not that I can’t write about myself, that making who I am – really – the center of the action is uncomfortable, because I’ve certainly done that before. I’ve exposed myself on the page so many other times, what makes this one so different?

Just do it. Put the words down and debate them later. After all, that’s what we’re here for, aren’t we? You want to hear what I dream he and I do together. You want to look over my mental shoulder at two men in that tiny apartment in Seattle.

I’m a writer; it’s what I do, and more importantly, what I am. So we sit on the couch, he in the corner me in the middle. His hand is on my leg. My back is tight, my thighs are corded. Doubt shades his face so I put my own hand on his own, equally tight, thigh. I repeat what I said before, meaning it: “It’s okay.”

We kiss again. A friend’s kiss, a two people who like each other kiss. His hands touch my chest, feeling me through the thin cloth of turtleneck. I pull the fabric out of my pants with a few quick tugs, allowing bare hands to touch bare chest. He likes it, grinning up at me. I send my own grin, trying to relax.

His hand strokes me though my jeans, and eventually I do get hard. His smile becomes deeper, more sincere, lit by his excitement. It’s one thing to say it, quite another for your body to say it. Flesh doesn’t lie, and I might have when I gave permission. My cock getting hard, though, is obvious tissue and blood sincerity.

“That’s nice,” “Can I take it out?” “I hope you’re all right with this.” Basic primal sex, a polite request including respect and sympathy, and the words for wanting something he knows I don’t – any one of them, more added depth to this dream.

My cock is out and because he’s excited or simply doesn’t want the moment and my body to possibly get away, he is sucking me. Was that so hard to say? It’s just sex. Just the mechanics of arousal, the engineering of erotica. Cock A in mouth B. I’ve written it hundreds of times. But there’s that difference again, like by writing it, putting it down on paper (or a computer screen) has turned diamond into glass, mahogany into plywood.

Cheapened. That’s the word. But to repeat: I am a writer. It’s what I do. All the time. Even about love – especially about this kind of love.

He sucks my cock. Not like that, not that, not the way you’re thinking: not porno sucking, not erotica sucking. This is connection, he to I. The speech of sex, blowjob as vocabulary.

I stay hard. What does this mean? It puzzles me, even in the fantasy. I have no doubts about my sexuality. I am straight. I write everything else, but I am a straight boy. I like girls. Men do not turn me on.

Yet, in my mind and in that little apartment, I am hard. Not “like a rock,” not “as steel,” not as a “telephone pole,” but hard enough as his mouth, lips, and tongue – an echoing hard, wet and hard – work on me.

The answer is clear and sharp, because if I couldn’t get hard and stay hard then he’d be hurt and the scene would shadow, chill, and things would be weighted between us. That’s not the point of this dream, why I think about it.

So, onto sex. Nothing great or grand, nothing from every section of the menu. A simple action between two men who care about each other: he sucks my cock. He enjoys it and I love him enough to let him. That’s all we do, because it’s enough.

He sucks me for long minutes, making sweet sounds and I feel like crying. He puts his hand down his own pants, puts a hand around his own cock. For a moment I think about asking him if he wants help, for me to put my hand around him, help him jerk off. But I don’t. Not because I don’t want to, or because I’m disgusted, but because he seems to be enjoying himself so much, so delighted in the act of sucking me, that I don’t want to break the spell, turn that couch back into a pumpkin.

He comes, a deep groan around my cock, humming me into near-giggles. He stops sucking as he gasps and sighs with release, looking up at me with wet-painted lips, eyes out of focus. I bend down and kiss him, not tasting anything but warm water.

I love him. I wanted to thank him. I hope, within this dream, I have. The night that didn’t happen but could have.

For me, writing is just about everything: the joy of right word following right word all the way to the end. The ecstasy of elegant plot, the pleasure of flowing dialogue, the loveliness of perfect description. Sex is good, sex is wonderful, but story is fireworks in my brain. The reason I live. The greatest pleasure in my life.

And he has given me that, with nearly flowing letters on an agreement between his company and I, between his faith in my ability and myself. He looked at me, exposed on the page of a book, in the chapter of a novel, in the lines of a short story, and didn’t laugh, didn’t dismiss or reject. He read, nodded, smiled, and agreed to publish.

Sex cannot measure up to that. Bodies are bodies, but he has given me a pleasure beyond anything I’d felt: applause, and a chance to do much, much more with words, with stories.

He doesn’t have a name, this man in my fantasy. There have been a lot of them over the years, and a lot more in the future, no doubt. Gay men who have touched me in ways no one has ever touched me before, by making love with my soul through their support of my writing. Each time they have, this fantasy has emerged from the back of my mind, a need to give them the gift they have given me: passion and kindness, support and caring, and pure affection.

I worry about this. I worry that they won’t understand, take this secret dream of mine as being patronizing, diminishing them to nothing but a being with a cock who craved more cock. I’ve confessed a few times, telling a select few how I feel about them, how I wish I could do for them what they have done for me, to be able to put aside my heterosexuality for just an evening, an afternoon, and share total affection together.

Luckily, or maybe there really isn’t anything to worry about, the ones I’ve told, they smile, hold my hand, kiss my cheek, say the right thing and to this day, even right now, make me cry: “I wish we could too, but I understand. I love you too.”

Am I bi? I know I’m physically not – I simply don’t get aroused by men – but that doesn’t mean I don’t adore men, or for the ones I care about, the men who have touched my soul through their support and affection for my stories and writing, I wish I could change. More than anything I wish I could give them what they have given me.

With a cock or a pen, with a story or hours of wonderful sex, it all comes down to one thing: love.

Here’s a bit of fun I wrote a looooong time ago … hope you like!

How Much?

The Editor sends the story back, No one comes like this. It’s obvious she’s faking it and I realize he’s right: she was faking it.

#

The Director leans in, hot lights burning my legs: Just can’t get the lighting right, your cock still looks too small. I frown, thinking of all the wankers from San Francisco to Boston feeling good that the stud in their whack-off vid is smaller than they are for once.

#

She never calls me back. Six months later, I run into her on the street. I read that story you wrote for Warped Perverts, she says, scanning for a quick escape route. It scared me. 

#

The Photographer tells me to smile, damn it, smile as I lift my leg into yet another impossible position. I miss the gallery opening because of a cramp so bad I can’t get out of bed.

#

Losing my virginity gets published in a book called Cherry Bombed about horrible, embarrassing, first times. I am supposed to get paid $15 and two copies. The check bounces and the book never appears.

#

I can’t sleep for three nights running, the plot of Truck Stop Tranps bogged down in a morass of motivation, character development, and a flawed narrative. I almost miss the deadline, and waste five bucks on Fed Ex changes getting it to the editor in time. When the magazine comes out, I see that he completely butchered the ending, losing the wonderful sense of pathos I had so carefully worked into it. Then I lose four more nights of sleep, shocked wide awake that I actually cared.

#

Where do you get your ideas? she asks in a breathy voice tinged with a boiling horniness as she strokes my cock. I can barely get hard, most of my brain being diverted by my thoughts of she stroked him like a fireman cleaning his pole: diligently, professionally — as if trying to work a gleam out of it…

#

My spell-checker has grown unwieldy from the words I have stuffed in its tight, resistant, pulsing, memory: cocksucker, cunt, mons, asshole, pubes, motherfucker, testicles, dildo, lube, S/M, she-male, latex, jerk-off, cunnilingus, felatio, flagellation, flogger, Saran Wrap, cunt-licker, assfucker, and on and on and on, etc., etc. I run it through a letter to my landlord and broken mail slot becomes she-male slut. Now he looks at me funny and the damned thing never gets fixed.

#

The party is full-swing and banging away: in the sling, guy fists guy – foaming Crisco plopping to the floor. In one corner two dykes are taking turns kicking each other in the butt. Over there a latex dom is turning her slave’s ass into maximus tar-tar. Next to me a grinning piercer expertly punctures some guy’s dick, then feeds steel rings through the holes — and all I can think is poor plot development, crappy characterization, no motivation…

#

She’s a fan. I’ve read everything you’ve ever written, she says. Jerked off to all of them. Talked other playmates into even reenacting some. Raves about me all the time. Box Lunch, Sailors At Sea, Yeeha!, The Bang Gang, TV Repairman … her favorites each and every one. I take my pants off and she’s disappointed. We fuck and she’s disappointed. We each come and she’s disappointed. I tell her: don’t get any rewrites in life, sweetie.

#

The book, magazine, movie comes out. I burst with enthusiasm: I did this, I did this! I become annoying, showing it everyone. Then someone also bursts, and shows it to my mother…

#

Am asked to write about the most degrading, insulting, humiliating, sex act you can imagine and the first thing that comes to mind and out of my mouth is How much?

It’s one of the most common questions I get asked – by budding writers via email or in person during one of my (ahem) Sex Sells: Erotica Writing classes: what makes an erotic story …erotic?

But before I answer [insert suspenseful music here] a bit of exposition is in order: there is ahuge difference in writing for yourself, such as when you are first dipping your … toes into erotica writing, and when you’ve made the very brave decision to throw your work out into the professional world.

If you are writing for yourself then you really don’t need to be thinking about sex (or the amount of it) at all: you’re writing for your pleasure, or just as practice.

But if you do decide to send your work out you really do need to be pay close attention to where you’re submitting: when a publisher or editor puts out a call for submissions they are often – or should be – quite clear about the amount of sexuality they need or want from a writer.  If you’re sending a story, say, to a site, anthology or whatever it’s always a good idea to scope out the territory, so to speak: read what the editor has accepted before, take a gander at the site … and so forth.  That, at least, should give you a ballpark feeling of what (and how much) they are looking for.

But [insert dramatic drum roll] as far as the right, perfect, ideal, amount of sex for a story that isn’t just for your own pleasure, or a very specific market, goes … well, what’s sex?

Far too often beginning (or even seasoned pros) have the idea that there’s a required amount of sex, of detail, of activity, that makes a story erotic: they occassionally even have a percentage guide – or a shopping list of required activities (oral followed by penetration culminated by mutual orgasm, etc). 

There’s also the belief that unless a story arouses them – or a publisher, editor, random reader, whoever – then it isn’t sufficiently erotic … and so needs more sex.

But both of these views are, frankly, wrong.  Erotica can be a remarkably flexible genre: it can be about anything to do with sex, sensuality, eroticism, whatever … there isn’t a set rule of amount or variety of sex that has to take place. 

I’ve sold (as a writer) and bought (as both an anthology editor as well as a book publisher), work that has a wide range of both quantity as well as assortment of sex and sensuality – though, once again, unless the project is upfront about requiring a certain kind, or amount, of sexuality.

And as for turning anyone on, I always remind people that there is absolutely no way to know what will turn anyone on – so it’s impossible to judge the amount of sex in a story by anyone’s (not to be sexist) Peter Meter.  Once again, as a writer I’ve sold, and as an editor and publisher I’ve bought, many stories that I personally wasn’t aroused by – and many writers and editors feel the same way.

So … sex.  What I meant by what’s sex is that sex can be a lot of things to a lot of people.  The erotic content in a story or book can be page after page of bumpy-grindy or lyrically sensual where actual penetrative sex (of any kind) never actually takes place.  Sex can be fantasy, without any reality.  It can be sense memory.  It can be masturbation.  It can be pleasure from extreme sensation.  It can even be bittersweet, disturbing, or even sad. 

Sex, in short, can be anything.  Speaking as a writer, I love to play with what sex can be about – often trying to really push the literary envelope.  Speaking as a publisher, I love it when a book or story crosses my path that says something – that really plays with the idea of what sex can be in a new and surprising way.

Erotica, to wrap it up, can be anything (caveats for specialized markets, of course).  There is no magic formula for amount or activity, arousal is no judge of quality or quantity: your erotic writing playground is as vast as your imagination–

–as vast as sex itself.  

My name is Chris – though my pseudonym is usually M.Christian – and I have a confession to make.

I’ve written – and write – a…what’s the technical term? Oh, yeah: shitload of erotica. Some 400 published stories, 12 or so collections, 7 novels. I’ve also edited around 25 anthologies. I even have the honor of being an Associate Publisher for Renaissance eBooks, whose Sizzler Editions erotica imprint has some 1,300 titles out there.

I’ve written sexually explicit gay stories, lesbian stories, trans stories, bisexual stories, BDSM stories, tales exploring just about every kind of fetish, you name it and I can all but guarantee that I’ve written about it. I like to joke that a friend of mine challenged me to write a story to a ridiculously particular specification: a queer vampire sport tale. My answer? “Casey, The Bat.” Which I actually did write…though I dropped the vampire part of it.

Don’t worry; I’m getting to the point. I can write just about anything for anyone – but here comes the confession:

I’ve never, ever written about what actually turns me – what turns Chris – on.

This kind of makes me a rather rare beast in the world of professional smut writing. In fact it’s pretty common for other erotica writers to – to be polite about it – look down their noses at the fact that I write about anything other than my own actual or desired sexual peccadilloes. Some have even been outright rude about it: claiming that I’m somehow insulting to their interests and/or orientations and shouldn’t write anything except what I am and what I like.

To be honest, in moments of self-doubt I have thought the very same thing. Am I profiting off the sexuality of other people? Am I a parasite, too cowardly to put my own kinks and passions out into the world? Am I short-changing myself as a writer by refusing to put myself out there?

For the record, I’m a hetero guy who – mostly – likes sexually dominant women. I also find my head turned pretty quickly when a large, curvy woman walks by. That said, I’ve had wonderful times with women of every size, shape, ethnicity, and interest.

So why do I find it so hard to say all that in my writing? The question has been bugging me for a while, so I put on my thinking cap. Part of the answer, I’ve come to understand, relates directly to chronic depression: it’s much less of an emotional gamble to hide behind a curtain of story than to risk getting my own intimate desires and passions stomped flat by a critical review or other negative reaction from readers. I can handle critical reviews of a story – that’s par for the course in professional writing – but it’s a good question as to whether I could handle critical reviews of my life.
But then I had an eye-opening revelation. As I said, I’ve written – and write – stories about all kinds of interests, inclinations, passions, orientations, genders, ethnicities, ages, cultures…okay, I won’t belabor it. But the point is that I’ve also been extremely blessed to have sold everything I’ve ever written. Not only that, but I’ve had beautiful compliments from people saying my work has touched them and that they never, ever, would have realized that the desires of the story’s narrator and those of the writer weren’t one and the same.

Which, in a nice little turn-around, leads me to say that my name is Chris – though my pseudonym is usually M.Christian – and I have yet another confession to make.

Yes, I don’t get sexually excited when I write. Yes, I have never written about what turns me on. Yes, I always write under a name that’s not my legal one.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel when I write. Far from it: absolutely, I have no idea what actual gay sex is like for the participants; positively, I have not an inkling of what many fetishes feel like inside the minds of those who have them; definitely, I have no clue what it’s like to have sex as a woman…
I do, however, know what sex is like. The mechanics, yeah, but more importantly I work very hard to understand the emotions of sex and sexuality through the raw examination of my own life: the heart-racing nerves, the whispering self-doubts, the pulse-pounding tremors of hope, the bittersweetness of it, the bliss, the sorrows and the warmth of it, the dreams and memories…

I’m working on a story right now, part of a new collection. It’s erotic – duh – but it’s also about hope, redemption, change, and acceptance. I have no experience with the kind of physical sex that takes place in this story but every time I close its file after a few hours of work, tears are burning my cheeks. In part, this emotional investment is about trying to recapture the transcendent joy I’ve felt reading the work of writers I admire.

When I read manuscripts as an anthology editor, or as an Associate Publisher, a common mistake I see in them is a dedication to technical accuracy favored over emotion. These stories are correct down to the smallest detail – either because they were written from life or from an exactingly fact-checked sexual imagination – but at the end, I as the reader feel…nothing.

I’m not perfect – far from it – but while I may lack direct experience in a lot of what I write, I do work very, very hard to put real human depth into whatever I do. I may not take the superficial risk of putting the mechanics of my sexuality into stories and books but I take a greater chance by using the full range of my emotional life in everything I create.

I freely admit that I don’t write about my own sexual interests and experiences. That may – in some people’s minds – disqualify me from being what they consider an “honest” erotica writer, but after much work and introspection I contest that while I may keep my sex life to myself, I work very hard to bring as much of my own, deeply personal, self to bear upon each story as I can.

They say that confession is good for the soul. But I humbly wish to add to that while confession is fine and dandy, trying to touch people – beyond their sex organs – is ever better…for your own soul as well as the souls of anyone reading your work.

Even before writing about the sex in a sexy story you have to set the stage, decide where this hot and heavy action is going to take place. What a lot of merry pornographers don’t realize is that the where can be just as important as the what in a smutty tale. In other words, to quote a real estate maxim: Location, location … etc.

Way too many times writers will makes their story locales more exotic than the activities of their bump-and-grinding participants: steam rooms, elevators, beaches, hot tubs, hiking trails, space stations, sports cars, airplane bathrooms, phone booths, back alleys, fitting rooms, cabs, sail boats, intensive care wards, locker rooms, under bleachers, peep show booths, movie theaters, offices, libraries, barracks, under a restaurant table, packing lots, rest stops, basements, showrooms — get my drift?

I know I’ve said in the past that sexual experience doesn’t really make a better smut writer, but when it comes to choosing where your characters get to their business, it pays to know quite a bit about the setting you’re getting them into.

Just like making an anatomical or sexual boo-boo in a story, putting your characters into a place that anyone with a tad of experience knows isn’t going to be a fantastic time but rather something that will generate more pain than pleasure is a sure sign of an erotica amateur.

Take for instance the wonderful sexual pleasure than can come from screwing around in a car. Haven’t done it? Well you should because after you do you’ll never write about it — unless you’re going for giggles.

Same goes for the beach. Ever get sand between your toes? Now think about that same itchy, scratchy — very unsexy — feeling in your pants. Not fun. Very not fun.

Beyond the mistake of making a tryst in a back alley sound exciting (it isn’t, unless you’re really into rotting garbage), setting the stage in a story serves many other positive purposes. For instance, the environment of a story can tell a lot about a character — messy meaning a scattered mind, neatness meaning controlling, etc. — or about what you’re trying to say in the story: redemption, humor, fright, hope, and so forth. Not that you should lay it on so thick that it’s painfully obvious, but the stage can and should be another character, an added dimension to your story.

Simply saying where something is happening is only part of the importance of setting. You have to put the reader there. Details, folks. Details! Research, not sexual this time, is very important. Pay attention to the world, note how a room or a place FEELS — the little things that make it unique. Shadows on the floor or walls, the smells and what they mean to your characters; all kinds of sounds, the way things feel, important minutiae, or even just interesting features.

After you’ve stored up some of those unique features of a place, use special and evocative descriptions to really draw people in. Though quantity is good, quality is better. A few well-chosen lines can instantly set the stage: an applause of suddenly flying pigeons, the aimless babble of a crowd, rainbow reflections in slicks of oil, twirling leaves on a tree, clouds boiling into a storm … okay, that was a bit overdone, but you hopefully get my gist.

Once again: location is not something that’s only important to real estate. If you put your characters into an interesting, well-thought-out, vividly written setting, it can not only set the stage for their erotic mischief but it can also amplify the theme or add depth to the story. After all, if you don’t give your writing a viable place, then a reader won’t truly understand where they are — or care about what’s going on.