How I Accidentally Became an Erotica Writer

From Honest Artist to…Sexy, Desperate Hack?

It’s the dream, isn’t it?

Our first book—oh, that old thing? Just something I’ve been working on late at night after work, probably on a 19th century Singer, over espresso or two fingers of bourbon — gets agented, gets sold, and pops. Off.

Then, in an inevitable Step Two, we buy a cottage—you know the one, it’s a little stone famine house in rural Ireland with a view of the sea and an overgrown garden—and begin a prolific career of mysticism, unequivocal artistry, aloof web interviews, and unplumbed riches.

I mean, that wasn’t my dream, really. Mine was more in the Leigh Bardugo vein. I wanted to write sweeping YA fantasy. I dreamed of 6-figure deals, internet fame, and four-film options wherein I do a corny, charming, inevitable cameo— the whole-ass, cliched shebang.

“So,” you say, “maybe you should have gone to college.”

“So,” I say, “yes. Yes, maybe I should have.”

But whoa, hey — that’s not why you’re here.

You want to know how I found myself thrust (ha) almost unawares into the lurid, ill-lit, mafia-man crowded landscape of — gasp! — self-pub erotica.