Jacked

Of all my short stories Jacked was the most difficult to write, primarily because it didn’t involve lady parts. But I fell in love with the cover image and triple pun title (the guy is jacked, they are lumberjacks, and they jack each other off).

Two lumberjacks, John and Duncan, can’t continue work with protester Skyler chained to a tree. Skyler has a taste for lusty lumberjack cock, and confesses his desire to see John dominate Duncan. But are these macho men willing to do what it takes to persuade Skyler to abandon the hardwood for their hard wood?

Something I was told very early on was that if you are writing a m/m story you need to have a man on the cover. You’d think that straight women, who are the vast majority of erotica purchasers, would prefer to look at male bodies. Certainly in romance novels it’s common for men to be alone on the covers. But for whatever reason the convention in erotica seems to be that man on the cover (unaccompanied by a woman) = gay sex.

Observation

Jacked has the opposite problem of Poker Party Gang Bang, which saw a lot of sample downloads but comparatively few purchases. Only a few people have read the sample of Jacked, but almost all of them have bought the book.

Lesson

I assume that most people saw the cover and figured that there would be gay sex. Those who weren’t interested didn’t bother clicking and those who were interested were really interested.

Another lesson from Jacked was that when there are three men I have to be really careful with the pronouns. A lot of the editing involved making it clear who was sucking whose cock.

Taking Care of Daddy

This short story was such a dream to write. In fact, it pretty much wrote itself. Even the title and cover pretty much fell together. Even better, it outsells Poker Party Gang Bang by about 2 to 1.

The spanner in the works is that Smashwords are no longer selling erotica containing pseudo incest (basically step and adopted relatives). Overall I sell more on Amazon than I do Smashwords, but every bit helps.

When she was good she was very good. But when she was bad she was wetter…

When Darla discovers that her mother isn’t taking care of her stepfather’s desires, she decides to give him the release he so desperately needs. But he is used to thinking of her as his innocent daughter and it’s up to Darla to show him that daddy’s little girl is all grown up.

Remembering the lesson from the last short story, I pretty much jumped straight into a scene where Darla spies on her stepfather masturbating. The bulk of the story is the extended seduction and then the sex scene, followed by a quick wrap up.

Observation

Pseudo incest seems to come pretty naturally to me! I think it helps that there are expected tropes – like she has to call him “daddy”, at some point he has to think that this is wrong, etc. It’s how you put them together that matters.

Lesson

It’s hard to say if I learned anything about erotica from Taking Care of Daddy. I guess the Paypal-induced crackdown of pseudo incest (also rape and bestiality, though those don’t affect me) is a reminder to not put all my erotic eggs in the one basket.

Oh, I also learned that writing a male/female pairing is much easier than writing group sex. With group sex I had to worry about who was putting what where, and whether the sex acts were equitably distributed between all the participants. I also had to go through multiple times to make sure I didn’t put them in contortionist positions or get people’s names confused. Sometimes writing erotica for a living is not as sexy as it sounds.

Poker Party Gang Bang

This was the first book that I published. It contains masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, mild humiliation, and a gang bang.

I had some trouble coming up with title names. I wanted to do a pun on the poker term “all in” but the titles I was coming up with (All In Her Holes or All In Anna) didn’t get across the the poker aspect. I toyed with something like Poke Her Face but thought it had the same problem.

A far more experienced erotica writer said that you can never go wrong with the title just describing the where and how of the sex act, so Poker Party Gang Bang it was. 

Greg badly needs to win at poker tonight to pay off all his debts. Luckily for him, the other players are less interested in cards and more interested in his sexy wife Anna, who has been teasing them with her body all night. But when Greg gets in too deep it’s time for Anna to pay up…

The idea is fairly basic; the other players require the main character to perform gradually more and more depraved acts in order to pay off her husband’s poker debt.

I separated the story into mini chapters based on a poker game:

Dealing the Hand – the story set-up
The Flop – first loss (players ask to see her breasts)
The Turn – second loss (players ask her to masturbate in front of them)
The River – final loss (group sex scene)
Settling the Bets – the wrap up

Believe me I was patting myself on the back a long time for that story structure.

I think Poker Party Gang Bang will always be my baby. It’s clever (oh look the back patting still hasn’t stopped) but also incredibly sexy.

After a slow start it has begun to bring in some money but I think I made a couple of rookie mistakes with it. On Smashwords I could see that a lot of people were reading the 20% sample but not buying the book, and I think that was because it started off too slowly. I added an excerpt to show that the smut ramps up, but potential buyers had no guarantee of how long it would take to get there.

Observation:

Low purchase-to-download ratio on Smashwords.

Lesson:

Get straight into the meat of the story. It doesn’t have to start with the gang bang, but in a short story readers want an assurance that they’re going to get value for money when it comes to the sex scenes.

To test the theory I jumped straight into a voyeur/masturbation scene for my next book, and it has sold a lot better despite fewer sample downloads. Admittedly the pseudo incest genre is a lot more popular than the poker party gangbang genre, but I think the idea is sound and will be implementing it in all of my future books.

Welcome to my Blog

My name is Lauren Fell and I am a writer of erotic short stories. I’ve only been doing this for a week, so I’m basically fumbling my way around (with the aid of a few mentors) trying to see what works.

Oh God, Why Erotica?

For the price of a coffee you can buy an orgasm, and what could be better value than that?

So much (though admittedly not all) pornography seems to involve plastic-looking actors going through the motions of inserting Slot A into Tabs B and C. That sort of joyless hammering doesn’t appeal to me and I think it doesn’t appeal to a lot of women.

Which doesn’t mean we’re interested in candlelight and roses and eternal declarations of love. I am my own audience; I write the sort of hot, crude stories that I want to read.

Why Short Stories?

Hands up those of you who watch porn for the story.

Erotica is the opposite of a penis – shorter is better! (Actually that’s not even true, as any woman who has been rammed in the cervix will attest to)

Why Self-Publishing?

I was inspired by various articles about authors making a living by self-publishing – although they sell fewer books they receive a larger slice of the profits and made more money overall.

I also love the direct feedback that self-publishing provides. Last week I published my first book on Smashwords and Amazon, and I was biting my nails the whole time. What if people weren’t buying it because it was too perverted? Or worse, because it wasn’t perverted enough? Being able to see people buy my books in real time was the best affirmation I could possibly hope for.

I think e-books are a great medium for erotica. Like I said earlier, I’m my own audience – I used to be embarrassed getting romance novels from book stores; do you think I’m going to buy “Daddy’s Anal Sluts”?

Why this Blog?

Why indeed? In the hour it took me to write this post (yes it has taken that long – I’m slow and easily-distracted, which are both useful qualities when you are trying to make a living through writing) I could have brainstormed a few story ideas or gotten a start on another book.

This is essentially another distraction, but I can delude myself that it’s marketing I have Amazon Affiliate links on this site – that counts, right?

This blog is an unofficial, possibly sporadically-updated (mama’s gotta write porn if mama wants to eat) diary of my progress as a new erotica writer.