Ever wonder how your favorite author started writing the books they do?  Ever wonder what lead them to write sci fi instead of historicals or why they write erotica instead of children’s books?

Well, so did I.

That’s why I set out to ask some of my favorite erotica authors why they write what they do and just how they got started.

Madeleine Oh was my first subject and when asked why she writes, she replied, because it’s her job.  She never really thought about when she first wanted to become a writer, it just happened.

Madeleine writes BDSM, hetreo, gay/lesbian and kinky erotica, so I asked her how she chose these genres and she matter-of-factly told me she didn’t choose them, that they chose her.  The stories come to her and she writes them down, simple as that.

Considering she has eight novels and novellas under her belt, I’d say the stories are coming fast and furious.  Her latest release is SUMMONS THE MASTER, an erotica romance anthology with paranormal elements.

Next on my list to question was erotica author Louise Bohmer, who also writes horror and dark fantasy.  She said she knew she wanted to be a writer when she was around five or six years old.  And the memory is as fresh as the day it happened.  Her mother got out an antique British typewriter that her father had brought with him from England and she let Louise use, so she wrote her very first fantasy tale and even illustrated it.

I asked Louise why she chose erotic fiction as one of her genres of choice and she mentioned a friend of hers, fellow erotic romance writer Ann Cory.  Louise liked what she was reading on a lot of the sites Ann was publishing on and in the print and e-book formats she was reading from her and other erotic authors, as well.  So, she decided to give it a go and really enjoyed it.  Erotica became a new outlet for her imagination and a nice break from the heavier horror tales she had been writing.

Louise has stories in two different erotica anthologies that were released this month, LUST and TORRID TEASERS Volume 20, and she has a dark horror tale in the anthology INTO THE DREAMLANDS coming out next month.

Finally, I gave J.M. Snyder, author of gay erotic romance, a call to ask why she writes and she quoted Isaac Asimov, “I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.”  How true that is for most of the writers I know.

I went on to ask her how she got her start in gay erotica romance and she recalled how she had discovered slash fiction, which is homoerotic fan fiction involving characters or people who are straight outside of the story.  What she found available was disappointing and she figured she could do better, so she gave it a try.

After two years of writing slash and running a frequently updated website that garnered over 1,000 hits a day from all over the world, she asked herself, why she wasn’t making money with her writing.  So, she canned the fan fiction and began writing her own m/m stories and the readers and fan base she had collected over the years followed her.

All her stories revolve around gay characters and the majority of her fiction is contemporary, but she also writes fantasy, science fiction and historical stories, as well, because she writes what she likes to read.

J.M.'s latest release is BETWEEN BROTHERS and is available now in print and soon in ebook.

I want to thank Madeline Oh, Louise Bohmer and J.M. Snyder for letting me pick their brains and I finish this article with the realization that writing erotica is no different than any other writing.  It is all the art of taking the dreams spilling out from an author’s heart and mind and organizing them in such a way so that they can be shared with others.

Whether that dream is about a teddy bear that wants to fly or a woman who wants to be loved, we readers are incredibly lucky to have so many different writers out there willing to share with us their dreams.