I have been a fan of well-written erotic fiction since the early days of the Literotica.com website. The first author that drew me in was Tx Tall Tales, particularly his hot group sex story, The Perfect Game. I wrote my first piece of fiction at age thirty-four. It was a short piece of erotica, called Señor Sexy, handwritten on graph paper. The story was so bad, I stashed in my pajama drawer where it rests to this day, buried under nightgowns I never wear and other assorted pajama drawer items. Wink, wink. I didn't write again until I was on the brink of forty, bored by the long-term regular-job project I was working on. I started with two “enhanced” journal entries, stories that started with reality and ended up in fantasy land. I didn’t bother to tell my husband before submitting them to Literotica to share with the smut-reading world, even though he played a starring role in both stories. The feedback on the first two stories was encouraging, and I experienced a life-changing revelation: Making shit up was a helluva lotta fun. When my first completely fictional story idea hit, I thought it was the only one. It was Hurricane Season, a completely ridiculous story about a gullible woman who accepts a weekend in paradise as a prize, and finds that she has to play with the man and two women who planned the trip. My favorite part of the story is the twist at the end. As I wrote the story, I wondered what Tx Tall Tales would think of it. It seemed to me to be similar to some of his early stories. (I had to wait two years, but I found out what he thought.) After that silly story, I surprised myself several more times when new, completely different stories popped up in my head. As someone that never envisioned writing a single story, having seven to my name was a thrill, but the long-term real-world project was still looming over my head, so I put my writer shoes away for a year and a half. In the summer of 2013, I made my way back to Literotica, just in time for the Nude Day Contest. I used that contest to pull a story out of me that had been playing at me for the whole year and a half between writing stints: Bare Naked: Skater’s Waltz. I was fixated on the idea of ice skating in the nude. That story doesn’t get a lot of attention, but it’s still one of my favorites. The most surprising part of the journey from reader to writer has been the quality of the education I’ve found from a free erotica website. I met authors there with skills as sharp as the pros, and they were willing to share what they’d learned. I’ve learned a million things since the first time I sent a story to M.S. Tarot for a beta read. He had major revisions to suggest on my Halloween story, Jeffrey’s Murderer. The next story he read for me had half as many suggestions, and my storytelling skills continue to improve thanks to his help. When I went back to writing in the summer of 2013, I put out a request to other Literotica authors to suggest stories for my reading list. Tx Tall Tales shocked the hell out of me by asking if I’d care to beta read his stories. I’m not impressed by celebrities, but I was star struck. Not long after those early beta reads, TTT read my story Hurricane Season. (I was right. He liked it.) With each story I write and TTT reads, I learn something new about tightening my writing. Countless others I met at Literotica have influenced my writing as well. Second Circle, Bucky Duckman, AMoveableBeast, J. Kendall Dane, JC Winchester, Privates1stClass, ILienBagby are just a few. I wasn’t surprised to make friends there. I was surprised how much I learned. I have a regular, mundane life with a full-time job, a husband, three kids, and two cats. Writing smut keeps me balanced.