Friday, July 12, 2013

Electro Deluxe - How & Why I Wrote My First Erotic Short Story - By Lori Perkins

 
Riverdale Avenue Books just published Electro Deluxe, the first erotic short story I ever wrote.  I wrote is over a decade ago and published it under a pseudonym, but here it is for the first time under my real name.

And here's the story behind it.

I now use this short story as an example of how even the silliest, fleeting erotic thought can be grist for the erotic writer mill inside your brain.

So, let me tell you my story about my story.

I have a good friend I went to NYU with.  We were both journalists, but I had sold his literary novel when he was in his 20’s, and it was very smutty in a dick lit sort of way.  When I turned 40, I asked him about how he felt about writing all that twenty-something smut, and he said he was proud of it, and glad he had put it down on paper when he did.

I fanned myself and said I could never have written anything like that.

And he said to me, “Lori, you have a kid.  Your mother knows you’ve had sex. Go write me a dirty story.”

He double dog dared me. And I did.

Because there was no way he could do something that I couldn’t.

But it wasn’t easy – at first. Because I was trying to think about what other people might find exciting.

I was try to be Anais Nin and Henry Miller, which I was not.

You need to write what you know in your own words.

Or, use your own fantasies for inspiration.

So, I was trying to think of interesting sex stories about princesses and vampires, but I had just broken up with someone.  And when I break up with someone, I clean my house.

Now I had also recently bought a very expensive vacuum cleaner with many attachments.  And I had to watch a video to figure out how to put it together.  My best friend came over with a pitcher full of margaritas to cheer me up, and I said t her, “You know for all the money I paid for this thing, it should get me off.”

And that was the inspiration for my short story “Electro Deluxe” about a very expensive vacuum cleaner with some marvelous attachments.  I wrote it in a white hot flash, and sent it to Cecilia Tan (publisher of circlet.com, a science fiction, fantasy and horror erotic press).  She told me if was one of the best pieces of smut she had ever read.

And I sold it.

And then I sold a whole bunch of other erotic short stories, all based on these barely memorable ideas that flashed through my head as a result of everyday life.

You know how there used to be this Playboy TV ad saying men had a sex thought every 6 seconds, when women who write and read smut have them just as often, and they are your ticket to a whole new world of  smutty publication.

So, without further ado, here is Electro Deluxe:

 http://www.amazon.com/Electro-DeLuxe-ebook/dp/B00DV8LZDY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373655187&sr=8-1&keywords=electro+deluxe+lori+perkins