Recently, our cats have taken a very keen interest in Pixie's doll house. Specifically, they like to grab some of the dollies and bat them around the house like mice they're only sort of interested in eating. It's always the same three dolls - the mommy, the big sister, and the little sister. And once they're done tossing these dolls around, they then like to give them a very long bath. Thus the reason why all three of those dolls have very bad hair dos and smell like tuna-breath.

What's really bad is when I catch the cats chewing on a doll's head. I try to rescue the doll, but the cats will quickly jump up, grab the doll by the hair, and run off. Then I'll find the doll later in some strange place, like say, behind the toilet, or on top of litter box. I always do my best to wash them after these brutal excursions, but I cannot seem to get rid of the tuna-breath smell. Oh well. Pixie doesn't seem to mind. In fact, I think she's decided the dolls make better play toys for the cats anyway.

"Look, Mama! Kitty is chewing on your head!"

My kids and my cats are really, really weird.

I am a lunatic. I hate early mornings, and yet I keep my alarm set for 5AM so I can haul my ass out of bed to work. I have been doing this every since I first had kids. It's the only way to get in enough work hours every day, to be honest. Yet even the promise of writing the hottest porn scene will sometimes be overcome by the sleepies.

I work in the mornings from 5AM to 6:30AM, then I'll put in another 2-3 hours later on in the day. From 2:30PM until 8:30PM, I am a full-on mom, supervising homework, cleaning house, shuttling kids to karate classes or swim lessons. If I've still got any energy left after the kids go to bed, I might put in another hour or so. It depends on what's left on the to-do list and how tired I am by that point.

It's far easier to stick to this schedule during the school year, I've noticed, than it is to keep any kind of schedule at all during the summer. I'm not sure why having the kids home throws such a monkey wrench into my plans, but it do so enough this past summer that I'm planning on cutting my work load in half next summer. I simply can't do it all, and honestly, I'm not sure I want to. After all, I am a mom as well as an erotica writer. I should spend plenty of time on both activities.

Ah, Moist Magazine. I believe that was my third erotica sale, after the PlayGirl reader's forum and a now defunct website called CherryBomb.com. Unfortunately for me, Moist folded before they ran my story, so I never did get paid for it, nor did that particular story get published for another four years. But that's okay. It all worked out in the end.

The cartoon above was an actual conversation I had with my mom. My parents have always known what I write, and they don't seem to mind. I had a similar conversation with Dad once, back when he was running for U.S. Congress a few years ago. When I told him I'd sold yet another erotica story, his response was, "That's great! You don't mind if we don't mention that in the campaign literature though, right?"

Speaking of sales, I recently sold a story to Dreamspinner Press, and I'm very pleased to say that from acceptance to signed contract to payment only took about a month. That's the fastest I've ever seen a publisher move on a sale, and I have to say, I like it a lot. I definitely look forward to working with them again in the future. I was a little stumped when they asked me for my author bio, though. They wanted a bio that made no mention of previous sales or current works-in-progress, which was a first for me since the common wisdom is that author bios should specifically include that kind of information. However, with a little brainstorming I was able to come up with the following biography:

Helen E. H. Madden is a writer and graphic artist who quit her lucrative day job years ago to tell dirty stories for fun and profit. In the last three years, she has written at least one erotic short story a week. That's a lot of smut! Helen's mother often introduces her as 'her daughter who writes porn.' She introduces Helen's sister as 'the actress.' Helen's mom says Helen can write whatever she wants, so long as her sister doesn't star in it.

Not content to simply write erotica, Helen also records her work for audio podcasts and does readings where she frequently proves to her audiences that she has no shame whatsoever. In her spare time, Helen draws dirty pictures. When she's not writing or drawing, Helen thinks about sex. A lot.

Mom is going to be so proud of my latest sale ;)