ACW Episode 83 – She’s so proud of me

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 😉