My Sexual Memoir.

Spring is in the air and a young man's fancy turns to you-know-what. Even though I'm getting older now, I ain't exactly immune.

Right now I am putting off writing another science fiction novel. I know that I want to do more, but I have reasons not to do it right now.

One thing I really ought to write is another mystery novel. ‘Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery’ sells each and every month in a number of stores, including Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Sony, all of them really. I have one novella, set at free, and two mysteries involving Inspector Gilles Maintenon, i.e. ‘the series,’ which is known for selling long-term better than stand-alone works.

I need to do another one of those this year just to support those readers and build up the brand, in other words Inspector Maintenon.

I write what grabs me at the time. I need a plot. If I had a good science fiction plot I would be more enthusiastic about writing another science fiction book. The mystery is easier, (maybe) as I already know it must be a murder plot and the Inspector will be involved, it will happen in the thirties and all that sort of thing.

Much of the visualization work is done in a sense, and I learn more about the genre, the themes, the era, with every story I write in terms of mysteries. Theoretically that should get easier.

Pen names divide up the works by genre, so readers find it easier to get the books they think they are getting from authors they know and like.

So when I wrote some erotica, I assigned that work to a pen name. When a few books sold, much to my surprise, naturally I wrote more stuff. Now after a time it all starts to catch up. Each and every pen name needs to produce new works on some regular basis—just as I must produce another mystery within the year.

And yet I must write what grabs me, what I have the ideas for, and what I have a plot/no plot for…the reasons are obscure for writing any one thing. But they all add up.

All of a sudden I’m in a bit of a bind. I started something I first conceived of as erotica. It turns out it’s not so much erotica as literary erotic fiction, and it’s also kind of a memoir, and the whole consideration of what pen name to assign the work to or publish it under eventually came up. And maybe the thing isn’t really appropriate to Louis Shalako. And yet who knows? Maybe that’s what I should do. It does bear some thinking about. The problem is that it’s not really in keeping with my thriller/crime guy, nor my erotica girl, etc. It doesn’t fit with any of the existing pen names.

And if I do another pen name, it sort of begs further support if the book sells in any sort of manner (or at all.) How many freakin' sexual memoirs can I possibly make up? (That sounds like a lot of work.) I don’t have all the answers, but I won’t have the story done for a while yet either.

Hopefully it will come out around 25,000 words and then I’ll have my first literary erotica novelette. That would be so cool.

The protagonist is a guy called Devlin and he gets an anonymous note.

As for a title, I simply have no idea, but something will suggest itself.

It usually does.