Ep.24 How Can I Write My Own Erotica? (with Mia More)

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Transcription: Lovehoney Podcast Episode 24

Sammy [00:00:07] Hello! You're listening to the sexual happiness podcast from Lovehoney, the podcast where we answer your questions about sex and sex toys. I'm Sammy.

Nick [00:00:14] I'm Nick.

Sammy [00:00:15] And this week, we are joined by writer and presenter Mia Moore to ask the question, how can I write my own erotica?

Nick [00:00:22] Hello Mia.

Mia [00:00:22] Good afternoon.

Sammy [00:00:23] Thank you for joining us on the podcast today.

Mia [00:00:25] I'm very pleased to be here. Thank you for having me.

Sammy [00:00:26] Fantastic. So, do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about what do you? Why you're here on the podcast with us today?

Mia [00:00:32] Sure, I can. Absolutely. Well, I used to be a music journalist and they used to be... Well, there are a huge amount of correlations between sex and drugs and rock and roll. And that's put me into really good stead for working in the erotic industry, the adult industry. I used to be editor of Clitoratti...

Sammy [00:00:47] Right.

Mia [00:00:48] Which did lots of things. So it used to kind of bring together erotica - both written, you know, photos, poetry as well as sex toy reviews, all sorts of things, which is covering the whole adult industry as a whole and it even predated Sex in the City. So it's kind of, a bit of a kind of historical website, which is pretty good being involved with that. And, you know, being a speaker at Eroticon as well off the back of that, and I've compiled charity anthologies of erotica. So I'm used to dealing with writing. And I have been an author and a writer myself. And I'm just actually taking the leap now, a bit belatedly, into self publishing, which is quite a good... An interesting way to do all of this and really to get into erotica.

Nick [00:01:33] How's that going?

Mia [00:01:35] I'm learning so much - it's like a whole new thing, you know, going from a publisher to actually doing it yourself. It's fascinating. Absolutely brilliant. And I also review sex toys for a pier magazine release for the industry, so if you can imagine you can get PR weekly and music weekly, and all this kind of stuff. And I do it for a magazine in Australia called Synergy magazine. So I'm reviewing to the likes of you guys, your own products! So there you go! So be kind to me, be kind!

Sammy [00:02:02] Fantastic, so you definitely know your onions when it comes to the sex toy world.

Mia [00:02:04] I do, I don't know my bass guitar though - I'm learning that. I'm really into ukulele as well. So I've got a finger in every pie.

Sammy [00:02:10] Every pie! So Mia, what we normally do on the podcast is we kick off with our "You can never know enough about sex" section, which is where Nick and I normally share a fact that we have learnt about sex during the week, because obviously sex is massive and there's so much to it. And so, Nick, what have you learned about sex?

Nick [00:02:28] Well, I thought as we're talking about fiction and books this week, I thought I would have a look at that angle of sex. And I discovered that in February this year, the British Library put on the Internet, it's a 'private case' collection. OK. Now it's private case collection is 2500 books that are a little bit naughty and I've got a quote from the curator Maddy Smith here, she said: "It was essentially a series of cupboards the keepers room from the 1850s onwards, where material that was deemed to be unsuitable was kept locked away, usually because of its obscene nature." So pretty much anything to the sex. And it dates back to 1658 with, and I think this is the best title I've ever read. Well, the best title of a book, the book 'Rare Verities, The Cabinet of Venus Unlocked and Her Secrets Laid Open.'

Mia [00:03:23] I was so stealing that, I bet there's not even a, you know, trademark on that or anything.

Sammy [00:03:26] No, that's public domain!

Mia [00:03:28] Exactly. No infringement. That's mine now!

Nick [00:03:34] The Cabinet of Venus. Yes! So they are available online somewhere. I couldn't quite find out where on some university archives website. Yeah. You had to pay. So I didn't actually read them.

Mia [00:03:43] Pay Per View.

Nick [00:03:47] That was my bookish sex fact.

Mia [00:03:50] Excellent. It's a good one.

Sammy [00:03:50] Yeah. It's a good one. I'll have to check that out when I feel like paying for my erotica.

Sammy [00:03:55] Yes. Mia. How about you? Did you learn something new about sex this week?

Mia [00:03:58] I did actually, I read an old article from a couple of years ago, but it reminded me of something called objectophilia or objectosexuality, which was about its condition or its... It was about a woman who has emotional, romantic relationships with objects, not just women or men. You know, people do. But this particular woman had a romantic relationship because she married a chandelier. So she had about 25 chandeliers that she collected.

Sammy [00:04:22] Wow.

Mia [00:04:23] And then, of course, I remember reading last year about a woman who married a bridge. There's a woman that you'd mentioned earlier when we were chatting, who married the Eiffel Tower. And I just love it. There's really, honestly something for everybody. And it's the human mind and sexuality. I just find it the most fascinating thing. And, you know, just when you think, wow, this is unusual, something else trumps it.

Sammy [00:04:44] You'll enjoy this fact that I found out Mia. According to a study by Sonos, who are the people that make, you know, smart speakers and that kind of thing. 67 percent of couples who listen to music out loud together - they reported having more sex than people that don't listen to music together. And apparently the reason for that is that couples who are listening to this music - if they're enjoying it, it produces oxytocin, which is the love hormone and the bonding hormone. So it makes couples feel closer. And if couples aren't listening that music together, then they're not having that same kind of shared experience.

Mia [00:05:15] Well, it's kind of makes sense, I suppose. I mean, my husband's a DJ, I mean absolutely 100%, and he's a producer, and we hundred per cent cannot have sex to music. I'm into the kind of right girl go indie staff. And he's just like, you know, ends up doing it to a beat, and it just it just doesn't work. So neither of us, weirdly, can have sex to music. And we've independently come to that, you know, when we met each other we were just like, oh, wow, there's somebody else like me. Maybe it's also a unifying if you can't do that?

Sammy [00:05:43] So I think that brings us onto our hot topic, which once again is, how can I write my own erotica? So this is something that we've been asked about a few times. People on our forum always want tips on how to create stories for their partner or even stories for themselves.

Mia [00:05:58] Wonderful!

Sammy [00:05:58] Yeah, it's great. And it's a great way of also... I think it doesn't just extend to erotica, does it? It's another form of communication. And when people are communicating so often over like, WhatsApp and text, and that kind of thing, it's nice to be able to have the tools to write that stuff well.

Mia [00:06:11] Absolutely.

Nick [00:06:12] Yeah. So how can erotica be beneficial to your sex life, do we think?

Mia [00:06:17] I think it's clearly in the same way that sex or, you know... It can be beneficial to your sex life in terms of the kind of physical, you know, release - our stress release and all that kind of stuff. Also, you know, I think a healthy sex life can never be overrated because it makes such a difference to your life. And in terms of erotica. Well, you know, it's different, you know, from porn, obviously, because you can... You know, it's more imagination involved. So you can put yourself in that position or somebody else in that position while you're reading the story. And also, you know, how it had this huge resurgence, really. Obviously, the Fifty Shades effect that happened and that kind of happened because of the Kindle and e-books becoming a big thing at the same time. So it meant that you could read in public without anybody knowing what you're reading.

Sammy [00:07:04] Yeah.

Mia [00:07:05] So there's always a way of ingesting erotica that isn't obvious to everybody else. So I really like audio erotica. I think that's absolutely brilliant. And there's, you know, you can be listening and getting on with stuff, so I think there's a huge - in terms of market - there's loads of different markets that didn't exist before. And it's one of those unifying things. If you like something, you can send it like you were sayig, do a screenshot, send it to your partner or your partners. And it's just yeah, I think it's one of the unsung heroes, really, of literature. You know, you don't have to be an amazing bibliophile to be into erotica. You know, there's a lot of 'one-handed reads', we call them out there, which are functional, and there's nothing wrong with that either.

Sammy [00:07:49] I think another good thing about erotica as well, is it gives people almost a safe space to explore the fantasies that may be in their brain and like half formed... They're like "oh I don't want to look at that." But whereas if they're looking at it written down on a page they're like "oh, someone else has thought of it and someone else is identifying with the same kind of things that I like. But they can enjoy it without necessarily having to involve a partner or having to worry about communicating that desire to a partner. So it's a way to enjoy that without feeling like, nervous or worried I think.

Mia [00:08:16] Yeah, it's definitely less intimidating - the written word. And like I said, you know, any pornography which is kind of like 'woah' in your face.

Sammy [00:08:23] No room for interpretation really!

Mia [00:08:25] There you go. There's no two ways about it, but it's just... Oh maybe there's three or four ways about it...

Sammy [00:08:30] Maybe there's 15, who knows!

Mia [00:08:30] But you know, it's really one of those things that you can kind of take out what you will. So whatever you're looking for, exactly as you said... I remember speaking to a woman at Eroticon, which is an erotic writing conference that I spoke at a few years ago... No it's quite long time ago, actually... but it's absolutely brilliant, it's every year and it's in... I think the next one's in March in London in 2020. But it's... you know, writers come together. There are a lot of amazing speakers. And remember talking to this woman who had come over from America, and her thing was spanking. So she was a spankee - she liked being spanked. So what she would write about was, you know, spanking erotica. And she'd done really well out of it. You know, absolutely flying in terms of income and in terms of just enjoying what she was doing. And I think it's one of those things that if you're into something, not only is there likely to be something out there, but you can create your own niche or add to the niche or really just explore the niches - you write your own stuff. And it doesn't take a lot to get it out there now either, which is really good. Although it's... yeah, it's not as complex as you think.

Nick [00:09:39] Yeah. I think the sheer breadth of stuff that you can find on, specifically on the Amazon store... If you search for erotica, there's over 50,000 titles. And then when you narrow it down there's just anything and everything... prehistoric porn. Like loads of caveman porn.

Sammy [00:09:58] There's like... you can get erotica Clippy, from the old Microsoft... the paperclip.

Mia [00:10:03] Oh yeah. Thomas the Tank Engine as well.

Sammy [00:10:05] Thomas the Tank Engine. My friend was sending me excerpts from some erotica she was reading about a half man, half dragon warlord, and he lived on another planet. And her live updates about that were amazing. I loved them.

Mia [00:10:20] They're really big, actually. All paranormal stuff is really big. Again, you know, there's so many sort of subgenres in there as well, like you were just saying. I just love all that stuff. It's fantastic.

Nick [00:10:30] Amazing. What do we think the advantages are of erotica over adult movies? I mean, you've already touched on the interpretation thing, or leaving nothing to the mind. So...

Mia [00:10:40] I think as Sammy was saying as well, it is about having something for yourself and being able to enjoy it in a public space. A lot of us commute. A lot of us, as I was saying earlier... and a lot of us do want to keep things private but don't have that downtime, which again, is why I think audiobooks come in - I think they're totally under underplayed. I just think they're just wonderful ways of... you know, because you also do other things at the same time. In a car or, you know, cooking or whatever. There's always something you can be doing at the same time as an audio book. That's why it's my preferred level of erotica at the moment.

Sammy [00:11:14] It's the most efficient level.

Mia [00:11:15] Yes, yeah exactly, you can format even, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I just love all that stuff. So I think... I don't know, what would you say, what would you say you can get out of erotica?

Sammy [00:11:25] What you're saying about the limits of imagination, with anything where you are involving actual people having to be filmed doing things, unless you're talking about stuff like hentai or animated porn - there's gonna be a limit to what people can actually do. And also then you've got limits in terms of budget and set and all those kind of... that recreation. Whereas...

Nick [00:11:46] You're turning off your imagination as well because you're watching it.

Sammy [00:11:49] Yeah, exactly.

Mia [00:11:50] I suppose It's more passive in a way isn't it, if you're watching porn. You're kind of, you know, there's a bit more interaction weirdly. You know, mentally.

Sammy [00:11:55] Yeah, you're having to engage with it more because you're having to use different parts of your... Yeah. I imagine you're using different parts of your brain actually.

Nick [00:12:05] Yeah. I guess it depends the way the books are written but you can put your own... Almost put your own character on top of the characters. As a means of visually, how you imagine them in your brain in the scenarios they're in, unless it's very descriptive of "oh it was pink curtains with a yellow pattern. The sheets look like this and the sheet had...

Mia [00:12:24] Is that a euphemism?

Sammy [00:12:24] Oh what was the yellow pattern?!

Nick [00:12:34] Yeah. I really like science fiction. Not science fiction erotica. Some of the authors I read... generally. They leave a lot up to your own imagination. So you imagine what... I sound like a right geek and I am! You know - what the spaceship looks like from the outside and what the alien person they're encountering is or even whether, you know, the buildings that they're inhabiting and the food that they're eating is all fairly ambiguously. You can put it in your own head what it actually looks like. So...

Mia [00:13:04] It's actually quite big in terms of, if you ever wanted to write your own content, erotica or otherwise. It's a huge area. Sci fi does really well in self publishing, like really well.

Nick [00:13:12] Cool. Okay. I need some software I can transcribe while I'm running.

Mia [00:13:17] I can tell you all about that if you like, I've got all of that as well.

Sammy [00:13:20] And the other thing as well, is I think sometimes... So porn is... And adult movies. Because they're often presenting a certain body type, particularly like the higher production value porn, like, you tend to see a lot of the same people, a lot of the same look, a lot of the same... even, you know, right down to the same kind of genitals. And I think sometimes people can feel a little bit like, "oh, I'm not being represented in that". Whereas when it's a story, you don't have to worry about looking like the heroine or the hero or whoever, because you can just kind of, like you were saying Nick, you can superimpose yourself on that and you don't get the same level of maybe... Some people do find porn can help or not help, but can trigger insecurities and stuff. And I don't think erotica necessarily does that in the same way.

Mia [00:14:07] And also, there's a niche for kind of all body types as well. You know, sort of 'dad bod' kind of thing, potentially older guy. That's quite a big area. You know, bigger women as well. There's... it's like porn but it's not in that it kind of chunks down. It keeps going down and down. There's something for everybody in erotica really that you might not find in porn. It does sometimes require a bit of digging. Or milking. Hucows is quite big on erotica at the moment - just human cows being hooked up to milk pumps and all that kind of stuff. So you know, and I found this really fascinating because it's one of the biggest selling... I just went on to erotica yesterday in Amazon and was just looking at the genres and subgenres and all this kind of stuff. And actually that one of the biggest selling authors is writing that stuff. And I was just like, this is amazing. So it's really, you know, she's obviously tried... Or it might even be a 'he' who has written it because a lot of people use pseudonyms. You know, written a load of different kind of styles and seeing what's working. But, yeah, you know, there's there's something for everyone out there.

Nick [00:15:10] So if any of our listeners are out there thinking, yeah, I fancy a crack at this. We know... I can't remember the name of those awards, the bad sex writing award...

Sammy [00:15:21] The Guardian Bad Sex Awards. Yeah. Love it.

Nick [00:15:24] So it's really easy to write bad sex or it's really easy to write sex badly. So what kind of tips do we have? At least, you know, no one's expecting people to become a literary genius overnight. But how did you get started, do you think?

Mia [00:15:42] How do you get started? So to get started in writing erotica, really, as with any writing, it really helps if you're a reader. So if you're consuming erotica, first of all, I'd say, you know, write about what you know, they say, or write about what floats your boat. People know if you're not into it. You know, readers aren't stupid. They can tell if you're not bothered. So really, just find out what's your thing? It doesn't matter how unusual or how mainstream. Find out what floats your boat and really go and focus on that. So that's one of the first things, I think that's really important. And in terms of learning about your craft, if you like, read and see what... you know, look at the top books on Amazon in that genre, in that subgenre and that subtrope. You know, what are you into? Are you into cowboys? What kind of cowboys? You know, go down. Is it, you know, go down the list and just really research your own sort of preferred... What's the word I'm looking for? Turn on maybe. One of my old editors, Emily Dubberley, who established Clitoratti, and has sold over a million books about sex. She used to say, oh, you know, it's really important, you know, to write from your See You Next Tuesday. I don't know if you're allowed to say that word here. You know, you've got to make it believable. And if you can write from your your guts or from whatever, you know, part of you is titillated by what you're writing about. It's really important. I mean, I know that the author Tabatha Raine, even as you know, designed a sex toy with Rocks Off, which is like a saddle. It's non penetrative so it's also good for people who aren't into penetration. And to sit on, while you're writing, just to kind of get you that little bit, you know, juicier, in terms of text and ideas. Which is wonderful.

[00:17:26] And so yeah. It's all about, you know, I think actually technically you don't have to be a great writer. That's not so important. You know, I had a quick skim through some of the Amazon top 10 and some of the mistakes were even on the first, second pages. There's no excuse for it. There are loads of tools which we'll talk about later to avoid that. But actually, at the same time, it doesn't matter - if you've reading stuff to get off, then it's... you know, it serves a function. It depends what you want to do. Do you want to be an erotic romance person? You know, do you want a kind of happy ever after ending? Do you want a happy for now ending? Or do you just literally, just want to write, you know, a 5000 word bonk, you know? In which case, just get straight to it and find out what floats your own boat.

Sammy [00:18:07] Yeah, definitely. And I think if you're someone who's like, I'm going to write the next big erotic novel - don't necessarily go in thinking I'm gonna write a 80000 word book, 120000 my book straight off the bat. Go and try and write a short story first. Don't just go in with this expectation that you can take on this mammoth task, try out with something smaller.

Mia [00:18:28] Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I think, for example, if you look at the romance, that market is absolutely saturated. If you can find a niche or find a corner or find an audience, then you will do so much better than if you're writing straight erotica. Yeah, definitely not straight erotica - the opposite of straight erotica! But if you're writing something like erotica, like, you know, anything alternative or tabooish. Actually, what you need to do is keep it short and sweet and do it regularly. So you could even do like a load of, you know, six or ten thousand word releases and do it... One a week or once every fortnight, or once a month, and then build it up and sell them as a bundle online. Or you know, there's so many different ways of doing it and then if you find an audience, then you can maybe start doing... Some people really do like longer books, but more novellas really for erotica, so it's probably 40000 words or something like that. Where's a classic novel's about the 80000. Yeah, so there's lots of different ways to go about it. And there's... It's really endless, and actually half of it I think, what I'm learning about doing this self publishing business is it's about playing with things and finding your audience. And actually, you know, you need to have at least five things, at the very least five things behind you to launch your page on Amazon or whatever, because if somebody finds it, and they've got nowhere else to go after, and they like one story, then where are they going to go? They're gonna lose that person straightaway. I think honestly, there is absolutely no reason to have rubbish spelling and typos in your books. There's spellcheck, you know, and it's unifying. So you can be, you know, dyslexic or have have issues with focus and concentration - doesn't make any difference. There are machines that will may basically make your text legible, which is why, when I read this author in Amazon the other day - the sample pages that I read - I was like, how can you have these mistakes when there's all these tools out there? And actually they did so well. It obviously didn't matter, as I was saying earlier, because people just wanted to get off, which is great for them. So you've got that. You've got things like Pro Writing Aid and Gramley, which check your grammar. And that's quite useful for things like repetition, because I'm quite you know, I'm one of these people, you may have noticed... why use three words - he went out or he exited the building - or whatever it was, you know, when you can use like twenty four, forty four the same. And then he pottered about a bit and then he kind of looked out the window... All of this kind of stuff, so it kind of takes out the faff. And actually that's quite good as well. So those tools are really useful. Myself, I've a few health conditions - I've got ME and fibromyalgia and transverse myelitis, which is the cherry on the cake. So it's a combination of kind of symptoms, rather like a combination of symptoms like MS and polio combined. So I spend a lot of time in bed or housebound and a lot of time my hands - I have got haven't got a grip, so I can't type. So I use a lot of dictation tools. So we've got things like this called Dragon. You can even use Siri or Cortina, or anything like that. Your Mac will also have that facility. So the other beautiful thing about writing is I think, and it's really important that so many 'spoonies', as we call ourselves, you know, people with a limited amount of energy who can really invest a lot of love into writing. You can do it from your bed. You can do it, you know, when you... I've taken a lot of medication today, it does help. But sometimes I can't speak either. You know, in those times, I might type a bit, you know, if I can't type, walk or talk, then I'll be mulling over the stories in my mind. So I think with people who are sort of struggling or who neurotypical, you know, there's a beauty in cooking those stories and coming out with them when you're ready. So not feeling necessarily a pressure to write, but to finding a way that suits you. It's all about making it work for you in terms of, you know, your erotic content and the way that you record and write. But yeah I don't think there's any excuses for typos. But yeah I think also, if you're looking to make money from this and you can do it either organically or really go for it, it's always, as I said earlier, useful to look at the genres and subgenres. I wrote some of these down. You might like to learn what's trending or what's not. What's hot, what's not. So we have had - if you're writing to market - we have had bikers - in terms of genres - bikers, billionaires, BDSM cowboys, contemporary cowboys - not the old stinky, you know...

Sammy [00:22:58] Now The Prospectors!

Mia [00:23:00] Exactly. Reverse harem. That's been xxx and it's been a huge one. So a woman with loads of guys.

Sammy [00:23:05] Okay.

Mia [00:23:06] Friends to lovers, older guy, silver foxes. And then you've got things like the paranormal, so you've got devils, demon ghosts. And then, you know, the subgenres of the shifters, which is kind of dragon, wolf and lion, which you were talking about earlier. And then you've got Vikings and vampires and, you know, I read one that's in the top selling list at the moment, which is by someone who's called Kerrelyn Sparks, which is called How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire. So there... I mean, imagine it's a trilogy as well. So there, you're ticking all the boxes. You know, and these things do go through, you know, they do go through fashion kind of phases. So it's just like, what's hot, what's not? How fast can you get it out? And are you wanting to do it in terms of, you know, a trilogy, in which case, you know, you need to kind of start working on it soon. But actually, maybe look at what's coming up, what are you banking your money on, what's going to be the next genre/subgenre? You know, keep going. I mean, billionaires have been up there for a very long time. We would all love to be billionaires, let's face it. So you can understand where that comes from.

Nick [00:24:03] Yeah. Now, obviously, you should never judge a book by its cover. But I am of the understanding that covers are really important when it comes to self publishing.

Mia [00:24:13] Covers are absolutely huge. Like, they're so important because if you think about - especially in the romance category - there is saturation. You know, saturation was reached a long time ago. And if you are doing vampire reverse harems, for example, you need to put that on your book in terms of an image and in terms of the font. It's got to be clear, it's got to shout it out because, you know, people are just glancing at the page and then they're going to move on. So you've really... It's exactly as you say. Well done. You've done your research, about judging a book by its cover. It cannot be avoided. And again, this is this is what I'm talking about earlier, about reading and learning from other people. What is doing well, what's you know... What will get you noticed? You know, it's so important.

Nick [00:24:59] And if you've got absolutely zero graphic design skills, then would somewhere like People for Hire or...

Mia [00:25:07] So you can go to People for Hire, or you can go somewhere like Fiverr, with two r's on the end. You can also... A lot of people have actually just started learning Photoshop and doing it themselves. Well self publishing people. Especially if you're doing quick, you know, quick releases, then, you know, you just want something that's right... This took me like a day to write... Wanna get it out there. You can do it yourself or you can go to Fiverr, and you know, people find artists they like, or artists they've recommended from other people. And again, if you go on certain forums, there are really good ways to learn how to do this. Like I was saying about the 20 books to 50K on Facebook. And there's something called... It'll come back to me in a minute... D2D - It's not dirty to dirty. It's like... Oh my God, my brain's gone dead. Anyway, so things like that will help you work out where to go to get your covers. And there's also going back to the tools. There's something called Vellum, which will make anything look beautiful. It's expensive, but any book will look great and it kind of does it for you. But, you know, normally you kind of upload stuff and you're like "it didn't look like that when I was putting it together, it looked beautiful. Now what have you done?" You know, it avoids that because it works across loads of different platforms. So things like that, it can be worth paying for. You know, spellcheck comes with Word anyway and things like, you know, you were talking about when you're running. So there's programmes called Ulysses and Scrivener, and they do similar things. And what they work across are clouds. So if you're running around and you're dictating, you can have it on your phone and then you come back in and it's on your own laptop so you don't lose it. And they're really good to help structure books and structure novels, especially things like Timeline as well. So if you're doing a novel and you're just like, "oh, that happens then and that happens then and oh, actually they haven't met yet." And you get really confused. So there are loads of kind of formatting in terms of your storyline, but also in terms of visuals. So Vellum is by far the best way to do it, but it's expensive. Go easy on yourself. If you make a bit of money, invest in that I'd say.

Nick [00:27:01] Yeah. What are your top recommendations for finding this erotica? Obviously we've got Amazon. I always find Amazon quite a... you have to plough through it.

Sammy [00:27:09] It's overwhelming sometimes.

Mia [00:27:11] It's totally overwhelming. I mean, you can even go to iTunes and Google Play. You know, Smashwords is always good. And if you've got... And again, I think forums are great for this, especially if you've got a niche interest. What are other people reading? Just ask them "what are you reading at moment? Is anyone reading any good erotica?" You know, link to... You know, can you send me a link to something that you're into or just a plain Google and then just keep as you know, sometimes it's a bit of a dive down and you kind of have to keep going down and down and tapping into the depths of the Internet, the most depraved parts... to find what you're looking for. But that's always... it's always worth the while. Because when you hit a rich scene, which is, as you know... this author's great. I'm going to go with this and get... Which is why, again, like I said at the beginning, it all ties together. It's really important to have more than one book out there at a time. So we start off with like at least five things.

Nick [00:27:56] Good Reads? Is that...

Mia [00:27:58] Good Reads is good. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. All of those things just, you know, try not to be... try to be open minded and not too prescriptive. I think it's all there for the taking.

Sammy [00:28:09] So Question of the Week, this week is taken from our forum - also a good place to go and talk about erotica. Check out - there's several threads on there about the books that people are reading. So if you want a good place to start, go over to the Lovehoney Forum. And the question is, are there any tips to use when trying to orgasm together during sex?

Nick [00:28:27] Read erotica!

Sammy [00:28:29] Read erotica... during. Steady on, you'll lose my page!

Mia [00:28:33] Gosh, that sounds like you're putting a lot pressure on yourselves, first of all. I just say be sweet to yourself. Sometimes it doesn't happen. And actually, it's not... Just like having an orgasm isn't the be all and end all of having sex. I think simultaneous orgasm is also not the be all and end all. Just the enjoyment of each other is the most important part I'd say.

Sammy [00:28:49] Yeah, definitely. And I think also if it's something that you really want to try and get to, the more you try and get to it, the more pressure you feel, the less likely you are to actually achieve it. But I think if it's something that you think, "oh, that would be nice, but no pressure", which is kind of the ideal. I think you need to know about your body and your partner's body and how how they respond to things, what they respond to and how quickly they respond. Because if you know that one of you normally climaxes is quicker than the other one, then they need to know at what point they need to stop and focus on their other partner so they can keep that journey going. And then it's all kind of like, it's almost like a dance, isn't it? You've kind of got to choreograph who does what when, in order to be able to get to that point. And sometimes that can be a bit stressful. But you... Yeah, just relax.

Mia [00:29:32] I think that's such a good way to put it because it's definitely, from, you know, personal experience. It's not something that happens very often. And when it does, it's a bonus. And you know, as you're saying, it's a dance. And it's just... that's just such a beautiful analogy because it is, you know, and I think it's a giving thing as well, as well as a receiving thing. And it just demands a bit of extra legwork and extra dancing.

Nick [00:29:56] Or finger work.

Sammy [00:29:59] And then also, if you're in a heterosexual couple and the female partner needs clitoral stimulation, like 70 percent of us do in order to get to climax, then make sure you're using your clitoral toy during sex as well. You don't just have to use it before. So something like a bullet vibrator or like the We-Vibe Unite, which can be worn during sex but does touch the clitoris as well... Like that kind of thing is a really good way to go.

Mia [00:30:21] Definitely. I think about speaking your truth and saying, you know, I actually need a bit more or, you know, or... You know, I'll help myself just to get myself. You know, that's not a problem either, as long as you're both open minded and then the world is your oyster.

Sammy [00:30:34] Yeah, exactly. So that brings us to the end of this week's show. But to say thank you for listening, we're giving you 15 percent off absolutely anything that you want to buy at Lovehoney. If you want to claim your discount, just check out the links in the episode description and you will be taken to the website nearest to you in the world.

Nick [00:30:49] If you've enjoyed this week's episode, don't forget to give us the rating you think we deserve. Maybe tell your friends and drop us a review. We'd love to know what you think.

Sammy [00:30:55] You can also follow Lovehoney on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Follow us on YouTube where we are LovehoneyTV. Or if you have any questions about this or about erotica in general, you can get in touch by e-mailing us at podcast@lovehoney.com. And finally, Mia, where can people find you and follow you?

Mia [00:31:10] Oh, well you see, I'm so busy. I'm actually really rubbish at keeping my own website, which I think is a common common thread with freelancers. But anyways, it's either clitoratti.co.uk if you want to look at historical work by myself or by anybody else, because it was quite a big thing in the adult community at the time. That's got a great back catalogue of erotica. So if you want, have a look through that I'd really recommend it. Clitorattti.co.uk. My own website is mia-more.co.uk. And it's More with a one 'O' so MORE. And my twitter handle is @mia_more_UK.

Sammy [00:31:49] Excellent. Cool, go, go give her a following. And look out for hot erotica recommendations.

Nick [00:31:55] Thanks ever so much for coming on, Mia.

Mia [00:31:56] Yes thank you.

Nick [00:31:57] It's been fantastic.

Mia [00:31:57] Thank you for having me.

Sammy [00:31:58] Yeah, very informative. And don't forget to come back next Wednesday when we'll have a brand new episode for you. Thanks for listening. Bye!