Aphrodisia Authors :: Blog

No, I’m not venturing into the realm of incest, just so you know. I don’t write or condone incest. Okay, so I did have a crush on my first cousin when we were young. We even talked about running off to Mexico to get married until we were about 14. And my great-grandmother didn’t have to change her last name when she got married, but Louisiana is full of Broussards, so that doesn’t really mean anything. Out of the 14 kids my great-grandparents produced, only one was a little odd. (Hey, it’s the South. We’re all a little odd.)

But I have something completely different on my mind today. I’m about to embark on a family trip. My little sister lives in Hungary, and she’s arriving in the States this week with her two daughters. My mother, step-father, and I are driving to Texas to pick her up, then we’re all tooling around Texas where my niece will look at colleges. My husband insists on staying home. I can’t imagine why. (I know what you’re saying. “What does this have to do with erotica?” Hang on, I’m getting there. We Southerners like to sneak up on a topic, not run directly at it. It’s kinda like chasing armadillos.)

Don’t you ever wonder about erotica authors? Like, how did they get started writing erotica? How much of what they write is first-hand knowledge? Do their mothers know what they’re doing?

I can’t answer all of those questions. It’s a little like asking a magician, “How’d you do that?”

But I can tell you that my mother knows exactly what I’m doing. In fact, she’s the first reader for my erotica. Having a retired school teacher in the family is a wonderful thing! The rest of my immediate family knows, too. They have kindly been my biggest supporters. (There are some aunts I haven’t giving book information to. I don’t want to be banned from entering certain Southern towns.)

The most important aspect of family, however, is that soul restoration aspect. Those of us lucky enough to have family members we care deeply about know that it’s important to connect with them now and then. They remind us of who we are. And they tie us to the past, as well as (for me) to the future. My nieces will see things I can only imagine.

The other thing family does is give me the confidence to write whatever I want. My mother was wise enough to leave copies of The Sensuous Woman and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask lying around where I could find them as a teenager. (If she hadn’t, I might have ended up in some bad situations. We didn’t have cable TV back then.) I’m so thankful that I learned to enjoy life, love, and sex, and that I feel confident enough to write about them. I hope to share some of that joy with my readers.

Now, I must admit, my family didn’t introduce me to vampires. That kind of went the other direction. But they seem to appreciate them (fortunately). Have I told you how I got into vampires? No? It’s kind of a funny story, but I’ll save that for another time.

My family also makes my world feel secure enough to allow my imagination to run wild. I’m quite sure while we’re riding around in an air-conditioned vehicle looking for shade so we can picnic, we’ll be sharing stories and lots of laughs. I know I’ve saved up quite a few stories just for this trip. I have little doubt I’ll end up with ideas for future books.

Oh, and that’s another thing. Family is definitely where I learned to tell stories. I still remember, when I was a child, sitting on my grandmother’s back porch listening to my relatives swap stories. (Granted, they rarely shared erotic stories–when us kids were around, at least.) I would say that’s another Southern thing, but I guess others share stories, too, huh? After all, that’s what writers are — storytellers, and I know there are writers all over the world.

I hope you’ll read this and think about the family member you haven’t connected with in awhile. Maybe you’ll even give him or her a call and swap stories. Won’t that be fun? If you want to, you can send that person a copy of one of my books, as long as they don’t share it with my aunts.

What do you get from spending time with your family?