mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Author of the Problematic Audrey series of very smutty yet wholesome romance books. 18+ only. DM and email welcome.
#romance #erotica #books #romancelandia #bookstodon #writingcommunity #amwriting #erotic #nyc #newyork
#ScribesAndMakers 21. You turn a corner on a dimly lit street and see...
A scene from the first Problematic Audrey book.
I pause to make sure it's consensual, then watch discreetly.
#WritersCoffeeClub 30. What got in the way of your writing this month?
Dumb but real problem: wanting non-AI covers.
I'd spent around 100 hours making 5 tacky covers for my first series, partly with AI.
Then I decided I wanted covers to be 100% non-AI, like the text.
I'm uninspired to do intense writing work to finish the next 2 WIPs, until I have covers for releasing them.
So I've been looking at illustrators, models, and stock art, and trying to learn a kind of drawing.
#WordWeavers 17. How far beyond the local home of your MC does your story extend?
The first 4 volumes of the Audrey series will take place in NYC. Mostly in a few apartments.
Most of final volume 5 will take place at a sunny resort, after MCs scrape together enough money to GTFO of NYC.
#ScribesAndMakers 4. How do you answer if someone asks you what you do? Is your answer different in person than it is online?
In this online writing persona, I'm an indie smutty romance writer.
But in real life -- in person and online -- I answer as either a tech bro, or a scourge of tech bros, depending on who is asking.
#WritersCoffeeClub 10. How informal is your prose? Is there a limit to informality?
Book 1 opening sentence: "I'm Mike."
In school, my prose was more formal and flowery.
Today, I'm just happy if my smutty romance doesn't sound like an engineering specification.
For book 4 WIP, which opens with "i'm Audrey", I will have to relearn writing skills I forgot, and learn new ones.
#ScribesAndMakers 1. How many creative projects do you have going right now?
A few:
* Writing Audrey smutty romance books 3 and 4.
* New book covers for Audrey series. I might have to level up my own weak drawing skills.
* Writing non-Audrey less-smutty romance book.
#WritersCoffeeClub 26. How much of a break of hiatus do you take between works?
After book 1 (novella) and 2 (short), I started WIPs almost immediately. Got 2 WIPs mostly figured out, and rough ideas for 3rd WIP. Then paused all writing.
One reason for the pause is I want non-AI covers for all 5 books of the series.
The WIPs will be better for the pause, since I'm slowly having some ideas for details that I wouldn't have thought of while actively writing.
#PennedPossibilities 991. Tell us about your WIP. What is the genre or genres?
3 WIPs, to probably finish the Problematic Audrey series.
Erotic romance, since that's the story that needed to be told in book 1.
Two of the WIPs explore the HEA non-trad relationship after book 1.
The other WIP revists the book 1 romance from other MC's POV, with new scenes.
#PennedPossibilities 988. Tell us about your MC’s bravest moment.
MCs in NYC quitting their better jobs or opportunities, to try to make a go of it with their values intact.
That's how they became roommates, and where the story begins.
#WritersCoffeeClub 16. Must writing always in complete sentences? Unusual syntax?
Twitter-like message size limits are the enemy of complete sentences.
Some of my posts read like I'm paying by the word for a newspaper classified ad.
Necessity is the dysfunctional relative at Thanksgiving dinner of adaptation.
#PennedPossibilities 978. MC POV: Write about three realistic goals you would like to achieve in your lifetime.
Mike:
1. Audrey.
2. Kids?
3. Survive NYC.
#WordWeavers 5. What's the most supportive/uplifting thing you heard related to writing?
Personally, the first review I received, for my first novella.
Despite the limitations of my skill, the reviewer seemed to understand what I was trying to do, and was very kind.
They said only good things, though I'm sure they noticed many flaws.
I really needed that, 'post-partum'.
(Now I'm not stuck on writing enthusiasm, but on non-AI covers, before I finish more books or get in more stores.)
#PennedPossibilities 969. Do your stories have happy endings?
Yes. And the series finale experiment that would've retroactively turned the earlier HEAs into HFNs... I deleted.
If real life gets too happy for everyone, I'll reconsider making cautionary stories. But who needs more misery right now.
#EroticMusings 44. Is there an aspect of culture of political stance that shapes most or all of your erotica?
The nascent ero-rom Audrey series tries to be sex-positive, pro-gender-equality, and open-minded.
The MCs are thrown together because they separately chose to be poor, to be true to themselves.
Book 2 mocks billionaires because it's fun.
But the series isn't about culture or politics, but rather, simply love and sex of these two particular characters.
#WordWeavers 8. How do you approach stereotypes while creating characters?
We know that Audrey identifies as "queer," but if she fits a stereotype, it's not one I know.
"The Problematic Audrey series" WIP stories develop that more.
Mike is a stereotypical young man, in that he's simpler than some of the women Audrey has loved. But he surprises her sometimes. And he doesn't want Audrey to think of him like all the men who are wrapped around her finger. Though he is.
#EroticMusings 41. Are you self-taught, or have you been trained or mentored in your craft? Would you like more?
New writer. Only basic education. I don't think the nuns intended for me to write excessively smutty romance.
#WritersCoffeeClub 4. Share a recent experience where something just 'clicked'.
I removed a coherent set of scene ideas from book 1, because they didn't fit well.
They could be a start on a separate short of the same MCs, which I wanted to write, but that seemed to want to be an alternate timeline of book 1. Book 2 already went to that well.
Clicked: I could re-explore the book 1 story *from the other MC's narrator perspective*, using the new scenes instead of rehashing book 1's.
#PennedPossibilities 25. Has your MC ever snooped in a friend or partner’s house?
That's one of FMC's naughty things to do, and it's not only curiosity, but thrilling to her.
MMC narrator refers to it in passing in book 1. Now that you reminded me, I'm banking that trait to move the plot forward in book 4 or 5.
#WordWeavers 26. Who in your book is most like a real person you've loved irl?
Audrey is fictional, but influenced by at least a dozen people I've known, including the original inspiration, who I loved, and a few ex-girlfriends.
I'm a new writer, and I wonder whether it's *too* easy for me to imagine what Audrey would do or say in a situation.
Is she believable and likable? Am I describing her well enough?
A kind Amazon reviewer said they liked the character, which gave me hope.
#EroticMusings 46. Does your work ever explore its own unreality? (e.g. unreliable narrator or breaking the fourth wall)
Audrey book 1 plays a little with this.
A few times, it's unclear whether the first-person narrator realizes something obvious about a situation he just described.
There's also a fourth wall joke, when the narrator criticizes the structure of a film they are watching, but the book is doing the same thing. ("Who writes like that.")
#WritersCoffeeClub 4. Do you switch between past and present tense? How do you make it work?
Accidentally. One of the first things I fixed in book 1 draft when I realized, then looked up what was standard for the genre.
But WIP book 4 has a different first-person narrator, with a different and richer voice. I was musing whether she should temporarily switch to present tense as scenes get steamy. Would that be more immersive, or evocative of overwhelmed in the moment?
#WritersCoffeeClub 31. What are we celebrating regarding your writing this month?
While waking up last weekend, and brainstorming whether to move a scene out of Audrey book 3, I realized a non-Audrey story I want to write!
I worked out a rough outline for the parts and SCs, and thought of some scenes. I think it could be "good."
It's a solid new-adult romance, FMC POV. Without nearly as much sex as Audrey, though there will be a few toned-down sex scenes, key to the conflict.
#WordWeavers 26. What do you feel thinking about the last scene you wrote?
It was a rough sketch of situation and dialogue for book 4, which flips perspective from MMC to FMC.
As cismale, I've been apprehensive about trying to write F perspective.
But I feel good, that I think this one romantic banter and introspection scene will work.
Will have to research F experience of the more explicit scenes. I know FMC's personality, but not how certain physical things feel.
#PennedPossibilities 952. How do you use social media as an author?
I got on social media to promote my smutty novella.
But I refuse to join the social media apps that most readers are said to be on.
On less-popular social media apps, I met some nice writers. And some naked people, which I'm calling research.
#WordWeavers 4. When was the last time your MC lied? Why?
Not all the real-life influences for the MCs had the same ideas about honesty, and I had to decide for book 1 how complicated to make that. I decided both MCs would be strictly honest.
But when sketching a subsequent book in the series, lying and cheating happened. Mistake. People who liked the wholesome but horny MCs of book 1 would be betrayed. I destroyed the sketch.
In book 3 WIP, FMC fibs and tricks, but for a good reason.
#WordWeavers 20. What is your MC's relationship to obtaining and preparing food?
As a fitness nut, Audrey is very conscious of calories and carbs.
She's on a tight budget for groceries, since most of her income goes to rent. During her weight-training phase, she steadily accumulated a collection of empty peanut butter jars.
When Mike made her a birthday cake, she murdered it, despite knowing how many extra hours of spinning that meant, because she loves being loved.
#WordWeavers 10. Did your MC ever have a melody/tune stuck in their head?
Every time I see the tag WordWeavers, the small part I know of that old Dream Weavers song pops into my head.
If that's going to be looped in my head, then misery loves company, and I'm jamming it into MC's head.
(spoilers) I let that MC get the girl, so he owes me one.
#WordWeavers 2. Do you write scenes out of order? If so, how do you decide their arrangement?
So far. Not only one chapter at a time, but notes for each chapter, fleshed out (erotica pun) incrementally in parallel. Chapters are shuffled around. Details move between chapters.
Book 1 order was mostly increasing intimacy. Also SC breakup, and a house move.
Book 3 WIP order has more constraints of who is where, when, and what they know then. Also increasing intimacy. Some bumped to book 5 WIP.
WIP Book Tease:
Non-Audrey new-adult romance, from FMC's POV.
She struggles to find love despite a particular trad role expectation.
More conventional romance, and internal drama, than the explicit action of the Audrey series. But a few key steamy scenes.
Coming someday.