What was the defining moment that led you to erotic fiction?

[dasgoodshit]

For me, it was The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, by Anne Rice, sometime in the late 2000s. Until that moment, I had no idea that people wrote this kind of stuff.

 

[alohadave]

My dad had a bunch of copies of Variations magazine put out by Penthouse in the 70s and 80s. I read them all. There was a wide variety of themes and subjects, so I was well accustomed to various kinks before the internet became a thing.

 

[onehitwanda]

Being sixteen and curious and having access to a FreeBSD system with my own account, on which I could access Usenet. alt.sex.stories became a firm favourite.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I don't know, maybe when I migrated from therapy writing to just writing.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Spring 1980, I was in a grove of trees on base in Ft. Eustis, VA. Like most army bases, there were piles of men's magazines which had been dumped in the woods by enlisted men who were moving elsewhere. Among those magazines, I found a Playboy that had a short story by Roald Dahl. It was a wife-swapping story, in which two neighbors plotted to sneak into each other's houses to enjoy the other's wife without the wives realizing what was going on. The images of the women in those magazines have long since fled my mind, but the story remains.

 

[Fatdog25]

In retrospect, mid to late-1970's Penthouse Forum. Migrated back because I needed a creative outlet and video wasn't doing it for me any more.

 

[yowser]

A striking tale, interesting to me that Rice used the pen name 'A.N. Roquleaure' but yes, illuminating.

For me the main introduction involved the insertion of a bizarre piece of Victorian pornography into the syllabus one of my college literature classes (Biographies of the world, or some such title.) The work, which was endlessly, and unconvincingly, debated in class as whether it was fiction or not, was titled 'My Secret Life' and was described by bibliographer Patrick Kearney as "one of the strangest and most obsessive books ever written." Wall to wall Victorian sex, it presented itself as a 'sex diary.' I learned more 19th century slang terms there ('quim', 'minette', etc.) than I ever thought existed.

Blew my twenty-year old cerebral cortex to bits.

I even wrote a little piece about this book, a sudden plunge into new waters. The written word has remarkable powers.

 

[MrPixel]

In retrospect, mid to late-1970's Penthouse Forum. Migrated back because I needed a creative outlet and video wasn't doing it for me any more.

Similar, but it was a really shallow dip reading friends' copies since I was too tight-laced at the time to stoop to having a Penthouse in my house. I mean, my wife then had a Playgirl subscription, but I was too much of a goody-goody. The 'forum' stories were interesting once it was clear they were exactly that, fiction, but nothing I dwelled on.

Fast forward 40 years. I was randomly searching the Internet for adult content and the story libraries at one of the major porn sites got my attention. IIRC it elicited more surfing for erotic literature, and I ended-up here. Reading a few of the stories on LitE inspired me to document some of my and my current wife's sexual adventures in our 36 years together, and it blew up blossomed from there.

 

[AchtungNight]

I have several. First should be my interest in professionally published fiction with erotic elements. I got into it in my early teens & mom allowed this, don’t ask me why. I would check out from my school library various bodice-ripper romance novels, action thrillers with intense lovescenes (Eric Lustbader, William Diehl, Laurel K Hamilton are prominent examples of the era), and the occasional depraved satire (LRH’s Mission Earth). Again don’t ask me how a school library had all these books. Then at age 18 I saw a Beeline novel in an airport bookstore and was allowed to purchase it. That was my entry into the world of pornography. For online adult entertainment…

That didn’t come into my life till college. I got into it on asstr at first, then Yahoo Groups and eventually Lit. I started writing in the genre in 2006 and have usually enjoyed myself. A key moment I will point out here is when I first read KMB’s Harem series and knew I wanted to write something similar someday.

 

[Djmac1031]

Okay, Personal Story Time:

I was a young lad who'd stumbled across a copy of Penthouse Forums one day. Wasn't my first experience with a "dirty" magazine, my father left Playboys around all the time.

Anyway, there was one story in particular that described a woman giving a hand job in exquisite detail.

I figured I could mimic this behavior myself, and so snuck off to the bathroom to experiment.

Lo and behold, a lifelong habit was born lol.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

Heaven and Earth, Nora Roberts was my first romance novel.

I'm a diehard Rice fan, so my absolute delight in finding The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty is a bit of an understatement. I wish she'd written more erotica... and honestly I'm not surprised she used a different nom de plume, it's not uncommon for authors who'd like to keep their dark spicy and their traditional novels separated.

 

[KeithD]

For me, it was in the writing of it, not the reading of it. I still don't read much erotica. The moment for me was when I was writing a scene in a mystery novel for the mainstream, and I had two hot men in a verbal exchange, the detective and a young man working on his car in just athletic shorts. The young man was a possible suspect in a murder and the detective was interrogating him. I let the scene get out of hand and they fucked on the trunk of the car. I, of course, cut that out of the mainstream mystery I was writing, but I enjoyed just letting loose in writing the sex so much that I began writing erotica from there in addition to the mainstream work. The scene exists somewhere here (in the sr71plt account), probably under the title "On the Trunk of a Car."

https://www.literotica.com/s/house-on-park-ch-01

 

[SimonDoom]

I can't remember a moment. I recall enjoying erotic segments of mainstream novels when I was young, but I don't recall reading erotica to any significant extent until the end of the 1990s, when I discovered it online. I read for 15 years before I wrote anything.

 

[Britva415]

What was the defining moment that led you to erotic fiction?

Reading? Or writing?

I don't even remember where I was first exposed to it, but I can say I probably had my hands on The Hite Report long beforehand. Probably the Judy Blume novel kids passed around because it had a brief reference to fingering in it might count as the first fiction. Nobody but 12-year-olds would call it "erotic fiction" but we were twelve, come on.

As far as writing goes - it became an outlet during a time when my options for partnered sex were limited. It really wasn't much of an outlet, but it turned into its own sort of thing.

 

[dasgoodshit]

First should be my interest in professionally published fiction with erotic elements. I got into it in my early teens & mom allowed this, don’t ask me why.

Don't ask because you don't know, or don't ask because... winky face emoji?

 

[dasgoodshit]

Anyway, there was one story in particular that described a woman giving a hand job in exquisite detail.

I figured I could mimic this behavior myself, and so snuck off to the bathroom to experiment.

Lo and behold, a lifelong habit was born lol.

Dude, I wish I had that mag growing up. I didn't figure out how to jerk it until I was quite a bit older than I would have liked. And I put a lot of time into it, lol. It really made dating extremely hard, always ready to explode, lol.

 

[dasgoodshit]

Heaven and Earth, Nora Roberts was my first romance novel.

I'm a diehard Rice fan, so my absolute delight in finding The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty is a bit of an understatement. I wish she'd written more erotica... and honestly I'm not surprised she used a different nom de plume, it's not uncommon for authors who'd like to keep their dark spicy and their traditional novels separated.

Are romance novels erotic fiction? With graphic accounts of sex? I've never read one because I always assumed that they were geared towards women.

 

[AchtungNight]

Don't ask because you don't know, or don't ask because... winky face emoji?

The first one. I hope.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I'm with @alohadave, Penthouse magazine, back in my "formative" years. Penthouse Forums, Call Me Madam, and Variations.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

Are romance novels erotic fiction? With graphic accounts of sex? I've never read one because I always assumed that they were geared towards women.

Not overly graphic, no... but absolutely graphic enough, no fade to black sort of scenes. Depending on the author I don't doubt the male audience would find interest in romance novels, especially if you enjoy romance. They were definitely not something my young ass should've been reading! I was definitely writing erotica in my teens as well but my interest started with reading.

 

[AchtungNight]

If not for my fondness for romance novels, I would not be able to write from the female perspective or know half the stuff I do about writing about lovemaking. That is all I will say.

 

[SeraphNocturne]

If not for my fondness for romance novels, I would not be able to write from the female perspective or know half the stuff I do about writing about lovemaking. That is all I will say.

That's a fantastic point... I'll have to check out your work now.

 

[mirafrida]

Reading or writing? I came across some bits of graphic erotica on Usenet back in the day, and began dropping into Lit now and again starting around 2005.
It never occurred to me that I could write it for years though, until a "fallow period" in real life got the fantasies revved up and I decided to give it a go...

 

[hannahbull]

For me, it was The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, by Anne Rice, sometime in the late 2000s. Until that moment, I had no idea that people wrote this kind of stuff.

 

[hannahbull]

I have always been infatuated with hockey players. I would spend hours reading hockey fan fiction on Mibba.