How I got started as a writer of erotic gay fiction

I kind of fell into writing erotic gay fiction by accident.

It was a few years ago now - during a period when I was travelling, looking to pick up some freelance work. There was some copy-writing work going for writing gay erotica.

This sounded easier than it actually was. What the publishing houses were looking for was m/m erotica designed for a female audience - they didn’t want anything too explicit. The stories had to be one-on-one romances where two guys fell in love and lived happily ever after. Stories about vampires and werewolves were also popular - as long as they fell in love and lived happily ever after.

I gave it a go, but I wasn’t very good at it. It’s a style of writing that’s so far removed from what I find to be sexy and erotic that my heart wasn’t really in it - I was just churning them out to make a bit of quick money. There’s easier to ways to make quick money.

On the plus side, this experience of writing romances about man-on-man love for the titillation of straight women did lead me into learning a bit more about self-publishing. It also pushed me to start writing the kind of erotic gay fiction that does interest me - intense, no-holds-barred encounters between guys who just want to get off with other guys.

My kind of erotic gay fiction clearly doesn’t sell as well as the m/m stuff that women readers seem to want to buy, but there are definitely some gay men out there who like what I like and that like to read what I write.

Writing erotic gay fiction, for me, is a bit of a hobby - a self-indulgence that I seem to rarely get the time to do. But I keep going. For me, writing is just something that I need to do - it's one of the key things in my life that makes me feel like I'm on the right path.

If you're struggling to come up with an erotic story that you want to write and really get your teeth into, a good starting point is to look at what's around you.

Take something that turns you on in real life, and then give your imagination permission to really go to town.

That's what I did with my water polo team.

I don’t play any more, but I still love everything about water polo.

One of my most popular stories is about a gay water polo team in London.

London Orca

I joined the London Orca water polo team because I was looking for a new hobby, and I wanted to meet some new people. I wanted to meet gay guys, so I joined a gay sports team. London Orca is a gay water polo team.

I’d never played water polo before, and I wasn’t even a particularly good swimmer, but I quickly became a bit obsessed with this crazy sport.

To be honest, I did join with some sort of subliminal expectation that it would a be a sexually-charged environment - a group of fit guys in swim-briefs, showering together after training. There was a bit of that, but what I loved most about playing water polo was the friendships that I developed with a pretty amazing group of guys.

Reality becomes fantasy

It wasn’t too hard to turn a lot of my actual experiences and conversations from being part of the London Orca water polo team into something a bit steamier and sexier.

Sometimes it’s just a case of remembering something that happened and then dialling it up a bit to wherever your imagination can take you.

The result is The Orca Cross - an erotic gay fiction novel about the guys on a water polo team in London.

Everything in the book has some reality at its heart. I’ve changed most of the names.

Want a taste?

Exhausted, Ethan followed the coach into the locker-room and they stood next to each other in the open shower stalls. Ethan closed his eyes as the warm water of the shower cascaded down over his body, washing away the chlorine of the pool. The locker-room was otherwise deserted, the rest of the team having finished changing and headed to the pub.

“Can I borrow your shower gel?” asked the coach, breaking the silence.

Ethan passed across the bottle - Original Source, mint. Putting the shower gel near his feet, the coach undid the cord-tie of his swim-briefs, pushing them down over his thick muscular thighs, and down to his ankles before stepping out of them.

The coach picked up his swim-briefs and slung them over his shoulder, before squeezing some shower gel into the palm of his hand and soaping up his body. Ethan followed suit, slowly untying the cord on his swim-briefs and pushing them down and off, hoping that the coach’s eyes were on him, hoping that the coach was watching him as closely as Ethan had been watching the coach.

Ethan picked up the shower gel, squeezed a dollop into the palm of his hand, and began soaping his body, the mint-infused gel tingling against his skin.

“Why do you all use this mint shower gel?” asked the coach, slowly massaging the soap across every inch of his body.

“I don’t know…” shrugged Ethan. “It just seems to be what all the guys use.”

“It makes my balls tingle…” winked the coach.

“Yeah - mine too…” grinned Ethan.

“I kind of like it…” said the coach.

“Yeah - me too…” nodded Ethan.

Dive into The Orca Cross: Adventures with a gay water polo team

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