The first story I ever wrote was called "My Flatmate". You can read it in one of my collections called "Inappropriate Behaviour and Other Stories".

I had done a bit of writing before this. I'd been very successful in getting letters published in newspapers. But writing fiction always seemed too difficult. I was worried about how to make a story both interesting and believable. I could write a believable account of everyday incidents in my own life, but that wouldn't be interesting. A mystery or spy story set in some exotic locale would be interesting, but the amount of research I would need to do to make it believable when I've never been to such a place or done such things seemed too big a challenge.

At this time I was a fan of a sexy Asian girl named Kris who had a website called The Shy Exhibitionist where she posted pictures of herself getting naked in various public places. One day she held a story writing contest. "I could probably write a story based on a sexual fantasy of mine," I told myself. This seemed to be a way around my dilemma. I could set the story in an ordinary location which would require no research to present convincingly and the story would hopefully be interesting to readers because it was sexy.

My story didn't win anything, but the writing of it did unlock my creativity in the realm of humorous erotic fiction. The key was that I was writing "trash" and that was liberating. If I were writing something I had to take seriously then I would worry about whether or not I was "getting it right". Writing humorous erotica is just a game. That doesn't mean I don't think I do it well, but the secret to any creative endeavour is to remove the barriers to creativity, and for me the major barrier was taking the idea of writing fiction too seriously.

At the heart of my approach to writing fiction are the principles of improvisation laid out by theatrical improvisation teacher Keith Johnstone in his book "Impro : Improvisation and the Theatre" (London : Eyre Methuen, 1981). When everything is going well, a story writes itself.

A lot of my stories have been written as a response to writing challenges in which some word is provided as a prompt and the story is written in a limited time. I begin with an idea I think may be amusing, then I use the process of association to come up with other interesting ideas which would link well with it. The basics of the story grow out of the process of problem solving. If I want a scene to occur then that requires characters and a process which will lead to that scene. What kind of characters I create and how I bring them together is partly a matter of practicalities and partly something open to the free expression of the imagination. A practical solution to a plot difficulty often opens up even more amusing possibilities for the story. And there is no knowing where any idea will lead, so there is a strong incentive to entertain even the least promising ones. When the process is going well it feels as if the story already exists and all I'm doing is uncovering it.

I think the greatest joy of writing is to re-read a story when I've finished writing it and to realise that, through my efforts, something exists which did not exist before. The other great source of joy is to hear from others who have enjoyed reading a story. I've had readers tell me that they laughed so hard they snorted coffee all over their keyboard. And since I write erotica it is always a great thrill for me to hear that one of my stories has had an arousing effect on a female reader. I would never make it as a rock star or matinee idol so my writing is my one opportunity to have such an effect on the fair sex.

A lot of my stories were originally written to amuse women friends on-line. Since I'm quite shy, my writing is a way of making a connection in the realm of the erotic. While I don't get a lot of feedback from my ebooks it means the world to me if I'm able to bring some laughs and titillation to people around the world.

I love movies of all kinds, and I also love the conventions of pulp fiction. Writing stories which parody pirate adventures or horror stories or westerns allows me to express my love for all the trappings of these kinds of tales without having to actually write a serious story. And one of my fans did confess to being genuinely frightened by my story "An Indecent Descent" (which parodies the movie "The Descent") from my ebook "Improper Improvisations 1".

Sex at its sexiest is a form of play and so I try to capture a sense of playfulness in my erotic writing.

Our nearest genetic neighbours on the evolutionary tree are the bonobos who live lives of peaceful coexistence with uninhibited sexual exchanges being the lubricant which keeps them so social. It's my belief that, somewhere buried under centuries of social restraint, there is within each of us a playful friendly little sex monkey. And it is to this prurient primate that my erotic stories are addressed.

But there is more involved that just sex. When Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall lit cigarettes and blew smoke in each others faces in "The Big Sleep" it wasn't about smoking, it was about the sex the censors wouldn't allow the movie makers to show. In my stories, the sex is about sex, but it is also about relationships between people generally. At the heart of my stories is the optimistic belief that all that keeps us from loving communion with all of our fellows and from true creativity is our inhibitions. The stories are often about people losing their sexual inhibitions and finding happiness, meaning and empowerment in their lives. In real life sexual inhibitions play a useful function. Often they keep us from going to jail. But there is no such benefit in the realm of the imagination, and the stories can be seen as metaphors for risk-taking of a more productive kind.

I watch a lot of movies.

I like to read humorous fiction. One of my favourite authors in this genre is Christopher Wood. That's not the name that appears on his humorous novels though. While he has written thrillers and historical fiction under his real name, and also the scripts for two James Bond films, his humorous novels were written in the first person by a bunch of fictional characters whose names served as his pseudonyms on each of the books - Timothy Lea, Rosie Dixon, Penny Sutton and Oliver Grape. I have a fondness for things which are dated, and that is true of these books. They are very much a product of the "politically incorrect" 1970s. But what makes them so much fun for me is Wood's ability to create outlandish scenes of cartoonish slapstick and his verbal ingenuity - as each book is written in a pun-filled stream of Cockney rhyming slang including some of the funniest sexual terminology you will find anywhere.

I also enjoy horror and mystery short stories. I'm a big fan of the Pan Books of Horror Stories and also the detective stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton.

When it comes to non-fiction, I like to read books on psychology, but for fun I'm more likely to turn to books on movies, especially movies of the trashier variety. And one of my favourite authors is also my favourite film director - John Waters. His autobiography and books of essays are both hilarious and thought-provoking.

John Waters, Ray Bradbury, Christopher Wood, Oscar Wilde, John Sladek, Douglas Adams, Arthur Conan Doyle, W. Somerset Maugham, William Shakespeare.

Smashwords has made it so easy for me to be my own publisher. Initially I tried to make money out of the books I published on Smashwords. I'm sure I could have achieved this, but impatience and a desire to be read more widely led me to make all of my books free.

Some view success purely in a monetary sense, but for me success is reaching a wide audience, and since my most popular story is currently in the Smashwords Top 100 I would consider that I have had great success through Smashwords.