I've been a technical writer for about 20 years -- it only feels like more -- and like most tech writers, there resided within me a fiction writer wanting to come out. One day, I was doing laps in the local pool and my mind started to drift as it often does when you're doing laps. By the time I'd finished my workout, I'd plotted my first story, which became the opening chapter of Incubus.
I posted the chapter on Literotica, not knowing what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised at the reception.
After about 40 submissions to Literotica -- some roundly panned but most well-rated -- I decided to take the plunge and get into e-books.

Writing is always a challenge, but there are days that it just flows and you re-read what you've written and have one of those "wow" moments.
And of course, there are the readers who take the time to let you know that you've done a good job. That's really what gives me the greatest pleasure.

Stephen King said that he tries to create sympathy for characters and the turns the monsters loose. Not that I'm trying to be Stephen King or anything, but my approach is not all that different. I try to create normal, everyday characters and the throw them into unusual erotic situations. For example, Incubus has a grad student who wakes up to find that she'd been visited by an incubus. Swallowtail has a typical alpha male who falls under the influence of a dominatrix half his age. Outsourced begins with a wife telling her husband that she wants to outsource her lovemaking.

Because I typically write erotica, the biggest challenge is to make the sexual situations interesting without falling into cliche. Members typically don't throb and loins don't too often melt at a touch. Most interesting to me is the psychology of characters when they find themselves in strange or challenging situations.
Another challenge is to find the time to write. I get up early in the morning and try to get some work done before the house erupts and I have to go to work (though I sometimes, unbeknownst to my employers, manage a few paragraphs on my Blackberry while at work). I need the quiet hours, because there's nothing that pours cold water on the writing of erotica than a kid looking over your shoulder and asking why you're typing so furiously and why you're always closing the laptop whenever someone comes close.
The most recent challenge is publishing in a big ocean (Literotica is a small lake by comparison) and getting noticed. While I had harbored the delusion of "Publish it and they will read", I realize that this is not the case. Marketing is necessary but time-consuming. And I'd rather be writing.

I'm currently working on a sequel to Incubus which is tentatively called Succubus. I'm hoping to publish it in mid-2014. Of anything I've written, Succubus excites me the most. It's certainly more ambitious in terms of plot and has been a great deal of fun to write.

When I first published Incubus, I found that a lot of readers liked the character of Kat and felt that she had had a rough go of it. Kat is one of those conflicted characters that I like so much -- caught between being a succubus and all that entails and wanting the things that one would expect are denied demons.

The fans are everything. When you publish, it's as though you're sending your baby out into the world with no assurance that you'll ever hear anything from it again. As an indie author, you can't necessarily expect stratospheric sales, so any time you hear from a fan or get a rating or review, it's reassuring that your baby is having an impact somewhere.