I come up with an idea that may be little more than a single scene, and develop a story line around that. Often the initial segment becomes a single chapter or disappears entirely in the final draft. I revise and add as I go along, often using the old process I learned for preparing speeches and presentations when certain ideas go into a list or on cards and then get shuffled around to fit. Typically, I write about 50-60,000 word stories in four to six months. Translating them takes a lot longer.

I wrote my first short story while still in high school and it was published in the school literary magazine. It was more of an essay than fiction. Even before that, I wrote some short story chapters by hand or on a typewriter while I was still in middle school. I still have a few of these and they were pretty crude, in more ways than one.

I have some idea about the cover I want to see, but costs usually enter into this decision. Recently, when CRUISE, book number nine, went to press, I completed an arrangement with a superb German photographer and we mutually benefit from the use of his copywrite-protected art.

Old Tom Clancy. Robert Parker. Lee Child. Books based on actual historic events with fictional characters and scenes. Some military history. This is also what I write best.

Five computers and displays. A disorganized mess with a filing system based on what was put in the pile last...or first.

As a young man, I read and studied much of the erotic classics: DeSade, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, John Norman, Campbell’s huge BDSM series, JG Leathers, Gord, Bob Bishop, Story of O, The Image, Last Exit to Brooklyn, etc. Admittedly, some of it I didn’t understand.The idea of integrating moderate to hard core porn with BDSM and romantic literature got closer to mainstream with e-books and the anonymity of downloading what you want to read. This changed everything for erotica authors because we could now reach an audience that previously feared the exposure of "reading porn." The migration from "Bodice Rippers" to bondage and sadism novels has been a seminal event in literature, perhaps as important as the switch from 8mm silent film loops to video or DVD. Each time this happens, there are new audiences to reach and, of course, there are new challenges from the political and religious fanatics who would tell us what we can and cannot read or see. I have every reason to believe that this trend will continue, no matter who or what seeks to stop it. I have a sign in my office that reads: “Beware, the book burners still live.”

CRUISE came about, after much more effort and revising than any other BDSM book of mine thus far. I wanted to take the adventures of Bibi Wolfe Lynx, the German female detective/body guard, to a higher level than in her initial appearance in AFTER SCHOOL. The beauty of Bibi is that she is a strong, self-directed female hero with some very interesting sexual proclivities and the smarts of perhaps a Miss Marple or Hercule Perot.
Tie this into a nautical theme with a mega yacht in the Caribbean, a TV assassin on a mission to kill Bibi and a gorgeous all female crew and you get more complexity than I am used to....actually a story, not just a series of events where girls get tied up, encapsulated in rubber or whipped.

Honestly, I think I have readers in both genders and I write for both, sometimes to my own detriment with readers who are very hard over on wanting just one angle, one side of the S&M scene. For example, in one of my books that has been banned on Amazon, DESPERATE, the kidnapped guys get gender-switched and the women become pony girls. There is S&M activity across gender lines and some readers may not care for this. To me this is no different than the woman who says she wants only men with lean, hard bodies and long dark hair or the men who favor only blonds with big tits. So the audience is men and women who enjoy BDSM fantasy and don't trouble themselves with worries about the likelihood of it being real. Fiction and fantasy have as much of a place in literature as biographies and romance novels.

Just this week there was a story in the New York Times featuring interviews with porn/erotica writers. One author put it better than I can: "There are only so many words you can use to describe sex." Given that reality, the writer must find other scenes, images, words and phrases that interest the reader. After all, the objective is to keep the audience reading. Having a closet full of BDSM gadgets and devices doesn’t hurt either. Von Stuka readers will find lots of chained, sexy women at the mercy of evil, rich men (and women). Chains and ropes help immensely. John Willie, probably the most memorable erotic graphic artist/write of the fifties and sixties, once said that he found rope was better than chains, but he used both. I try to mix the bondage media in my stories as often as possible, but when pressed, I'll have my villains use chain every time. And gags. I like to describe gags because the oral stimulus is sometimes more powerful than those below the waist. I once read a negative criticism of my work because I devoted three pages to describe one particular gag being used on a female subject. The reader said he/she got bored. A good flogging perhaps would have altered his/her opinion because a well detailed whipping is hard to beat. The pun is intentional. Caning and other means of corporal abuse often work well with my themes and of course, we can't do without a good suspension and multiple impalements. Finally, I like to use rubber as a punishment medium, so you'll often find the females in my books sealed tightly in some sort of rubber paraphernalia.