Alex Carrick’s Blog

Surrounded by racy stories in the media everywhere these days, I sometimes find myself caught up in the flow and straying out of bounds with my material.

To help you discover whether or not you may be flirting with the same R-rated conundrum, here are a dozen tell-tale signs that, wittingly or otherwise, you’ve acquired some expertise in writing the good stuff.

(1) You take two double entendres and try to make a threeway.

(2) You hang out with a very naughty crowd on Twitter and fervently pray you’ll never meet any of them in person.

(3) You keep your new identity secret from your wife although she wonders why you’re now getting mail addressed to Mr. Swordmaster.

(4) You note that your competitors in the genre are often women; or they might be men writing as women; or women writing as men pretending to be women; or…oh never mind, at this rate your privates will fall off.

(5) You like to think your erotica has become acceptably main-stream but then wonder why you feel the need to bathe in borax and shed your skin.

(6) Since pretty much every kind of fruit or vegetable carries some sexual connotation, you start hanging out at your local superstore. When the cops are called, you claim you’re doing research. Winking at the produce manager while fondling a melon doesn’t help you avoid arrest.

(7) You stop using big words like “connotation” and stick to nothing longer than six inches. Oops! I meant to say six letters.

(8) You step out of your professorial toga and embrace the fact that, rather than just being 30 in Latin, XXX can have another meaning altogether.

(9) You observe that cell phone users have their “smart-talk”; athletes engage in “smack-talk” all the time; and you’re learning a special communication skill, “spank-talk”.

(10) You view your latest works as loss-leaders to attract attention to your previous high-brow efforts. True, they’re aimed at different market segments, but you’re hoping for crossover interest from cross-dressers.

(11) You take pride in the fact you still haven’t sunk as low as “whatshisname”. You know ‒ that author who’s really depraved.

(12) Your sleazy-fun quotient has pitched a better game and sent your shy-inhibitions quotient to the showers.

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If the foregoing is to your taste (or lack thereof), you’ll likely also enjoy “A Mathematical Proof that Economists are Sexy“.

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For my first book, “Two Scoops” Is Just Right, please click here for the paperback version and here for the Kindle e-book version.

For the sequel, “Three Scoops” Is A Blast! (with the award-winning “Size of the Skip”) click here for paperback and here for Kindle.

For “Four Scoops” Is Over The Top (containing Hemingway short-listed “Caboose Follies”) click here for paperback and here for Kindle.

And finally, for my latest book, “Five Scoops” Is An Addiction!, please click here for the paperback and here for the Kindle digital version.

Also, I would love it if you joined me on Twitter (Alex_Carrick), Facebook and/or LinkedIn.