Books By Don Vaughan
Saddam:
The Face Of Evil
The Everything Civil War Book
The Everything Anti-Aging Book
16 Minutes From Home:
The Columbia Space Shuttle Tragedy
The Everything World War II Book
It's A Dirty Job...
Writing Porn For Fun and
Profit!
Includes Paying Markets!
"...The greatest trait of this book is Terrega's enthusiasm for what she does and her conviction that anyone, yes, even you or I, can write porn."
Shanna Germain, Review Editor at Clean
Sheets Magazine.
Click Here
to see why this e-book is all you need to learn how to write (and sell!) your work!
Or Order Here!
The
Write-Resume
Online Resumes For Writers!
Showcase your clips and promote your
writing!
Sex-Writer.com
Updated market listings, articles and calls for submission!
What I Didn't Know:
By C.B. Potts
Thirteen of her best columns on sex writing!
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Confessions Of A Porno Hack
By Don Vaughan
Anais Nin did it for a dollar a page. Ed Wood Jr. - the
mastermind behind Plan 9 From Outer Space - did it between
movies. Henry Miller turned it into a cottage industry.
Some of the world's greatest talents (and Ed Wood Jr.) have
tried their hand at writing pornography. I have, too, though not
nearly as successfully as those named above. In fact, my stint in
the literary smut biz turned out to be one of the weirdest, most
twisted experiences of my life and a hard lesson in how not to
get rich.
The whole thing started with a Greenleaf paperback cutely
titled Eager Beaver Bride by Nick Eastwood. A friend had tossed
this much-read classic in the trash, where I found it and started
reading. Five pages later I, too, threw the book away. "Christ,"
I muttered. "I can do better than that!" So I got the addresses
of ten porno publishers and sent away for writer's guidelines.
Greenleaf and Beeline kindly wrote back.
The guidelines for a Greenleaf book seemed the easiest -
40,000 words, heavy on the sex, no kids, animals or male
homosexuality - so I decided to try them first.
After much mulling, I came up with the basic outline for what
would turn into Weekend Wifeswap: Three couples who have known
each other since college meet for a weekend getaway and have sex
with each other. Pretty simple, I thought - and the numerous
character combinations would easily help me meet the 40,000 word
requirement.
I needed some conflict, though, so I decided to make the main
character - Shelby Martin - a newcomer to the group. Initially
she would be a little shocked by the freewheeling sexual ways of
her new husband and his hedonistic pals, but eventually she'd
learn to get in the groove. And this set up would lend itself
nicely to a terrific orgy at the end.
No problem.
My first task was defining my characters. I decided to name
them after my closest friends for easy reference, and outlined
the story into several, easy to write chapters. Then I wrote down
as many words for male and female anatomy as I could think of,
since I didn't want to use the same ones over and over.
The actual writing was a piece of cake, or would have been if
I hadn't been using a rickety Commodore 64 computer, a black and
white TV as a monitor and an obsolete General Electric printer.
I've since upgraded to a superfast HP Pavilion, but back then I
made do with what I had, which wasn't much.
Nonetheless, I persevered, often enlisting my wife for help
with "research." Almost daily I would spring from my chair with a
question that could only be answered by actually doing it. Was
THIS position even possible? Could you really do THAT without
ending up in traction? Never before had a writing project brought
us so close together.
I'm not ashamed to admit, either, that I would often find
myself writing frantically as a monstrous erection strained at my
jeans; a sure sign, I felt, that I was on to something truly
great. It wasn't art, but I knew what I liked.
Over the course of the book, Shelby became quite the little
love monkey, having sex with several men at once, as well as
participating in a fun-to-write lesbian three some.
Forty thousand words later, I mailed my precious, unsolicited
manuscript - and was quickly rewarded with a sale! Four hundred
dollars would be mine if only I would sign the contract, accept a
name change (Weekend Wifeswap became The Weekend We Swapped, by
Doug Vincent) and attest in writing that I hadn't stolen the work
from someone else. I did all three gladly, only to realize later
that I had made a whopping one cent per word. Oh well, at least
the research had been fun.
And I was a published pornographer! I couldn't wait to tell my
family and friends, most of whom were happy for my success, glad
I was being paid - and shocked that I had lowered myself to
penning such crap. "But," I reassured them repeatedly, "it's good
crap. Better than any of the other crap on the market." Of that I
was positive.
A lot of friends asked to read my file copy of Weekend
Wifeswap, though not very many of them finished it. Well, not
very many of the women finished it. In fact, only one was able to
get more than ten pages into it, and she was one of my character
models. All my male friends loved it, however, and told me they
couldn't wait for the next installment.
Not surprisingly, my parents - who have always had a keen
interest in my writing career - never asked to read Weekend
Wifeswap, and for that I'm grateful. There are some things a son
shouldn't share with his mom and dad, and I think a six way orgy
filled with nymphos screaming "Do me harder! Do me harder!
Unnnggggg!" is one of them. Call me old fashioned.
Fired up by my success, I immediately started the outline for
my second magnum opus, Mother's Wild Urges (published as A Mother
So Naughty, again by Doug Vincent). I decided to stretch myself
as a writer, creating a complicated, character filled study of
marital strife, loving neighbors, horny teens and sex with
grocery store stock clerks. There's also a sex scene involving
the rubber handle of a claw hammer, though the less said about
that, the better.
Once I knew where I was going (straight to hell, according to
more than a few acquaintances), I grabbed my handy list of body
part adjectives and jumped right in, turning my friends into
rutting hogs in heat. It was in this book, too, that I introduced
the character of Wayne S. Diaz - a favorite inside joke.
However, when the book finally came out, Wayne's last name had
been changed to Smith. I never did find out if the editors at
Greenleaf thought the character was too ethnic, or they just
didn't like the gag.
Anyway, Doug Saito, editorial director for Greenleaf,
responded quickly to my latest submission: "Mother's Wild Urges
is a buy," he wrote. "However, I've got to know if you'll be able
to live with the fact that you won't be paid until at least nine
months from now (yes, we're in a financial crunch)."
Nine months? I didn't like the sound of that, but I was too
overwhelmed by the fact that I was two for two in the smut game
to really think about it. I signed the contract and started
contemplating my third book. This was, after all, easy money,
even if it took a while to get. The books were fun and simple to
write, and the market seemed inexhaustible. At a book a month, I
thought, I could bring in...an extra $4,800 a year!
Knowing a golden goose when I saw one, I decided to enlist my
pal, cartoonist/writer Mark Cantrell, in penning my most daring
book yet: Jessica's Class Act.
This touching story tells the tale of Jessica Peters, a
divorced housewife who decides to join her twin daughters at a
small midwestern college. One of the twins is a nympho, you see,
and the other hates sex, so the scene is set for all sorts of
zany shenanigans. In fact, by the time we reach the inevitable
climactic orgy, our leading lady and her family and friends would
have sex with pizza dough, sex with Coke bottles (a scene half of
my female pals loved and the other half loathed with a
vengeance), sex with teachers, sex with students and sex on an
airplane. Indeed, something for everyone.
I wrote a simple outline of the story and Mark and I evenly
divided the chapters. Things went smoothly until Mark's computer
started acting up, freezing the chapter he had on his screen and
preventing him from saving it to disk. Rather than lose the whole
thing, he read the chapter into a tape recorder for future
inputing - not realizing it was the same cassette on which he
had recorded some guitar music for his new girlfriend.
Days later, I was told, said girlfriend was driving to work
when suddenly the tape she had been listening to segued from
relaxing guitar tunes to Mark reciting his latest sex scene in a
fixed monotone: "Bernie's tongue brushed her swollen pussy lips,
then suddenly probed deep inside as he sucked her entire mound
into his mouth..." Well, you get the idea. Anyway, it really put
a unique spin on their relationship.
Working in tandem, Mark and I finished the manuscript fairly
quickly. A few last minute tweaks here and there, and the sucker
was in the mail. An easy $200 each, I thought.
Boy was I wrong.
I was halfway into Horny Sucking Neighbor, with Reunion Suck
Slut waiting in the wings (yes, there was a distinct trend in my
subject material) when the figurative ceiling came crashing down
on my little sideline.
"Sorry to give you the following bad news in the form of a
nonpersonal, Xeroxed form letter: We are cutting back drastically
in the number of titles we publish each month," Doug Saito wrote
with great seriousness. "We will not be needing any submissions
at present. If you have a work in progress, please stop at once.
If you have a submission currently in house, there's a good
chance that it will be sent back to you. If you have any money
owed to you for manuscripts already purchased, payments, to the
best of my knowledge, will still be made...but they've been
delayed, postponed or rescheduled so many times that I cannot say
with any degree of accuracy when checks will go out."
This was news, of course, that I really didn't want to hear. I
was still waiting for payment on A Mother So Naughty, not to
mention Jessica's Class Act, and now it looked like it was going
to take a lot longer than nine months to get any of it.
Well, to make this twisted tale a little shorter, the publisher
ended up doing to me what I had been doing to my characters, and
he didn't even kiss me first. The nonpayment bothered me,
especially because Mark was supposed to get half of one check,
but what really pissed me off was the fact that I had two
terrific books halfway written and nowhere to go with them. As I
write this, they're still in a box, gathering dust, because I
can't think of a way to convince Random House to publish a book
titled Reunion Suck Slut.
This story does have a happy ending, though - sort of. Just
to even the score a little, I ordered 10 copies each of The
Weekend We Swapped and A Mother So Naughty, autographed them and
gave to friends as Christmas presents.
Unfortunately, in so doing I probably blew any chance I ever
had of running for public office. I can see the press conference
now: "Mr. Vaughan, does the name Doug Vincent mean anything to
you?..."
---
Se Don's website at www.donaldvaughan.com
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