An introduction to a ten-part series distilled from over thirty interviews with erotic authors, and a few confessions of my own, by Jenny Raven
What I Learned from 30 Erotic Authors
I have been a writer all of my life. I’ve written in almost every genre imaginable, under different names, for magazines including Elle and Marie Claire. I’ve had books that have sold half a million copies. And then, a couple of years ago, I decided to do the most personal, most exposing, most exhilarating thing I had done as a writer: I started publishing erotica as Jenny Raven.
Not for money (though that helps).
Not to shock anyone.
Because I had stories to tell that were mine.
Really, specifically, deliciously mine.
And because I had spent too long wondering whether anyone else would want to read them.
The good news? It turns out, they do.
This is a very rough guide to doing the same thing, if that tickles you. I use quotes extensively from other authors, drawn from 32 interviews, including my own.
Whatever your desires, whatever your niche, whatever the fantasy you’ve been quietly carrying around for years thinking nobody else could possibly share, this guide is for you.
Why I Started, and Why It Matters
My first erotic book, The Initiation of Hannah, came from a very specific place: my own life. My own experiences. My own friends, my own memories, my own kinks. Dramatised, rendered more vivid. Fucking sexier for sure. As I always say:
“Every word I write is true, except the ones I have made up.”
Jenny Raven
Writing it was one of the most intensely pleasurable creative experiences I have ever had. I put on music, dance and trance, loud, which I’ve found puts me into what I can only describe as a state of heightened creative arousal:
“I also listen to dance and trance music LOUD when I write, it gets me into a highly charged state of erotic arousal. I heard about erotic energy some time ago, and that’s what I use. It’s kind of like sexy caffeine. Delicious.”
Jenny Raven
I dress for writing too, which, for me, helps me inhabit the voice I need. I sometimes write scenes out of order, starting with the ones I most want to write and working backwards. I discovered something I hadn’t quite expected: that the process of putting desire into language, of making memory and imagination real through words, was as profoundly erotically charged.
“I love the process of memory and imagination being made real through language.”
Jenny Raven
What I Did Next: The Interviews
Once I had published my own work and found my footing as an erotic author, I became curious about the wider community. I knew there were other writers out there, covering every corner of the enormous, varied, vibrant and gloriously kinky world of erotic fiction.
I wanted to talk to them.
I wanted to know how they started, what kept them going, what they’d learned, what they wished they’d known earlier.
So I began a series of interviews. Over thirty of them as of writing. Authors spanning forced feminisation and femdom, transgender romance, bimbo transformation, sissy maids, futa fantasy, hotwife and cuckold scenarios, body swaps, gynarchy fiction, and everything wonderfully in between.
Each interview was a privilege.
And each one taught me something.
“I really admire all my prolific sisters who are writing on Amazon too. It’s no mean feat to write and publish and turnaround a book in weeks. I salute them all!”
Jenny Raven
When I had finished the interviews, I sat with everything I’d learned and noticed that certain themes kept recurring.
Sensual wisdom that almost every author had arrived at, independently, through their own experience.
Ten themes emerged so consistently and so powerfully that I knew they were worth gathering together into something more structured.
This guide is that structure.
Who This Guide Is For
This guide is for you if you have ever thought about writing erotica but haven’t started yet.
It is for you if you’ve started and lost your way or given up.
It is for you if you’re already writing but want to think more clearly about the craft and the business of what you’re doing.
And it is for you if you simply love erotic fiction and want to understand the people who create it.
Above all, it is for anyone in our community, anyone who has ever felt that their desires were too niche, too unusual, too specific to speak to other people.
They aren’t. As I said in my own interview:
“No one chooses to be like us. It’s how life made us. And sometimes, that can be tough. So I choose to be kind and enthusiastic about them, their kinks and their sometimes deep need to just share.”
Jenny Raven
This guide is, at its heart, an act of kindness toward anyone who has felt that their desires put them outside the mainstream.
There is an experience for us all here.
Writing, and publishing, and being read, all while having, as Phoebe Pearl so perfectly put it, “so much f***ing fun.”
A Note on the Business Side
This guide does not shy away from the practical realities of erotic publishing. Amazon, covers, titles, consistency, pen names, reader engagement, all of it is here, because all of it matters.
Writing something beautiful and personal is only half the job.
Getting it in front of the people who need to read it is the other half.
My own biggest career regret is not having done enough on the marketing side:
“Marketing is the greatest challenge, and not putting enough energy into it.”
Jenny Raven
I’ve learned from the thirty authors in these interviews, and I hope you will too. Between them they have published thousands of titles, sold perhaps millions of copies, and navigated every obstacle the erotic publishing world can throw at you.
What they know AND share, is extraordinarily useful, and it’s all here, freely given.
“Just get writing and let your fantasy pour out and onto the page. Your writing will inevitably improve, as will all related skills, such as writing a synopsis and choosing artwork. Write because you want to. It’s too hard to do it just for the money. Plus read all these interviews — it’s a goldmine of experience.”
Jenny Raven
A Final Confession Before We Begin
I want to tell you something personal before you dive in. There is a moment in my own writing process that I keep coming back to, because it captures something essential about why any of this is worth doing.
My first published erotic book emerged, as I said, in “one erotic flurry” of memory and imagination. I was back in those rooms, with those people, in those clothes, living it again on the page.
And the writing itself became an act of recovery and celebration of a part of me that I had not always felt free to inhabit.
Getting back in bed with Ruby, Sasha and Isobel, between the covers of a book instead of black satin sheets, was one of the most joyful things I have done as a writer.
Only a handful of people in my life know that Jenny Raven exists. My friend Ruby jokes that when I die, people will discover “this entire smutty empire” waiting to be inherited. I find that genuinely hilarious and genuinely wonderful. The secret empire is real.
It is mine. And now, in some form, it can be yours too.
Read on. Use this. Write your stories.
The world needs them more than you know.
The Complete Guide: All Ten Posts
- Introduction to the series.
Where the data came from and what you can learn as erotic author. - Rule #1 Write What Makes YOU Hot
On passion, niches, and why following your own desire is the only reliable compass. - Rule #2 Write Your Truth
And How One Reader Email Can Change Your Whole Day, Or Your Whole Life.
This list will be updated as new posts go online.
Each post stands alone, you can dip in wherever a title calls to you, but when read together they form a complete picture of what it takes to write erotic fiction that is both commercially viable and deeply, personally satisfying.
They are built from the real experiences of real authors who have done this, who are still doing this, and who were generous enough to share what they know.
You can read all thirty original interviews on the Authors page. I recommend every single one.
Now, go write something naughty.
Jenny’s writing is rooted in real crossdresser experiences — explore the 2025 Crossdresser Community Survey to understand the community she writes for, or listen to the Gurl Talk podcast where she talks craft and community.
JR x
Jenny Raven is a crossdressing erotica author and the creator of this site. Her books are available on jennyraven.com and on Amazon. She interviews erotic authors, writes about the craft, and occasionally puts on six-inch heels to get into the right creative headspace.
I live for all things feminine—stockings, heels, scarlet nails, and above all, the intoxicating touch of another woman. A translesbian muse and unapologetic hedonist, I share my most divine and wicked misadventures in words and now as a podcaster too. All gurls welcome. You are gorgeous. Just like me. xxx
Goodreads // Amazon Author Page
