“So how’s your writing?” asked my friend yesterday. She’s one of my oldest friends, used to sit two rows back from me at school, and was one of the early readers of what passes for creative fiction when the writer is fourteen.

My writing was great, I assured her. Most of it was in English these days. Some of it got published, yeah; she wouldn’t want copies. Most of it was also, um, well… sort of naughty. *whisper* Erotica, you know.

“Cool!” said my friend. “Let me guess, does it involve, teachers and students?”

…When you’re fourteen, and a baby writer, and kinky but don’t know it, you write spanking stories and think they’re just stories, and show them to your friends.

Then you grow up, and realise you’re kinky, and laugh at the old stories, and write some new ones – anonymously, online.

You think that your friends have forgotten the long series about that girl in that strict boarding school, or that one about the magician’s apprentice who got into trouble five times a day, or that one a pair of home-tutored twins.

Well, your old friends remember. And when you grow up to write erotica? They aren’t very surprised.