The Salacious Scribes Mystery

By Maggie May

"I never imagined when I joined an erotic romance writing group that one of us would be killed at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. It had all started out so fun." So begins this humorous and PG-Rated romantic cozy mystery about the relationships between writers and what happens when one of them is killed.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maggie May
• Release date: May 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224879403

Book preview

Description:

I never imagined when I joined an erotic romance writing group that one of us would be killed at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. It had all started out so fun. So begins this humorous and PG-Rated romantic cozy mystery about the relationships between writers and what happens when one of them is killed.

Chapter One

I never imagined when I joined an erotic romance writing group that one of us would be killed at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.  It had all started out so fun.

When I first heard that my writing group wanted to reserve a booth there, I couldn’t make up my mind if I wanted to go or not until my husband convinced me.

He said, You gotta go.  It’s a great venue.  There will be plenty of people willing to pay for erotic romances.

Good point! I thought.

You may ask why my husband is so liberal and supportive about me writing in this genre?  The truth is that he loves my stories.  Sometimes, he reads them aloud with me in bed, and we have extremely hot sex afterward.  Lucky me!

But—before I continue, I must tell you our ages.  He is a smokin’ hot 63-year-old and I’m a year younger.

My life-long dream has always been to make money as a writer.  It is a tough field, and the competition is fierce.  My area of concentration in graduate school was 19th century British female writers like Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, and George Eliot.  Unfortunately, these women writers were appreciated only after they had passed away.

I couldn’t help but wonder what my professors would say if they knew that I wrote erotic romances.  I haven’t always written in this genre: I primarily wrote mysteries such as police procedurals and cozy, Agatha-Christie type whodunits.

My love affair with the written word started when I was a junior in high school and listened to my brother’s Bob Dylan’s albums over and over again.

I attempted to write in Dylan’s style. My poems were amateurish—to say the least, but I kept writing. I had a bit of confidence that I was an okay writer because my teachers often encouraged me when I was growing up. After graduation, I made many trips to the post office to send out my short stories without success.

I hoped and prayed that someone would eventually recognize my potential and the money would soon start rolling in. The problem was that I couldn’t get a publisher to accept my stories.

Fast forward to retirement four years ago, when one Sunday, as I was reading the L.A. Times, I came across an article about how indie writers were using websites like Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing to publish their books. I was surprised when I read that writers didn’t have to pay a cent.  On Amazon, they earned 70% royalty for each book sold and Amazon kept the other 30%.

On Smashwords, the royalty was even higher; so, I always started there.  Their website teaches writers how to properly format their books.  It just took a little time and patience to get it right.  Once approved by Smashwords, the book was then reviewed by their team of editors and, if it passed their inspection, it was then sent to other eBook stores such as Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo Books, Scribd (a subscription site like Netflix), and college and public libraries.

It sounded like a pretty great deal to me; so, I gave it a shot.

After a few years, I managed to write several more books and ended up making quite a tidy sum for my little creations.

After a while, I wanted to try something new and noticed how popular romance novels were and started reading some of the bestsellers in that genre.  I thought that the women who purchased these novels wanted an escape from their ordinary lives and needed to fantasize about a knight in shining armor who appeared from out of nowhere and came to protect, rescue, and cherish them.  Sounded good to me.  I had always enjoyed reading the erotic romance novels by D. H. Lawrence, so I gave it a shot and penned one myself.

The first erotic romance I wrote was a Cougar story under the pen name, Sexy Sadie, like the Beatles song.  I wanted my story to be like the sweet and tender movie, The Summer of 42, which was about a young woman whose husband had just passed away and a teenager who worshiped her from afar. After a while, they reached out to each other and grew close. Never in a million years would I have imagined that someone would buy my book; let alone give it a 5-star review!

My next smash hit was about a sexy cop who lived in an apartment complex that had a shared laundry room who was angry about how the dryers were being left unattended for long periods of time by inconsiderate people who’d left their clothes in the dryer long after they had dried.  Anger turned to curiosity when he opened the dryer to remove the offender’s clothing and discovered double d-cup bras, thong panties, and a sexy lace teddy amidst the rest of the clothing.  He wondered who owned such enticing items and when a sexy teacher came to retrieve her clothes, he was definitely interested; but she was not a bit happy about a stranger man-handling her undies and she left in a huff.

However, that night she remembered how sexy he looked in his uniform and wished she hadn’t been so angry.  She had sexual fantasies about taking a bath with him.  He imagined her starring in his funny and over-the-top XXX fantasies.  This little 99-cent quickie became my number-one bestseller.

Some of the erotica authors in our group wrote stories that feature elements of bondage and submission; and so, whips, chains, and handcuffs were part of their stories.  Mine were a lot tamer, but I liked the whole idea of a power struggle between the sexes, role-playing, masquerades parties, and resisting temptation.

When 50 Shades of Grey hit the bookstores, everyone was talking about it, so I read the entire trilogy. It was sexy, I’ll admit, but watching the film and seeing the cruelty towards the young woman made me wonder why so many women were buying a book about a sadist in a good suit. Women adore bad boys apparently—especially rich ones. One of my friends asked, How come it’s called erotica when a handsome rich guy hits a woman and it’s called a sex crime if a poor guy does the same thing? Good question.

I read a few more of these types of novels and noticed that despite the violence towards the submissive young women, they read like love stories. The female main character was often a virgin and very trainable because she didn’t have any other sexual experiences with which to compare.  The power was in her hands because she had a safe word she could use to tell her lover to stop if the pain that he was inflicting upon