The Rocky Road to Publishing

[Sean Malone]

I started writing my fantasies down in my teens. Later I discovered the Literary and Fantasy Group of the Forum Society, which was a mail based writers' group in the UK. It was a very tough group that gave me a good start in writing for publication. One of my first stories published in the Group Newsletter is here:



Some of the other members became best selling authors of erotic novels.

After that I had a series of short stories published in Pleasure Bound magazine, published by the company which has become Olympia Press. These were erotic science fiction, Mf bondage / slavery oriented stories. I also had a short story published in Secret magazine. However I was not paid for any of this.

These early stories were written before I really learned to write dialogue, and that has been an important step in the development of my writing style. It did not come easily at first, but now I have learned to bring characters to life as well as the scenarios that they are in, in new stories written under a different pen name. I am constantly pestered by readers who want more!

More recently I have been working on a novel about the sexual adventures of a professional woman crew member on a merchant vessel in space. It is about three quarters finished. I decided that this time I wanted to be paid, and I want my book to be on the shelves in high street bookshops. These days it might easily finish up online as well, as electronic publishing is here to stay. As nothing I have offered to a publisher has been turned down yet, I feel quietly confident that I will succeed in having this book published, but I am not in touch with the right people, and I really appreciate the information provided in here.