I have just signed my name as "L.M. Coull" for the very first time (I think). Well, not so much signed as typed....but as the signature part of my E-mail.

L.M. Coull is my erotica writing pen name- I didn't want my gender to be given away and my last name, that I will tell you rhymes with "Dildo Pen" in case you don't know me, is too clunky to ever be even marginally famous.

I wrote the entire first draft of a porn story last night. 2,405 words. I wouldn't let myself go to bed until it was finished because I knew if I did, I'd never get back to it, so by the end the quality suffers. It definitely needs editing, so today I went online to find the market for cleansheets that I received in a Porn and Erotica writer's newsletter. I had to resubscribe because my L.M. Coull account got deleted a while ago, and before checking back issues I found a listing in the current issue for Swell Audio. They make CDs of audio porn- stories, poetry, audio plays, etc.

"Prose: We need quality, well-written fiction. Ideally we're looking for 2000 word stories, but we can work with you on length. No content restrictions, just nothing criminally violent, illegal, etc. We acquire audio rights to your work, and contributors whose work is accepted receive 3 copies of the CD their work is featured on.

Poetry: Basically the same as above (no length restrictions, etc.) but we're accepting all sorts of poems, and not looking for anything in particular, as far as theme. Just make it sexy. We acquire audio rights to your work, and contributors receive a copy of the CD their work is featured on."

The poetry part appealed to me. I wondered if "The Saxophonist", an ode to Pete (from Tri Sleep) I wrote a while ago was sexual enough to be considered for publication. The more I thought about it, the more sense it makes- whether or not it's dirty enough to be considered erotica, it certainly isn't clean enough to be published under too many other genres, and it was definitely meant to be oral poetry, so any other places it could possibly be published wouldn't make sense.

So I submitted it. If I get rejected- which is a definitive possibility (if not THE definitive possibility)- I'll need you all to remind me that, while it is a great poem, it was probably rejected simply because it's not quite sexual enough. It's my best work to date, and I need to have confidence in it at all costs.

Let's hope all comes out well, right?

I'm gonna go bathe, I think. And think about how cool it would be to actually get published. If not this one, soon, ya know? Soon.

My name is L.M. Coull, and I am a writer! On with it.