Throwback Thursday to The Venus School

 TBT! - The Venus School #tbt

So, when I threw it back to Forced Bet I talked about how I always forget that it was my first book... that's because I always think that The Venus School was my first book!

Like Forced Bet, The Venus School was originally a Literotica story and there were some very invested readers (*cough* Katherine Anderson *cough*) who were commenting on every chapter of the story and then when it when it was done I received several emails asking me if I could turn it into a book so they could own it. Just in case something ever happened to the website or something. And I said, sure, let me look into this self-publishing thing...

And then for some reason I released Forced Bet first lol. But The Venus School came out only a month after. Then everything just kind of kept rolling along and here we are.

This story was inspired by an amazing book called The Madame X School of Sex (unfortunately no longer available for purchase anywhere that I can find). In Madame X, a boss finds out that his assistant is going to the school and he's inflamed with jealousy. He used to be an instructor there, so he pulls a favor and returns to claim her.

The book was hot AF. My only problem with it was that the heroine only made it to ONE class before he claimed her and it was a massage class! Where, of course, he was the one giving her a massage. Super hot, sure, but I had been SO excited to read about all the sex classes!

Since I had already started writing on Literotica I realized, hey, I started writing for the website so that I could write the things I wanted to read and I really want to read about the classes, so why not make my own school of sex? And I can make it a love triangle so that she's not going to get claimed too soon!

Because, it being me, I still wanted that HEA.

So I started writing and posting each chapter to the website, and watched as Team Justin and Team Chris formed in the comments. At the time, I didn't know who Jessica was going to choose, I was just enjoying writing the story. Then, this one commenter kept popping up (*cough* Katherine Anderson *cough*) who begged me not to make her choose.

My brain went whaaaaaaaat?

But around that time, purely by chance, I also started reading Lexi Blake and Shayla Black's Masters of Menage series which had heroines getting their HEAs with not one, not two, but THREE heroes. And I realized oh... she doesn't have to choose.

The series on the website actually had three endings. One for Team Justin, one for Team Chris, and one for the readers who had started rooting for Team Both. When I got the emails asking for a book version, I was like you know... I could easily keep this story going past the school.

After reading Masters of Menage I had moved on to Bianca Sommerland's Dartmouth Cobras series and I loved the drama in her books around the heroine having more than one partner. That felt very real life to me and I wanted to explore it for Justine, Chris, and Jessica. Also I had moved on to reading Lexi Blake's Masters and Mercenaries series, Kallypso Masters' Masters at Arms series and Cherise Sinclair's Shadowlands series and the idea of a BDSM club had gotten stuck in my head, as well as a bunch of new characters.

I wanted to connected the club and characters I had in my head to Justin, Jessica, and Chris. Because Justin and Chris needed friends and Olivia was growing in my head already as well. Plus I wanted someone for Hilary.

So I published the book and changed the ending so that things could continue after they got home, which I felt was the more realistic ending anyway lol.

The cover has been through a few incarnations over the years and it'll probably go through another change eventually, though I love my lingerie covers lol.

If you haven't picked up The Venus School yet... this first book is still 90% smut since it was originally on an erotic@ website lol. There's a smidge of plot. Most of the plot starts in the second book though.