…to write your erotic romance, that is. To put it another way, at what age is a woman best suited to write about sex?

If you happen to be aware that yours truly is 51, you're no doubt expecting me to make a case for "cougars." Older women indeed have a lot of credentials when it comes to a full understanding of the erotic. We've experienced it all: Stage 1, when sex still seems a little creepy but it's starting to appeal for some mysterious reason. Stage 2, when your shyness and squeamishness is past, but you haven't sorted out yet what you need to feel emotionally before you want to be intimate. Stage 3, when love and sex come together and actually, wonderfully, work in tandem to bring you joy. Stage 4, when you find yourself thinking about sex all the time and looking at males with a new appreciation. Stage 5, when other aspects of life become more important than sex and you wonder if your libido is in trouble.

Who better than a cougar to be able to apply all this experience and wisdom to the task of writing erotically? Erotic romance written by the fifty-and-up is going to reflect a deep and powerful understanding of human sexuality. It will be creative and varied. Through into the mix that writers get better with experience and you are bound to do better with my age, right?

Well, hold your proverbial horses. All those points are well taken, but let's give the nymphs a chance too. By nymphs I mean women in those Stage 3 and 4 age groups, say, late 20s to mid 40s. These women may not be wise, earth mother types yet, but they have been around the block a few times. And their advantage is, to put it bluntly, a lot of the time they are horny. Walking around horny is a boon for an erotica writer, as you might guess. Your day is full of fantasies and inspiring little encounters, all of which are fodder for the word processor. And you are quite often perfectly in the mood to write some stuff that turns yourself and your readers on.

Unfortunately, now I've made such a good case for the nymphs, you may be questioning why I should expect you to read my books! Well, fortunately, in the imagination people can be any age they wish to be, and even though my body has left behind the nymph stages of life, I certainly can remember them. We female authors are much more fortunate than female actors, in that no one pays any mind to what we look like on the outside. I assure you that when I write erotic fiction from the heroine's point of view, I imagine myself as a nymph far more often than a cougar. Meanwhile, the true definition of "cougar" is an older woman on the prowl for erotic fun, and even though women over fifty have other things on their minds most of the time, they aren't dead either. If I weren't up for some erotic fun, I wouldn't be in this business, now would I?

So, I guess my conclusion is, a nymph with some life experience is going to give you some perfectly lovely erotica. But a true cougar, who still keeps a nymph alive inside her, will have no trouble doing the same. We might be a little more choosy about our inspiration, and a little less inclined to stay up late writing, but we can pen a hot love scene with the best of them.

To Stage 5 and beyond!

Diana Laurence is the author of the Soulful Sex anthologies of erotic romance fiction, and released her newest book Bloodchained in September 2007 (www.bloodchained.com). Diana's works are published by Living Beyond Reality Press (www.livingbeyondreality.com.)
Visit her at www.dianalaurence.com or enjoy her blog at www.eroticawithsoul.blogspot.com.