Why Play With Me – Erotica was (re)born

In 2014 I found myself in a bit of a lull.

I’d moved — again. Left an unhealthy relationship. Got into a new unhealthy one. I guess I was spinning out in the emotional realm and didn’t even realize it.

Professionally, I’d just been laid off from a job I thought I could like… but really didn’t. It so happened I was asked to write the listing for my own job description, they were asking for an intern… I was also asked to publish the listing, attend the interviews, and train the person who would replace me.

In short, I stopped putting in effort.
I can hear the judgment on my lack of work ethic from here.
But hold up.

After getting the news, which wasn’t really a surprise, I hopped onto EI’s small business program. That’s when I officially registered the business I’d technically started two years prior. I decided to go all in. But going “all in” for me has always meant having a side project that’s also all-consuming.

I’m hopelessly in love with projects. Always have been.

And around that time, Fifty Shades of Grey was still making waves.

I hadn’t read it. I didn’t have the pull. The premise made me uncomfortable.
Educated but naive girl gets educated…

As unhealthy as my own relationships had been up to that point, and even a little further down the line, that storyline didn’t light anything up in me.

But what fascinated me was the noise around it. The controversy. The cultural divide.

The herds of fans (some of my friends included), the pearl-clutching, the BDSM community condemning it, the literary world mocking it. Everyone had something to say. It was polarizing in every direction. And through it all, the noise. All. That. Noise.

I had to tip my hat to the PR team. They didn’t just sell a book. They lit society on fire.

Let’s also be honest: the author wasn’t a nobody. That’s just one piece of the puzzle. Connections matter. Timing matters. But even that doesn’t fully explain it.

Because what the book did, beyond the plot, was open a crack.
It normalized something that was often left in the shadows.
Sex. Kink. Fantasy. Female desire.
Despite the backlash, despite the condescension… it went mainstream.
And that, on its own, is powerful.

Whether I endorse the story is irrelevant.

Years later, I finally read it. I found it well-structured.
Not my taste. Not what I go to when I want to be shaken.

What mattered was this:
It woke something up in me.

Why the hell are we always turning sex into the devil?
Why is it not OK to openly write these things?
Why does writing about desire make people so uncomfortable?

And most importantly: why can’t she write fiction?

So I figured: I’ve got a business in copywriting and translation.
I’ve been meaning to learn how to build websites.
Why not give it a shot? Build an erotica blog space.

Somehow — and I don’t remember how — I found another writer interested in the idea. We started writing. I built a dingy WordPress.com site. And within a few short weeks, we were live: stories, polls, a couple social media accounts… and most interestingly, readers. People who stuck around and commented.

I was writing stories that blended the beginning of real-life situations and ended them the way they didn’t end in real life. Or the way they did. It depended. I let my imagination take the lead, uncensored, anonymous.

At first, they were mainly just sexy stories. Designed to arouse. The side story of the main character was there, but subtle: the questioning, the longing, the deeper emotional current. Background noise. Because the genre was erotica, and as I understood it then, that meant the sex had to drive the plot, not the complexity of the character.

It still felt like something was missing.
But at the time, it was good enough.
I was writing again. I was having fun.

I’d looked around at what was available online, mostly male gaze. Some poorly written, some extremely well written. It was hard to weed through. Mostly, I couldn’t find what turned on my senses. All of them.

V1 of PWME started off strong.
Readers told me I’d hit something good.

But at the same time, my real life was shifting fast.
My relationship was in crisis, though I didn’t realize it yet.
I was recently engaged. We were planning a one-way backpacking trip. My other business was growing. Life took a spin.

And Play With Me… stopped.

In all honesty, I even forgot Version 1 was still live and online. I never took it down.

It popped back into my mind a few years ago. My mother had passed away, and my intimacy was just as impacted by that loss as every other part of me. I thought again about what the project meant: a place to explore, to be vulnerable, to share stories my brain kept building.

I bought the domain in 2020.
And then… I forgot about it again.

Until this past June, 2025.

Why now?

Well, because apparently it comes back every five years. Like clockwork.

I’ve grown more.
Matured more.
Lived more.

Experienced heartbreak in a way that changed me.

But Play With Me is here again.