PRIMULA Bond’s brand of erotic fiction is not for the easily shocked.

This is not the literary version of cinematic love scenes – this is sweaty, often surprising, sometimes rough and very, very graphic.

Her latest novella, Sisters in Sin, features sex and sadism in a Venetian convent and a lot more besides.

Primula is, it would seem, anything but prim.

But that said, she is very, very normal.

It is almost a surprise to step into her cream and beige Winchester living room, decorated with tasteful paintings, black and white family photographs and impeccably tidy, with the exception of a heap of Lego figures on the coffee table.

A mother of three, Oxford graduate, legal secretary and wife of a solicitor, at a glance, 50-year-old Primula seems to be respectability personified.

But she has a very active imagination – and one that she has put to good use writing steamy fiction for more than 15 years.

Primula makes some effort to separate her erotic fiction writing from the rest of her life.

Like many erotic fiction writers, she uses a pseudonym for her work, and doesn’t want her whole face to be photographed.

This is partly because she has ambitions to write a ‘straight’ novel and also writes for newspapers under her own name, and partly because she thinks her young sons would be excruciatingly embarrassed if it came out at school.

She is, however, quite open with friends and family about her writing.

“It’s a very good showstopping dinner party conversation,” she laughs.

“When people meet me I think they think I’m quite serious and they have to completely revise that. Then they start asking a lot of questions!

“You get a lot of prurient questions about whether I’ve done what I write about.

The honest answer is ‘no’. I’ve got a normal life but I’ve got a very vivid imagination!”

She adds that people sometimes volunteer ideas for stories. “At dinner parties men often say ‘have you thought about writing such and such?’ but they’ll have had quite a lot of drinks before they get the nerve to say it. They always want me to write about lesbians!”

Primula would be the first to admit that her writing stands in contrast to her Catholic upbringing, which included a convent education – a theme that recurs in her work. She certainly didn’t plan to write erotica.

In fact, she fell into writing erotic fiction by accident in 1995. She had written a novel for Mills and Boon which was rejected because the sex scenes were too explicit.

“I thought I’d see if I could turn one of the scenes into a short story because erotic was coming to the public attention more. It was accepted by a magazine. I was so excited to have a piece of writing accepted and paid for and it took off from there. I’ve written short stories for magazines and anthologies, three novels and two novellas. I write a few short stories a month.

It’s not my ultimate ambition but it’s something that comes very easily to me.”

Primula is an accomplished writer of erotica and works for a literary website as its erotica expert, critiquing the work of others hoping to get into the same field.

She says that writing erotica requires not only skill but also a commitment to the style.

“Some writers of mainstream fiction seem to be embarrassed about writing sex scenes,” she says.

“In that case, they should just leave it.

People can be prissy about it. If you can’t describe it in a beautiful way, then don’t do it – leave it to the experts.”

She adds that there is a big difference between sex scenes in mainstream writing and erotica.

“Erotica is totally explicit – there’s no two ways about it.”

She adds that it isn’t for everyone.

“Friends have said that they’re going to buy my book and I’ve said to some of them ‘please don’t, you’ll be shocked’.

It can be pretty brutal at times.”

Despite her success, Primula is keen to point out that erotica is not a lucrative business.

Making £75 per short story she sells, she says “it’s a hobby that makes a bit of pocket money really.”

Given the fact that she has been writing erotic fiction for years with limited recognition or reward, Primula admits that she wasn’t best pleased when erotic novel 50 Shades of Grey hit the headlines and the top of the best seller list and became the fastest selling paperback of all time in the UK.

“My honest reaction was fury and irritation because she had leapfrogged over the work that people like me have been doing for years,” she says.

“I hope it will put our work out there more but my personal reaction was real jealousy that she’d managed to do overnight what we’ve been struggling to do for years.

“If her phenomenon creates more interest in other erotic writing that would be great. I haven’t seen it so far – it’s just her dominating the best seller lists but my publishers think it will be good for all of us.”

In the meantime Primula will carry on with her erotic writing – she has recently been commissioned to write another novella – and will continue writing ‘straight’ fiction in the hope of hitting the big time in her own name.

“Erotica isn’t the greatest kind of literature to be writing,” she says, “but I love writing and it’s great to be published. It is explicit but I try to write beautifully and intelligently.”

* Sisters in Sin is published by Mischief as an ebook. Primula Bond’s stories are available via Amazon and on Kindle.