The fantasy image of an erotic novelist might be of a sexy young thing flitting around the world having all kinds of naughty adventures.

The reality? Meet 40-year-old married mum-of-five Geraldine O’Hara (she only wants to be identified by her pen name), who lives in a village just outside Oxford.

“I’m a homebody, preferring to live quietly, keeping to myself. I have a full-time job and write on weekends, so I rarely get any free time,” she says.

“I read every night without fail and also enjoy crosswords or puzzles – anything with words, really!

“I suppose I could be seen as very boring, but that’s okay. I live the life I want to lead, and that’s the main thing for me.”

Geraldine – who also uses the pen names Natalie Dae, Sarah Masters and Charley Oweson – has been writing erotic fiction for around 10 years and has created close to 100 stories and novels.

“They usually focus on one couple, but I have written some with extra participants! I prefer to keep my stories ‘real’ and contemporary, but have been known to write fantasy, historical and horror,” she says.

She’s written every day since she was about 10, graduating from a diary to short stories at school and then romance novels “three that are absolutely awful and that I wouldn’t ever want anyone to read”.

They were her learning curve.

“Although I look back on them now as dreadfully written, I’m fond of them as they were the true beginning for me. I spent a few years having children then the urge to write came back and I haven’t stopped since,” she says.

At first she kept quiet on what she wrote about.

“People weren’t too accepting of those who wrote erotic romance.

“They got the wrong idea, that I was perhaps a sex maniac who must have done all the things in my books in order to know what to write about,” she says.

“I assure you that isn’t the case! I use Google as much as the next person – and my imagination.”

When Fifty Shades of Grey came out, taking reading and writing about sex mainstream, it made her “slightly cross”.

“All those years I and others had been writing it, people looked at us as if we were dirty, yet now it was acceptable.

“When something becomes trendy, all previous misconceptions about it go out of the window.

“I just wish women had felt free enough to read erotic romance without guilt years ago.”

But although Geraldine has the support of her family and is proud of what she writes, she still feels she must remain anonymous.

“Because I have children, I’m conscious of the effect it could have on them,” she says.

“Although they’re all aware of what I write, knowing how some people have perceived me in the past, and the reaction we got when I was in another newspaper pictured with one of my older children, it brought it home to me how some people are very quick to judge.

“It’s easier to just write what I write and keep to myself.”

She says her husband knows her erotic writing is like any other form of prose for her.

“It isn’t something I get all hot and bothered about, as some people would think,” she says. “I’m too concerned about making sure all the body parts are in the right place at the right time, whether my grammar is correct, and whether I’ve overused certain words!

“As I’ve always been honest with my children, they know I write romance books with added sauce, and because I’ve never hidden it, they don’t ask me any questions.

“They do know not to approach the computer or read over my shoulder, and to be honest, none of them ever have.

“As for the rest of my family, I was nervous about telling them but shouldn’t have been.

“They were very accepting, knowing that I just love to write and if adding erotica to it means my words will be read more widely, then so be it.”