Blackpool author SJ Carmine's 'Wax Whips and My Hairy Bits' taking Amazon book charts by storm

Writing under the name SJ Carmine, 52 year old Stephanie Oram has written six novels in just three years, with the works garnering a string of four and five star reviews.

Reviewers say the stories, described as ‘erotic comedy’, are “laugh out loud funny” and a breath of fresh air.

So successful have they been that one of the novels even outsold Pointless star and popular novelist Richard Osman on Amazon last year.

Yet Stephanie, who began as a total unknown in literary and media circles, had to resort to self-publishing them, starting with debut novel Wax, Whips and My Hairy Bits: An erotic comedy of errors, in 2020.

Now the possibility of the works being brought to the screen has emerged, with plans to film in Stephanie’s home town of Blackpool.

And it all started when the first Covid lockdown pulled the shutters down on her plans to set up a recruitment agency for the over-50s, forcing her into a major life-changing re-think.

What are they about?

The books follow the ongoing story of Ann who, after a series of dull and uninspired relationships, begins a journey to find her very own Mr Uninhibited but, as related in hilarious detail, things do not go quite as planned!

Stephanie turns all the clichés of romantic and erotic fiction on their head by casting a humous eye on how things really are in the world of courting.

Titles also include ‘Shoes, the Blues and Erotic To-Dos’ and ‘Flamingos , Fears and Happy Tears’.

The books are light and are aimed at giving mainly female readers are laugh, while writing for an audience she feels is often ignored in literature.

What she says

Stephanie, who lives off Whitegate Drive and is married to architect Lindsay Oram, said: “I’m a menopausal Northerner – if someone had told me I’d be sandwiched between the Hairy Bikers and Richard Osman in the book charts, I’d have said they were having a laugh.

"It ‘s been an incredible experience and it shows what ordinary working class women in their over-50s can do.

"I’m not a celebrity and the publishing industry frankly looks down its nose at this kind of thing – there is no way a publishing house would bother with these books.

"So I’ve done it by myself. Self publishing is really easy, Amazon does nearly everything for you.

"A lot of my ideas have come from reversing all the usual tropes – my heroines have cellulite and frizzy bad hair days but it’s about strong women who know their boundaries and are not going to do anything they don’t want to.

"It’s a celebration of women in the over 50s and I’ve had a lot of women contact me to say these stories really resonate with them.”

Lockdown anxiety

Yet Stephanie had to face a bleak time before this literary renaissance dawned.

She said: "At the start of the first lockdown I was in the process of setting up a recruitment agency to help over fifties get back into work.

"When lockdown hit all my plans were in tatters. I was suffering from horrendous menopausal/lockdown anxiety and I was in a terrible place.

"I knew I had to do something to occupy myself and maybe make other women in the same position as me laugh.

"As a woman of a certain age and former member of the PTFA, I had two choices – write funny, mucky books or make banana bread.

"I’m a rubbish cook, so banana bread was never going to be an option!”

Stephanie says Ann’s frank amorous misadventures are not drawn from her own personal experiences, but are a winning mixture of real life anecdotes from people she knows, her own imagination and some very earthy sayings in the Urban Dictionary.

She added: “Another exciting development is that the first book has been optioned by a production company.

"The script is being written and funding has been applied for.

"It is our intention that the production is going to be northern, diverse, working class and filmed in Blackpool!”

Another door opened when Stephanie ventured into stand-up comedy.

She added: “As one door closed several others have opened!”

All the titles are available in kindle and book formats on Amazon