Dirty: A Sexy Novel about a Smutty Start-Up (The Taking Sexy Back Series, 1)

Dirty is Sense and Sensibility set in the porn industry.

When two thirty-something friends lose their dot-com jobs in early 2000’s San Francisco, they pool their severance to start an internet-based business together. 

Wallowing in an identity crisis brought on by being an out-of-work Stanford MBA, Nora Kind is on the hunt for her “killer app,” an idea that will prove profitable and earn her a place in the B-school boys’ club. Artist Katie Kleinman, on the other hand, just wants to find a way to keep expressing herself creatively that also pays her mounting bills.

One afternoon at a suburban bridal shower, a male stripper bumps and grinds against a table, knocking a glass of boozy punch to the ground. While the other women in attendance—Katie included—gather to ogle the scantily clad clean-up, Nora spots a lucrative opportunity. On the drive back to the city, Nora suggests she and Katie leverage their experience to start YourFantasyMan.com, a website featuring men in various stages of undress doing household chores. Nora emphasizes an analytical approach, but Katie embraces an edgier aesthetic angle. And neither woman proves immune to temptations of the flesh.

With a series of obstacles instigated by a jealous competitor and Nora’s scorned fiancé threatening the company, the ladies must figure out how to navigate the male-dominated worlds of adult entertainment, local politics, and national criticism. Only by leaning on Nora’s business acumen and Katie’s emotional intelligence will they succeed in their professional and personal quests.

Megan E. McDonald has published poetry and personal essays in California Writers Club anthologies Fault Zone (2021, 2025) and Phases (2023). She was named 2018 Literary Stage Exhibitor of the Year at the San Mateo County Fair, and placed in poetry and fiction in 2019. Her pitch for novel Dirty won the 2018 Kauai Writers Conference Pitchapalooza. She’s read at literary salon Bay Area Generations, delivered a Perspectives segment on KQED Radio, and was selected as a semi-finalist for writing reality show America’s Next Great Author. Originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, Megan now lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.