<p><em>From the author:</em></p><p>When I decided to reissue my early books in the Collection of Classic Erotica, I did so without realizing what I was getting myself into. I would have to read them again.<br />
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Or, as in the case of BORN TO BE BAD, I&rsquo;d have to read them for the first time.</p><p>I remembered just three things about the book. (1) The title, BORN TO BE BAD. (My mother, on hearing about the novel, suggested that BORN TO BE BANGED might have been a superior choice.) (2) The name of the heroine, Rita Morales. (My mother, bless her heart, thought Rita Immorales might better suit the character.) (3) The circumstances of the writing&mdash;that it was the fall of 1958, that I had just returned to Antioch College after a gap year with a literary agency, that I wrote it on an office-model Remington typewriter in the office of the Antioch College Record, where I was serving as Managing Editor prior to assuming the full-time editorship the following semester, and that between the newspaper and the books I was writing, I was devoting precious little time to my classes. When I was supposed to be reading PARADISE LOST, by John Milton, and Roderick Random, by Tobias Smollett, I was instead writing BORN TO BE BAD, by Sheldon Lord.<br />
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It was my third novel for Harry Shorten at Midwood Books, and you&rsquo;d think I might have a clearer recollection of the circumstances of writing it, if not of the book itself. At the very least, I&rsquo;d have expected to have a good number of Oh Yeah moments while reading it. &ldquo;Oh yeah, I remember that character. Oh yeah, I remember that scene. Oh yeah, I remember cooking up that plot twist.&rdquo;<br />
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Nope. It was all remarkably new to me&mdash;and I drew great comfort from the discovery that it was better than I&rsquo;d expected. It&rsquo;s the story of the daughter of a Cuban prostitute from the slums of Miami who goes to New York, breaks into show business, moves from a Times Square hotel room to a Greenwich Village apartment, and takes aim at a life of middle-class respectability. She meets some unusual people and does some unusual things, and stuff happens. And you know what? It&rsquo;s not bad.<br />
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Still, let&rsquo;s keep Rita&rsquo;s bildungsroman in perspective. She&rsquo;s no Becky Sharp, and BORN TO BE BAD&rsquo;s not on the same shelf as Vanity Fair. (Uh, that&rsquo;s be the novel, by William Makepeace Thackeray, not the magazine. But you knew that, right?)</p><p>Never mind. I can but hope you enjoy BORN TO BE BAD as much in your first reading of it as I did just now, in mine. I should mention that the cover is by the great Paul Rader, who did so many outstanding covers for Midwood. The book sported a different cover in 1962, when Midwood reissued it with the title PUTA. Then, five years later, they trotted it out again with a third cover and its original title restored. So I guess they must have sold a few copies over the years, but I never got anything beyond the original $600 advance. But you know what? I&#39;m okay with it.</p>