Blog Entry of 12/22/11

Closing out 2011 with Stories

The Epilogue to Queen of the Nile will be out on Friday before Christmas. Part II of Sal the Super is already posted. Lots of Nookie in Apt 301! I think I will keep this as a running story because the scenarios are many in a 100 tenant apartment building. I will also keep the Diane Journal up as a running story. Need to address sequels for several stories. Hope to have most of that finished before the middle of January. Tinkletown was not intended to be a series but I have already written part two. However I will make it a new story called The Smiley Face Panties.

Blog Entry of 12/26/11

Patterns of Geographic settings in stories.

Over the course of my short writing career (about 10 months) I have choosen for some unknown subconscious reason various locales for the stories. Some have been in Asia. A number of my early stories have been in the Balkans and Italy. I have a whole genre of stories that seem to focus on Britain as a preferred locale. A number of my recent stories have returned to locales in the USA and have been in Las Vegas, New York, Washington DC and New Orleans. Strangely, I have been writing stories situated in France lately and I have no idea why. Most of my experiences in France were somewhat negative with the possible exception of Nice and the Riviera. I think it was because my French was stilted and mispronounced with Teutonic and Slavic accents not like a proper American. I once was accused of being a Ukranian Jew by a policeman trying to ruffle my feathers. My recent series of "Sal The Super, The Nookie King of the Bronx" returns me to my roots. I will cease to attempt to discover logic in story locales and just go with the flow.

Blog Entry of 12/29/11

The Problem of Story Length in Short Story Terms

When I first started to write short stories only a scant 10 months ago, I did not have a clue as to exactly what constituted a proper short story. After reading several hundred stories, I came to the conclusion that length of the story is a key issue. Please bear in mind that most of these comments refer to the genre of erotica as that is my primary focus. It became painfully obvious that a sizable percentage of readers are "turned-off" by a story that is too short and an equally sizable number of readers are turned off by a story that is so long it starts to get repetitive or boring. It seemed to me that 2,000 to 3,000 words are an ideal format to do a single entry story and also ideal for multi-entry stories or even a continuing series featuring the same main characters. I know this sounds a bit "formula driven" but I believe it is just good sense to follow what readers seem to enjoy or expect in a "short" story. I have written about 250 stories this past year and they average 4 to 5 pages each. My "best" story in terms of total readership was called "A Bet is A Bet" It is on this site but does not enjoy as much success here. I suspect that the average reader on SOL is more knowledgeable of what constitutes "Good" writing. I wrote that story with the express intent of gaining a "famous" story badge on another site. I fell short by only a couple of thousand reads and I have determined that the magic formula for a story that collects a high degree of readership is subject to many other factors besides the skill in writing or the interest factor of the material. More on this later.

Blog Entry of 1/1/12

Vampire Erotica, Nun Fetishs, and Nookie Kings.

After a fun series like "The Queen of the Nile", I started writing 3 concurrent themes on the Erotic sex habits of Vampires, The kinky activities of Sister Ursula, and The adventures of "Sal the Super, The Nookie King of the Bronx. None of these stories have anything in common and are not related in any way. I suspect that the excitement of writing 3 different yet related story lines in the Queen of the Nile was stimulating and the prospect of 3 completely different stories in my mind at the same time was even more so. The Vampire Erotica was instigated by a female friend and reader of my stories who told me of her obsession with everything vampiric in nature. Similar to the devotion of Star Trek or Harry Potter fans in concentration on the single subject. The story is actually a spin off of "The Voodoo Queen" series which I hope to rewrite and make more palatable to readers. The character of Lafitte, the pirate vampire chieftain is somewhat more believable than the Voodoo Queen even though both have a basis in reality. Sister Ursula is a composite of Nuns; all to whom I have the greatest respect and owe much for my education. My erotic writings are not intended to demean them in any way. It is just a "Canterbury Tales" way of portraying them in the short story form. Now Sal the Super is a very real part of reality and He exists in my memory as a real King of a man.