Big Ed's Place

Sorry–couldn’t resist. Two of the yahoo groups I belong to had nearly identical posts, from different people, with that title. Such posts occur almost like clockwork. At least once a month, someone will post “I’m looking for a story where xxx and yyyy occurred” and hope that the denizens of the erotica group du jour recognize the story and can provide title, author, and site.

At first, I found such posts great–they seemed to be a good way of helping readers. Then I became annoyed–can’t people bookmark or download stories into their own libraries? It isn’t that hard. These days I’m mostly amused because I realized a handful of implications of such posts.

The first is that anyone actually “looking for a story” much read a lot of stories. I think it’s a lot harder to forget the name of a story you’ve read if you’ve only read a half dozen in the past year. I don’t know what the threshold is, but they can’t ‘blend together’ if there aren’t that many to blend together.

Now admittedly, there’s a time factor involved. It’s much easier to forget titles of stories read years ago than one read yesterday. But there’s still a need for the reader to have read many. If they’ve only read two books in the past five years, the odds are pretty good that, even if they can’t recall the title, they can recall where they got the book or where it’s likely to be now. But even with the time factor–the implication is pretty clear–these people “looking for a story” are very likely to be heavy readers.

Which means they’re fans of the genre. I’ve read maybe one Western in my life. I’ve read more science fiction than I can count. So which is genre is going to contain a story that’s memorable enough for me to recall plot and character details, but that I can’t place exactly? Again, the one with more stories I’ve read.

Complete aside–I do recognize the phenomena known as “misplaced in the library.” My wife and I own 8 seven foot tall bookcases, that are overflowing. And when the toddler came along, lower shelves got emptied and shoved into higher shelves willy-nilly. I have no idea what we own anymore. So I could easily some day ask about a book I actually happen to own.

Having fans of the genre I write in (and read in) is just cool. This is a communication medium, after all, and doing art that no one sees (or reads) is kind of pointless.

The second implication is that some of these stories have lasting power. They’re not ‘read and forget.’ This may be because of the characters and overall story, or it may be because there’s a really hot sex scene that the reader doesn’t want to explicitly mention in their request for help, but there’s something that tugs them back to wanting to reread the story. Stories memorable enough and/or good enough to be reread are just cool.

Second complete aside–I have a shelf that is “meaningful books.” It’s intentionally only one shelf, filled with the books that have had the biggest impact on my thinking and my life. It’s sometimes gratifying to see them sitting next to each other that way, as silent markers of contemplations past.

Which leads to the third implication–they’re not asking for my stories. I’ve seen only one “looking for a story” request for one of my stories in five years. Which means that either my stories are eminently forgettable, or my readers are remembering who wrote them and where to find them.

Now obviously there’s a ‘selection bias’ in that last implication. People who ask the question in yahoogroups where I post are likely to not forget who I am. They are therefore less likely to forget what stories are mine. I’m sure that if there’s someone scratching their head somewhere about a story I wrote, they’ll ultimately post their question in a different forum.

But it’s still cool. If my stuff sticks, it sticks well enough that people don’t need to ask about it later. And that, ultimately is part of what I’m trying to accomplish.

I remember growing up and having “Christmas Vacation.” Then I became an adult and the term ‘vacation’ seemed more and more a misnomer. Now, with a toddler, it’s even less true. We were up until Midnight on Christmas Eve wrapping presents and cleaning because there just hadn’t been time while he was awake. I’m assured it gets better.

Because of this crunch, I only managed a tiny bit of time to write. I added 212 words to Love’s Labor Found (LLF), bringing it to 7658 words in the Crappy First Draft. I’m wavering about what to do for the final scene. I think a no-sex finale might fit the story best, but that would leave this one decidedly short of erotic scenes. That said, I need to write the penultimate scene first and see if that tips the balance.

And such ‘write and see what happens’ is often what makes writing interesting. I know there are other authors who do most of their writing this way–just seeing where the story takes them. I am as a rule more structured–following my outline until the characters make it clear that they really want to go a different direction.

But even an outline leaves a lot of room for organic development, and this is one of those cases. The penultimate scene is the last one in my outline for LLF. It’ll move the series along to where I need it to be for Unmasked (the 8th Holiday Series story) and all the preceding scenes have built pretty well to it. The final scene is, for this story, really just a coda. So it’s not in the outline per se–just a ‘wrap it up and end on a happy note.’ Heck, I could just ‘fade to black’ if I was willing to leave it as a transition story, that doesn’t stand on it’s own too well. We’ll see what the organic writing brings.

That is assuming I find some time to write this next week. It’s still not ‘vacation’ for me. True, I’ll be taking some time off from work, but that’s because day care is closed. So instead of extra time to write, I’ll have to spend that time with my son. It’ll be fun when we’re playing ball or singing songs, but there will be hours that are just long, like when he’s tired and refusing to nap. Such is life with a toddler over the holiday ‘vacation’.

Recently, “Oh Get a Grip” has had a series of posts by their host authors on First Times (sexual and not) and before that, on genres one didn’t feel comfortable writing. Well, the genre that I’m second-most uncomfortable with (the first is memoir) combined both of those. It’s the teen coming-of-age story.

Why? Because, honestly, I have all too vivid memories of that time frame and nothing in those jives with what I read in the genre or even see in the TV and movies about high school.

Ya see, I graduated from a suburban high school of about 2000 kids. There were just shy of 500 in my graduating class, and that was typical for my state, outside of the rural areas. And with that many kids, I didn’t know them all. Hell, I didn’t even know one of my co-valedictorians and met her for the first time when we called to the office at the end of my senior year to be informed that they weren’t going to break the GPA tie.

Which meant that there really wasn’t a ‘popular clique.’ Yeah, we had cheerleaders, but my crowd largely ignored them. Football players weren’t gods and in fact, the track team was where the real pride was. I suppose you could have called us the ‘nerds’ or ‘geeks’ but when there’s 50 plus kids who fit that stereotype, it doesn’t much matter. Yes, we had our peer pressure situations and our intrigues and all the usual melodrama of being a teenager, but, frankly, 80-90% of the other students were just bodies in the hallways or occupants of the desk three rows over that we’d never see again after the eddies that swirled them into an honors class swirled them back out. That’s not to say we didn’t resonate with The Breakfast Club, when that film came out, but the characters therein represented different worlds in our school that didn’t meaningfully intersect.

That’s not to say it was trouble-free. I had to deal with bullies in junior high and had moments where I was publicly made fun of in high school. Alcohol, drugs, and sex were around, as were fights and low-grade crime (it was the suburbs after all, so gangs weren’t a part of the scene). It’s just that the tropes we commonly see in high school stories weren’t there.

This is what makes it hard for me to conceive of a decent story, much less write one. Most American teen high school stories involve a few basic tropes. The outsider getting ostracized by the cool kids, even though he/she is the true ‘cool’ one. The ‘king’ and ‘queen’ of the school who are popular and dating each other. There are scenes at dances or in the halls or other places where people shun the lead character when they walk in. Lots of kids are trying to find ‘their place.’ A few teachers have hearts of gold who bend over backwards for the kids, but at least one or two are completely incompetent (okay, the incompetent teachers trope was true for a couple of classes). Very few of us ended up married to our high school sweethearts (though, amusingly, mine babysits occasionally–it’s a long story for a different time).

But most of all, the high school tropes assume that it was a significant period in one’s life. Honestly, I can’t say that’s true–certainly not in comparison to what came after. Which is course is where the title of this post comes from.

Early in my senior year, they rounded us up into the auditorium where Jostens made a big pitch to us about buying class rings. It was a film that had the phrase “These are the best days of our lives.” I almost threw up on the spot (and never bought a class ring). If high school was the best, then it was time to slit my wrists and be done with it. Not because high school was particularly bad, but because that sentiment undermined all there was to live for in the future. For me, and the people I enjoy spending time with, high school was just a blip on the way to an interesting and enjoyable life. Not “the best days” by a long shot.

And that extends to the characters that interest me enough to write about them. I remember hormonal confusion. I remember the heady rush of a crush that consumed every waking moment. I remember the terror and passion of those first sexual steps, when getting to second base was actually a big deal. But I’ve been there, done that, and don’t think I could write about it without infusing it with a “get over it” tone.

That’s not to say there aren’t other authors who can and who do (and whom I enjoy). But me… I just don’t think I could write it. Which is why it’s a genre I just don’t expect to write.

Long week. Way too much work, as my customer tried to jam everything in before their folks started taking off for the holidays. Which of course means that I will not be taking off for the holidays, as I need to catch up on everything that didn’t get done this week. That includes Christmas preparation, of course. I’ve made minimal progress on preparing for Christmas, even though it’s only a week away. Overall, it’s just the holiday stress that makes it hard to be merry this time of year.

I did manage to do a little writing on the airplane on my business trip, however. I was at the window with an empty middle seat, which is a shocker these days. The guy in the aisle seat went to sleep and I realized that if I tilted my laptop appropriately, no one could see what I was writing. I knocked off 627 words on Love’s Labor Found, bringing it to 7446 words. I’ve only got two big scenes left, so it’s rounding nicely into a 10kword or so story.

I also have a working title for my queue jumper: Caught Online. I didn’t have a chance to work on it this past week so it remains at 446 words, but so it goes.

So after that status, I’d like to say something pithy or at least semi-witty. Unfortunately, the energy just isn’t there. Work sapped enough of the creative energies and what’s left has to go to figuring out what to get my wife for Christmas (yes, I know it’s only a few days away–did I mention work overload this month?).

Which is the other thing that makes December not much fun–it’s tiring. I have a bunch of great ideas for stories, this site, and things I can do elsewhere, but by the time I get a few free moments, I’m too tired to really let the creative juices flow. Fortunately, there are moments like the airplane trip where I can plug along.

Witty sayings next week. Or the week after that, if I end up just sleeping over the Christmas weekend.

I recently mused about how the movie sex, likes, and videotape ended up having a major role in my life (here). I figured I should do a review of it as well, for those who might not have seen it.

read more »

We’re cleaning out the basement and I came across the framed European quad poster of sex, lies, and videotape that appears in Friends and Benefits. Boy, did that bring back memories.

The full story starts in college. My then-girlfriend was a big movie buff–something I stole for Tina. She saw 1-2 movies a week, and often saw the same one several times. We were dating the year sex, likes, and videotape came out and I think we saw it three times in the theaters before she moved on to the next film to seriously grab her interest.

As for me… I loved it. The movie spoke to me in many ways, which I’ll cover in a review soon. It stuck with me as not only an amazing movie in and of itself, but at a personal level. I was a confirmed voyeur by then and I knew that the only thing that stood between me and being James Spader is that I had no deep emotional scars to lead me to choose video over real life relations.

But that was coming. When the college girlfriend and I broke up, it was one of those wrenching splits that leaves jagged scars for all to see. The type that ooze and often fester, as this one did.

It was shortly after we broke up that I walked into a poster shop in Tucson and saw the European quad poster. The clerk was a cute Hispanic girl who was very friendly. She liked the movie too and we had a great conversation. Much like in Friends and Benefits, I dithered about asking her out then, so I bought the poster to give me an excuse to come back. When I picked the poster up, I did ask her out. She said yes, gave me her phone number, and then said no when I called her to make the arrangements. My character “Tina” gained her superficial characteristics from that exchange.

The poster became the second piece of framed art to hang in my apartment; the first being a Nagel print that had been a gift from the college girlfriend. The Nagel remained in a discreet location whereas the movie poster held a prominent position on my wall in my living room. It would continue to hold a similarly prominent place for another decade even through two moves.

It finally came down when my wife moved in, as we had other things to hang on that wall. However, I’d been thinking about replacing it for some time, but never found something I liked that fit the space (a quad poster is quite large). That desire to replace it came from a conversation I’d had at my open house.

An acquaintance had noticed the poster and asked, “Do you realize what message you’re sending with that poster?” I said I didn’t think there was much message, and he said, “Are you sure? What would women who come over and see that think?”

A female friend sitting nearby said it would make her think twice about dating me. It certainly caused me to stop and consider what the poster meant to me.

And what I realized, is that, in many ways, I’d come to live the movie. I’d spent years obsessing about an ex, just like Spader’s character. My voyeurism had gone from minor to full blown, and while I didn’t have videotape, I did have photos. Furthermore, I’d wound myself so tight in controlling myself and my sexuality that I was missing out on a lot.

It’s not a good thing to wake up and realize you’ve been living a movie, even loosely, unless it’s a very happy movie. sex, lies, and videotape doesn’t qualify. But I did wake up, and the next few years were a great time of exploration that culminated in me meeting my wife.

So, it’s been a long hard week, with way too much to do for my job, and the standard not enough time to do it. I brought work home multiple nights and worked through lunch all but two days. It’s a little hard to write when that happens.

Nonetheless, I did find a little time. I squeezed out another 293 words on Love’s Labor Found, bringing it to 6819 words. I also had a queue jumper show up. At first I thought it was a flash story, but it’s already 446 words long, and is pushing to be about 2000. Yeah, I could tighten it and do a fade to black, but the more it bounces around my head, the more it wants an explicit sex scene.

Which is one of the ‘problems’ with it right now–it’s bouncing around a lot. I suspect there’s actually three stories in the concept, though I don’t want to really write three variations on a single theme. So I gotta pick one. And that’s where the other interesting vagary comes in: no title.

Ya see, the title is usually one of the first things I come up with. In fact, the story often isn’t ‘real’ in my mind until I know the title. Heck, The Ugly One was a title before it was anything else. And once I have a title, I find that it flows into the theme and has a way of popping up in dialogue or other sentences throughout the story.

Heck–I’ve got great titles that don’t have decent stories under them yet. “Son of a Bitch”, for example. You know immediately from that title what the lead female character’s gonna be like.

So… no title. Maybe it’ll come to me this week. Maybe I’ll muddle through a bit more and it’ll come to me. Or maybe the story won’t gel and it’ll go into my unfinished and abandoned folder. We’ll have to see.

Anyway, the current queue:

In progress:
Love’s Labor Found (7th Holiday Series story)
Babe in the Night (submitted for paid publication to an editor who hasn’t replied in 2 months–about to be resubmitted elsewhere)

Likely queue jumper:
Untitled story

Firmly in queue:
Unmasked (Holiday Series story #8)
Giving Thanks (Holiday Series story #9)
The Devil in the Details (a Summer Camp story)
Boys of Summer (next Compassionate Courtesan Universe novel)

Potential queue jumpers:
The Size of Their Toys (a Summer Camp story)
Deep Dish (a Summer Camp story)
Historical Fiction novel (would be written under my real name)

Might get added:
Son of a Bitch (reworked short story)
The Devil’s Due (turn the Devil stories into a trilogy, but lacks clear plot)
Mayflower (how Sherri from the Compassionate Courtesan Universe meets Susan from Summer Camp)
Mainstream sci-fi short story (reworked from first attempt, would be written under my real name)
Any of about a dozen ideas that haven’t crystalized even this far

So that’s where I’m at.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I’m on Nick Scipio’s reality team. What that means is that I see and comment on his drafts before they are released.

When Nick sent me the draft for Chapter 11 of Book 4, I argued that it didn’t make sense for Paul and Leah to be excluded from swinging with their parents completely—that there would be times when Sean wasn’t around. Nick disagreed, but we continued to discuss the idea. In particular, I felt that the adults wouldn’t cut Leah and Paul off unless something had happened. I suggested a ‘something’ to Nick and he told me to go write the story. It became Bent.

This one was a challenge because, while the plot was minimal and it was reasonably short, I was playing with many more of Nick’s characters than I did in Dealing with the Devil and I had to make them seem like the same people. Fortunately, Nick helped out and I’m reasonably satisfied with the result.

I also wanted to tackle the incest taboo in a slightly more realistic manner than most of the stories on the internet. Nick’s universe is one of the few on storiesonline where characters engaged in incestual encounters actually have second thoughts about them. I believe the struggle between the lure of the taboo and the recognition that it’s fraught will peril is important to capture. While I didn’t spend a long time with those internal struggles (Chris isn’t David, after all), I hope I did realistically show how the slippery slope of allowing rules to be bent can lead to them being bent more than ultimately desired.

So I’ve discussed how including taboo in a story will increase the readership on storiesonline and other free sites. I’ve discussed how I believe part of that is the nature of the brain chemical speedball we get from the taboo. But those arguments are general, and there’s one taboo that seems to stand above the others in online erotica: incest.

Heck, the whole point behind my story 9.7 was how story codes influenced ratings. And it’s not “beast” that’s driving stories to the top. So what specifically makes the incest taboo so attractive?

My opinion? First, besides the speedball, I think that taboo has an inherent sociological lure. There’s a rush with “being bad” or stepping across the boundaries. It helps reaffirm that we’re not staid boring old farts. We can flirt with the places where there be dragons! If you can’t head for the physical frontier, you can find the sociological frontier.

I think that incest is a particularly good “frontier taboo” because it’s understandable. Not a lot of people can image why scat or bestiality would be arousing, but it’s not a stretch to imagine that an attractive woman has the name “mom” instead of “Susan.”

I also think that many guys remember those early years of puberty when the hormones were in complete control and any woman looked attractive. Boys peeking on their sisters or mothers is pretty common. Many incest stories tap into that and take it to an idealistic fantasy conclusion.

Aside: I think MILF fantasies come from that same era in a guy’s life. He was ignorant but full of hormones. Wouldn’t it have been great to have an older woman teach him all about sex? Maybe not in real life, but the fantasy has some serious grounding in past experience.

There’s of course the Freudian explanations for sexual attraction to our parents. I’m not sure how much I buy them myself. Is it possible to add a sexual attraction to an existing love interest? Sure, but it doesn’t seem causal. Besides, it’s fairly clear in hindsight that a lot of Freud’s theories were because he just couldn’t face the fact that there was a fair amount of child sexual abuse going on by the fathers in his social class.

But that, I think, is where the reason for the taboo shows up. Fantasies, and reading fiction however unrealistic, are one thing. Engaging in the act is another. While I believe that consenting adults should have wide latitude in their private sex lives, consent becomes trickier in familial relations (and note: “consenting” and “adults” are key parts of that sentence).

This is in large part because I’ve never seen a family that didn’t have underlying power dynamics. Even when all parties are adults, the ability to say yes or say no to one’s parents or siblings can be fraught with emotional baggage. My personal example is my grandmother–when she said “you’ll come over Sunday”, it wasn’t a request and all her kids, even the ones in their 50′s, showed up. Even near-age siblings can have such dynamics, making it dangerous water to add in a sexual component.

Which I think is the final part of the attraction. Not many of us grew up in families that were open enough and healthy enough about sex that we could walk into the living room, say “I’m really horny, what should I do about that?” and not freak out everyone else in the family. So the incest fantasy appeals not only for its sexual taboo elements, but for the idealized family elements.

Now, obviously, these are only my opinions and speculations. I’ve never engaged in incest and the overwhelming majority of the people I know personally who have report that it was ultimately damaging for them. But fantasies usually aren’t about the realistic. And in the online world, the ideal, when mixed with a speedball, seems to draw the readers.

This past week my annual December blues hit. I’ve never liked the month, and traditionally get to wrestle with those darker bah humbug feelings for most of the month. Some of it is the cold and lack of sunlight. I once went a week without sun and found I was manic. Fortunately, Colorado has 300 plus sunny days a year and very few contiguous dark days, so it’s more the shortening of the days that gets me than anything else.

But this year I also realized that a lot of it is work related. I usually have more business travel and customer meetings in December than most other months. But this time around, I realized that the fundamental problem is that we’re trying to cram 5 weeks of work (between Thanksgiving and the first full work week of January) into 3 weeks. Everyone is trying to be finished by the 18th or so. This is a recipe for stress if not downright failure, without even considering all the additional holiday related chores that get added on. And I realized that this pattern has been in place since college and the end of the semester projects. We’re trying to do too much.

So I’m going to try to be easy on myself on the fun stuff, which is the writing. I’d hoped to finish the Crappy First Draft of Love’s Labor Found by mid-December, so I could get it released close to the end of the Grand Opening stories release. Well, maybe that will happen, maybe it won’t. But I will write at whatever pace happens rather than pushing myself.

That said, I had a night in a hotel room this past week due to a business trip, and was able to knock out another 859 words, plus some editing, bringing the total to 6526 words. It’s pretty clear this one’s going to clock in around 10kwords, as plot-wise I’m past the halfway point. Maybe the two days I’m stuck in a hotel room in a few weeks will allow more writing. Then again, it may be spent cramming the last bit of work in before the next day.