Big Ed's Place

It’s been quite a ride.

This story started because I wanted to explore the concept of “friends with benefits” and particularly I wanted to explore that grey area between being clearly friends and being clearly lovers.  I’ve had a relationship like that, and several of my readers have commented that they, too, have had such relationships.

Once I’d picked that concept, the rest fell into place.  Some of it draws on my own experiences, though not to the extent that The Ugly One did.

When I realized I needed a catalyst for Joe’s growth, I immediately thought of Sherri, from The Ugly One.  Her philosophy and business plan are drawn from a tantrika (female tantra teacher) I’ve known socially, but am no longer in touch with. The tantrika believed in sacred prostitutes, and had intercourse with some of her male clients if she thought it would serve them, despite identifying as a lesbian.  I had her in mind when Sherri appeared in The Ugly One, and realized she was just too much fun to not expand into a major character.  Her mentor Susan is indeed from Nick Scipio’s Summer Camp, and the references herein are with permission.  I’m still having fun with Sherri, so look for her to appear in future stories.

The rest of the characters and the plot are the usual amalgam of pure fiction and past experiences, swirled together.  Pulling it all together was usually a joy, and sometimes quite challenging, particularly when real life intervened at times and forced me to slow down my writing.

My wife’s support was invaluable in getting through those times.  I wouldn’t be able to write what I do without her.  In addition, one of the things that helped keep me going was the supportive fan mail.  Thank you, everyone who wrote.  It’s been quite a ride, and one heckuva journey.

Lost Girls, by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, is beautiful, thought provoking, and a bit disturbing. A very thick graphic novel, it’s not cheap nor, surprisingly, a quick read.  The basic premise is that Wendy (of Peter Pan), Alice (of Wonderland fame), and Dorothy (of the Wizard of Oz) all stay at the same hotel in Europe in 1914.  It doesn’t take long for their paths to cross and then… things go through the metaphorical looking glass. read more »

Okay… time for a mini-rant on length.

No, I’m not talking about penis length, though that’s worthy of a rant in porn. Bad porn gives penis sizes. Good porn doesn’t. This is in part a good writing technique, in that it lets the readers relate more easily to the male characters. But it’s also a realism thing. Most men are average for a reason, even if that’s not the case in porn.

Worse, porn distorts what’s really important. It’s not length–it’s girth. In fact, too much length is a bad thing–just ask any guy who’s banged a woman’s cervix. That hurts both of you. Given that most of the nerves in the vagina are in the first inch and the other interesting spots (clit, g-spot) aren’t likely to be touched by the average not-horribly-curved penis, extra length doesn’t do much. But if a woman wants to feel full, or to have all those nerve endings stimulated, she likes wide and thick.

So the same thing often holds in free porn. Length doesn’t match up with quality by necessity, or even regularly in my experience. Yeah, sometimes as a reader I want more than the amuse-bouche of a short story, but I also like to be able to start a story without committing a week to finishing it. Novels are a standard length for many reasons and I’m convinced that part of it is that it’s just frigging hard to write a decent quality mega-novel.

Which doesn’t prevent the mega-story of a bazillion words from having a following on storiesonline and elsewhere. I’ve heard the reasons–readers want a chance to really see characters develop. They want something that will fill an evening. They want to come back to a story/universe already knowing the quality rather than try something new.

Yeah… but can’t all of those be done with novel and novella length stories? How much character development can be done in 250kwords that can’t be done in 120kwords? And, for a really good writer, in even less? I think I could successfully argue more character development in Joyce’s “The Dubliners” short stories than most storiesonline meganovels.

Furthermore, how much is just padding–the action loop or sex scene du jour? Rearrange the names and the positions and throw in a new code and you’ve got another 5kwords, right? We have the erotic equivalent of Law and Order–where the scenario doesn’t change night after night even if the writing is top notch otherwise.

But of course what gets my dander up is the ‘recommended reading’ lists that only have the mega-novels on them. Try some other stuff, folks. Find that gem that you love that’s only a novel long. Or even less. Because if we only hype the big stuff, then newbies will feel they have to write the big stuff, and that’ll just delete the quality and make it harder for new authors to really develop the craft.

Okay–rant off.

Another light week. 133 words added to Love’s Labor Found, bringing me to 3093. It’s feeling like this is going to wind up around 10kwords when I’m done. Maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less.

I think if I wasn’t so busy with other writing tasks (i.e., finishing this site), I’d be a bit disappointed. I’m just dribbling along, stealing a lunch hour here and there to write. I could probably knock out a good hunk of writing if I could concentrate. More a stream than a dribble. In particular, I’m lacking the “hmmm” time (when I go “hmmm. How am I going to do this?”). But this still feels good. It’s something, and soon the other tasks will be done.