! I'm in! I'm in!

So I didn't get the little pink "H" (the editor's mark for a hot story), but my story's posted! Well, chapter one is. But two and three are pending, and aren't allowing any more edits, and have dates on them, so I think they might be in, too! Just going out a day or so apart (which I thought was really considerate--keep them from getting in out of order, etc). If that's so, I should know about the second chapter in a few hours. (The third, more mercurial, will appear in his own good time.)

The formatting looks beautiful, too. Three cheers for the editors!!!

I'm absolutely paranoid, still, but I've had nothing but nice comments. My voting score (did I mention there was voting involved?) is pretty high, which is really gratifying. I love to make people happy. I love to make people feel sexy. (And who am I kidding? I love getting praised for my writing. I love it way too much.)

I'm pretty stunned at the response. It's been twenty-four hours. I don't have many comments, compared to the number of views and votes (which I understand--what do you say to that?), but there are already almost 3900 views ((EDIT: 17500 views! Jesus Christ.)), and 50 votes. My days of fanfic did not prepare me for that. On a good story in an active fandom, 15 or so commenting readers has been tops. Places I posted had maybe 300 members total, and probably not too many people 'lurking.' Some stories on this site have been viewed 5.5 million times.

I can't even fathom that. How many people go to this site?

Anyway. I'm way too shy to write back to the handful of comments I've received. I'm guessing because of the subject matter? But I also got spoiled on comment threads, where you don't have to make a step quite so active as jotting an email. I mean, the email I'd use is strictly for comments here and for Literotica, so it's not so... I don't know, exposed. But me being a married woman and all, it seems a little seedy, doesn't it?

Maybe it's one thing to write something for total strangers to masturbate to, but another to thank them for doing it. Hmm.

I do want to thank them, though. Thank you, wherever you are! Happy hunting!!

For posterity or wanderers-by, here is the link to chapter one. (I'll edit this with the links to the others, when/if they get in. :) ) Confessions of a Slutty Cousin, Chapter One.
Chapter Two.
And Chapter three!

(P.S. Should I vote on my own story? It seems a little cheap, but it's probably fair play. Hrm...) Continue reading...

Columns?

Sometimes I wonder about running "columns" in this blog. I write a lot of first-person fiction, after all. I could run "Confessions of a Slutty Cousin" (which I sent in to Literotica in chapter form, today) in short pieces. Or "Neurotic/Erotic," a series of adventures of an existential sex hero. I know people can get that in nonfiction form (and sometimes "nonfiction" form), so a fake blog is probably in a distant second place to the real thing, or something even pretending to be. But I don't want to just make a couple extra blogs and pretend they're real; I did that, once, and it was a bad, bad, bad idea, however innocent or just generally disassociative the initial intention was. But running blog features? That could be fun.

I'm a little suspicious about giving into the blog-as-literature phenomenon. It's not that I don't think it's legitimate to get your memoir on in a blog, definitely not--I've read some stunning blog writing--but making a fiction version? Writing fiction as if it were a blog? ...Seems like it could come off a little, well, sad.

But I have to admit, it's tempting. If not written explicitly as a blog, just as sort of.. periodical fiction? Maybe someone would enjoy reading it. Maybe it would draw a little attention (...yes, I'm a whore?); that happens, sometimes. And attention is something I don't have, here. Blogging without readers is--well, it's tempting to say it's like masturbation, but it's not even that. It's like talking about masturbating, when no one's even listening, and that's not a place you want to go.

There is also the fear of plagiarism, though (not to sound narcissistic; some people will plagiarize anything), which is a point against it.

I'd ask you what you think about the matter, but you're not there. It's a conundrum, friend. Continue reading...

Putting it out there.

So, I write smut. Right? Right.

I even completed NaNoWriMo, this year, although I haven't actually finished the novel. It's a BDSM love story about a terminal woman who has traded in her assets for care and ownership by a widower. It's kinda' lovely, really. But I'm also not sure how someone would go about publishing something like that. Things that don't settle well in one genre or another are harder to get moving, aren't they? And gloomy love dramas may not pull the same audiences as BDSM stories. The Venn diagram has to have a fairly narrow center, doesn't it?

The bigger problem I have in the meantime, though, is my inability to finish the things I start. Publishing is a moot point when there's no finished work.

It's not that I abandon them permanently. Really. It's just that there are so many going at once that there's always something else to write before I finish the first. I have plenty of thirty and forty page starts to novels, fourteen or fifteen page starts to short stories, two or three page beginnings to any kind of thing. I really thought I'd finish this one, though. That I'd have finished it by now. It passed 50,000 words, after all. How hard is it to finish?

Hard enough, apparently. The siren call of everything else has dragged me away. 54k in one month, and in another 5 weeks since then, I've barely written 5k more for it. As much on three different other projects, I'll grant you, but it doesn't give ya' that sense of completion.

I did finish something else, though. I suppose it's actually my first finished, non-fanfic smut piece, now that I think of it. So the question finally does come to publishing--but it's in the badlands.

For one thing, it's a terrible length. About 40 pages. Long for a short story, short for a novella. Fine for a compilation or anthology, but who wants to include an unpublished writer in one of those? With something so long/short? With a taboo subject matter?

Because it's also in one of those "no, we won't publish it under any circumstance" categories. Unfortunately, a whole lot of my smut falls into one of those or another, at least for a lot of publishers.

Believe me, I don't mind writing for my own jollies and for the good of mankind, but... it gets to feel a little futile, you know? Fanfic is grand, until it's something you know you'll never be able to translate into original fiction. But I am a whore for praise. I need to be fed one way, or another, to keep writing. Feedback is as good as it gets for most of us, I think. Better.

So I sent it in, to Literotica. Free site, no compensation, but I've always loved it. And it's edited, and will (if they accept a story) let you be listed on a kind of writer's auction block (I need a Will Write For Food sign, I think). They do sometimes do compilations that get published, people sometimes leave feedback.. . . It's a good start. At least, if my story gets in. If I haven't made a huge blunder with how I submitted it. If people read it. If people vote, comment, etc...

I'm a good writer. I write cleanly, and I think--I hope--I write sexily. I think I'll get accepted. But... What if I don't?

And why am I so scared about it?

This really isn't like sending it in to a publisher who has rules against the things I'm writing about. It's lower stakes. But it is the first finished thing, the first non-fanfic thing. It's the first time someone has stood between me and posting/publishing (barring a couple poetry submissions Back In The Day--two of which did get in, tyvm).

Maybe it's my pride? Shuddering and stuttering before a fall? I know in my heart that what I write is a lot better than things I've seen published--even published properly, in books, for money. That doesn't bother me--I don't wish ill on people who do well in the arts, whatever they do. And the thought of rejection itself doesn't bother me--people get rejected all the time. Maybe it's the thought of them both coming together? I did read a lot on that site, today, saw a lot of poor spelling and grammar, a lot of weak dialogue and impossible measurements and clunky scenarios, and so on, but... what if what I do still isn't considered as sexy as those other stories? What if it's just not as sexy? What if I'm not loved?

Ah. There, methinks, is the rub.

I want to be loved.

I don't need a lot of praise, I don't think. It doesn't have to be profuse. But words want to be read, don't they? Words need reactions. They need to strike out and strike up.

I want to be loved. I want to excite, to thrill! Or, if not, to at least amuse, a little. Even if it's a cheap thrill.

I keep grabbing my head, wondering why in hell I let it roll out for the chopping block. I'm glad I can't snatch it back up, because I might have. But I am second guessing. I'm fussing, and worrying, and checking email more often than makes any sense. It'll probably be at least three days.

I'll let you know how it goes.

(Who am I fooling, really?) Continue reading...

A good time to figure out 'read more,' I figured.

Edited to amend: The amazing feats required to actually make this ship "read-more" compliant have quite lit the fires back under me. Huzzah! Avaunt!

I feel like I'm a bit going mad today. I'm having trouble with productive impulses--namely, that they're not working. I want the dishes, laundry, and work done, but it just makes me grimace a bit and dance away.

I feel very much like I want to go a it mad, right now, but I embarrass too easily for that sort of thing....


I'd start saying the things that came to mind, but without enough confidence, and then there'd be the odd looks, but I won't have backed it up with enough gumption for it to be an "Oh, well, then, she's mad, that's all right then," it'll just be more of that uncomfortable and disdainful stuff, and then I'll feel sick and embarrassed. So, so embarrassed.

I've been reading, all morning, and feeling sick. I've tried to eat responsibly (i.e. enough), and that's helping a bit, but the discomfitted feeling and the nauseated one aren't helping.

I've been bogged down in a sense of racial tension. Namely, by the thought of white people I know in the "I'm not racist, but..." mode, which is so very charming. And then especially when one of them is targeted for a little reversal that they, quite honestly, didn't call on themselves. Which is a sure way (a) to make me feel sick to my stomach with upset, and (b) reinforce their "but..."

I don't want to go back to cheerful ignorance of the bad bits of the world, and back to the misconceptions that everyone has an equal go at things, and that racism and sexism and all such are dead, because I do value having a fairly accurate sense of the world (and if everyone accepted it was gone, who would be left to do anything about it?), but it was certainly a lot easier.

I'm trying to fish out that nice little point which is (1) I know, (2) I care, (3) I'm keeping a watch out for it, and (4) acting when I can, but (5) I'm going to keep living my life in the most positive way I can, because (6) there's no reason to add any more misery to the world.

But it's difficult.

I ... I've lost it. Ah, well.

Playing in dischordant A minor on the piano helped. This is helping. (Therapy, right?) But I can't seem to buoy myself back up and out of the sense of vague dread and sickness that sticks on my when I have Those Kinds of Conversations with Girlfriend B. I know that it only makes it worse if I argue, and that if I just let her go for a while she'll run out, and if I don't encourage her it should make my point, but how sickening is that? Having to sit back and let it go? Well, not sickening. Just in the sense that it makes me feel seething inside. Not sure if it's angry or guilty or sick.

Probably all.

Fuck.

And now this--this? Really?--I'll post up on the web. Why? There's no real sense. I could just show it to Love (I'm pretty sure he's the only one reading) or keep it to myself, in the age old tradition of psychotherapy, where you write the letter and then don't send it, but it supposedly exorcises your demons.

I used to keep a file full of these feelings, back in an old life. I think this is some kind of preventative method against that. I forced all of those sick and guilty and disappointed (there's the word!!) feelings into it, and just felt low and mean and unpleasant, when something had come at me wrong and I couldn't see a way to lance the wound to purgative effect, rather than to infection.

The last time I tried to argue this kind of thing with Girlfriend B, it got bad, and she wisely stopped and hung up, realizing very well the kind of momentum this shit could build up, but when I didn't hear from her in longer than usual, I was et at by the sense that I'd lost her, and was conflicted with that kind of empty triumph of a moral battle won with a friend lost. I wasn't sure whether I cared or didn't if I lost her, and it was some of both. I don't think I care enough about people, sometimes. I love people, but I somehow haven't got the strength of pursuing them to forgive them that I used to. I'm much more willing to let them go off, now.

But I don't have many friends.

Things like this make me not want to, really. I want to hide with my plants and my Love and feel sick.

But I don't really want to do that.

Hence the dilemma, eh?

Anyway, I don't want back into that week of disgusting doubt and worry. I was good, I derailed it myself (or, rather, didn't let it rail up in the first place), and when I hear from her again, it'll be gone. But I don't want to hear from her, because every time I think of her, think of the situation, think of anything that reminds me of it at all, I feel sick.

I don't think I've ever written the word "sick" so many times in a single sitting. Or in several. Not even in jest.

Maybe it'd do me good to get sick, properly, right now. (My making that kind of statement tends to precede its happening, and that is followed by the burst of wisdom that scolds me for having thought it, and reminds me how really miserable it is to be sick, whatever the appeals are from the other side.) But it's always the same. I feel dull and weak and sluggish and unpleasant, like I'm just getting the half-assed of it, and there's nothing really to do with it except go easy and ... I don't know, drink tea and juice and try to keep the spirit and health up. Except for getting properly sick and letting the immune system clear it out proper.

But that's such an unpleasant experience. And besides, I'm set to be very busy tomorrow. Which, when I think about it, will either mean I'm plenty sick by the time it comes around, or it'll be the tipping point to send me right into the arms of pestilence.

I want to cry, and hold a couple of my less-thriving plants and tell them it'll be all right, and rouse them with my tears and carbon dioxide and warmth and vibrations. I want it to work, and I want it to work on me, too.

The sick is much like the madness. I keep thinking I could just have it done with, and feel better for it, but I know, down, that it wouldn't make things better. Not at all.

The best thing, I know, down, is that I try to feed the health and the heart and keep it up, and if I have to deal with a little ill, I'll be better prepared to come out of it whole.

I'm a fucking optimist, for chrissakes, and I want that optimism to have some self-respect and get out from under the covers and come out to help me along. I could use it. That and some sunshine.

So, this having done as much as it probably can, I'm going to go out and get some light. We're enough like plants, after all. How can we expect to thrive in the dark?
Continue reading...

Finally, a little light!

I would just like to point out that the intelligent, sexy, fabulous blogs of The Girl with a One-Track Mind and Mon Mouth frequently make my day.

Make my day a lot sexier, to be specific.

I am grateful for their existence. Anyone else looking in here? Go check them out.




I have another habit (aside from blog-reading) that makes my day take on a pleasant, naughty glow. It probably comes out of reading too much erotic fan-fiction, to be frank (or else my fixation on said fiction is a symptom of this predilection--chicken and the egg much?), but in any case...

I take a lot of joy from perverting the everyday scenes around me. The smut goggles are always on, so to speak. People I see/hear/meet frequently wind up engaged in strange trysts, with one another (or with me, or with My Man, or with some combination thereof) in the privacy of my own little mind. Haunting the hubby's work functions feeds me material for the erotica I write, and certainly keeps me interested in the topic at hand, whatever it is. (People are always so flattered or baffled that someone from outside could take such an interest, even in the bureaucracy. If they only knew, eh? I wonder if some of them do?)

Even my own job provides me with these opportunities. I'm a secretary, for god's sake--a masochistic secretary who gets off on being told what to do, on following very simple, direct instructions.

Imagine the opportunities, won't you?

Every little "Input this into _____, thanks" or "Please copy this and send it back" that winds up in my inbox can get me squirming, on the right day, hot and eager to comply. It wouldn't work, I suppose, if my if I didn't find some of my coworkers very sexy (unless they were completely anonymous, I suppose), or probably even if there was any remote possibility anything would happen (which, I assure you, there is Not), but while it's a delightful impossibility, I remain delighted.

And it sure makes menial tasks a lot more fun. Continue reading...

Can I really profess anonymously? Maybe I'm just bitching, then.

I am feeling deeply depressed.

I'm getting sick of hearing from each of two girlfriends about how the other is an unreasonable source of "drama." They're BOTH unreasonable sources of drama, goddamnit, and it makes me batshit. I, however, don't turn it into terrible feuds and then come bitching to me about the feud. What do they expect me to say? They try to bait me, by telling me what the other is doing. They try to get sympathy and information, and while I do try to be generically sympathetic, I'm not going to comdemn either of them to the other. Fuck it. If A wouldn't want me to condemn her for B, why should I condemn B to her?

Batshit. Batshit, batshit, batshit.

I feel like my day's been spoiled. I've been looming in a general depression for a while, now, and I was on an upsweep, but it feels so very unstable. An enormous phone conversation that felt like tense negotiation later, and I'm ready to lie down on the floor and not get up for a while.

I'm trying to avoid that course of action.

It's sunny out. It's breezy. It's the first time it's been reasonable enough to go outside at noon, but there are machines going through, everywhere I look, and I can't hardly go lie down in their path.

I want them to go. I don't want to hear from these chicks, no matter how much I may love them. I want my lover home, I want to lie down in the sunshine, I want to eat strawberries and play some music and enjoy myself. I'd love to have the energy to get a little work done, but motivation lacks. I'd even like to do a little laundry. Something.

Maybe I can manage to start laundry. It's a good start. It's useful. I'll feel more productive. I couldn't even finish my yoga, this morning, and that was before the phone rang. Now everything looks bigger and messier and less approachable than it did before. Than it is, I'm sure.

GAAAAAAH.

Huff.

Okay, okay.

Stop that tape, it's done. Start another one. Start the laundry. Put on some music. Maybe finish mixing that CD I've been meaning to get together. Do a little work with the music on. Chill the fuck out. Without, you know, clonking the fuck out.

Maybe it'll work, right? Continue reading...

Vision, circa Saturday.

When we were driving through the long, endless tunnel, with its fine lights and its solid, smooth tiled ceilings and walls, I told him I loved him and braced my hand on his thigh as it all collapsed. Just like the bypass collapsed, the other day, only without reason.

He's a good driver, but you can only dodge just so far, so deep in a tunnel, surrounded by so many other vehicles. And it's a safe car, but broken metal supports and heavy stone can only be thwarted so well. Sometimes people still get crushed and impaled, and they bleed, and they try to get one more weak kiss in, before the paramedics try to pry them free, just in case one or both of them don't make it through the day, or the long night. I couldn't live very well with that missed opportunity, even if mashing my organs against the jagged edges to get to him might diminish my eventual chance at survival, anyway.




There was gentle daylight on the other side of the tunnel, and it was over. We were utterly unscathed, I relaxed my grip on his leg, and sighed, and smiled, and closed my eyes. It's a strong tunnel. It's a safe car. He's a good driver.

But when we drive through tunnels, you know, I still hold my breath (and occasionally put my palms on the ceiling of the car), like we did when we were children. It used to be simple ritual, but as with most rituals, I have come up with reasons why one might do it. If the tunnel collapsed, for instance, and crushed down the roof of the car, you might only crush your wrists and arms, rather than your skull. If everything collapsed around you, you'd already have the space to breathe, being at capacity, when you were confined.

And this is how I think about things, day to day.

I swear, I'm generally a very cheerful person. But perhaps you can understand why I might not want to share this sort of thing with the people I see day to day. With, of course, the exception of him what I love. He, who manages to get us safely through the traffic, every time, who never gets merged into fatally by trucks, who never gets blown into the median and over the edge, who never gets thrown into spins by the careless drivers apparently attempting to do it.

Him what never, to date, has actually been flattened and left for dead on the road, during his long walk back home to me, in the afternoon.

Him what manages to hold and kiss and not judge me for my fears, what is patient with me.

Him what I love. Continue reading...

Hey, Mr. Tambourine man. . .

I allowed the doctor to give me a prescription for vicodin, despite near certainty that I will not need it for the issue at hand.

See: When I was 15, I was given vicodin for a legitimate medical purpose, and failed to eat before taking it. As the experience was very like what I would later experience as lightly toasted, inclusive of slight trails in my vision, and a very calm, pleasant mood, I kind of like the idea of having some around. I generally don't get the opportunity to smoke or eat grass. I really don't often go after intoxicants, in general, but sometimes. . .

And I probably won't use it. Certainly not when I have anything to do. But it was inexpensive (I love having insurance, for once), it could be useful for legitimate pain in future, I might actually need it for the issue at hand, the med. professionals were encouraging, etc.

And it's nice to have. It's an option. Continue reading...

Introductory disclaimer.

I feel the need to rework this thing to broader ends. So, I've purged and am beginning again. Since I feel equal need to actually describe events and my sense of things, and describe scenarios confined to my own psyche, I figure there ought to be a warning system.

So. Entries will generally be loosely tagged as:

1) Candid or Surreal;
2) Confessed or Professed;and
3) Sex, Candy, Politics, and/or Fear

That is, as to whether they happened or didn't happen, whether they are admitted to with some degree of shame or shouted from this isolated little mountain, and whether they have to do with something sexual/fantasy based, drug-related, political/religious/philosophical, and/or my own paranoid feelings about the world and what might happen in it.

With that artful prose, smash, I suppose we can start. Continue reading...