There’s a new piece published today! I listened to your feedback from my last post and posted another story I was working on. As always, feedback on my stories is appreciated. I really wanted to be done this story in June, but it turns out that taking on a job at a hospital then a massive pandemic hitting the world makes your schedule and your whole life a lot more chaotic than you planned.

Speaking to ‘listening to feedback,’ I wanna say a few things about viewer feedback this week. First of all, I love getting feedback, positive and negative, and also I’m eternally grateful for the community I have around my stories. The level of care, imagination, and aspiration a lot of the people that contact me have is wonderful.

That said, there’s a trend people emailing me have, a trend to tell me ‘you probably hate people emailing you’ or ‘you probably hate people saying this about your stories…’

First of all, heck no I don’t. I love when people email me. I’m terrible at getting back to people in a punctual manner, but I appreciate every email and form of contact I get. Even the negative stuff… I remember I only ever received one death threat online, and it was after I wrote something negative happening to Nicole during Being More Social (I believe her revealing Phil had assaulted her to Adam). I took it as a huge compliment. The person who gave me the threat cared so much about a character I created, that when he saw she was in distress, he threatened physical harm to the person who made the story end up that way. To me, there’s a kind of beauty to that, even if it caused a person to say something extreme in the moment.

Second of all, if an author “hates” people getting in contact with them and telling them their opinion or criticism on something they made… how do I say this… tough shit. That’s a part of an author’s job. An author’s job isn’t just to write stories and sit back doing nothing. It is, in my mind, equally on an author to have a finger on the pulse of the community reading their stories and to accept the worldview of those reading their stories. Not necessarily ‘agree,’ but accept. If I hated people telling me something they thought about my story but a dozen people a day told me about it, odds are even if I wanted to blame someone for this happening I’d only be able to blame myself.

Plus, the idea of ‘hating’ audience feedback implies this feedback is useless or that the author is inherently superior to its viewers. It isn’t, and never will be. A viewer, especially in online writing, makes an author an author, and not a person who opens up Microsoft Word when they’re bored. Not only do I enjoy getting feedback from my readers, but if an author you follow actually does hate getting feedback, what do you think that says about how they view you?

When you get into contact with me, or another author online, you do not need to preface with, “You probably hate people saying this, but…” I don’t, my colleagues that write sex stories don’t, and the type of people that do, I have to question whether they deserve the communities they do. By all means, have the confidence to forgo that line entirely and give your point confidently.

At any rate, I hope you all enjoy the new piece, and the new pieces that are on the way. I’ll talk to you all next week.