Hello! It’s been a while since my last blog post, hasn’t it? Well, let’s dust it off and have a go.

I honestly thought these blogs were a fun extra for some readers on this site, but have come to realize that for some, it’s how you’re made aware of my most recent chapter. In that case, sorry about that. I have been busy for the last two months – too much of it has been business away from here, but still – and have posted new chapters for multiple stories. Follow the Leader Chapter Six has been released, as has the long-awaited Final Answer Chapter 7. As well, a finished commission story was posted just today, and another is done and will be posted next week, to pace myself and not dump everything on you all at once.

It’s very interesting to observe the three pieces as they exist. I’ve often worried about becoming too same-y and having all of my pieces being too similar; I don’t want to become too predictable and have all of my stories boil down to the same ideas over time. While I have a couple of patterns to my writing (dialogue-heavy, emphasis on snarky humor, consent being a major theme, and a weird prevalence of “the protagonist doesn’t fall for the first love interest but instead for the second one”), a lof of my recent pieces have been distinct from one another in the traditional erotica sense. Follow the Leader is a bit of an ego project; an experimental mostly-narrative-driven piece that fills the cracks of other stories. Final Answer is probably my most “Bashful Scribe” story I’m writing currently insofar as the tropes I’m known for are concerned. The commission was interesting because it’s about sex first and foremost, and has that more “typical sex story” appeal of taking place in a sexed-up world with less rules and less consequences. The three are very distinct from one another.

Is that a good thing? I don’t know.

I’m happy that I have the capacity to write different stories, but if the difference isn’t a value appreciated by the community that consumes it, was the variety of stories a good quality for them to display? I’m not sure. It keeps me from tearing my hair out – if I wrote altered copies of Being More Social for ten years, I think I’d have passed away by now. I like exploring different things, and I like playing with the concept of “What is a sex story” and “What will my audience be surprised to find out they enjoy?” Sometimes I get it wrong, but hopefully, for you, at least once I’ve gotten it right. I think that’s the value I get from this attempt to write different pieces with different values or approaches.

The biggest difference in Final Answer and the commission piece at first blush is the approach to sex. If I’ve written Final Answer correctly, you the reader aren’t even sure what sexual adventures will happen chapter to chapter. Arguably the characters with the most chemistry aren’t even having sex, and I really find that fun. I also find it fun to discover that chemistry when they were the characters who both had the least chemistry with anyone when the story began. Not to mention, they go through so many arcs of liking and disliking each other that they’re aware of it at this point in the story. It’s a very push-pull story. A yes and no. The action is very “stop and go.”

I like overthinking and labeling patterns when I see them. I find “stop and go” is a great label because it tells me where the excitement comes from. I think readers enjoy the “stopping” between Rose and Jason, because it means I’m making a promise that the stopped action will “go” at some point later on. To show my hand, I haven’t even decided if Rose and Jason will have any intimacy or not, and whether or not they’ll get up to anything in later chapters will come just as much of a surprise to me as it will to you. That’s undeniably thrilling in a small way.

On the other hand, Here’s My Snapchat is instead what I call a “go go go” story. There is no point in stopping; this story is governed by sex, and sex will be had. I can make the pace of how they get there faster or slower (glacial by some people’s standards), but there’s no point in stopping. It’s not that kind of story, and stopping would make it less fun. So, the story goes and goes and goes. The sexual tension increases, sex is promised, sex is delivered. Odds are, even if you haven’t consciously thought of this before, you’ve still felt it. To quote Mr. Plinkett, “You might not have even noticed… but your brain did.”

I often don’t like to think about story structure or completed plot lines when I start a story. If you approach a story with, “What would make a good story?”, all you’re proving by writing is how well you adhere to your own perceived ideas of what a story structure should be. I always go character-first. All of my stories began with a single character, usually the protagonist, and then other characters follow, and their relationships and what happened as a result of those relationships forms the basic foundation of the story. Plot comes decidedly after. Adam, Aaron, Quinn, Nicole for Consequences, Jason, Robyn. In the case of the most recent commissioned story, it was a guy named Luke inspired by how sheltered and awkward some of my friends doing Master’s and PhD programs can be. I really enjoyed writing the story, and I think a lot of people will enjoy it too. I sure hope they will. Either way, once you get a feel for these characters, you instinctively know whether the action needs to stop or go, and when to switch gears. Writing is a powerfully spiritual force – at some point, you just know. You just feel it. What’s left is letting the thoughts flow into the page, and hopefully, into an entertaining story. I’ll talk to you all next week.