Where It All Comes From

It's important to understand why I have nothing else to say, though. This is a one scene play, effectively. There's a few pages of background and local color to explain how the protagonist has the ability to do what he does, but apart from that, it's effectively a two-person duet, with a third silently there for effect.

There's no real way to add to that with another chapter, without doing the same kind of thing. If I didn't make the sequel a single scene play, then it detracts from the first chapter. And honestly, I don't see that anything else was going to happen between them that warrants that same kind of situation.

Although. Having just written that, something did just occur to me, maybe...? Hmmm...

Opening Arguments

This was entirely generated to see if I could argue both sides of the Open Marriage discussion. We have friends who are in 'the lifestyle' and we've been to parties where this kind of thing goes on, -- we didn't indulge, but we've heard all the arguments for and against.

I think I made a mistake in making the open marriage come about because of cheating, -- that was a mistake and took away from the actual discussion of ideas. It made the proponent seem ineffective and a wimp; it wasn't something the two of them came to mutually, but was more thrust upon him. I think too many readers took that point of view rather than attempting to process the actual discussion.

However, I thought it was an interesting experiment, -- could I be both sides of the argument? Argue it back and forth and counter each side from both sides? Again, I've no real idea if I did or not, -- too close to really be able to tell I think.

For the record, I think it's possible that this kind of relationship can work, but it takes one hell of a rock-solid marriage to do it, and one that requires constant tending. There's no way you can do this and not be paying a shed load of attention to your spouse, and it all work out. I don't believe most people can handle this, but I also believe more people could if society wasn't set up with monogamy as the default expectation.

I did discover that most readers have a preset filter for this sort of thing though. Most people aren't reading the arguments and thinking about it, except to think up their next point about how wrong it all is. There wasn't that much consideration of the arguments presented in the comments on this story, just a rush to declare it a terrible idea and to virtue signal to everyone else, which was sad, but not entirely unexpected.

Mr. and Mrs. America

This was an exploration of what, I wondered, it is possible to forgive, in the way of a non-sexual betrayal from a spouse.

Some of what was in here is taken from life, -- the environment that the two guys grew up in was pretty much the family situation that my wife grew up in, in terms of physical environment. Obviously, her dad wasn't a spy though. Or was he??? :)

There was never meant to be any hint of sexual betrayal. The letter was intended to be a real opening of his friend's heart; a genuine unburdening and attempt at explanation. It was a classic "I meant it for the best". And in this case, it really did turn out for the best. It really was the right thing to do for our hero, even if it was true betrayal. That's what made it more interesting, for me, -- although it was the wrong thing to do, it had the right effect and was done for the right reasons.

His wife is based on mine. If she did something like that, that's exactly how she'd behave. 100% surety that she knew what was right and that she'd done the right thing, mainly because she would have been right, and I'd better just get with the program.

Mike was never intended to be evil, -- he was meant to be a man who had slipped a few times due to the occupation he had, and the stakes he was dealing with, but was clinging to the concept of the life he had directed his friend into, - the classic American Dream, - as the reason for doing what he was doing. He'd gone too far on occasion, because the task really required it and done things he shouldn't have, but he was doing his best to not be lost in it, and using his friend and his life as his touchstone.

The whole reaction of Jake was based on what I thought I'd do in that situation. I'd punish the shit out of my wife, but at the bottom of it all, I still loved her, and I knew she loved me, or she'd never have done it in the first place. There would have been some pretty tense discussions about respect mind you, but the result, -- what is your marriage and the life you love worth at the end of it all, -- is pretty much where I stood on the subject.

Strangely, this is the story I am most proud of. It's so entirely generated purely by my own thoughts, -- more so than any of the others, -- and I really thought that I hit what I wanted to with this one, more than any of the others. There's a great deal of me and my own thought processes in this, - more than any other story I've written to date, apart from The Wrong Side of Smart. Obviously the intent behind it doesn't resonate with the reading public, -- Words seems to do that, -- but for me, this is the one I feel like I wrote and I could say, 'Yeah, I'm a writer' afterwards.

Stone Cold

This one never got published on Lit. Laural, the female part of the team who created and administer LitErotica declined to publish is because I was upfront about this was a re-write of someone else's story and I hadn't gotten their permission. I did try, but got no response, so, after waiting a while, I just went ahead. As a result, this is only available on StoriesOnline and in the first Ebook compendium.

I had to write this one. I was vacillating whether to or not, because it seems vaguely dis-respectful to the original author, but for some reason, every time Lost in the Snow comes up on the random story list in Lit, I end up reading it again and getting just as pissed off about the way the plot goes as I did last time I read it. It's like a brain itch, that I just can't seem to scratch unless I just sat down and bashed out my own version.

One evening, after I had finished Ingrams #4 and was waiting on the editor to return the copy to me, it came up on Lit, I read it again, -- for some reason I cannot stay away when it comes up, - and I just couldn't stop myself starting in writing my own version.

Interestingly, I knew exactly what I'd do in my version. They want a prophecy? I'll give them a prophecy. What if the prophecy given was one they didn't understand, and required their own child to turn on them, in order for it be fulfilled? That was the ultimate BTB situation for me, -- they fucked up someone else's life in order for a prophecy to be fulfilled that would ultimately fuck up theirs.

I just love the karmic retribution that invokes, and so, I had to write it. I just had to.

It came out of me much like Live from the Game did, just one evening after another. Most of it was written over two weeks, late nights each night of 2-3 thousand words pouring out.

To be honest, writing the first half, which re-trod the original story, was quite painful. I had to follow someone else's script, but I did it my way, with extra depth and attempts at characterization, and it took a long time. It was hard to write betrayal that way, knowing what where it was leading, and that the guy concerned had such little recourse.

The second half, where it went into Jezzaz territory, was way more fun. I had no idea how much detail I was going to put in, and it was a voyage of discovery writing it.

I think I got the point I wanted to make across; this was a very damaged human, and his revenge was pretty brutal in terms of the one act he perpetrated. That this guy's moral compass was totally scrambled when it came to the two who had done him wrong.

This isn't the only story I want to give this treatment by the way. There is one other incomplete story, where I'm going to re-write what is already there, and then finish it, FinishTheDamnStory style. Then I'll be done and have scratched this itch to the point where it hurts and I won't want to do it again. Hopefully.

Private Dancer

I'll be honest, this was mostly premise. I was enamored with the idea of a guy at a strip club, having to have a deadly serious conversation with a stripper, while she is taking her clothes off for him over a three-song duration. It just seemed like a fun situation to write.

Then it became about a man trying to persuade the stripper to stay away from his wife. That seemed suitably important a conversation to be having.

Then, finally, I had the idea of a final twist, which I won't reveal here. That made it far more of a challenge to write the discussion without giving away that final premise.

This was definitely more a writing exercise for me than because I had something important or necessary to say. This wasn't about the Why of what I wrote, but more about the How.

This was literally written over three days, just because I had the idea and wanted to get it out while I had the impetus to do so.

I fully expected the Lit readership to hate this one, because of the end twist. To be honest though, the more commenting that hated it I saw, the more I knew I'd maybe gotten that right.

The wrong side of Smart.

This was originally named "The long way around", as an indication of how long it took the protagonist to come around to the truth of what she was doing.

The concept behind this was twofold, -- the first was to talk about how, in lots of stories, you hear about the woman saying the man "Honey, we have to talk" and then saying how she needed to move out / separate / divorce, for whatever reason. Maybe she wanted some other guy, whatever. But in almost all those stories, we follow the man being left, about how he either says emphatically No, or how he lets it happen, but keeps tabs and takes his BTB on her when it's discovered she is cheating. And, at the end, the lady concerned realizes what she's lost and laments it. Usually in a one bedroomed apartment, or in extreme cases, in jail.

I thought it might be interesting to follow that woman's path, from her point of view. StangStar06 did a great job of this in one of his stories, but his women are usually fairly one dimensional. I wanted to give background and some justification. All the more justified, -- in her mind, -- because she didn't cheat. Just wanted out, for all the wrong reasons.

The second concept was that of a person too smart for their own good, -- that particular area where you know you are smarter than the average bear, but not smart enough to realize that just because you are, you don't actually know everything. That your own arrogance blinds you to the fact that instead of considering an argument given to you on the merits and reality, all you really do is try and find a flaw and argue that.

To be honest, January is probably the character that has the most me in them of all of them. I had the 'too smart for your own good' issue, and I had a come to Jesus moment when I suddenly realized how much of an asshole I could be, stemming from the casual arrogance of imagining you are a bit smarter than everyone else. I also went on the self-built twelve step program, just like Jan does, although I'm lucky that I didn't inadvertently press the self-destruct button on my marriage as Jan did.

I have to admit, I feel that this is one of the slowest stories I've written, -- it being more a sequence of events than a plotted set of things happening, and it's all very personal rather than world shattering. But I do quite like the Tina Dinner Dialog at the end, which is what the entire thing is leading up to. The conversation with Jeff at the end had to happen, -- how could it not? -- and I honestly didn't know where it was going to go till I sat down to write it, -- a first time for me, where every detail wasn't plotted out weeks in advance. I decided to take a leaf out of Matt Moreau's book and not have a clear result in mind when starting out. Once I started that scene though, it was obvious where it had to go. There had to be actual consequences for Jan. God knows, she deserves them. I honestly felt like this story, once wrapped up, was like a StangStar06 story, only from the total opposite direction.

This one took the longest of all my stories, mainly because real life happened in the middle, -- my fledgling business suddenly expanded and demanded all my time, and as such, the writing had to take second place for a while.

The Pursuit of Justice.

This one purely came about because I was asked to participate in a Legends day on Literotica. Legends day invitational's, for those unaware, are where a bunch of authors (considered to be successful in their genres), are given a theme and asked to write a story about that theme. For me, the mystery area is one I have one foot in anyway, with the way some of the Ingrams stories have gone, so it was no great shakes to imagine myself writing something along these lines.

I wanted to do something with an unreliable narrator, but, give the reader clues once the big reveal came about. Something that, when you read it again, you go "Oh, right, look, there's an oblique clue right there!" -- the sort of thing you get when you watch The Sixth Sense for a second time.

The problem with writing in first person and having an unreliable narrator is that of lying to the audience. I hate it when I am deliberately misled, -- or out and out lied to, -- by an author, so I was at pains to never have John think something that wasn't true, and that's a lot harder than it sounds. It's just as hard to avoid him thinking about something in response to some action in the narrative, which is as much a lie of omission as a direct lie. In the end I tried to redirect a lot of the thinking he was doing as wondering what his partner was thinking, thereby avoiding any immediate reactions on his part. There were a few times when he did have to think something, and I hope I got it right enough, that what he did think could be taken in more than one way. It's a hard line to hew, -- too much abstraction and the reader starts to wonder what is up, and too much depth and you inevitably end up lying to the reader, and like I said, I really tried not to do that.

I wrote it literally in about a week. Once I'd decided what the plot was going to be, -- and that did take some working out, -- it just flowed. It ended up being about 25k words, which I think is about right for this. Any longer and it would have dragged.

I think I pretty much got there with what I wanted to do. It's not the best mystery story, but it was pretty adequate to the task, I think.

I ended up quite liking the character of John Tulley. I wonder if he might come out to play again?

The Sins of the Father.

This came about as one of the entries of the 750-word challenge on Literotica. The smallest story that Literotica allows is 750 words, so the challenge was to write a complete story in 750 words exactly.

This one came out of the blue and was written in about an hour, 30 mins of which was trying to edit it down from over a 1000 words! I'm a wordy guy, can't help it.

I love stories with a twist, and this one, while far-fetched, -- there are probably too many checks along the way for this to actually happen, -- was a fun one. I probably should have set it during the Vietnam war instead of the Gulf war, to give it a little more chance of happening. The problem there is that I don't know enough about the Vietnam war to really give it the small touches that make it more real.

I do wonder what happened next though. How did the kid deal with this revelation? What was their path forward? Did he start calling his father by his real name? What was the outcome there? I've no real idea, but it's a fun exercise to think about it.

Roses are Black

Another 750-word short, this time I was trying to write something about a man who's had an affair, gotten away with it, and understands how lucky he is that he both got away with it, and understands what he does have at home.

But, much like a first love, I imagine that the one that got away, -- the affair that ends because both sides decide to rather than through discovery and recriminations, -- might hold some echo down the years. A friend told me once about an affair he had that was like that. He's since divorced the wife he cheated on for other reasons, but I remember him being wistful about the lady he'd embarked on the affair with. How he still looks her up occasionally on facebook. Not to rekindle anything, just... nostalgia. Shared experiences. He said to me he'd love to have dinner with her one day, just to talk about the emotions not expressed at the time. The honesty of time, he called it.

I took that story, fictionalized it (the settings are nowhere near what this guy was doing), and then give the guy a way of expressing that nostalgia. Hence the black roses.

It's hard to imbue a 750-word story with wistfulness and regret, but I did my best.

Find a way to my heart

This was a result of being asked to be part of an invitational writing challenge. The challenge was titled "caring is sharing", and we were tasked with writing about a sharing situation, for good or bad. Well, the obvious natural tendency was to write about how it obviously fails or doesn't work out, but I thought I'd have a go at trying to write something where it did work out.

I didn't want to go down the path of having a marriage where one was sharing; I've already tried exploring that in Opening Arguments, and honestly, I don't think I did that well with it, because I don't honestly believe that one sided sharing really works, and I think it shows in that story.

So how to do it? Well, how about if the protagonist has lost his wife, and this was part of his rehabilitation? I wanted to be clear that none of this was driven by the guy who'd lost his wife. The concept of a guy losing his wife and using that as an excuse to go jump on someone else's wife is repugnant, so I had to have it written in such a way that he was led to it, somewhat unwillingly, and only indulged when life all got too much.

It's written in two parts very specifically to draw a line between the two parts of the story, -- the first part, where he loses his wife, is designed to be as honest as possible. What really happens in a plane crash situation. It's very easy to wallow in the desperation and depression that must result from losing a spouse, -- in any way, really, -- and I honestly want to deal with it, but not wallow in it. Have some degree of "well, the sun still rises" aspect to it. Almost all of the emotional upheaval I had in there was based on me just imagining how I'd be if I lost my wife.

I put the father figure in there so he wasn't totally alone, but honestly, couldn't figure out much to do with him, so he doesn't figure much in the story.

Part two is the Caring and Sharing part.

Part one was required to set up the lead so he could be led to the swingers party and start exploring and starting to make memories that weren't tinged with his wife. The whole point of the exercise was to have him make memories that his wife could never have been a part of, since if she was still around, he'd never have been doing it. It's a bit circular, but for plot purposes, it works.

It was important to try and make it clear that this wasn't his whole life going forward, and that the moment he met someone, it all stopped, because just like with his first wife, he's really a one-woman man when he's in a relationship. I did struggle with how to introduce the new love interest, -- if she was at these parties, well...that's a stretch. But if she's not, does he tell her? I settled for the way I did it, which means she has full knowledge but he's not burdened with knowing his wife has screwed all the guys at these parties.