Where It All Comes From

I do feel a bit like the professor got a bit preachy, but I had to try and explain why they did what they did without painting them as social and sexual deviants. I wanted them to be a bunch of people for whom this worked, and that required some explaining, and so...we got preachy Prof. Sorry. Couldn't figure out how else to get it done.

Note, -- Follow You, Follow Me is actually the song my wife and I danced to on our wedding, so yeah, some parts taken from reality. Plus, I just liked the idea of using song titles for the chapters. I did think at one point of making it more chapters so I could use more titles, but it would have just been indulgence for the sake of it, so I left it at two, just because that was the correct separation for what the story was about.

It's interesting how many commentors have said "Love part 1, hated part 2". Yeah, I get why, but this was the brief. I can't have a Sharing is Caring without some actual honest to god sharing, and this was about the best way I could figure to do it, and give the guy some slack from those people whose world view is extremely black and white.

Delilah

Another 750-word project story. This one I couldn't even fit into 750 words exactly, although since it was late being written anyway, I didn't try that hard.

I was fascinated by the idea of a self-made transgendered boi, who knew exactly what he was and what he wanted to be, and then he goes out and finds his ideal mate, and turns out that his ideal mate wanted to be the same thing!

It actually came from a discussion with a transgendered psychologist who posited that all men who are interested in TS people, -- "tranny sniffers", as she put it, -- are to some degree Transgendered themselves in their own self view. I'm not sure I agree with that, but for the purposes of this story, it was a fun premise to play with.

Ten days at sea

This was also written as an entry for a nautical themed writing invitational challenge. However, it ended up being two years late. Whoops. As Douglas Adams once famously observed, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they zip past."

Life got in the way of this one, and I honestly was trying to stretch out the 'falling in love" aspect, -- I always have trouble this this, and I think I over did it in Ingrams #5 over this. I try and provide detail to make it feel real, but then overdo it, and it ends up just slow.

The swapping of point of view, -- first person when he's telling the story, but third person while talking and recounting to his kids, -- proved a bit of problem. I just kept forgetting which one I was using at any given time and my editor had a hell of a time straightening these out.

While writing it, I did wonder at the detail provided in the recounting, bearing in mind he was telling this story to his kids. I mean, what kids want to hear about their mother being a bit of a tramp when she was young? Let alone details of 'how her breasts glistened in the early morning light'. I mean, seriously? But, it needed to be there for the story to work.

So I cheated and mentioned these details in the story telling of what actually happened, then said that he glossed over these details when actually recounting the events to his kids.

In terms of the actual plot, well, she is actually cheating on her husband, and produces kids because of it, which is a pretty not nice thing to do, even if she had been through a near death experience, and was married to someone who pretty much ignored her. Then she compounds it, by never telling the biological father that he has kids, and making him lose twenty years of their lives. It's a pretty reprehensible thing to do all round, and I kinda wanted to point that out, but if I did, then the entire magic of the story just vanishes, I copped out on that one. It did astound me how well this was received though, as a romance. She's a cheater who has kids with another man and passes them off as her husband, no matter what the circumstances. That no one really zoomed in on this and pointed this out blows my mind.

I did like the premise though. Old salty sailor has a ten-day experience with someone out of his league, and never quite gets over it, only to find out he has kids later in life, and gets united with them.

License to Kill

This one got written over about three days. 12k words just sprang out in one sitting, which is a personal best so far.

I'm still not entirely sure where this came from, or what it's even really about. There's no real message I can discern. There was a invitational writing challenge on Lit a while back about unbalanced relationships, where the woman was the dominant one (most writers took that to mean financially), and I remember thinking at the time "what if she had entirely another life?" There have been some stories on Lit that kind of use the same premise, where the wife has a secret agenty life that is hidden from her husband, and it comes out in various ways. My way, because I'm a sadist to my characters, is about as nasty as it can be.

What would happen if you discovered you wife was a secret agent, did stuff you had no idea about, and then you got stuck paying the price for that? Given that point of view, it kind of wrote it self.

Originally I had him writing the tell all book, but it just seemed such a trope, and then when Clarissa came to visit him for the inevitable conversation about her behavior, well, it became obvious that she needed to write it.

I did like the Thurgood character, I have to say. I have a feeling he may crop up again some time.

So there you have it. Some behind the scenes stuff in terms of how Jezzaz writes, where it comes from, and what it was meant to be about.

Once the two big series are done, I'm going to slow down a bit on stories for Lit and StoriesOnLine -- I'm actually pitching some TV shows and have written some scripts, and they demand attention if I'm ever going to persuade anyone to make them.

But there'll be more stories coming out of me, as and when they occur to me. I have two things in mind that are developing in my head, slowly but surely, -- one is a plot and one is a premise or, more accurately, a way of telling a story I've never seen done before, -- and I've no doubt they will spill out sometime soon.

Check back - :) The best is yet to come!