Bondi Beach: Blog

I've queued the first three chapters of Amélie for posting. The story, three sections and 35 chapters, is written. This first posting is a test to check formatting.

From the blurb: From steamy Caribbean islands to rainy Oxford, England, a family journal more than three hundred years old reveals romance, a journey, first love, skinnydipping, pirates, heartbreak, and a new world and new friends.

The story contains explicit language and is written for adventuresome readers with a sense of humor and an appreciation of purplish prose. Written by a 17th century family matriarch who, it is safe to say, lived her life to the fullest. If her journal is to be believed, of course.

Heads up: Be aware there's a bit of MM here and there, oral, but it's not a major part of the story.

Most of the "Sunrise" chapters appeared as Emily's Journal in Emily and Daniel (2015).

~ JBB

Harper is a quick little vignette featuring two of the characters from a sequel (still very much a work in progress) to Sarah's Honeymoon. Although they are not named, Sarah and Matt also appear. Off-screen is Fredericka, Julian's mother, known to the family as "Fred."

There's some similarity to the characters in Stockings with respect to lingerie because I wanted to play a little more with the idea, but otherwise there's no connection between the stories.

A lot happened between the time Sarah and Matt met on the island. It's arguable things didn't turn out the way they expected, they turned out better.

Cheers,
JBB

I've posted a revised Stockings. It's the same story but reads a little better, I think. I've also changed the cover image from the BW version to the original color image of "Jollen" (Dinghy) by Anders Zorn. (Cover change still pending as of this posting.)

You can download a
rel="nofollow">
rel="nofollow">PDF of the print edition from my Google Drive. It has a different cover and supplementary material (copyright, acknowledgements, other titles, etc., etc.) and a more traditional book layout, but the text is (almost) identical to that posted on SOL. The PDFs are all free downloads, no registration, no login, no record kept.

Stockings doesn't meet thematic requirements for Amazon, iTunes, etc., so there won't be an ebook version available until and unless I have time to do one and put it up for free download along with the PDFs. No promises there. In the meantime you have SOL's clean ePub to work with.

Please note the caution tags and notes on the story before you read.

Cheers,

JBB

I've lightly revised Azotea and smoothed out a couple of rough spots. It's still the same story but reads a little better, I think. I'm working on the e-book edition to supplement SOL's clean epub format, and that will be available as a free download in the usual places soon.

Cheers,
bb

Make no mistake: Thoughtful feedback, positive or negative, is gold to me and to just about every other author on SOL.

I had a note from a reader who said the story he'd just finished didn't work for him and he told me why. I've thanked the reader directly but I'll say it again here: Thank you.

Every once in a while a reader tells me he or she "can't" write, or doesn't want to because they fear failure. Maybe the reader can't, who knows? But you don't know until you give it a whirl, and you won't find a more welcoming and easy-to-post place on the Web than you have right here on SOL.

Cheers,

bb