Someone or thing hacked my fucking e-mail. God damned cock-sucking computer geeks with too much time on their hands. I hope they all develop leaking pustules on their nutsacks.
I changed the password and I hope that stops it. Meanwhile I guess they grabbed every address that's stored in my account. I wish there was a way I could reach through the computer and rip their lungs out but I guess the iPhone doesn't have that app yet.
If you've gotten a screwy e-mail from me, please don't click the link. I can only imagine where it might lead you or what it might do to your computer.
Sorry,
Jay C.
I have posted the first chapter of my latest offering, a story of knights and ladies set in a fictional time that is reflective of the middle ages.
As with "Daze In The Valley," it is a different story from my normal, sickly sweet romance. "Always on Guard" contains scenes of violence and intrigue, although practically no sexual content.
And for those readers who were intimidated by the length of "Daze In The Valley," this one is only about half the size (75 total chapters, I think).
In other news:
I have shelved a story I had started about a MLB general manager and his fight to rebuild a failing franchise into a winner. I was using a baseball simulation game to determine his success -- and he failed. I mean miserably (his team almost set the MLB record for consecutive losses to being a season -- after he overspent his budget to improve the team). So it's going back into the garage for a tune up to see if its even salvageable.
However ...
The characters from "The Outsider II" have suddenly found their way back into my consciousness. I have been pounding out scenes to the tune of one per day in the past couple of weeks and I'm now up to about 25 chapters. I estimate it has about another month before I can wrap it up and get it to my stalwart editor, BlackIrish (who deserves all the credit for getting it off the scrap heap and back into production).
I sent the few chapters I'd finished to BlackIrish for a look-see. He came up with several great ideas about potential plot points and really set the story back in motion.
I hope you enjoy "Always On Guard" and feel free to drop me a line about any zingers you might find while perusing it.
Regards,
Jay C.
Hi all,
I am extremely heartened by the positive response "Daze In The Valley" has received. Truly, I doubted it would garner as much of a following as it has (or at least the following I think it has given I had 80 e-mails waiting for me 7 hours after I posted the final chapters).
Many of the e-mails asked me what was next. In a rare occurrence, I actually know.
My next story was spawned from "Daze In The Valley." As I picked through potential plots for the group's feature film, I had two or three that I thought held promise but just wouldn't work for one reason or another.
I turned one of those rejected plots into my next offering, which should start (in serial form, of course) in the next six weeks or so. There are no dragons or wizards but I think it falls firmly into the action/adventure category.
Thankfully it is "only" about half the size of "Daze" so I should be able to get it all posted in less than 18 months this time. After that, I have several other stories that I work on from time to time.
One revolves around the general manager of a small-market baseball team. Another is a quasi-legal thriller. A third is another adventure story set in modern times.
I will strive diligently to answer the e-mails I have neglected. "Daze" generated almost 3,000 e-mails over the course of its run and I've become remiss in getting replies out. They reside in a folder waiting for me but I can never seem to grab enough time to go through them.
That happens all the time, I suppose. I don't want to send a "canned" response but I don't always have time to sit down and compose a response.
I guess I've always consoled myself by thinking that those who enjoy my work would rather I be writing my next piece instead of sending e-mail.
But it doesn't make it right that I haven't taken the time to say thanks to the readers.
So, I'll take the time now. If I haven't gotten back to you, I apologize.
The readers on SOL have offered (for the most part) the encouragement I've needed to break free from the "Just the facts, Ma'am," journalist style that littered my earlier works.
They have given me the freedom to think outside of my stilted worldview and create, I hope, some truly interesting, truly endearing characters -- characters I never would have attempted without the kind words of a multitude of readers.
The writer of an e-mail I read today said he would recognize Adam Walters if he were to sit down beside him in a bar.
That's high praise.
I hope my next story will live up to the standards "Daze In The Valley" has created.
Best wishes,
Jay C.
Hi all,
I've gotten a lot of e-mails about the impending conclusion of "Daze in the Valley." Most of them want the story to continue or to see if I plan to write a sequel.
It won't and I won't.
In fact, I'm not sure it can. I am a regular reader here on SOL. I enjoy reading the works of others as much as I do compiling my own stories.
That said, I've seen far too many stories keep going far after they should have ended. I have done my best to avoid repetition. In a story the length of "Daze," that's not easy. I have read dozens of stories where plot points are repeated by the same characters over and over again.
I tried to make each description of the character's lives, loves, trials and travails be different from something that was included earlier in the story. I've tried to make the "shoots" as unique as possible and have gone to great lengths to refrain from descriptive scenes that are too closely related to something else in the story.
Sometimes it has worked; other times it hasn't. But the effort was there.
There is nowhere for "Daze" to go without skipping literally years in the character's lives. I'm trying to do that in another story -- a sequel to "The Outsider" -- and it is not working out at all.
So the tale reaches it's proverbial climax as the group's signature motivation -- "Dragon Lore" -- wraps.
The last chapter is an epilogue that catches up to the characters a few months later, after the video is released, to close the couple of plot lines that still needed a resolution.
After that ... finis!
There will be no curtain call.
Regards,
Jay C.
Hi all,
"Daze In The Valley" was meant to be fiction -- at least most of it was meant to be fiction.
Still, in the time since I started to write it (2007) a great many portions have turned out to be prescient.
1) The file-sharing fiasco.
I wrote that section before the whole SOPA, PIPA, Megaupload fiasco. I'm a little disheartened at how our federal government has taken it upon themselves to police the Internet. It is frightening to me to consider that a bunch of 60-year-old, tight-assed old men with one hand on their secretaries' asses and the other in the pockets of their benefactors has the power to stall a huge segment of online activity. That is just my personal opinion, by the way, so don't send the FBI to my house with a no-knock warrant because I have an illegal copy of the latest "Harry Potter" movie.
I do believe, as I wrote, that copyrights are worthless in the digital age. The dinosaurs in D.C. seem intent upon protecting the profits of the multi-millionaires in L.A., who are crying poor and threatening to lay off the lowest-paid employees they have in what can only be described as a temper tantrum.
Still, the movie industry has enough money to pay some essentially worthless actor or actress $35 million to film a picture; the television industry routinely pays its actors and actress $250,000 per 23- or 44-minute episode; the literary industry can afford a $3 million advance to a writer who hasn't had a unique story since the 1980s. Perhaps the Occupy Wall Street gang should move over to Rockefeller Center and head out to Hollywood. Oh, that's right: they're looking at a different segment of the "1 percent." They all land in the same boat, if you ask me (which you didn't).
2) The non-agency and educated starlet.
Again, when I started the story, it was almost unheard of for an actress to work for long without an agency (or a suitcase pimp) to represent her. Now it is coming more and more prominent. Some of the biggest young stars are going without representation, preferring to make and schedule their own bookings. I hope this is a wave of the future because, from what I've read, one of the biggest factors in shortening the careers of female performers is the agent assigned to her. There also appears to have been an influx of better-educated talent -- or they have a great P.R. machine working for them -- if the posts on some of the chat sites are any indication. That portends well for the future, too.
3) The fall of AIM (or AMS in my story) and the rise of condoms.
In summer 2011, AIM mistakenly identified (apparently publicly) a performer they thought to be HIV positive. It turned out to be a false-positive but the damage was done. The industry called for restrictions on what AIM could do and I read last month that mandatory condom usage in the adult industry has been been proposed and passed a first reading in Los Angeles City Council. Studios and performers have already said they will move the industry from the city. Other U.S. cities are already lining up for the influx of cash that would come from moving the adult industry outside of Los Angeles (and completely ignoring the rash of problems that it will bring with it).
4) Softening the product (no pun intended)
In the past year and half, many web sites have purposefully moved away from the Gonzo element of porn. Sites such as X-Art and Only Blowjob took the lead. Now places like New Sensations have launched a series of "Romance" porn films and even compilation web sites have added one or two sites that feature less ass-slapping and choking and more sexual content like the rest of the world seems to participate in.
5) The non-nude model brigade.
When I wrote the section about Rita Looker and Cassie Charms moving from "modeling" to adult entertainment, it was pure fiction. I searched and searched to find someone who had "taken the plunge." Now there are more than a dozen starlets who started in "non-nude" modeling and have worked their way up to hardcore. Most prominent among them is Lily LaBeau. They are bringing a ready-made set of fans with them. Sadly, Lily LaBeau does not appear to have taken advantage of that fact (or she enjoys the harder-edged portion of pornography, because she certainly doesn't shy away from it).
So, it seems my time was wasted in writing "Daze In The Valley." I should have sent the story to Porn Valley and perhaps I could have reaped some of the benefits of the changes and been seen as a "soothsayer" for the next big wave to hit porn.
Oh well, at least I can still steal things from a few of the file-hosting sites for another week or two.
Alas,
Jay C.