Lubrican: Blog

Okay. This might seem like an odd blog entry, but what the heck.

Back in the 2004 -2008 time frame, I wrote a whole raft of short stroke stories. They were how I got started posting at SOL. I got a lot of very nice mail from people who encouraged me to keep writing. I got some really not nice mail, too, but I shrugged that off. My pen name back then was Beating Off Bob, for those of you who are young.

Then I started getting mail from people who thought I should write longer stories. I experimented with a few and got a good response.

So I started writing longer and longer stories until I was writing novellas (which, as I understand it, means a long "short" story) and then full-fledged novels.

I liked writing the longer stuff because it gave me a chance to get to know my characters better, and let them develop more.

So years of that go by and then I try to write a short stroke story again. It didn't work. The story got stretched out. I wrote a blog entry about that.

I tried again and again, but it just didn't work. I couldn't write a Beating Off Bob type story anymore.

Well, wonder of wonders, I've recently been sifting through my projects folder, which has a lot of half-finished stuff in it that got back-burnered for one reason or another. I found this story that was based on someone else's work. I've done that before, telling someone else's idea with my own spin on it. And this one, when I finished it, qualified as a good old B.O.B. kind of story!

It's called Breeding My Nieces and it has no redeeming value at all. There's no lesson and no philosophy. The girls wanted to get knocked up, and they do.

My current working theory is that if I get my own idea for a story, it will end up long. If I poach someone else's plot idea and just spin it my way, it might end up as a short stroke story.

So there you go. I said I'd keep trying, and it might have paid off.

Of course, you'll have to be the judge of that.

Thanks for reading.

Bob

A number of people have written about the "new chapter" posted to Any Soldier. It is not a new chapter, however.

Here's what happened.

A reader wrote to me and asked where the epilogue to Any Soldier went. I looked at the SOL copy and the epilogue wasn't there. Chapter Fifteen was the last chapter listed. So I reloaded the epilogue and sent it in, explaining to the moderator that it wasn't really new, just replacing a missing file. I have no idea why it went missing.

This triggered a "new chapter" notification for some reason. I guess that was the moderator's call. So then I got mail with a variety of subjects. Some thanked me for a new chapter, but moaned that they didn't have a premium membership, so could not read this new chapter. Some said it was nice to finally read the end of the story. Others asked why I broke the epilogue out of chapter fifteen, and were there any substantive changes to the story.

Working off of my memory and logic (neither of which is a great idea, in my case) I think this is what happened.

I think the original posting had the epilogue embedded in chapter fifteen. If you downloaded the book when it was first published, then that's probably what you have.

At some later date, I decided the epilogue deserved to be its own chapter, so I broke it out and made it so there was the prologue, fifteen chapters, and the epilogue.

So if you downloaded the book after it had a separate epilogue, then that's what you have.

To my knowledge, there were no changes to the story (other than the inevitable small tweaks I do any time I send in a file)when I broke the epilogue out of chapter fifteen and posted it, or when I re-posted the mysteriously missing epilogue recently.

In any case, if you read the story and there was a wedding in it, you read the whole story. If there was no wedding, then you got caught in that Twilight Zone where there was no epilogue for whatever reason it disappeared.

Clear as mud?

Sorry for the kerfuffle.
Bob

I hope everyone is being intelligent and practicing social distancing. Please do that, and wear a mask, even if you think it doesn't do any good. Whenever I see someone running around without a mask, the image in my mind is of Typhoid Mary, smiling at everyone and saying, "It's good to see you. Give me a hug!"

I've been sifting through my projects folder. It has some things in it that got started, but then put on a shelf for one reason or another. I'm picking a few things that can be finished relatively easily. To compare them, to food, they're more like peanut butter sandwiches, than steak dinners.

But there's a place in the world for a PB&J. Right?

I'm posting one called Riley's New Bikini. I'm not going to repeat the foreword, here, so read it. This isn't my idea and another author has written something like it.

It is, however, my imagination, so if you've liked that in the past, then here's something to relieve the boredom for a while.

It's eight chapters long and will be completely posted by the weekend.

Stay safe, everybody.
And thanks for reading.

Bob

What with all this stay at home stuff, I looked around in my projects folder and found an idea that plays to "not going out" for a while. In this case, Uncle Bob gets snowed in with his assistant librarian, who happens to be his niece.

You already know what happens.

That's what I'm doing for a while, just looking through things that are half finished, or got shoved onto the back burner for a while. There won't be anything like The Seventh Sense for a while. Those ideas are few and far between.

This one is short, just four chapters. It's called Library Niece and will be fully posted this week at the rate of one chapter per day.

As always, thanks for reading.
Bob

Okay, I have explained this before, but some people don't read blogs, so I'll try again and just hope that they read it this time.

I write because I enjoy it. One side effect is that some people think I write well enough that they're willing to buy my books. That is a direct result of the education I got from SOL readers since 2005, as they coached me on how to be a better author.

For that reason, it is my policy to let all of my SOL family read everything I write for free. The caveat is, you have to download it as I post it, and save it on your computer. That is because, in some cases, the story will go behind the SOL pay wall.

Why?

Because I have learned the hard way that, that when I publish a book at Amazon or Smashwords.com, people (who are not members of the SOL family) Google the title and try to find it free somewhere. SOL is high up on the search algorithm, and if the story is posted for free at SOL, then people read it there, instead of buying it.

A lot of people think that all e-books should be free, just as they feel all music should be free.

Imagine you own a small business. Let's say you sell hot dogs. How would you respond if everybody approached you and said, "Give me a free hot dog." Would you be able to stay in business? Of course not.

I give free hotdogs to my SOL family, but not to the whole world. The only catch is, you need to grab that hotdog as soon as it comes off the grill.

I'm writing this because I've gotten numerous complaints that people were halfway through The Seventh Sense and then it went behind the pay wall. They were upset about this. They said it wasn't fair.

I started posting the story on the 13th of April and finished posting the story on the 25th of April. I left it in front of the pay wall until the 2nd of May. So, for roughly three weeks (during which the whole country was chafing under stay-at-home orders, with 'nothing to do' all that time) the story was sitting there, free to download.

Yes, you had to come back day after day, but I had to write it and post it every day, so we both had choices to make. If you had better things to do than download the story, then that's fine. You know what's important to you and what isn't. But if you just decided to wait and read it after if was completely posted, and then didn't download it for a week, I don't feel sorry for you. Especially since I posted blog entries about the length of the book and the posting schedule.

I offer it for free to a select group of people. I don't know of a lot of other authors who publish for sale who do that. I put blog entries out there giving you the information you need to know when to grab that hot dog off the grill.

So when you say I'm not fair for putting something behind the pay wall, it ticks me off, and I just don't feel like a horrible person.

I hope you and yours are safe from Covid 19

Thanks for reading.

Bob