I am not making this up. I'm usually pretty humble, even if I do say so myself. I'll go back to being humble in a minute, but I have to show you something first.
I'll print the body of the text, but if you want to see the original (plus a really nice photograph) then go to
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/08/minnie-driver-hints-at-ba_n_100768.html
Now, here's what it says. Remember, I'm not making this up.
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Oscar-nominated actress Minnie Driver announced her pregnancy on Leno in March but has yet to identify the father of the baby. Busy promoting a country music album, the actress-singer talked about the speculation and the likelihood of marriage in the near future.
Today she's wearing tight black leggings and a T-shirt with a picture of Gandhi, inscribed with the motto "Be True", that would be baggy were it not stretched over her growing bump. Freckly beneath her chestnut mane, and with huge hazel eyes, she radiates the healthy glow of an expectant mother. She's prepared to talk about it too - but not before she's satisfied her daily craving for a cheese sandwich at precisely 11.30am. "This was an unplanned pregnancy," she confesses between bites, "but it's been very happily received by everyone. Which is great," she adds with a wide smile. "It's something I've wanted to do my whole life; I can't believe I've waited this long."
There are no rings on her fingers and she is adamant that she has no plans to marry before the birth of her baby. "Definitely not in the near future," she says. "It's not important to me. I don't think a piece of paper lends itself to the idea of being a good parent and I want to be a good parent."
She has so far kept the identity of the father a mystery, prompting much Hollywood gossip. She won't be drawn on revealing him now but she does say that it's not the man named in many reports, San Francisco musician Craig Zolezzi. "Craig's not the dad!" she exclaims. "He's my great friend and he's been so cool about it. I want to shield the baby's dad as much as I can because it wasn't his choice to get roped into all this stuff. It'll come out in time and there'll be some other bump people will be interested in and I'll have this baby and get on with my life."
The only clues Driver will offer about the identity of her "baby daddy" are that he is English, and "sort of in the same business", and that they have evaded detection because "he's really busy, like me".
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Ehhhhh? How about THEM apples? I remind you, I posted MY story in January of 2008. The article doesn't say how far along she is, but if she's showing nicely, she could have gotten with child sometime around ... JANUARY! Ha!
I have a time traveling muse. This much is obvious.
Now, for those of you who are scratching your heads going "Huh? What the heck is he babbling about now?" I must refer you to the series "The Making of a Gigolo" The story you're looking for is called "The Making of a Gigolo (13) - Misty Compton. If you didn't read the series yet, give just this one story a try. You'll be laughing as hard as I am.
Thanks for reading.
Bob
An interesting thing happened the other day. I found out I had forgotten to do something, and I was astonished that I had forgotten to do this particular thing.
A little background on how I work.
I usually write a story completely before I start posting it. I have this fear that my muse will take a vacation (she has, in the past) and that, right in the middle of posting a story, I won't be able to finish it. The last thing I ever want to see on one of my stories is the dreaded yellow "incomplete and inactive" tag.
Once in a while, though, a story is so long that I start posting it when it's only half done. I'm not sure that was the case with the story I'm thinking about, but it might have been.
Anyway, I post everything at SOL first, and then at my personal web site at ASSTR after that.
So a sharp eyed reader sent me some feedback (in the email account I use with my web site) with a correction to chapter 33 of Prick Van Winkle. I went to my website and fixed it. Then I sent the fix to SOL, only to find out from the friendly moderator that... there WAS no chapter 33 posted at SOL.
Yup. It went from chapter 32 to the epilogue. Somehow, I had forgotten to post chapter 33 of the story at SOL.
So, for those of you who saw the update, with chapter 33 in it ... like months and months and months (OK, more than a year, actually) after the story ended ... well ... what can I say?
I'm old. I forget things. Call it the long lost missing chapter. Maybe you can look at it like the story was sent out in bottles, with different chapters put in different bottles and thrown in the sea, next to the desert island that is my mind. The bottle with chapter 33 in it just floated ashore on the mainland.
And it only took a year and a half. That's not bad, considering ocean currents and hurricanes and all that kind of thing.
Am I embarrassed?
Maybe a little.
But the real embarrassment is that nobody seemed to notice that chapter 32, which apparently ended things, flowed into the epilogue without wrapping up a few loose ends. Of course the epilogue tied up loose ends too. When you have as many loose ends as I seem to end up with, one or two left flapping in the breeze apparently isn't all that strange.
I'm trying to make light of this. Honestly. It is not a nefarious plan to get my fans to read the whole story over again, since chapter 33 will make absolutely no sense, all by itself, for those people who read the story when it was first posted, and have now forgotten it completely.
Honestly.
But it's there now and, if you ever decide to read the whole story again, it will make a little more sense.
I feel like such a goofball.
Bob
For those of you who don't know it, I have an editor. I call her Peaches, because she's sweet. Her father died Easter Morning, and I mentioned that in a previous blog entry. She wanted to say something to you all.
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A Note From Peaches :
I've been meaning to pass this on to Bob for a few days now, so he could pass it on to all of you, and i'm finally getting around to it...
I want to thank all of you that have kept me in your thoughts and prayers for the past week and a half, especially those of you that have sent your kind words of condolence. The fact that so many of you took the time to offer your sympathy to a stranger is making me feel pretty good about the human race right now. And that, more than anything, is very cheering.
My father was a wonderful man and I will miss him terribly. There has never been a moment in my life when I was not proud to be his daughter and I wish I had been able to find the words to tell him that while I still had the chance. The fragility of life is something that we are all aware of in a peripheral way, but most of us rarely take the time to bring that concept into focus. Because, really, dwelling on your own mortality is hardly uplifting. But it is very important that it not be entirely ignored or forgotten.
I know you've heard it all before and I'm not one for spewing cliches, but as I have been so recently reminded, I feel the need to remind others as well...live life to the fullest, live every day like it could be your last, etc. etc. Tell the ones you love that you love them EVERY DAY, more than once, and tell them why. Tell your children AND your parents that you're proud of them. Hug people. Kiss people too. Do what makes you happy and make sure your life is as fun-filled as it can be. Fuck well and often. Embrace your sense of humor and never be afraid to laugh at yourself. Don't waste time being embarrassed. Learn everything you want to know. Meet everyone you want to meet. And never be afraid to reach out.
I also want to thank everyone for being so understanding about the fact that I was not able to edit the last half of Bobby's latest adventure. Bob and I will get to it eventually and the chapters will be reposted fully corrected. Take it easy on him in the meantime. He's an old man, he needs my fresh young eyes to catch all of those mistakes for him.
- Peaches
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I'd like to thank all of you too. Your outpouring of love made me proud of you.
And ... just for the record ... I had to edit one whole word in her note when I posted this.
Bob
I got some feedback from a fellow named Ken and, in the process of answering his mail, I had an epiphany of sorts.
Many of you have written and said that you've noticed my "maturation" as an author. That's really interesting, from my view point, because I'm over fifty. I've been "mature" for a long time. I've been writing things for a long time too. I wrote professionally for one of my jobs. So I just naturally thought when I took a stab at writing erotica, that I might be "pretty OK at it" from the very beginning. I didn't think that my writing would make that much of a splash, all things considered. It was just a new hobby, and it was fun, so I kept doing it.
But in replying to Ken, it occurred to me that this whole erotica writing thing has been like a baby learning how to walk.
First the baby sits there, interested in things, but unable to reach them or explore them. So he just looks around. Then one day he wiggles his way toward something interesting. Then he pulls himself up, to stand on shaky legs. There are the first hesitant steps, with lots of falls and bumps.
The baby doesn't notice all this, of course. The parents do, and are very excited by it. When that baby takes his first series of connected steps, without falling down, there is jubilation. The baby looks around, surprised at all the uproar. All he did was move from point A to point B. What's the big deal?
Of course any of you who have been parents know the rest. Before you know it, the little toddler is tearing all over the place, getting into all sorts of trouble, sometimes going places he's not supposed to go.
But everything is so new and interesting, he can't resist. And the more he practices, the better he gets at it, all the time not realizing there has been any progression at all.
So I'd like to thank all my "parents" out there for making such a fuss about my improvement as an author. I don't really see it, but that's probably because I'm too close to the situation.
I'm having fun learning to walk. And when I toddle over and get into something you don't think I'm supposed to, just bark at me. I won't cry.
Of course I might not stop exploring either ... but then that's normal, right?
Thanks for noticing my growth.
Bob
Is there really a plot? That might seem to be a strange question, when considering erotic writing. After all, isn't the point to tittilate? Who needs a plot to do that?
But sometimes ... there IS a plot. I'm not the only author who thinks up plots and tries to write about them. Lots of other people do it, some better, and some worse.
OK. So I had this idea, about a young man, who would become involved in situations that, according the the dictionary, would make him a "gigolo." It was a series that I called "The Making of a Gigolo."
Now there are lots of things you could do with that, plot wise. You could be very straightforward and have him get better and better at making women happy, until women would be happy to pay him for sex, and he'd be happy to take their money.
You could have him try to be a gigolo and fuck it up royally. That would be the comic approach. Or maybe the tragedy approach, depending on how you wrote it.
You could have him run afoul of the law, get sent to jail, and ... well the possibilities are endless there.
You could have him be miserable in his life as a gigolo and be saved by some angel of mercy, who lifts him out of the gutter and teaches him how to have a happier life.
But there is another plot that I thought up.
Now, the problem with that is that, as people read the story, they have their own plot ideas. That's fine. It's normal, and I don't mind that a bit. This is fantasy, after all, and it's supposed to energise the imagination.
But, here's what I want you to reflect on: If you're reading something by one of those authors who really THINKS about things, and tries to write more than just sex scenes connected by a paragraph break, sometimes you have to wait a while before the plot gets illuminated.
By that, I mean that everything that happens in the whole series ... happens for a reason. It's not just a bunch of loosely connected stories. It all LEADS somewhere. I'll admit that it meanders a bit, sometimes. I'm an amateur at this, after all. But everything that HAS happened, and IS happening, as you read the series, has a purpose. It moves one or more characters to the ending that has been established in the plot.
So be patient as you read these kind of stories. To be honest, you won't actually know until the last words are read whether the plot is one you like ... or not. I personally hate that, when reading a book. I want to know that I'll be happy at the end.
Just like you folks. Believe me, I know you feel the same way.
But as an author, I don't want to be so transparent that you know the ending before it's even in sight. I hope there will be anticipation, and excitement and yes, even a little dread, now and then. And then, when you DO get to the ending, I want you to stick your arm up in the air, make a fist, jerk it back down like you're pulling a cloud from the sky and say "YES!"
Of course that's just what I want, as the author. And I know that's not going to happen with everybody. But that's the author's goal.
But how else could I write, and feel like I'm challenging my own skills?
Those of you who have read much of my stuff know that Romeo and Juliet is not my style. I mean the Bard could write some great stuff, but sometimes his endings are so dismal as to leave one in a mild (hopefully) state of depression.
That's not me. I like happy endings. That's what fantasy is for, in my opinion. Maybe the endings in your real life aren't all that great. And, to be honest, some of the darkness in the fantasy I write plays to that, so that it feels familiar. You can empathize with the character, because you know how that feels.
So, if you think, as you read this series, that things are getting screwed up, and going in the wrong direction, just remember ... it all leads to the ending, and the illumination of the plot.
I know not everybody will be happy with that ending. But I hope most of you will be.
Thanks for reading.
Bob