aroslav: Blog

This is number 110 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

“DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF.”

“How do I know it’s small stuff?”

“It’s all small stuff.”

Mad at me for not recognizing that your problems are real problems that are huge? Upset that I don’t consider the crumbling of civilization to be big stuff? Ready to fight over sexual identity, women’s rights, deportations, border protection, the war in Ukraine, salvation, racism, tariffs, democracy, civil rights, voter identification, government waste, autism, taxes, social security, health care, constitutionality, wokeness, gun rights, vaccinations, homelessness, pronouns, abortion, inflation, tourism, golf, football, basketball, or checkers?

Still reading?

Yes, it’s all small stuff. In fact, if all we had to deal with was any one of the things above, we’d realize it’s small stuff. Even terminal illness is something small. It affects when a person will die, not if they will die.

That’s right. It’s only when we collect the things up into batches we believe in or are concerned about and consider them all at once that we get overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. It seems like a crushing weight that has to be dealt with in order for humanity to survive.

Individually? It’s all small stuff.

The Strange Art series will be released in July as The Art Étrange Trilogy in a single volume as part of my Signature Collection of print books. The series is about a young artist who is simply overwhelmed by life. His speech gets bottled up when he tries to speak to people. He is overwhelmed by his classes, even though he’s a good student most of the time. Strangers, lack of familiarity, and new circumstances are all triggers for panic attacks.

He’s on the autism spectrum disorder, what the secretary of health and human services wants to have registered, declaring of those on the spectrum: “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job. They'll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date.” Etc.

Well, Art is evidence that is not true, and though the story is fiction, the characterization is not. He simply needs to deal with one thing at a time in order to not be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the things facing him.

The thing is that autism spectrum disorder was redefined recently, identifying a plethora of different conditions as being ‘on the spectrum.’ Asperger’s Syndrome. Rett Syndrome. Kanner’s Syndrome (also referred to as classic autism disorder). Pervasive Development Disorder—Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. It’s not on the rise; we are diagnosing a broader range of disorders under the banner of ‘autism.’

And most of those affected will, indeed, pay taxes, hold a job, play sports, write poetry, go on dates, and live lives that are almost indistinguishable from others. Just as Art the artist does. When he learns to focus on one thing at a time, he finds life less overwhelming.

The entire Strange Art series is available as a collection or individual eBooks at Bookapy.

No, this post isn’t about autism, but rather how a bunch of things get thrown at us at once and we start to panic instead of listening to one thing at a time.

Perhaps you have seen the 1907 photograph by Herbert Ponting of a Fakir in Varanasi, India lying on a bed of nails.

Did you know you can even buy a bed of nails online and practice lying on it? It is reasonably safe, and they are usually priced at less than $100. The weight of the person lying on the bed is spread across many points so there is not enough pressure from any one point to break the skin.

Imagine this person represents the people of the world (or just your family or community) and the nails represent all the problems of the world with which you are concerned. People don’t pay attention to panicked alarms because they are so numerous they (we) actually become comfortable lying on them.

The bed of nails looks overwhelming. They are so many that we feel hopeless to do anything about them. We raise the alarm about everything we see that is wrong, but no one listens. They have become comfortable lying on it.

But have you ever seen a picture of a person lying on just one nail?

Ridiculous, right? Because one nail doesn’t distribute the weight across the entire body. It focuses on one point and punctures.

When I say ‘it’s all little stuff,’ I mean we are so overwhelmed by the number of things that they all become equal and we are helpless to do anything. Perhaps it is not a sleep number, but in a way, the bed of nails becomes comfortable. We start shutting out the pain of so many things wrong in our lives, our world, or even our minds. We simply lie on all of them and can do nothing.

I’m suggesting that if you focus on one nail, you can make a real impact—flatten it, bend it, change its course. It doesn’t make a difference which nail you choose. It doesn’t have to be the same nail that anyone else chooses. But that focus helps you make the point. Continuing to drive it home day after day makes it irresistible.

It doesn’t mean you don’t care about anything else. Obviously, you do. But the mass of things you care about becomes the little stuff and you are able to actually accomplish something.

What does all this have to do with writing erotica?

I find that in the course of writing a story, there can be so much that needs to be dealt with that it is overwhelming. When I focus on one thing and resolve that, I can then move to another issue and resolve that. Trying to resolve them all at once leaves me unable to progress at all.

Yes, that means that I often need to backtrack as I’m writing and add something earlier in the story to support the next issue I’m dealing with. That’s okay. I’m still only dealing with one at a time.

I hit that point in my current work in progress this week. I looked at the number of things I needed to complete in the story and it was too much! It could (and will) all be dealt with, but I’ll be doing a lot of making sure each point has been set up correctly and that I successfully bring each one to a conclusion.

One at a time.

I don’t sweat the little stuff.

Sometimes my editors ask me for an estimate of how long the book will be when finished. Next week: Lying to my editors.

This is number 109 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

IT WAS BACK IN 1995 that I was first referred to (to my face) as a metrosexual. We didn’t have the benefit of online urban dictionaries yet, so I had to go to several hip friends to find out what the hell the term meant.

Turns out, it was a term coined by Mark Simpson in the British tabloid The Independent in November of 1994. Apparently, I was one of the first! By definition, it referred to a man who took care of himself. He had disposable income and spent a share of it on good grooming, exercise, and clothing.

It was true. I was a trainer and design consultant. I traveled around the country delivering lectures and workshops on publication design, production software, and color theory. My clients included major publishers, specialty design companies, and technology companies. I was on the road a lot. It was important for me to present a good image in front of my classes and clients.

I’d come a long way since the early 80s. I remember getting a new job as an executive assistant to the owner of a major real estate franchiser. When he found out I didn’t own a suit—I’d spent the past few years eking out a living in theatre—he immediately advanced me $200 and told me to come to work Monday dressed appropriately for the office.

I’m not sure he had in mind the brown herringbone wool suit I showed up in, but it was uniquely my style and he came to appreciate it. And the corporate gold jacket we were required to wear to official events went well with the suit pants.

Personally, I was in heaven. When I was growing up, my parents were the epitome of blue collar workers. Dad worked on the assembly line at Studebaker—when they weren’t either laid off or on strike. My daughter and ex-wife still wear a couple of his work shirts when they are painting, gardening, or engaged in a deep cleaning of the house, car, or garage. We lived hand-to-mouth, often on government surplus or unlabeled cans of Campbell’s soup my aunt picked up at the factory in Chicago.

In my mind, all the people who had nice homes (without six to ten broken-down cars in the yard) and cool stuff (boats, toys, 10-speed bicycles) worked in offices and wore suits to work each day. I vowed that one day I would be one of those people. My new job put me in their ranks.

As much as I set my mind to blanking out all memories of my unpleasant childhood, when I began writing the Living Next Door to Heaven series with Guardian Angel, I resurrected an idealized version of my childhood and neighborhood in Indiana. Nonetheless, some of the reality seeped into the story.

I remember the bullies, the rich kids, the church, and growing up in poverty. I remembered getting a ghastly paper route so I could earn enough money to have some things I could call my own: a radio, a trip to the dude ranch, breakfast when I got to school. In real life, none of that was mitigated by having multiple girlfriends, though a key incident in the story occurred between me and the ‘girl next door’ at a neighborhood beach party. That was just before she graduated and I moved away.

I first set my eyes on becoming a minister because that seemed to be a way to get respect in the neighborhood. The church provided a nice home for the minister. The minister always drove a nice car. The minister didn’t usually wear a tie, but he had a uniform with a clerical collar that was pretty cool. And there was lots of time to study and prepare speeches, which I dearly loved. I served as a minister for five years, at which time my wife and I went to grad school to follow our passion for theatre. I’d discovered that I was a pretty fine preacher, but a lousy minister. From there, I spent my life in jeans and T-shirts, building scenery and props.

Until I got that job at the real estate franchiser. Then I started wearing suits. Just like Brian, who started out in poverty on a Northern Indiana back road, became a television personality and always dressed nicely or not at all.

Guardian Angel and the entire Living Next Door to Heaven series (10 books) are available individually or as an eBook collection on Bookapy.

Rush forward a few years. In 2000, one of my co-workers asked for my ‘sartorial advice.’ I discovered that meant he considered me a clothes horse. When I went to work at Microsoft, I continued wearing suits or jackets and ties. I could go a month or more without repeating a tie.

At a division social hour, the vice president of the division came up to me and threatened to cut off my tie—actually calling for a pair of scissors. I explained to him that it was a $75 raw silk tie and if he had cash, I wouldn’t balk at him cutting it. He asked why I dressed in a suit. I answered that if he wanted me to work on a farm, I’d dress like a farmer. I glanced at his ‘work clothes.’

So, dressing nicely was part of my claim to being metrosexual. I always wore a hat—which might have been termed retrosexual, but I’ll let it be a contributor to my image. I also had regular appointments with my hair dresser and my manicurist and my massage therapist. One client said I had the most beautiful hands he’d ever seen on a straight male.

But recently, a commenter on Soulmates used the term disparagingly, scoffing at Jaime as ‘just a metrosexual.’ I’ve read the pejorative definition as being an effeminate or gay man. I don’t think so.

Like so many other terms in our language today, a faction of people who don’t want to be held to the same standard infer that the term refers to something repugnant to them, lumping other characteristics into the definition so that they can ignore the positives that they find uncomfortable.

Here’s my definition:

The term ‘metrosexual’ refers to a man secure enough in his masculinity to eschew the affected characteristics of manliness typically termed ‘toxic.’ He takes care of his body, his appearance, and his temperament. He is polite and respectful of others, especially those considered weaker or more vulnerable. He respects women and allows them the space to make their own life decisions, holding them to no less or greater a standard than men.

Anytime you would like to refer to me or to one of my characters as metrosexual, you have my thanks.

I’m considering a topic for next week that might get me in hot water. We’ll see. “Panicking Over Little Things.”

This is number 108 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

MANY YEARS BEFORE I became a born-again pagan, being saved from the clutches of organized religion, my career ambition was to become a Methodist preacher. Yes, when you read about how much of the Bible Brian memorized in LNDtH, that was based on my experience. I was able to quote chapter and verse and, in some cases, page number.

The summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I attended the Indiana Area License to Preach School at DePauw University, even though I could not receive my license until I’d turned eighteen and graduated from high school.

About thirty men were in the classes (all men), of whom I was the youngest and perhaps most impressionable. Yet there is only one lesson I still remember.

Among the men was a guy in his late twenties or early thirties who seemed intent on challenging everything. It seemed there was no subject on which he didn’t have an opinion or want to challenge an assumption or assertion. I liked that, as it seemed to be the direction my own life was headed.

Our pastoral counseling instructor was a kindly older minister whose name I have forgotten—I’ll call him Dr. Sanders. But his lessons on dealing with people in crisis and talking to parishioners when not in the pulpit were among the most interesting in the two weeks.

“Perhaps the most important thing to remember when counseling a person is to always leave room to respond,” said the old gentleman. I was certain he was well over seventy and was perhaps the gentlest soul I’d ever met.

“Dr. Sanders,” said the guy who challenged everything presented by every instructor we’d had. “What do you mean by leaving room to respond?”

The visage of the old man changed and hardened in front of our eyes as he turned on the questioner and said, “You think you’re pretty damn smart, don’t you!”

We were all stunned, including the questioner. Instantly, the old man softened again, and in his gentle voice said, “That just doesn’t leave you room to respond, does it?”

We all got the message. It was the most memorable lesson from that two weeks of instruction.

I have long since discarded all the theology we were taught in that time, but I have always tried to remember and practice that lesson. Like most of the best lessons in my life, I as often fail as I succeed.

I’ve been married and divorced three times. It wasn’t because of good communication.

I think social media aggravates the situation. I see massive amounts of stupidity—which I believe is the proper term for ‘meme’—that just makes me want to shout in the face of the person posting or reposting it. And let us not even glance at the comments on social media posts. I just want to lash out and silence the offenders.

Silence them. Not leave room for them to respond.

They will, though. The more positive I am that I have posted something irrefutable that should end an argument, someone argues with it.

We get divorced.

Times of passion are often times when we just don’t leave room to respond in our arguments. I had to face this in some of the stories I wrote. In What Were They Thinking? the adults who parented the clan in Living Next Door to Heaven sit around on Memorial Day telling each other the stories of how they got involved in the clan and how they let their children get involved. When Marilyn (Brian’s mother) tells her story there were moments that were obviously hard to relive. Among them was Hayden’s confession that he’d had an affair and his plaintive conclusion, saying “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry!” I [Marilyn] exploded. “We took wedding vows! I gave you everything. And you’re sorry? What did you do? Accidentally run into her on the assembly line and decide to put some parts together? How could you do this to me?”

In that paragraph of forty words, Marilyn asks four questions, but between the question and the attitude, there was absolutely no room to respond. Yes, the whole thing sounded kind of familiar to me. When you are in shock and grief and panic, you just don’t think of communicating. You lash out.

“You think you’re pretty damn smart, don’t you!”

Sadly, it happens to people every day. And as a result, it happens in my stories as well. I’m trying to make sure it no longer happens in my social media posts, but it does.

What Were They Thinking? and the entire Living Next Door to Heaven collection of ten books is available on Bookapy.

And that brings me to a topic I know many authors deal with daily: Handling criticism.

I have mixed feelings about reviews. On one hand, I don’t want to read them. They are known to be bad for an author’s morale, or a false boost to his ego. On the other hand, reviews are the single biggest thing that sells an author’s works. Even negative reviews bring attention to the book.

No matter what the review says, a primary rule is that an author should never respond to it.

I get it. If I read a negative review, my first thought is “Well, they obviously just didn’t get it.” But whose fault is that? I have successfully withheld my hand from responding at all, leaving plenty of room for others to respond.

I serialize all my stories and it is considerably harder to ignore comments by readers on chapters that are posted. This is partly because readers have a tendency to lock in on one thing that may or may not have any significant meaning in the story, and ‘discuss’ it forever!

In a coming-of-age story, I had a character mention that he could only get WLS Chicago at night when the weather was clear. Over fifty comments on that chapter revolved around where WLS could be received, what other 50,000 watt stations there were in the country, where various people were when they heard that station, and discussing the effects of weather and terrain on radio reception.

Honestly, the comments were fascinating, but they had nothing to do with the story.

I’ve made it my practice regarding comments to only engage when the commenter asks a question of the author, if comments become abusive, or if there is a technical difficulty I need to explain. That works pretty well and I don’t feel I’m ignoring my readers. I read all the comments on every story.

Email is the hardest yet most important kind of comment to deal with as an author. I receive email nearly every day relating to the story that is posting or the blog I’ve written. I read all the mail I’m sent, even if it is from someone who writes the same thing in every message.

These people have taken the time and energy to directly contact the author with their thoughts. Often, the message comes with a conclusion that says, “No reply necessary.” I appreciate that.

At least half the email I receive includes a question I need to respond to. I do so. Where is my Patreon address? Will there be another book in this series? Have I ever eaten at a particular restaurant in an area I’ve written about? I always respond to these messages and try to answer the questions to the best of my ability. They’ve left me room to respond.

Some email messages are just thank yous or notes of appreciation for making a story available. That makes up the majority of the remaining messages and I try to send back a brief “Thank you” to those people who have taken the time to tell me they appreciate my efforts.

Then there are email messages that don’t leave room for a response. They are simply venting about the current political situation, my ineptness as a writer, the terrible ending to a story, or how age is affecting my ability to focus. I just don’t respond to those. I don’t feel there is room to respond. The complaint is about something I can do nothing about. The book or chapter has already been published. I’m the age I am. There’s nothing about my political views that requires me to convince you I am right and you are wrong. It is what it is.

When there is no room to respond, I don’t respond. I’m not interested in starting a discussion or an argument about another person’s opinion.

Some comments that are intended to be insulting have the opposite effect on me. If someone calls me “woke,” I simply thank them. I know the actual definition of the term and it isn’t an insult at all. Next week, I’ll look at another term: “Metrosexual.”

This is number 107 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

I WRITE OLD MEN’S EROTICA. That means that we have to stop and talk for half an hour about the weather and our latest surgery before we get to any of the fun stuff.

Is that what I mean by TMI (Too Much Information)? It’s a good example, but is far from the only thing. No doubt at any age, you have encountered a person who has to go into every detail of what happened and all the events leading up to it. By the time they get to the point (if they ever do), you’ve forgotten what they were starting to tell you.

Many of those people are called ‘wives.’

“You won’t believe what happened to Maribelle this afternoon!” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“Well, this morning after I dropped the kids off at school… We were running late because that son of yours absolutely refused to put his shirt on right side out… So, I was in a hurry and didn’t notice that awful bully lurking beside the school, but Elmer and Elsie were already inside. I thought I’d make that pot roast you like so much… You remember the one my mother served you and you went ga-ga over? Well, SuperFoods had roasts on sale for just $6.99 a pound, so I headed over there, but Raygun Road was closed because of a fallen tree. You know that storm that came through last night? They were just getting around to clearing the road and instead of waiting in line to take the detour, I turned around and decided to go to Best Grocery to get the meat, even though it chapped my ass to have to pay 9.49 a pound for it when SuperFoods had exactly the same cuts for $6.99…”

Maybe in forty-five minutes or so, you will get the information of what happened to Maribelle this afternoon and maybe you won’t. But you will certainly get too much information!

When I started the Team Manager series early in 2021, I knew nothing about Iowa, basketball, farming, or teens. I researched. Every step of the way, I researched the history of girls’ basketball in Iowa, the top crops, the weather cycles, the high school classes that were typical in that area, the scores of basketball games, the terminology in use, and the operation of the ATF, FBI, and county law enforcement.

The problem with research is that an author wants to use all his new-found knowledge. By the time I reached the fourth book in the series, CHAMP!, I was having to research colleges, application processes, recruitment, college sports, and the effect of COVID on athletes.

By spring of 2022, I was a fan of Iowa basketball at all levels—yes, that included the incredible performances of one Caitlyn Clark at the University of Iowa. I knew the Division III schools of the American Rivers Conference, their mascots, and what each gym looked like from the inside. (I even visited several of them and verified I’d gotten it right the next year.) And I started plotting which of the schools my characters would go to.

And that’s where trouble really started for me.

I talked about characters being recruited and receiving scholarships, only to be informed (after publication) that it wasn’t how recruitment worked in Division III schools, that there were no athletic scholarships for those universities and colleges, that coaches weren’t allowed to talk to high school students, and that my general premise for getting the crew together in college was wrong!
But I’d described it all! The books were released in the market. There was little I could do but endure the comments from those fans who actually knew. And none of that information was really necessary. I’d become so enthused that I wanted to share all my (faulty) knowledge with everyone who read my story.

TMI. But it’s still a good story.

CHAMP! and the entire Team Manager series are available as eBooks on Bookapy.

I find this frequently when reading other people’s works. If something particularly interests the author, he feels it is incumbent upon him to share it with the world reading his novel. I think there is little that exemplifies this more than the description of weapons. For example:

Blaine recognized the Bolt X7 revolver in the assassin’s hand. It was the newest in the venerable line of Bolt handguns, known as the most lethal in the world. It weighed only twenty-eight ounces with a poly grip customized to the hand of the owner. It was a known competition single action pistol with a trigger pull weight of less than three pounds. Some competitors found the light weight resulted in too much kick from the high-caliber shells. He could see the six-inch barrel, equipped with a silencer, didn’t waver in the assassin’s hand. What Blaine didn’t know was the ten grains of powder propelling the flathead carbonite bullet toward Drake in front of him would leave an entry wound just a quarter of an inch across, but the exit wound would be two inches across, leaving enough power behind the deadly bullet to penetrate Blaine as well.

TMI!

And yes, I know much of the information in this that I made up on the fly is faulty. You can’t put a silencer on a revolver. Ten grains of powder could probably blow up the barrel of a lightweight gun. Etc. etc. But most of all, who cares?

I submit to the Congress of the United States that any gun control laws submitted henceforth should have a limit imposed of twenty words used to describe any weapon in fiction literature!

Yes, there is a small and vocal group of gun enthusiasts who want to read all this and contest any inaccuracy they find in the information ad nauseam, even down to whether or not the gun in question would have a kick. But who cares? Not the average reader of even the most intense thriller. In fact, the information creates such a large interruption in the flow of the story that most readers will have forgotten who the characters were and why they were being shot at.

Without going into detail, I will say that the biggest flaw in erotica is sex scenes with too much information. The more information included in a sex scene, the more likely readers are to be distracted by things like whether or not the position is even possible, how many hands are doing what, and the probability that these two or ten characters would ever allow themselves to be in this situation at all.

And all that, after we’ve endured half an hour of talk about the weather and the latest surgery.

It seems there are no end of writing issues to write about. Next week, I’m going to discuss comments, email and criticism: “Room to Respond.”

This is number 106 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.

“…MAN DO I DISLIKE the tired ‘someone misinterprets something innocent and gets mad/heartbroken at the other person’ trope.” So, commented a reader of Soulmates recently.

I understand. It happens in almost every book and every movie, whether you are watching action and adventure, romance, or anime. Someone always gets misunderstood. Someone always misinterprets something. Even James Bond. It’s a staple of keeping a story tense and making interpersonal relationships real.

It’s a ‘trope’ I’ve used frequently. A trope, by the way, is a recurring character type or plot device that appears repeatedly in literature or art. The innocent misunderstanding is only one of many that recur. There are dozens that you would recognize in everything you read once they were pointed out.

The Chosen One. The Mistaken Identity. The Love Triangle. The MacGuffin (a thing that appears to push the plot forward, like a secret letter, an amulet, a key, a sacred book, etc.). Inconvenient Prophecies. Impending Apocalypse. Enemies to Lovers. Only One Space (one bed in a room, one elevator, one available rental car, etc.). The All-Night Diner. The Grizzled Detective. The Treasure Hunt. The Double Agent. Self-Sacrifice. The Underdog Hero.

One of the most fun books I’ve ever written was the three-volume set of Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon. The idea came to me as I was driving north toward Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, supposedly thinking about the Team Manager series. Suddenly, I heard a voice in my head say, “Hello. My name’s Bob. I’ll be your demon tonight.”

I told my friend and story consultant, Doug, about the weird idea for a demon who was unattached to any person or purpose, but had merrily gone about his way for several thousand years. Doug nodded and said, “Bob is just a happy-go-lucky—mostly lucky—demon.”

But how did this demon get into the world?

By way of one of the oldest tropes in the book: The Drunken Summoning Spell.

Bob’s inept adept, Pinaruti, drunkenly thinks he is summoning Beelzebub, but slurs the words to Beetlebob. When Bob appears, Pinaruti is so surprised at the success of the spell that he dies of heart failure, forming a bridge out of the warded circle for Bob to cross into the real world.

Of course, Bob inherits his ability to cast spells from his would-be master, so even without being drunk, most of his spells go awry. It is the beginning of a 4,000-year adventure.

Why does the trope work? Because it has an unexpected outcome. The whole concept of ‘demon’ is rife with horror overtones, but Bob is a lovable and happy being who stumbles into the presence of Zeus, has a conflict with Poseidon, is Caesar’s sidekick, travels with Jesus, is the architect for Kubli Khan, combats piracy and slave trading across the Pacific, and ends up launching his own spaceship.

And, of course, his summoner imagined him as irresistible to females—some of whom ask him to possess them!

The entire three-volume set of Bob’s Memoir is available as individual eBooks or as a collection at Bookapy.

So, first of all, why are tropes so common? These things don’t come about out of the blue. I believe the reason the “someone misinterprets something innocent and gets a broken heart” trope referred to at the beginning of this post is so often included in works—especially of romance—is because it’s common in real life. I’ve personally been a victim of it on several occasions—some for which I wish I could go back and hit “undo.”

Sometimes these situations get cleared up, and sometimes they end up in divorce. That’s life.

In Soulmates, there is the unique solution in that the couple can communicate mentally and can share exactly what was going on with each other. It resolves the situation quickly, but it’s necessary to show a new level of growth and trust in the relationship.

An author can’t avoid every trope because tropes arise from common life events. What the author does with the trope will determine its success or failure. One thing is to avoid such overworked tropes that they have become clichés. A cliché is a trope that has been overused and trivialized to the point of being two-dimensional. The ditzy blonde and the dumb jock are two examples.

One way to make use of a trope is to subvert expectations. In Bob’s Memoir, the demon is not an embodiment of evil, but a happy and somewhat beneficent being. Perhaps the detective of a mystery actually is as incompetent as he appears and the mystery solves itself in spite of him. (The Pink Panther.) The blue-haired old lady solving a cozy mystery is actually a spy who has done her share of killing.

In my short story, “Before the Fire,” a man is reading in front the cozy fireplace in his sitting room when a ghostly woman substantiates in the chair next to him. They talk, he gives her a blanket, and eventually they make love. But then it is revealed that it is the man who is not real, but is merely a character in a book the woman is reading. That is a subverted trope.

One of the traps authors fall into is having two-dimensional characters. They depend on a trope to carry the story, but somehow it rings hollow, almost becoming a cliché. The remedy for this is to fully explore the character and fully develop it.

I have written characters that fell short of being fully developed, which irritates me because I pride myself in well-developed characters. It happens most often with the ‘occasional villain.’ This is a villain who only appears for a specific occasion. He’s there to pull the trigger and then disappear, so to speak. We don’t really know anything about him. We don’t know what motivates his action, what he believes, or often even what he looks like. Or that he’s a she.

When writing a limited viewpoint story, it’s difficult to fully develop characters other than the narrator. The hero’s only interaction with the villain is that villainous act that defines him in relationship to the hero. But that is never a complete view of the character.

In the Team Manager series, the bullies of the first book are slowly revealed through other interactions, their history with the hero, the police investigation, and the testimony of relatives—sisters, parents, business partners, and lovers. The action is consistent with how the characters develop.

Combining the character development with a surprising twist on the trope can also provide something fresh. Imagine, for example, a flamboyant gay hairdresser who turns out to be a family man who lives in the suburbs and only puts on the act for his clientele.

Keeping things new is always a challenge for the author—especially in erotica. It has been said that there are only so many ways for Tab A to fit in Slot B. It is only the depth of the characters, their relationship, and their emotions that set one act apart from another. Next week, “Too Much Information (TMI).”