FozzieBare: Blog

This will be the first chapter of FTMD in some time. It's off to the pre-readers, and I'll give you a bit of a tease.

It's current working title is "Prometheus+Slinger=Ozymandias", and now, it has nothing to do with Breaking Bad.

it also is a very discordant tonal shift from the other chapters. It is the beginning of events that will change the Universe that Mary, Alex and Melissa thought they understood. This chapter does not involve them directly in any way, but it will affect them profoundly.

In a universe where one's belief in the righteousness of one's Cause can justify anything, can one live with what one must do to advance the Cause? And when one's Cause is all consuming, how easy is it for others to manipulate that cause to their own benefit.

As always, I am open to pre-reader requests.

Ok. that's enough attempts at (poorly) writing rhyming.

So, health has it's ups and downs (rhumatoid arthritis flared up, combined with a pinched nerve in the hip, was all kinds of fun), but for once I want to talk about something positive instead of something negative.

And that's the new story I just submitted.

I have had about a dozen false starts over the last couple months, trying to write a story. Both chapters of an existing work, and something new. I am my own worst critic of my writing (as you can probably guess through these blog entries).

I would start to write something, get bogged down in the details, contradict myself a dozen times over, try to edit, and finally just go on a deletion filled rampage and quitting out of frustration.

So, I tried something (k)new with this story.

I didn't think about the story before I put fingers to keyboard. I let the internal editor inside of me go on an extended coffee break, setup a direct line between my brain-muse and my fingers, and started.

At first, this story really worried me. It felt.. raw... emotional. I don't know if it's because of the health issues I've been through, but by the time I got to the end of my main character's written stream of the thought, I dreaded opening that hospital door. In the mindset I've been in, I wondered if the woman/girl on the other side of the door had cheated on him, and now was dying, or what have you.

Instead, it's the exact opposite. It's not the ending of life, it's the beginning. Instead of the hurt of betrayal, it is the confirmation of togetherness.

I think it's good stuff. But there was this whispering voice in my subcocnscious, that was saying "You know this is crap, and you know you can't write well any more".

I sent it to my pre-reader/editor (as I noted previously), and said "I can't tell if it's crap. Let me know what you think."

He liked it.

Not only that, it was the story that he had to do the least amount of editing on recently for me.

So, now I offer it to you guys. I open it up to your comments, good, bad and indifferent. I want to know what you truly think.

The only thing I ask is that you don't judge it solely on it's flash-story length.

While I'm trying to break down the walls that separate me from continuing FTMD, RR etcetera (Basically, there's been about 8 attempts where I've gotten several paragraphs in, or even a couple pages, before self-doubt and frustration and not being able to do work that was up to my self-instutited standards caused me to delete everything, and walk away even more frustrated then when I started.

I couldn't even bother my long-suffering pre-readers, because I KNEW that it was crap, and I didn't want to waste other people's time with writing crap.

Until today, after I posted the earlier update, one of my pre-readers messaged me, and let me know he was glad to see me continuing to fight writer's block. He closed his message with:

"Keep in touch and send me a copy of anything you write. I enjoy proofreading your writing. "

So, I decided to do a challenge. Not a new chapter of an existing story, because I've butted my head into a wall way too many times on that recently, but what I would do is sit down, and write a story where my fingers and brain led me. No spellcheck, no re-reading sections to see where it should go.

Just let my fingers type, let the words flow to the screen, and no judging my own work. So.. that loyal pre-reader now has a copy of a quick story I wrote up. I don't know if it's crap. But I have a feeling if it is, he can tell me how to make it a little less crap.

If it's not crap, I'll share it with the rest of the world.

In short, I'm trying to emulate the "hero" of this cartoon that was shared with me earlier this week.

https://imgur.com/gallery/qw02rv4

No, you haven't got rid of me yet. Things are getting slightly better in some ways, just trying to get back to being able to write a lot.

Speaking of writing, FantasyLover has decided to try to finish Warlord's Scout story. https://storiesonline.net/s/19671/scout-by-fantasylover

And it got me to thinking. While I'm hoping to be around for decades to come, if I'm unable to finish the stories I have going... I want there to be a finish for readers, even if it's not mine. Mary, Alex, Melissa and Arin deserve that. Not to mention Antonia and Matt.

So, should I disappear, and be unreachable, if you want to finish my stories, consider this my approval. And my thanks.

But here's hoping that I can save ya the work :)

I was going to title this: Getting there may be Half the fun, but it's all the Pain.. but I couldn't fit that in with the true purpose of this blog post, so.. you get it here instead.

So, in and out of the hospital, as they try different things to manage my pain and to deal with my blood pressure. I try to tell them they're both related, because, well, DUH.. but eh. what can you do.

Except bitch about it a lot.

However, I want to make this more then yet another "FozzieBare is not happy about his health" post, so I decided to put some effort into this post (for a change, I can hear the snarkers say in the back..)

Here's some of the authors I really enjoy. Some of them are still producing new content, others have stopped writing, some of them have disappeared, and sadly, some of them are no longer with us. But I wanted to start a discussion on what authors you love, and hopefully we can all tell each other stories that may have slipped by that would make good reading.

Jay Cantrell I've mentioned Jay as a great author before. He writes long epic tales that manage to be both hot AND full of realistic story-telling. Daze in the Valley is my favorite, but seriously, I don't think you can go wrong with any of his work.

Warlord He had several EPIC stories going, including Wild West, Warlord, Scout and the Sea Cruise series (Fun fact: Scout was the impetus to start writing Free Trader Mary's Dream). Sadly, he's drifted away from writing, and a lot of his stories are still unfinished. Here's hoping someday we will have a finish to them.

Colt45: unlike Warlord, most of his stories are complete. The Sea King series and the Mayhem series are my favorites, and I hope someday we will see a Mayhem 5, where Tink finally gets her man (Read the Mayhem series to understand that reference).

SirNathan: For those of you with a BDSM type kink, SirNathan has some GREAT stories that can guide you into that world. A lot of those stories tend to replace telling a believable story with wild acts, both of a non-consensual and consensual manner that would require a doctor's visit, if not a lengthy hospital stay or worse. So, amongst the more "hardcore" stories, this is a welcome break. My personal favorite is Culture Shock. If you ever wanted to understand a submissive's nature and how they get into the lifestyle, you MUST read it.

Don Lockwood . Want a bunch of nice, sweet, stories about believeable, relateable people? Look no further. He's no longer writing, at least that I know of.. (he originally posted under another name), but I still re-read Dance of a Lifetime AT LEAST once a year.

Also, one of the greatest compliments I ever got while writing was when I mentioned I had released one of my first stories (It's My Party) on SOL. He said to me "Foz, this is the kind of story I like to write!" and it was high praise.

Al Steiner Got a few hours/days/weeks to kill? Re-read his books. Some of them are actually out on Amazon now (the Intemperance series), and I think he was one of the first "re-run history" authors here on SOL with Doing It All Over, which is my favorite work.

bluedragon: There are long stories, and there are smutty stories, and then there's bluedragon, who writes both very well. I joked one time that you can tell if you're the lead character in a bluedragon story if your genitalia is about to fall off, not from disease, but from overuse ;)

To prevent this from being multiple pages of fanboy gushing in one post (so, I can spread it out), I'll mention some of the other authors that I like, and will go into more detail in a future post.

Lazlo Zalezac
rlfj
The Night Hawk (Kelly! Once More With Feelings! Why didn't I do the full link.. ok.. stop gushing Foz, you can tell them more later.)
Douglas Fox
Lubrican