Lubrican: Blog

The title of this blog should have been "Thank you to everybody who ever sent me feedback" but that would mean thousands and thousands of people. So I would have had to say "Thank you to the multiple thousands of people who ever sent me feedback" and that would sound self-important and I don't want that.]

And this is going to be a long blog entry, but stay until the end (as all those you tubers say) and maybe you'll be entertained. Just think of it as a short story.

I started posting at SOL in 2005, or something like that. My aged brain doesn't have enough live cells left to reserve for remembering things like that. And I started getting feedback immediately. Most of it was positive. There were some folks who said I should stop writing forever and go eat raw fish, but they were in the minority. This is America, so the majority rules and the majority said I should start writing longer stories. Back then all I posted were stroke stories, and if you write anything longer than two or three chapters you have to actually put a plot in there somewhere, but I tried. And I got more encouragement until I was writing actual novels.
Trust me. Nobody was more surprised than I was that I could write a whole novel.

Eventually, I published one of these novels at Amazon, but not much happened. Then I thought about how unlikely it was for more than five or six out of a hundred millions readers to notice little old me. So I published seventy of my books there. Actually, that's not true. Amazon has extremely vigilant censors and to get a lot of my books published there I would have to edit them so much it would look like a ten-year-old wrote them. I mean how likely is it that somebody will want to buy a book in which an eighteen-year-old young woman asks to her step-uncle, "What is that white stuff that comes out of your male member when I see you massaging it?" But I published enough books that the kind of people who bought my books would be more likely to notice one. And if the noticed one and liked it, maybe they'd buy one of the others.

Now I publish everything at zbookstore.com, where the censors have decided to tipple scotch and take a nap.

Anyway, as I said, you guys made me better and better until, starting about a couple of months ago, I started getting emails from people like the CEO of Watabe's publishing house and tea-drinking company, where they explain that they stumbled up on one of my books at Amazon and were taken by the fascinating plot and the interaction of the characters in the book. It would turn out that they all had dedicated reading and discussion groups numbering two or three thousand, and that the members of their reading and discussion group were just dying to read something like "Losing in Vegas." They said the book wasn't getting the exposure it deserved and that they were desperate to help me get my book in front of more eyes.

For a fee.

It always seemed to require recompense for their administrative costs that I pay $125 for them to help me this way.

I actually went for it in the beginning, and I really did get more reviews on the book. I got four of them, in fact. Apparently the other 1,996 members of the reading and discussion tea-drinking group weren't as taken by my talent as the CEO was. And these four must have known each other because they all said almost the exact same thing!

Then I got the same email from fifty other CEOs or Presidents or Discussion leaders. I'm not kidding. There were at least fifty of them. And they talked about different books, too.

To be fair, they had read the book, based on the details they discussed which grabbed their interest and wouldn't let go. Or maybe an AI read it and gave them the cliff notes. I don’t know. But it was impressive. I even got an invitation to be interviewed live by Mary Louise Kelly on "All Things Considered" at NPR. I sent that to my sister, triumphantly, and she wrote back saying it was sad that NPR was so desperate for contributions that they have made their world-famous interviewers use Gmail to write to potential best-selling authors, instead an NPR.org account.

I was chagrined. I used to be a hot-shot homicide detective and I completely missed the Gmail thing.

Anyway, apparently my ratings at Amazon have risen past a point where the vultures can finally see my carcass and swoop in to get a piece of the action.

And I owe that to all of you who made me a better author.

So take it from me. If you can put a Band aide on your bruised ego and listen to constructive criticism it can help you be better at whatever the criticism pertains to. Sadly, to my brothers out there, this means you need to actually listen to your wife. Sorry, boys.

I'll even thank those of you who voted zero on everything I posted within ten minutes of it appearing in public. They wanted to make sure that nothing I wrote ever got rated higher than an eight. I'm assuming it was because they had a favorite author whose work they wanted to be in the high nines, or maybe even ten, and they didn't want any competition, but that's just the suspicious detective in me. I can tell you I was astonished at how vigilant they were to make sure their zero vote was the first vote I got. I'm serious. I actually timed it one time, checking SOL every ten minutes after I sent something up there to find out when it went public and it was rated nowhere above a one within ten minutes.

This why my reader feedback is more important to me than scores. Way more important.

So thank you to those of you who noticed something wrong with something I wrote and alerted me top that fact. It allowed me to make corrections and make the book or story better. It also ended up making it so I can enjoy a Burrito Supreme once in a while.

And thank you to those of you who said I was a passable author and should write more, and then said you liked what I wrote. That will do more to bandage up a wounded ego than anything else in the world. By now my ego is so scarred up that nothing hurts it anymore, but keep those positive comments coming. I appreciate them more than I can express in a return email.

In the end that's what I want to say.

Thank you.

Bob

PS
I have listened to All Things Considered since it was invented and I have enjoyed their interviews of new authors who were somehow best selling authors after their first or second book. Now I know how you can become a best selling author after your first or second book. And all it costs is a hundred and twenty-five bucks. I would be disappointed if I believed Mary Louise actually sent me that email. But it makes me wonder... you know?

I am posting a new story this week, by request from readers. Sadie Hawkins is My Mom was liked and people said they wanted another Sadie story. There are lots of possibilities for a story like that. My Aunt is Sadie Hawkins; My Niece is Sadie Hawkins; My Lab Partner is Sadie Hawkins. You get the idea. But I settled on My Daughter is Sadie Hawkins.
If you really, really, really want one of the others, let me know. If ten people say they do then I'll write that one.

In any case, it is more than six chapters long and I don't have time to drag out posting it until next Monday or Tuesday, so I'm going to post the first two chapters today (21 Sep 26) and then wrap it up by this coming Saturday at the latest. As usual, if you are impatient you can get the book at zbookstore.

You already know the plot, so I won't go into that.

Thanks for reading,
Bob

Several people have asked why most of my recent books contain black on white interracial plots. The reason is simple.

I love writing erotica. But I'm also retired and living on a fixed income. And black on white plots sell more books. I don't know why. So I've been concentrating on that to boost my income.

I have plenty of other ideas and I'll wok on them, too. If I need a little boost in income, though, another interracial book will come along.

Bob

I'm finally able to post something longer than five or six chapters. A lesson in Biology is book length and I'll be posting at least one chapter per day (assuming I don't get so busy doing other stuff that I forget. That has happened before.)
Since SOL only gives you 500 words to describe a new post, I'll put the "long version" of the description here. This is the description you'll find on the book at zbookstore.com if you go there and look at it:

Robin wanted to be a cheerleader and everything was approved except for her grade point average. To bring it up she needed to go to summer school. Her father said to get the best tutor available and her mom got a name from the school. Marcus was a quiet, geek-type young man whose single mom worked two jobs to support her family. So he took the tutoring job even though his social status and Robin's social status were as far apart as possible. Like he was a poor black kid and she was a rich white girl. Robin didn't care about all that. She just wanted to improve her grades. And her tests did suggest she'd achieve her goal. Marcus made it easy to understand and remember things and every test she took she got an A on. Then they got to the chapter on the human reproductive system in her biology syllabus. Marcus had always reacted in a biological manner to his beautiful student, and when she wished she could see things for real, instead of just in pictures, how could he do anything other than offer to be her manikin? After all, she couldn't investigate these things on dates. That's how you got a reputation. But, in the privacy of her bedroom, with her tutor, she could see things … touch things … experience things. And she found out she really liked doing all those things. It would have been great except her mother found out. And then his mother found out. And that's when the train went off the rails and just kept going.

So I hope those of you who read it like it. Those of you who don't read it can have fun elsewhere.
Bob

I don't usually do this, but in this case I'll make an exception. If you enjoy thinking about life and the trials life throws at you, and if you like a little philosophy, and if you like John Grisham's books then you should read "Naked Loophole." John Grisham didn't write it, but it's as entertaining as his stuff. It's really, really good. I almost never read a story that is over five chapters long, because I crave writing instead of reading. My editor, Andy said I should read it. I went all twenty chapters without stopping.

Bob