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...or at least the final two chapters, "Thursday morning" and the "Thursday night" epilogue are in the posting queue. Should be up shortly.
Because it's been a while since I've posted on SOL, my HTML editing skills are rusty, and I've had to reupload these chapters a few times to fix things I did wrong. Thanks to those of you who pointed out some HTML glitches in these chapters; if anyone sees anything else, let me know -- happy to fix.
I'd also love to know what people think of this story. It's so deeply personal to me, I'm so close to it -- I can't really determine if this will be interesting to SOL readers or not. It's very, very interesting to me, mainly because I somewhat lived it. But if scores and/or comments indicate that it's not a hit here on SOL, that's okay. Live and learn.
Two funny real-world things from this experience that I can't really share anywhere else.
1) This was a very male-centric conference, women were probably only 25% or less of the attendees. I don't think "Courtney" would have approached our group the first night if we'd been all dudes. The fact that my co-worker "Marcy" was there with us likely made "Courtney" comfortable to join in with our group, which then of course led to all of the events later in the week. So "Marcy" may very well have been responsible for this hookup, but I can never ever ever ever tell her that!!
2) The tattoo scene in this story is very close to real life. "Courtney" was very enamored with my tattoo and it definitely helped bring us closer. So my tattoo artist may have helped this hookup -- him, I can probably tell. :D
Happy reading!!!
So, I've just begun posting a new story on SOL, the first time in several years that I've done so. It's a deeply personal story -- as I put in the endnote, there's a lot of truth to it. Writing this story has been a bit of therapy for me, as I sort out some feelings about something that happened a few weeks ago.
I anonymized a lot of the story for safety reasons, but I couldn't anonymize the Jimmy Buffett angle, especially after I used his song title (slightly modified) for the story! I'd originally used lyrics and title from another Buffett song, but then happened to hear "Who's the Blonde Stranger?" on the radio and realized -- it, like this story, tells a tale of infidelity! But if not for Jimmy Buffett, this story (and the real events that inspired it) would absolutely not have happened.
I also didn't anonymize the setting. Nashville itself is intrinsic to the story and the events may not have happened anywhere else. Nashville is a bit like Vegas in that it encourages people to escape reality for a bit. That leads individuals to do things they might not otherwise do...
Curious to hear what people think of this. There will be five chapters total, and all are mostly complete. This entire story will be on SOL by later today or early tomorrow. Share your thoughts, please!
Some new illustrations for my story "The Arrangement," much better than the previous ones I created, have been drawn by a wonderful artist named Terry. (He doesn't want any more credit than his first name.)
I'm in the process of adding the 5 new drawings to the appropriate places in the HTML of the story, but if you like, you can see all of the drawings here. (Note that if you haven't finished the story, the drawings and captions will contain spoilers for the plot!)
The Arrangement: Illustrations by Terry
Hi all:
So I've re-read "The Arrangement" from start to finish a couple of times this week, first time I'd read it in its entirety since I finished writing it. Still quite pleased with it. I found several typos, and revised the chapters and reuploaded them to fix.
I also made one content change. A reviewer of the story noted the improbability of a "secret society" like ISPOTA, and the fact that they'd have a network of physicians around the world explicitly approving of sexual activities between adults and minors. :)
While the existence of ISPOTA is central to the story, the knowledge of the physician is not, and I see the reviewer's point. It does stretch believability a bit to imagine doctors around the world knowing of these Arrangements, and not notifying the authorities.
So, I tweaked chapters 5 and 6 to note that Arrangements simply require medical examinations from a "board-certified physician." Basically just a standard sexual health exam, and then the doctor is asked to fax the results to a specific fax number, with no mention of the organization behind it. That seems a little more logical to me.
I welcome your thoughts! Also, in reference to my last post re illustrations for "The Arrangement," I've reached out on a couple of online forums to see if I can find an illustrator willing to work with me, pro bono. If you (or someone you know) would be interested, please get in touch!
As many readers of "The Arrangement" know, the character Riley is based on someone I met on a cruise ship this spring. Though we didn't have an "Arrangement" or any sexual contact whatsoever, we did have several frank conversations, and she was the inspiration for the story.
One of my greatest regrets is that I don't have any pictures of her. It would have looked inappropriate for us to take photos together, and she doesn't seem to have any sort of online or social media presence that I can find. (It's probably for the best that I'm not in touch with her, to be honest with you.)
But, it makes me sad that I'm sort of forgetting what she looked like, and I've been trying to find an illustrator to add some artwork to "The Arrangement." (My previous effort, with "Second Life" avatars, was not very satisfactory.)
Flipping TV channels yesterday, I happened to see a Disney Channel actress who looks very similar to "Riley." So similar, in fact, that I actually exclaimed "oh my god" out loud or something along those lines when I saw her.
Her name is Devore Ledridge, she's 15 years old (as Riley was when Mark met her!) and you can see some pictures of her here:
https://www.google.com/#q=devore+ledridge
In many photos, she has straight hair, whereas the inspiration for my story's Riley was wavy. But in this one particular picture, she looks so much like my "Riley," that it makes my heart ache:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7fHSfRIZpHA/VyVqEKvOh2I/AAAAAAAAOeQ/c9tveZuctvk3Md17Lc3jNXQOj7TTjMx7gCLcB/s1600/devore-ledridge-1.jpg
If I can find an illustrator to work with me on some images, I will of course post those here when done.
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