Xalir: Blog

Wow! Jay Cantrell got some people to sit up and take notice overnight. I exchanged a couple of emails with him about his blog post and was amazed that he's heard of me. I'd wanted to reach out to him since the email he'd gotten is a familiar one to just about every writer on SOL. I've seen them. After the cliff-hanger at the end of book 1, I saw a LOT of them. lol. I handle all of the negative feedback with as gentle a touch as I can. I recognize that not all stories are for all people and given how deeply emotional some of my writing can be, it's inevitable that I'll touch on someone's triggers, so their rage can be about something that happened in their own past that the story reminded them.

When someone just lays on the hate, I tell them I understand, point out that not all stories are for all people and I wish them luck on finding one that's right for them.

The ones that piss me off are the ones that drop a 1 or 2 rating on the story. I'm setting aside the humble for a moment. I don't think it's hubris to say that I think the story deserves better than a 1 rating. Even if a reader doesn't like the events, My Journey doesn't have a lot of spelling errors, grammar mistakes or jumbled sentences. I don't get the people that read a story that stays coherent for this long and then drop a rating of "You call that a story" after more than 30 chapters. It was obviously good enough to read that far.

While Jay's right that too many trolls can kill a writer's desire to continue, I have never felt more motivated to write as I have since I started posting to SOL. For every email that spews hate, I get more than a hundred that tell me that I've touched their lives. Some people have told me that similar things have happened to them and that they've been able to grieve for their own losses through Matt's struggles in ways that they hadn't before. That alone is enough for me to keep pushing Matt forward into a bright future.

Today, I'm going to push a little harder. Since we just passed 50,000 downloads on Book 2, today will be two chapters.

As always, thanks to the people who write to me, both the positive and the negative. I DO genuinely read each email and try to respond, even if it's to say goodbye to someone who vows never to read my work again.

I just put chapter 11 up to be posted. Sorry it's so late today, but some nights I'm in more pain than others. Last night happened to be one of those and the pills I take for pain knock me out for most of the next day.

Thanks again to everyone who writes. I've gotten a lot of helpful feedback this week on BDSM and humiliation play. For something a little different, I'd like to ask everyone what fetishes, kinks and bedtime games they've been hoping to see that haven't shown up yet. I'm interested in what you, the readers are looking for.

This is a huge chapter. It has several important things in it, from Beck's initial list of what she thinks she needs to do to make things right with Matt, to another frank conversation with Tabby and Collie, to Matt's bitter assessment of his life as the "ninth person in line".

As always, huge thanks to everyone who writes to me. I love hearing from everyone. My rewrites on Book 2 and 3 are going well. They're not going to cause long-term problems or change the direction of the book, but it does mean that pretty much every character that finds their way into Matt's bed is committing felony child molestation according to Massachusetts law, since the age of consent is a hard 16.

When I get to certain points in the story that may be problematic, I do some research. In this case, I hit Google for information on age of consent in the US and Romeo and Juliet statutes. I knew the story had copious amounts of underage sex and wanted to know what the law had to say on the subject. My initial research turned up information about the Romeo and Juliet laws and returned a mixed age of consent of 16 for girls and 18 for boys. After an email from a reader this week, I went back to review a point I wanted to refresh the details on. Turns out, I either did something wrong in my search or the pages I was directed to had the wrong information. So, I'm back into the guts of Book 2 and 3 for rewrites on passages that refer to the incorrect information.

What does this mean for you, the reader? Nothing, really. I'm just ranting about how easy it was to get the wrong information and how much it's going to slow down my progress on Book 4. I basically need to comb book 2 and 3 for the wrong info and sanitize it with the new facts as I know them.

I'm about to post Chapter 9 to the queue and I've already fact-checked it for any references to the changed info. It should be up shortly.

Thanks again to everyone who responded to my call for opinions and sent me back their feedback on how far Matt went. For that matter, thanks go out to everyone who messages me. I love hearing from you and some people are surprised at how robust a response they get. When people bring up specific parts of the story, I'll sometimes offer a tidbit of behind the scenes information that doesn't make it into the pages of the story because it's my knowledge of things that happen without Matt ever finding out about it, similar to how all the pieces of the breakup fit together in Lana's head to make her believe them, a question sometimes sparks me to discuss the reasons behind some events.

I just put Chapter 8 in the queue for posting. It marks the end of Monday for Matt. I'm sure all of you will breathe a sigh of relief at that since it's been a particularly LONG day. Heh.

Thanks to everyone who reached out to me about the question on how far Matt should take the scene I mentioned. Some of the replies were extremely helpful. Others were slightly less informational than I'd hoped, but they all give me a sense of where you, the readers, are in relation to Matt's activities. Some people begged me to avoid specific fetishes and kinks which was what I'd sort of been looking for. Others wanted to impress upon me the importance of guidelines in the BDSM lifestyle that he sometimes engages in.

All of it was helpful in clarifying where the scene was going to go though. I WILL be labelling that chapter with a warning when the time comes for those that are interested in skipping it.