awnlee jawking: Blog

When you're in a hole, continuing to dig doesn't usually work. However Admin came to the rescue, renaming this story's upload units from 'Chapter' to 'Part'. The structure of 'Shaggy Dog' actually looks reasonably sensible now. Thank you, Admin!

There's a woman of a certain age who is an enthusiastic visitor to the writers' group I belong to, although distance makes her attendance irregular. She enjoys the wide range of genres we cover. She's also a member of her village's writing group, although she's frustrated because the stories her peers like to write and critique are typically about a girl and her little dog. I'd love to see the look on her face if she ever found out that someone she knows as a SciFi author was writing this story about a girl and her not-so-little dog!

AJ

Some readers of 'Shaggy Dog Story' asked for more. Perhaps they should have been careful what they wished for. I have two more instalments awaiting further editing and proofreading so the story is no longer flagged as concluded.

Apologies for any confusion caused by the chapters (SOL) being divided into chapters (mine). I never intended to continue the story in the first place and it's a clumsy retrospective (UK) attempt to make the head-hopping comprehensible.

Thank you to all those who have read the story and taken the time to vote or provide feedback. I hope I haven't wasted as much of your lives as I did of my own when I watched 'Frozen' on Christmas Day.

AJ

Students of voting patterns know that appealing to readers' fantasies will produce a score which includes a premium to what a story deserves on literary merit. One way of achieving this is to endow the main character with the appropriate characteristics. For this story, I deliberately tried to avoid as many of these as possible. For example:

1) Military/fighting experience. No.
2) Hyperintelligence/eidetic memory. No.
3) Hung like a horse. No!
4) Filthy rich. No.
5) Mastery of environment/destiny. No.
6) Drives a muscle car. No.

Despite these self-imposed limitations, I tried to create a sympathetic main character, although the variation in scores shows that at least some readers judged the experiment a failure.

Most of the above characteristics are male-oriented. I'd be interested to hear from female readers what characteristics they think a female main character should have in order to fulfill female reader fantasies.

As a sort of postscript, I had an idea for a continuation of my story. On the second anniversary, Clark takes another five bottles of Irish whiskey down to the river bank. The next time he's at the mall, he finds he has parked his box-on-wheels next to a near twin. He strikes up a conversation with its owner, a cute 4ft 11in woman who is very easy to talk to and strangely familiar. It's only after they cement their burgeoning relationship with some very satisfactory traditional sex that he discovers her last name - Warrender! However, to get to that point would require me to cover a year's worth of graphic descriptions of teen deflorations and that's not where my interest or strength lies.

Thanks to everyone who reads the story and provides feedback,

AJ

This is a list of recently updated ongoing serials which are giving me the greatest enjoyment.


Three Stars:


A Well-lived Life 2 - Book 1 - Bethany by Penguintopia

Jacob's Granddaughters by A.A. Nemo

Rebirth by Lumpy

Mayhem in a Pill by Shinerdrinker

Serendipity by oyster50

Getting it Wrong by G Younger

After Five Years by DeeBee


Two stars:


Murder by the Numbers by Stultus

Magical Slavery by Alan C. Zumwalt

In the Darkness Falling by Celtic Bard

Blue Wave Healer by Radley Black

Not Your Average Joe by double_entendre

Shaman by Zoras

Honor Matters by corsair

Of Dancers and Doves by Lord Van Leak

Summer of Love by Kenny Baller


AJ

In no particular order, these are the ongoing stories which have given me the most enjoyment in the past week or so.

A Well-Lived Life by Penguintopia.

Serendipity by oyster50. Not a 'Smart Girls' clone, it has enough potential for character conflict to keep it interesting.

Jacob's Granddaughters by A. A. Nemo

Rebirth by Lumpy.

The Times They Are A Changing by Omachuck. Significantly superior to the average Swarm Cycle story.

Getting It Wrong by G Younger. Nicely swerving some of the usual do-over cliches.

An honourable mention to A. King and his Queen by Lazlo Zalezac. I'm not a fan of the author but the multi-dimensional characterisations make this a couple of levels above anything else of his I've read.

AJ