BarBar: Blog

Congratulations to all of those authors who gained top billing in the recently announced Clitorides Awards. I'm familiar with most of the stories that won and they certainly deserve recognition. I am quite chuffed that my own story, Bec3, is included in that list so thanks to all who voted for it.

I have just posted a new story for the NIS universe. It's an idea I had several years ago and have played with a little during breaks from writing Bec. I need to thank Erik Thread for the excellent feedback that allowed me to improve the story as well as his editing.

Experiment 37 is now posted. It is a direct sequel to Experiment 36 even though I tried to write it as another stand-alone story.

Once again I intended it to be fairly light-hearted and not to be taken too seriously, though I found that I couldn't help myself and ended up inserting some quite tender moments.

I've said it before, I tend to write about broken people. They react differently and that makes them interesting. I'm not trying to make fun of people who have those sorts of issues. Ultimately, I find myself in awe of Sally's parents because they have built a life and a family despite their issues.

I guess another theme within my writing is the importance of family, regardless of how functional or otherwise the family is. Sally is broken too, in her own way, and her family is vital to her. But she needs more than they can give so she has to find that extra support outside of her immediate family. That is not uncommon.

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I find myself having to think much more carefully about technology. While I've deliberately never placed Bec in a particular year, I started writing her story in 2007 so I casually placed her somewhere in that 2004-2007 time period (post 9.11 US - Bush era)

At the time, I didn't have to think much about technology -- what was around me was more or less correct. Now - 6 years later and technology has moved on. A high percentage of kids now have smart phones. ipads and their variations are ubiquitous. Memory sticks are also now ubiquitous. But for Bec, such things don't exist yet or are cutting edge so the ordinary kid in school doesn't have access to them.

The next couple of chapters the tecnology plays a part as Bec visits Phil (a bit of a nerd). I shall do my best to make the technology right but feel free to point things out if I get it wrong.

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As I have commented to a few of you in response to your emails, I tend to write about broken people or different people and then put them in situations that exposes their broken-ness or their different-ness.

This means that they respond differently to the "normal" response that most people would have to those situations and this gives me an "ïn" to writing a story that is hopefully a bit different from other stories.

I love writing for SOL even though I don't think of myself as writing porn. The adults only nature of the site means that I can express sexuality a bit more openly and bluntly than I could if were writing for a general access site. Sex and sexuality are sufficiently "hot button" topics that they provide good situations for my characters to react to.

In the case of Experiment 36, Sally's parents have a number of issues. They are probably somewhere on the autism spectrum with lots of extra problems added on. Sally is probably a little bit that way as well. We might look at their lives and feel sad because of an apparent lack of emotion and their social awkwardness.

I'm not sure how successfully I managed to convey it but the parents and Sally have established a close and functioning family unit despite their limitations. Some quite functional people on the autism spectrum can end up isolated and alone once their own family is no longer around so the success of Sally's family is a triumph rather than a point of sadness.

Unfortunately, Sally is now at an age where she wants more so she is trying (mostly unconsciously) to break herself and her parents out of their carefully structured and organised lives. That is the source of E36 and any future stories about Sally. Without that conflict, I would only have a character study instead of a story.

Like with Bec, a lot of the humour in E36 is gentle and situational humour rather than in-your-face slapstick. But there are a couple of zingers in there that I am quite proud of. Overall, this was intended to be amusing rather than anything else.

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