Eric Ross: Blog

Every ghost story starts with a bad idea.

In The Harrow Testament, five friends dare each other to spend Halloween night in an abandoned mansion. Not just any mansion—Harrow House, the kind of place that clings to the edges of local legend and lingers in the childhood part of your brain that still believes doors can whisper. They bring flashlights, bravado, and more emotional baggage than anyone’s willing to admit.

What they don’t expect is the house to want something back.

So here it is:
* A haunted house with a mind of its own
* Friends with secrets they’d rather not face
* Paintings that breathe, mirrors that remember
* And a slow descent into something they might not come back from

The prologue and the first chapter are live.

Enter if you dare. And if you enjoy it, let me know—ghosts aren’t the only ones who feed on attention.

—Eric

I’ve been a StoriesOnline member since June 2013, but I didn’t start writing until April of this year. I’d wanted to write since I was a teenager, but a busy career kept pushing it aside. Now that I’m retired — nearly fifty years later — I’m finally getting the chance to "dip my quill into the ink".

For the past seven months, I’ve been writing stories with the help of AI and publishing them here. Yes, the AI is a shortcut, but it's also as a tool that helps me think differently and write more. Somewhere in that process, I’ve found a voice that feels like mine.

The stories vary. Some are funny, some are dark. I love absurdity, but I also write in a gothic vein. I’m especially interested in the intersection of religious language, thought, and prejudice with modern ideas about sexuality — how those old frameworks still shape desire, guilt, and transformation.

And truthfully, some of those early stories were awful. I didn't understand so many elements of writing. I just wanted to do it. So, it has taken time to find a rhythm — to learn what works and what doesn’t.

The story I’m about to post tomorrow — The Harrow Testament — is one I’ve been working on since early August. I originally wrote it for the SOL Halloween contest but later realized the rules excluded AI-assisted writing. Fair enough. I’m still proud of this one, and I’ll be posting it to the main stream rather than the contest.

I hope you’ll read it for what it is — a story. Not a debate about tools or technology, just something I’ve worked hard at to make it worth your time.

My best,

Eric

Lawrence—now Ren—has survived humiliation and risk. That leaves the third lesson in Ambassador Whiskers’ Curriculum of Desire: surrender.

After his toga-and-duct-tape debut, our reluctant disciple is thrust into a new trial—this time in a nightclub called Sanctuary, where basslines replace sermons and the dress code is “nothing to hide.” Under Whiskers’ dubious mentorship (and sartorial advice involving mesh), Ren meets Marina, a woman whose calm authority makes defiance impossible and surrender inevitable.

This chapter is where rhythm becomes ritual. What begins as a dance lesson turns into something deeper—part erotic initiation, part emotional unbinding. Through Marina’s command, Ren learns that surrender isn’t weakness; it’s a kind of trust. And, of course, Whiskers is there to offer philosophical commentary between purrs and insults.

You can read it here: Chapter 5: Marina and the Art of Surrender

By now the pattern should be clear: humiliation breaks him, risk exposes him, surrender remakes him. But Whiskers isn’t done yet—and neither, thankfully, is Ren.

— Eric

P.S. Ambassador Whiskers declares that comments are a form of devotion. Offer one, lest your courage be found wanting.

This one started with a simple idea—the old classroom trope: two students, too much tension (they are studying Lady Chatterly's Lover, after all), and not enough restraint. I wrote several drafts, always in third person, always at a distance. But I wanted something more intimate, more atmospheric. Second person turned out to be the key. It let the reader inhabit the seat, the stillness, and the slow burn of the story.

There were a few different endings along the way—some obvious, some explicit—but I liked the tension of this one best. The unfinished edge felt truer to the moment.

Have a hankering to revisit college when a pretty co-ed sits next to you? Then I hope you enjoy The Body as Text.

Eric

P.S. The margin, aka comments, are open. Leave your note there; I’ll be reading between the lines.

If Chapter 3 was humiliation as initiation, Chapter 4 is temptation as rebirth.

Lawrence’s next lesson from Ambassador Whiskers is risk—and Whiskers, ever the sadist in silk, enforces it with a masquerade invitation and a bedsheet toga. What follows is part comedy of errors, part erotic rite. The man who once hid behind screens and irony is dragged, blinking, into a ballroom of Gods and Monsters, where everyone glitters, no one apologizes, and shame becomes a form of dance.

Enter Claudia: half goddess, half chaos, and fully the undoing he didn’t know he needed. She doesn’t rescue Lawrence so much as rename him. In her hands, embarrassment turns into arousal; exposure becomes revelation. By the end of the night, Lawrence has been stripped—of clothes, certainty, and finally his own name. What’s left is Ren: raw, ridiculous, radiant, and awake in a way he’s never been before.

It’s a turning point not just of plot but of voice. Curriculum of Desire has always been about transformation through absurdity, and this is the moment the comedy begins to sound suspiciously like grace.

You can read it here: Chapter 4: Claudia and the Art of Being Seen

Tell me what you think. Did you laugh, squirm in sympathy with Lawrence (a.k.a Ren), or want to join the party?

— Eric

P.S. Ambassador Whiskers reminds you that comments are a form of confession—or foreplay, depending on tone.