Mushroom: Blog

Well, the first book of the Bohica series is now complete. And I will be posting the chapters after I go over them again. But hopefully people will be pleased with what I have written.

And yes, there will be sequels. But at least at this time, do not expect "Bohica II" any time soon. I have already decided that I need to first go over the stories of others first. So I am already storyboarding out and making notes for the second book in this series, "Dire Wolf".

And possibly a few shorter stories that will be used to fill in other things that I considered but did not feel right putting into this story.

And for those waiting for more Country Boy, I think I am finally working out the "darkness" that I felt coming on. I guess I just needed to get away from the almost saccharine sweet love story for a bit and do something more gritty for a while.

A bit of a description and background on my newest story.

I have been enjoying re-reading what is probably the seminal "Do-Over Story" on SOL, Al Steiner's "Doing It All Over". When suddenly I found myself pondering how such a story would appear from the point of view of a character who was NOT reliving things again. I found myself thinking on this all day, and realized the best way to do it would be to have it like "Groundhog Day".

I was finding myself torn between making this an absolute horror of a story, with graphic violence and snuff, but was unable to do it. I however did allude to the fact that the character had done such things in the past, but no longer engaged in them.

I also considered tossing this as a chapter into my Dark Tales series. But I realize that this really would not fit. For one, I believed that it was different enough that it deserved it's own entry. And ultimately, even though this tale is rather dark, it is obvious by the end that the guy really is in love with her, even though he is trapped and it will never really ever be returned.

But I hope people enjoy my attempt to do a flip on the do-over genre. I may even revisit this or try something different in the future.

Well, for the last week or so I have been churning out Country Boy stories like crazy. And I kept finding myself wanting to go dark with them.

Dark, as in killing some of the characters. Or drastically changing their behaviors. So I wrapped up the chapters I had finished, and decided to write sone stories of that type, to get it out of my system.

Ultimately, Country Boy is a love story. But Dark Tales is anything but. Each story will end on a dark note, and it is aboit as far from the gentle love stories I normally write.

However, I am still unable to be completely evil with them. If enough ask, every one will have a hidden ending that I will post.

I can only laugh at how some people in here behave.

Now I admit that one of the things I love about writing is that I love playing mind games. I consider many of my stories to be "Erotica, as O'Henry would have written". Setting up a story, making it seem like it goes one way, then taking it off into a completely different direction.

To me it is somewhat of a challenge, to see how far I can take it. In my latest long series, I was even able to stretch it out for 26 chapters before the cock of the narration character finally entered his girlfriend (who was in every previous chapter as his love interest).

Yes, it was a deliberate mind game. I wanted to see how long I could drag out the action, without actually having any "action".

Let's just say it was also my own kind of protest, against most stories in here where boy meets girl, boy fucks girl, all within 6 paragraphs.

I know I set it up in Bohica to seem that the narration character was male. He was a big guy who beats up criminals. And in his memories I purposefully set "him" up as giving a blowjob to a guy, and wearing a dress the night "he" got his powers. I even had the chapter close with him masturbating and thinking such things.

Only at the start of the second chapter to drop the other shoe. I revealed that one of the powers is shape shifting, and that Bohica (which I purposefully gave the real life androgynous name of "Chris") was born a girl. And could move back and forth almost at will, one of the "powers" the character has. All flashback scenes were from the point of view of Chris as a girl, not Bohica as a guy.

Yes, I did this on purpose. So sue me.

Was I fucking with the reader? Yes, but not with a mean intent. One thing I commonly try to do is to set up one idea in the readers mind, then purposefully break it. In one story I had started and never finished, I purposefully named a character "Tom". And this background character was always called Tom, until in the afterward (narrated by the daughter of the original narrator) finally let the shoe drop that the "Tom" a character had followed was not a dude, but it was correctly spelled "Thom", and she was a girl born in Vietnam. Shoe drop.

To me, it is a way to try and get people to be mentally flexible, and to cast aside preconceptions. And for the angry person who has both accused me of stealing my idea from George R. R. Martin, I had never heard of Wild Cards before this. Although I admit to being a lover of the Silver Age comics which I grew up reading.

And also of the Arrowverse. Typical in my writing, I pull concepts from a great many sources. For this one, some of the basic ideas did come from Arrowverse I admit. But also from more generic DC-Marvel sources, as well as such sources as Lawrence Watt-Evans (who wrote a book called "Night of Madness" a fantasy novel written in 2000 involving random people getting magical powers), and from playing games like "Champions" many decades ago.

Ironically, Bohica was based on a character I created for such a game 30 years ago. A slew of low level powers but no secret weakness. But no, that character did not shape shift.

All I can say is that if somebody writes a story you do not like (or do not like where YOU THINK it is going), do not get pissed off at them, just stop reading it. Especially do not blast them if you are mad because you THINK it is going to be some (as they put it) "Hidden gay story", and screaming that it should be in the story code.

Well, there is no story code in that posting for gay sex, because there is no gay sex. Do not get mad that "I fooled you", because ultimately you only fooled yourself.

And if you are mad and upset, that is not my fault. You are the one that is mad, that is your upset not mine. You need to control your own feelings and emotions, because ultimately they are yours. Not mine.

And if you do not want somebody to respond to an angry letter you write, then simply do not write anything. Lashing out at an explanation and demanding to "not write again" is childish.

Most of us authors live for feedback, good and bad. I write for myself, but also for the readers. And I believe a world without at least some "mind games" is very dull. It is the "mind game" of Gaius Baltar that kept the newest Battlestar Galactica so interesting. Is he a Cylon? Who knows, they kept us guessing through most of the series and dropped clues he could have been (but he was not). And I love how the responder directly accused me of stealing George R. R. Martin's work, yet did not seem to consider that Jon Snow is one of the biggest "mind games" of current pop culture.

One of the problems I sometimes suffer from is writers block.

And the way I finally work through it most times is to pause the story I am working on, and to try to write something else for a little bit. SO that is what I am doing now.

So for fans of Country Boy, please be patient. But hopefully this new story will help me clear my head so I can return to it shortly.