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My story "Your Cheating Heart" has only been available to Premier members because it was the second place winner in this past Valentine's Day contest. But it has now been released to the General area for all to read.

You may wonder how a story could have both the "cheating" and "romantic" codes. *winks* Read the story and find out. "Your Cheating Heart" can be found at: https://storiesonline.net/s/32319/your-cheating-heart

For those who follow me, I have a new short story that you may have missed because it never showed up on New Stories because it was a Halloween contest entry. It is now in the free area. It's called "The Mirror's Secret" and can be found at https://storiesonline.net/n/38889/the-mirror-s-secret

What ever happened to the 4th novel in the Lincoln Steele series? I started it several years ago, so where is it?

I'm a procrastinator and kept getting distracted. Sometimes it was trying to determine where to take the plot. Sometimes I paused because it was sounding too much like the other novels in the series. Sometimes I got distracted with another idea that turned into other writing projects. I wrote two novels, "Lonely War Widows" and "The Nymphomaniac," plus I wrote several short stories for SOL, some for contests and others simply to write the stories. One new short story is close to being posted. It was triggered by a post in the SOL Forum for a story idea. My story won't satisfy the poster's request, but it triggered my story.

So once that short story is posted, it's time to get back to the 4th book in the Lincoln Steele series.

That's the problem.

Something happened on October, 2023 that affected a major part of the plot in the novel. That's when the current Gaza war began. The Middle East does not look like it did when I started my novel. What I had planned to write a few years ago doesn't make sense now.

So for now, I'm stuck. That's what I get for procrastinating.

Sadly, I don't remember my old stories, so I was skimming a story of mine from 2009, looking for something. I don't typically re-read my old stories, but this one caught my interest so I stopped skimming and read "Teacher's Nightmare" in its entirety. I enjoyed it immensely, but that's not the reason for this blog.

Back then, I included a note before Chapter 1 discussing the difficulty an author has choosing the correct story tags. After re-reading the story, I ended up removing some tags and adding another. That only cements my belief that choosing the correct story tags is not easy and probably not always correct. If there is even a "correct."

While changing the story's tags, I also changed it from "some sex" to "much sex." That's another subjective decision an author has to make. I've read stories on SOL listed as "some sex" that, in my opinion, were at best "minimal sex." But people might think my "some sex" stories should be "much sex." I did for "Teacher's Nightmare" after re-reading it. I'm always hesitant to list a story as "much sex" because some people might think of it as "stroke," but just because it has a lot of sex doesn't mean it doesn't have a plot and/or character development. For example, I hope anyone who reads "Teacher's Nightmare" experiences the emotional turmoil the teacher goes through — fear, anger, frustration, fear again, humiliation, helplessness, desperation, despair.

I really enjoyed reading "Teacher's Nightmare." It's not one of my higher rated stories, but maybe that's because of the story tags I had listed that I just removed. With them listed, someone could have been misled into believing the story was what it isn't (based on the tags). That could influence a reader when it came to scoring the story. That's what I mean by an author's dilemma with story tags? Or maybe the score was affected by some people not liking it because it's rather dark. It has a happy ending, but even that was somewhat dark. But I'm not adverse to writing dark stories if it makes a good story. For example, my Lincoln Steele novels. In them, like in "Teacher's Nightmare," the bad guys are really bad, so it's a dark story. It has to be to really hate the bad guys and get satisfaction when they "get theirs."

I found some errors in "Teacher's Nightmare" and, although I'm a perfectionist and they're killing me, I'm not going to fix them. Back in 2009, SOL's submission process was different than it is today so all I have are.txt files for the story. It wouldn't be worth the effort to convert them to.docx and make the changes. I'm currently writing the 4th Lincoln Steele novel and don't want to stop yet again. I already put writing that novel on hold several times to write "The Nymphomaniac," several short stories, and SOL contest entries. So if you read the story, forgive the few errors.

While I was changing the story tags, I took advantage of SOL's new feature to have a book cover so I created one. I want to give credit to Meta AI for drawing the picture based on my input. She's a cutie and could easily be the teacher in "Teacher's Nightmare."

Well, I meant to talk about story tags here but seemed to get off on a tangent or two. So I guess I'll stop.

I've been posting a chapter a week of The Nymphomaniac, usually on Tuesdays, but sometimes on Wednesdays. For those looking for this week's posting, I posted Chapter 66 on Monday.

Now that the entire novel will soon be posted, I'd like to share some thoughts. The title makes it sound like a sex story (porn). It's not. There are a lot of sex scenes in the novel, but it's not a sex story. It's a story with sex. Every sex scene has a purpose, either for the plot or character development. The sex scenes define Julie's relationships and go into her struggles with her medical condition which, in the 1950s, was called nymphomania. A nymphomaniac back then was a slut, a tramp, well, a negative term to regard a woman with contempt. The ingredients for a good porn story. Although I don't shy away from graphic sex scenes, that wasn't my intention.

For those of you who haven't studied the craft of fiction writing, there is no plot without conflict. In The Nymphomaniac, the plot's conflict is the internal conflict Julie experiences. Sexual feelings brought on by her medical condition she doesn't understand combined with the morality of the time. Of course there are many mini-conflicts along the way that come up and are resolved. That's what keeps you turning the page. But when the main conflict is resolved, the story is over.

I could have kept writing more sex scenes instead of ending the story when I did. But then it would be a sex story. The sex scenes would have no purpose other than to throw more sex into the story. When I wrote The Preacher's Wife on another site, after I finished it people complained they wanted the main character to have more sexual experiences. I buckled to their requests and modified it, adding five chapters of just sex. Basically turning it into a sex story. When I posted that story on SOL, I went back to the original version. I learned my lesson back then.