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When the recent scare hit SOL about stories with underage sex, I looked at my stories. Quite a few were impacted, but most wouldn't make sense to up the age to 18. But I thought the explicit age of the 16-year-old girl in "Conflicted Nun" could be removed and the story would still work. So I set out to do just that.
As I read the story, I was disappointed in it. I didn't think it was written to my current standards so I changed a lot more than the age. Well, while I was modifying it, Lazeez announced that he was moving to a new host and the underage problem went away. But I was well into revising the story so I continued.
The changes are done and the new version of the novel is on Bookapy and SOL. If you had purchased the old version on Bookapy and you want what I consider a better version, although there's no explicit mention of the girl being 16, you are allowed to redownload what you had purchased. I also changed the book cover. Or if you simply want to read or re-read it for free on SOL, the new version is there. Note, I changed the Fa/ft to Fa/Fa even though in my mind the girl is 16.
Anyway, I hope you like the new version of "Conflicted Nun."
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.
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