Switch Blayde: Blog

Almost a year ago, I began a short story to post on SOL. Things don't turn out as planned. I really got into the story and added characters and sub-plots, resulting in a 102,000 word novel. I post my short stories on SOL as Switch Blayde and my novels on Amazon as S.W. Blayde. Obviously, this novel falls into the latter.

But now that it's published, I plan to write a story for SOL. I'm playing with a few ideas and will probably choose one that wouldn't be suitable for publishing on Amazon. That will discourage me from expanding it to a full-length novel.

So I've been absent from SOL for quite a while. But as Arnold Schwarzenegger said in The Terminator, "I'm back."

Yahoo Groups continues to make changes. And they're not nice changes. As of now, I find Yahoo Groups unusable so I cut the cord and switched to my new discussion group. So instead of posting on both, I will post only on the new one.

I will not delete the old Yahoo Group, but I will not be posting to it. So if you want to be kept abreast of my stories other than what I post here on my SOL blog, please join my new group.

In my last blog, I mentioned that the future of Yahoo Groups was uncertain so I created an alternative discussion group in case the Yahoo Group went away. As of now, I will not be using the Yahoo Group, so for anyone who is a member of my Yahoo Group and has not created an account on the new group, please do so now.

The new group is: https://groups.io/g/swblayde

I currently use Yahoo Groups to announce stories, but Yahoo is making significant changes and it might go away. As others using Yahoo Groups have done, I created a new group.

So if you are not a member of my Yahoo Group or didn't see the announcement there about the new group, I'm letting you know here. Members get emails when something is posted on the group, like me notifying members of a new story. Both groups are active, but I'm doing this for precautionary reasons.

The new group is: https://groups.io/g/swblayde

While writing my latest novel, I had an epiphany. I'm definitely not a commercial author. I'll explain.

I write erotica (which I do not consider porn although prudish people would). I also write thrillers. My current work-in-progress is a thriller/mystery. But it's an erotic thriller/mystery because, well, I write erotica and it has graphic sex scenes.

So here's my dilemma. For those readers looking for erotica, it's not page after page of sex. For those readers looking for a thriller/mystery, they may find the graphic sex vulgar. Isn't that a lose/lose for a commercial author? (That's rhetorical.) A commercial author would target one type of reader and write for them. I don't. I write what I believe makes a good story.

My first novel was rejected by a traditional publisher of Romantica (Erotic Romance) because the heroine committed adultery. That's a no-no in the romance genre. I discussed it with the publisher's editor who said their readers were typically housewives who were turned off by adultery. She wanted me to change the heroine from a wife to a fiancé (I guess it's not adultery if she's not married). I explained why it would hurt the story and she agreed so to preserve the integrity of the story I self-published it. I didn't buckle to the commercial rules back then and I don't intend to now.

Thanks for listening. End rant.