WTSman: Blog

It's good to be back. After nearly 3 years of silence, partly due to writer's block but also because I've simply been too busy with real life, I suddenly had a compelling urge to write and publish.


The first result, a little story with the whimsical title Kærestekedelig hit SOL last week and feedback has been nice. The SOL ranking system is still a pile of shit, but at least I can compare the ranking to that of the only other story I posted after the new "normalization" system was brought in (Wipe Off the Lipstick), and they are about the same. Check.


The second result was the somewhat longer story Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace which started out as a short humours tale that grew longer and more serious along the way. It is one of my soap-box stories (see previous blog "Rainbow Families"), so not everyone agrees with me, but it has racked up 4000+ reads very quickly - and a near 10% voting rate, which is very nice.


Once more the voting is hard, nay impossible, to compare with my older stories (thanks for nothing, SOL), but looking at the graph of the votes casts puts it in the top-5 of my stories. (Incidentally, the voting made it the best rated new complete story on SOL for a few days!)


Besides, when it comes to feedback, votes are of little value to me compared to the letters and those have been encouraging. Thanks!


A common theme in those letters has been: What's next? That's a really good question!


As some of you will know, I have been working for quite some years now (on and off, of course), on a much longer story provisionally entitled Someone Your Own Size. I have for all practical purposes a complete first section (so complete that it has been circulated in preview), a very good outline of what shall happen next, an extensive draft of some of the middle chapters - and some rather more rough drafts of the later parts, including the dramatic conclusion.


But I have real doubts that I shall finish it; at least not in its present form.


Last month my fellow author Coaster2, whose epic tales I enjoy and admire, posted a blog entry in which he essentially confessed to infanticide: He had deleted a new story, nearly 300 pages of it, rather than publishing it because he had reached the inescapable conclusion that he had written that story before.


That got me thinking about why Someone Your Own Size has been caught in development hell for such a long time: The outline I have reads too much like, a generic mash-up of other WTSman stories. That hit me hard - I like that story (especially the characters in it), and I'd like to finish it.


Will Someone Your Own Size ever be completed? I honestly don't know. Until I find a unique and original twist, it may be my equivalent of an Unfinished Symphony - The One That Got Away.

Cheers


WTSman

Dave has now completed the editing of the second story of my "2016 comeback". And once more I must thank him for his dedication to making my stories so much more readable. A footnote is simply not enough. Thanks Dave!

The story started out as a "what-if" exercise in which a groom stops his own wedding when the congregation is given the traditional invitation of the title. Although the storyline around this idea changed massively, we decided to retain the provisional title, so we now present Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace - published today for your enjoyment.

While, as the title suggests, it centers on a wedding - a wedding that ends up not happening (as you can read already from the prologue, so writing it here is not much of a spoiler) it also discusses weddings that until recently could not take place at all. I am talking about the formalization, solemnization if you like, of the commitment between two loving adults denied for the flimsy reason that the lovers have the same gender. Those unions were impossible in many States of the US during the era narrated in the story, and still remain impossible in many places throughout the world.

I find that kind of discrimination unacceptable. I rejoiced when the Supreme Court of the United States ended it nationwide, and I let my alter-ego - the storyteller George, do likewise in harsh uncompromising words. George's words are mine and if they offend, tough shit. WTSman is on his soap-box. It happens once in a while.

My regular readers should not be surprised - neither about the soap-box, nor the subject; many of my previous stories feature same-sex relationships painted in, what I hope is a very positive light. (There is not much same-sex sex simply because I have no personal experience to draw from; I was helped with the It's Practically What Uncles Are For stories by some lesbian friends but that's an aside).

I hope that the soap-box doesn't stand in the way of good story-telling; please read, vote and comment - I'd like to know if you think I've pulled it off.

Cheers



WTSman

My ever faithful editor Dave has a wicked sense of humour. When, after more than 1½ years of complete "radio silence" - and close on 3 years since I last sent him anything to edit, I suddenly sent him a short story, his reply e-mail was headlined "It's ALIVE!!!"

Point taken, Dave.

And point taken, the - surprisingly - many of you who have made discreet - or blunt - inquiries if I was planning on publishing anything ever again.

I was willing; but The Muse was conspicuously absent.

Until now. A brief story in the "Danish George" subgenre of the George series has now seen the light of day. As usual for those, the new story, Kærestekedelig, it is based very loosely on real characters, real places and real events, but the outcome is complete fiction.

Oh, yeah, the title. He he. I got away with posting a story with a Latin title (De Minimis Non Curat Lex). This time the title is, befittingly, in Danish. You'll simply have to read the story to find out what it all means. When you do, please vote and write me a note telling we, what you think.

Cheers


WTSman

Acknowledgements: Thank you to all those of you who wrote and urged me to try and lure The Muse back. And thank you, most of all, to Dave who always make my stories so much better from his precise editing that is a ruthless to mistakes as it is respectful to the author's intentions.

As I wrote in my last Blog entry, the new Limerick-based story Wipe Off The Lipstick has been massacred in the voting. As of now, with 300 votes cast, the "score" is 6.53 - making it by far the worst, most mediocre story I've ever published.

So my readers must hate it right?

Wrong. The value of 6.53 is "normalized". "Normalized" being a synonym for "utter fucking bullshit".

In my native language, the word for sex and the word for the number six are identical, apart from the spelling - the number is spelled seks whereas sex is sex.

We label, not always jokingly, some people with the saying that they "har sex på hjernen" - literally that they "have sex on the brain" - if they are obsessed with sex. I think it is fair to conclude that whoever devised the "normalization" of the scores on SOL have "har seks på hjernen" - ie "have six on the brain", since the method is devised to force the average of stories published by all authors at any given time to be 6.

Huh? What the FUCK have OTHER authors' stories that HAPPEN to be published at roughly the same time have to do with what YOU think about MY story?

Since we not only lost the T/P/A system, but also any direct numerical evidence of votes cast, I took the bar diagram of the said 300 votes, threw them into a graphics program and "measured" the height of the bars.

The graph included a scale to show that 94 people had voted 8, so I was able to "translate" heights to votes - and be able to account for each and every of those 300 votes exactly.

Guess what? The true average of Wipe Off The Lipstick is 8.01.

If you live in Florida or Ohio, you are used to systems where your vote doesn't count. SOL is a Canadian company. Could we have some good old fashion Canadian honesty and decency? If the site managers are in love with the number 6, then bless them - keep the bullshit number on too, but PLEASE could we have the ACTUAL RAW UNCHANGED SCORE?

Cheers

WTSman

The new Limerick-based story Wipe Off The Lipstick has been massacred in the voting, but the feedback letters have been nice. Go figure!

Since the T/P/A system was abandoned we no longer get technical votes, so I can't see how that aspect is judged, but since the story is set in the UK, the English is British and the idiomatical mistakes fever than (and different from) when my stories are set in the US.

The previous Limerick story De Minimis Non Curat Lex was US-based, and despite Dave's best efforts some mistakes slipped through. Published today is a revised version.

There are no (significant) changes to the storyline, but quite a few idiomatical corrections and especially some subtle legal changes. You can always read it again to spot the differences

But please read the new story first, vote - and write feedback. Please.

Cheers

WTSman
Acknowledgements: Besides Dave's help on the revised version, I would like to thank Reb who pointed out the legal mistakes and some of the British English idiom that shouldn't be there in an American story.