Tomorrow, my new do-over, Double Take, starts posting here on SOL. I'm very excited about it. Book 1 of 47 chapters is written, edited (thanks to Pixel the Cat and Old Rotorhead), and ready to upload for posting every three days. I'll upload the whole book in advance so you don't have to worry about me croaking and leaving it unfinished. I'm already sixteen chapters into Book 2 and I'm having a blast writing this adventure.
This story is a little lighter than some of my epics. Of course, there is teenage angst because there are teenagers. This has far more to do with an eighty-year-old in high school and dealing with a world that is not at all what he remembered.
Sex and the Single Freshman. I struggle with coding my stories for sex content with every story I write. I received a number of emails from people who said they got tired of all the sex in Living Next Door to Heaven. Another batch of readers wrote that the code 'Some Sex' was inappropriate because there was no sex at all in the first three and a half books of LNDtH. One went so far as to complain that I must not have much experience with sex if I thought what these kids were doing was still sex without penetration.
I think Double Take has slightly more sex in it than the early books of LNDtH. Let's face it: Why would an old man want to go back to his fourteen-year-old body if it wasn't to fuck fourteen-year-old girls? At the same time, I think the 'Much Sex' code paints an expectation of 'real' sex in every chapter. And there isn't. So, I'll code this story once again as 'Some Sex' and when asked how much sex there is in the story, I'll just say "Enough.'
What's it about? I gave the very short blurb for the story in my blog post on Christmas. Here is the long synopsis:
In a classic erotic do-over, an old man gets hit by lightning, sucked into a wormhole, abducted by aliens, shot, electrocuted, caught in a terrorist attack, trapped in a fusion explosion, or otherwise meets his demise. In the instant before death, he is granted his wish to do his life over again, correcting the mistakes he made. He (almost always male) is returned to his fourteen-year-old body complete with all his memories of growing up the first time and near Wikipedic knowledge of everything that happened in his life.
Armed with this knowledge, he can correct his own life errors, become fabulously wealthy by either betting on obscure sporting events or the correct stocks or by stealing a later invention and introducing it early. His great experience and accumulated wisdom allow him to correct political errors of the past, eliminating terror attacks, stopping wars, improving border security, and holding down inflation. And let us not forget that this old man can now apply his accumulated knowledge of women to seduce all the fourteen-year-old girls he wants to because he's really only fourteen again.
Jacob Hopkins is one such old man. Life was good. It just wasn't long enough. At eighty years old, he is dying and wants to regain to his youth. He has no burning desire to change the world. He just isn't ready to die. And someone has decided that's okay.
But Jacob is in for a major surprise. His new life is in an alternate reality. Things just aren't the way he remembered. People aren't who he remembered them to be. And there is nothing he can do to change history. It's already past.
Starting tomorrow: January 11, 2019.
Here's my mad idea. As usual, I won't turn on voting until ten or eleven chapters into the story so people have enough material to make a judgment about what they are voting for. Let's say at the end of Part I: Transmogrification. That's eleven chapters.
I will, however, turn on public comments. And I plan to use them differently than in the past. Usually, I refrain from participating in the comments unless I am asked, as the author, a specific question in comments. Then I'm happy to jump in and respond. But I don't use the comment section to argue my points or to defend what I've written. I've written what I've written. Like it or not. That's what it is. Me mansplaining it isn't going to change the story.
I want to try something a little different this time, though. I'm going to try participating in the comments as Jacob, the main character. I always enjoy role-playing and my characters like to jump into my head at odd times anyway, so I'll occasionally post something at the end of a chapter from Jacob's perspective and respond to comments as if I were Jacob.
This great experiment might last all of ten minutes. Or it might be something I keep going through the whole story. We'll see.
Now here's the real question: How much am I going to cry through this story?
I know that I often have highly emotional scenes in my stories. Just having re-read and suffered with you through Living Next Door to Heaven 3: What Were They Thinking? I wept at reliving some of the horrid events of the original series. I'm not ready to utterly drain myself emotionally this time. I won't say there won't be sad parts or moving parts, but I'm not planning to kill off major beloved characters, break people's hearts, or send anyone into the depths of depression.
So, try to keep my spirits up and keep me happy for the next year or so, okay? I'll try not to transfer any of that into my story.
One way for you to acknowledge your appreciation for authors is to nominate favorite stories for Clitorides Awards. I say this on behalf of all authors, not just myself. If you've especially enjoyed a story that has sex in it and was concluded in 2018, nominate it for a Clitorides Award at https://clitoridesawards.org/nominate.php. Use your same log-in as for SOL. Some of your favorite authors' stories have already been nominated. G Younger, Michael Loucks, Oyster50, Al Steiner, Lubrican, rlfj, and new author ProfessorC. But the number of nominations is what gets a story into the finals when they are announced in March. Get on there and nominate!
I have completed three stories on SOL this year that are eligible for nomination. The Props Master Prequel: Behind the Ivory Veil, Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain, and Living Next Door to Heaven 3: What Were They Thinking? Please do not nominate any of the three stories posted my alter ego, Wayzgoose. I appreciate your support, but those stories are 'No Sex' stories and are ineligible.
Thank you all for your continued support, your email messages, and comments. As many authors have affirmed in the past, your comments and email are all the compensation we get.
Enjoy Double Take!