It’s almost Easter Sunday and a new story of mine, “Mulier Unit 05-22-E,” just published on Bookapy, so I figured that now would be a good time to talk about some of the Easter Eggs that I hide in many of my stories, especially this new one.
This blog post does contain some spoilers, so if that bothers you, then read my “Mulier” story first and then come back to this. If you don’t care about spoilers, then carry on!
So… I love to amuse myself and one of the ways that I do that is by sticking all kinds of hidden things into my stories. It could be something like using the name Rufus for a male character who has red hair. Rufus is a Latin word for red.
Or an Easter Egg could be a hidden joke like the name of the French restaurant that Cynthia, one of the characters in my “Freya and Friends” series, likes to go to. She’s more of a “full-figured” girl and the name of the restaurant is “La Fille Rondelette.” In English, that translates to “The Chubby Girl.”
Oftentimes it’s something like the name of my dog used in a story. Or something that I see right in front of me as I’m writing. I just saw a squirrel in my yard, so I may write: “A curious squirrel scratched at the compacted dirt only to scamper away as Beth approached the old house.”
Some Easter Eggs are obvious.
Some are known only to me.
Some of them have already been forgotten by me!
I love adding in funny/odd little treats that most people don’t even know are there. It’s nice when someone discovers them, but it’s also funny to me that they are there in plain sight and never seen. Or at least never seen until I point them out.
Again, spoilers coming up!!
Let’s talk about Easter Eggs in my latest story – which, by the way, is my first (and so far only) foray into the world of sci-fi storytelling.
“Mulier Unit 05-22-E” contained a lot of Easter Eggs for readers to discover. I’ll try to remember them all, but I’m sure there are some that I will miss. There were lots of them in this story!!
It’s a story about a man who gets a female android to help with household chores and eventually things go awry with their relationship. Sexually awry! This is erotic fiction, after all!
Last chance if you want to read the story first!
Here come the spoilers!
So, first off, just the title of the story, “Mulier Unit 05-22-E,” has two Easter Eggs hidden in it. “Mulier” is latin for “woman” or more specifically, a “lawful wife.” And the female android’s serial number spells out “Eve.” “E” is the fifth letter of the English alphabet, “V” is the twenty-second letter, and the “E” is… well, “E.” In the story, the main character and “Eve” end up as the sole inhabitants of a wonderful planet that is a veritable Garden of Eden.
See how that worked out?
And even more obvious, the main character is named Adam. Ha! His last name, Renovare, is Latin for “to renew” (in the story, he and the fake android are banished to a planet and they decide to populate this new world – renew mankind). Also, his personal ID number, 05-04-05-N, spells out Eden.
I’m such a goof, right?
The company that makes these lifelike androids is called Vivus-Droid, Inc. “Vivus” is Latin for “living.” Vivus-Droid, Inc. also makes male androids to be assigned to unmarried women that are called “Vir” Units. “Vir” is Latin for “man.”
It’s all pretty silly, but I have to come up with names and whatnot anyway, so why not give them some type of meaning, right?
The “female” Mulier Unit assigned to Adam, in my story, calls herself Oriella. I thought that name was pretty (I simply did an internet search for female names), but it also means “full of life” in Latin. This wasn’t hidden in the story. I actually spelled out that Easter Egg right in the story because I wanted the Oriella character to try a little humor.
There are a few more Easter Eggs that are much less obvious, so let’s delve into those, shall we?
In the story (last chance to turn back before a HUGE spoiler!!), it turns out that Oriella is pregnant when they board the shuttle to the new planet. This is unknown to the main character, Adam, at this time – as well as unknown to the reader at this time. But in the story, they need to be ready to launch by “1500 hours.” Or three o’clock in the afternoon.
Get it? Because there’s secretly three of them on the shuttle.
Sometimes, I’m pretty darn slick with those Easter Eggs, huh?
And then there are some random ones that no one would really know. The age at which an unmarried person is assigned a droid is 25. For some reason, the number five keeps popping up in my life, so I’ve started to fit it into things, just for fun. And, of course, 25 is 5 squared. So twice the 5s!
There are probably a few more sprinkled throughout that I’ve forgotten, but that’s about it for “Mulier Unit 05-22-E.”
I have Easter Eggs in pretty much all of my stories.
A minor character of mine, Valentina, was a nod to the first erotic writing contest that I ever entered (the contest was to write a Valentine’s Day story, so I wrote “The Valentine’s Day Triple Play” which ended up being quite a fan favorite). I was in the middle of writing a chapter in my first novel, “Freya’s Sexual Adventures - Book 1: The Beginning,” and I needed a woman’s name, so I gave a little shout out to my first contest entry story.
In another short story that I wrote, “Faith” (the first part of my “Faith, Hope, and Love” trilogy), the male lead character is named Finn. Finn is Irish for “blessed.” I chose this name because (more spoilers!), although the character definitely feels cursed, he eventually realizes that he can still be blessed. And he becomes blessed by a woman named Vera, a name meaning “faith.”
Also in the story, there is reference to Finn’s late wife, Ana. That name is of Hebrew origin and refers to the blessings bestowed on Hannah in the Old Testament of The Bible. In Finn’s darkest moment, Ana shines through to give him hope and a belief that he could still have a future without her.
Those are some Easter Eggs on how I play around with names and whatnot.
You know what? All this talk about hidden things and meanings in my work has got me thinking, so at this point, let’s take a quick look at what is probably my most-misunderstood story, “La Petite Mort,” and the secret meaning behind this VERY (under 1K words) short story.
I wrote this over a year ago (a mere month into my erotic fiction writing journey) and posted it online with the description that it was a “departure from my usual style.” I then asked readers what THEY thought it was about. I’ve heard from a handful of people but no one has gotten it right, yet.
That ambiguity was by design, though.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, everything I write is pretty well thought out. My writing may seem light and breezy, but almost nothing is left unscrutinized.
Spoiler alert!
“La Petite Mort” is about an elderly widow sipping coffee alone in her kitchen, fondly reminiscing about the physical love she shared with her late husband many, many years in her past.
And that’s it.
Just a woman’s memory of something in her life from so long ago.
Apparently, my intention of making it vague, succeeded too well! I thought it was clever and well-written and everyone would admire my writing prowess, showering me with praise. I was wrong. The story flopped.
But I really like it. Still.
And some readers did like it, too. But I got comments like:
“At first, I thought it was about a man, but then thought it was about a woman.”
“The story is clearly about one person masturbating.”
“It was someone’s dream.”
That one was pretty close!
Well… now you know how I amuse myself with my writing. Fun, huh?
Thanks for reading and take a peek at some of my stories and see if you can uncover any hidden Easter Eggs!!
And Happy Easter (if you celebrate), Sweet Passover (if you celebrate), Merry Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Day (who wouldn’t celebrate THAT day??), or just…
Have a Great Weekend!!!
Love, Frey