I like to write coming of age stories. It's just what I like. I have lamented the fact that freedom of speech in the literary world has been hijacked by those who live in a fantasy world in which nobody has sex until they are adults. Publishers should be able to publish unvarnished coming of age stories without fear of legal harassment via tort, but that's just not the way things are.
So what is an author to do? Well, he can censor the original story by making all characters at least 18 years old. That makes the story read "stupid". I recently got a comment on a story that said if I wasn't going to put any effort into censoring a story (beyond changing ages to 18), so it made sense, then I should just remove the story.
That means I have to remove all my stories. There is no way to "rewrite" a junior in high school into a believable 18-year-old. I can say this person is so stupid they've been held back three or four times, but we all know that doesn't happen in today's educational system. And even if I did rewrite it that way, how is it that this idiot seems to be perfectly normal?
No. There are two reasons I post these fucked up, censored stories.
1. I know there are lots of you who like the coming of age concept, too, and who have good imaginations. Those people can overlook the "age" of the character and use the context of the scene to substitute a different age in their imagination.
2. I'm retired and I supplement my income with sales of my books. The books themselves have to be censored, too, but if a person sends me proof of purchase I'll happily send them, at no additional expense, the uncensored, original version of the book, which reads well and makes sense because the ages are "real".
Now I understand there are a lot of folks out there who don't want to pay for books of this sort. For years and years, if it wasn't free, I didn't read it. But I used my imagination to make reading whatever I found as much fun as possible. And I'm aware that lots of people live on fixed incomes, as I would be doing if it wasn't for book sales, and that they can't afford to buy books. I refer those people to number one, above. I generally don't put the free, posted version of the story behind the pay wall. I used to, but that was before every thing had to be censored. I'd let everybody read it as it was posted and then leave it up for a few weeks, so that people who can't afford a premium membership or to buy books, can still read it for free.
I also price my books very low, by comparison with other authors who write this kind of thing.
So I'm trying to do my part to make this work as well as the religious fanatics will let it work. That's all I can do, other than just stop writing.
And I'm not ready to just stop writing.
Bob