Chapter 5

More Rants? Christ ... Where does it end?

Actually, I have some strange self-reviews to post and I'm not exactly sure what they mean, but I had fun doing them. I'm still trying to find my real rants, but as I've always said - my best rants are in my stories anyway. See? I told you I don't understand why anyone would enjoy this sort of thing. Maybe they don't and they're only teasing me! That would be a cruel joke, wouldn't it? Or maybe I just need to get off my lazy butt and start writing something, but my mind has been such a complete blank lately.

Blah ... Let me post this stuff, just so I can say I did something today!

T.S. Reviews rache ... Just because

2008-11-02

Like all authors, I'm a repressed critic, and since I don't have my own reviewership and Andrew Johns doesn't take personal checks, I'm going to review my Siamese twin sister ... Or she reviewed herself and is just too lazy to leave my blog and edit hers. Either way...

Everyone always says, "I'm my own harshest critic." or something to that effect. I don't say it, because I'm kind of biased usually. But the good thing about critiquing my own work is that unlike my harshest critics, I sorta know what I'm talking about.

I critique myself all the time. And not just me, but my stories too! While I write, after I write, when I proof, after I proof, after I post, when I answer emails, later when I'm having a rhum and coke and trying to slip my wedding ring off my toe as nonchalantly as possible ... I'm always thinking about the story and wondering what I should have done and why. A story can always be better. Don't forget that.

For some odd reason my best ideas always come too late.

Eventually, however, I forget about that story and write a new one, and then a dozen new ones, and after two years I pretty much forget what the hell it was even about! That's the best time to open a story up and proof it! Not right away! Wait until you think it's someone else's story. The mistakes will jump out at you like drunken Irishmen on St. Patty's Day, believe me. Everyone's Irish when you're spread eagle on the pool table. Its weird.

That makes it the perfect time to do a little review as well...

"Dogsmith" was written by Lisa Pavageau in early 2006 for nevermindwho.com and posted to SOL sometime after the exclusivity rights expired, under the pen name rache. The title is a word I made up for a working title and a better one never occurred to me. I hadn't looked at it since posting and I largely forgot it even existed until the other day when I got an email telling me how good it is.

"Dogsmith?" I wondered. "What the hell is that?"

So I opened it up tonight and started reading, got two paragraphs into it and saw three silly things to be fixed and promptly opened my editor to fix it while I was reading. I'm amazed Bc didn't ask for their money back! So now, at the risk of being a total ass, here's my review of Dogsmith...

Dogsmith by rache // 10,846 Words // Story#50238 // Posted: 2006-10-23

Synopsis: Lisa wants to join a sorority and all she has to do is complete one last challenge, to get one of her sorority sisters laid. But that could be harder than it sounds, especially since the girl in question is a 5 year old black lab named Sophie.

Codes: MF FF rom 1st coll cons toys beast

QScore: 7.29

Dogsmith

Ahhhh ... Bestiality. If it isn't your thing, turn around right now and find something else to entertain you. "Dogsmith" is all about Dog Sex and when it comes to canine love, there are a mere handful of authors who are any good at it. Thankfully, rache is one of them and this story is a little known star in the constellation of Canis Major. It isn't Sirius (the brightest star in the sky) or even serious (a dull star indeed!) but it is a lot of fun and good escapist entertainment for the whole family.

rache begins the story with one of her favorite vehicles, a narrator who is rife with personal problems. Lisa is a college girl trying to get into a sorority and with a wonderful economy of words we understand immediately that she's smart, funny, cynical, jaded, and not just a little bored with life in general. A typical 19 year old, away from home for the first time, but somehow still plugged into her adolescence through an emotional umbilical that she detests. Sound familiar?

The obvious conflict in the story is announced with the first words out of her mouth, as Lisa wonders if she'll be accepted into the sorority or not. But we know rache and if there's one thing she loves, it's misdirection, and so we won't be surprised later when other issues arise to complicate the situation and push the plot towards an unexpected resolution.

What is the plot? In a nutshell, Lisa is challenged to get the sorority mascot, a five year old black lab named Sophie, laid by a member of the Alpha-Omega Fraternity. She has to get it on video for viewing at her initiation and therein lies the rub. How does she talk a college boy into not only fucking a dog, but letting Lisa make a movie of it?

Hmmm ... That's a toughie.

The Lisa character is like most of rache's narrators, well developed and likable and living in a universe just half a step off from ours. Everything she says and does may not be completely believable if taken separately, but in context Lisa works wonderfully. The dialogue and Lisa's narration into her thoughts and emotions are smooth and deceptively simple, and by the time the first (and very unlikely) sex scene rolls around we're there. We see the world through her eyes and it somehow makes sense.

I love how she does that and I wish I knew the secret.

The other main character, a young man named Michael, is not nearly so well developed and it's with him that I have to raise my only real issue with the story. As Lisa plans to seduce the boy into having sex with Sophie, she begins to fall in love with him, and while that's made clear, we don't get enough of the character to understand the attraction, in my opinion. I think one more good dialogue scene would have added a lot to Michael's character, but that might just be some knit-picking on my part ... He does read her two poems, after all, and while it isn't Shakespeare, even the worst prose given from the heart is a pretty big kick for a closet romantic like Lisa.

The sex. This is good stuff if you're into bestiality, because we get some hot scenes with more than the usual male dog slipping the bone to a girl ho-hum doggy style.

Dogmsith gives us a lesbian threesome involving Lisa, her roommate, and Sophie. Another scene with a large male dog spoiling Lisa completely. And finally Michael with Sophie while Lisa watches. That's a lot of sex in a small package, but who's complaining?

The scenes aren't terribly long and not entirely written for stroke, but even so, they are stimulating and very enjoyable. The scene between Lisa and Michael's dog, Stein, is an over the top fun fest, but we can forgive Lisa for that as she was doubtless recalling her experience through the rosy lens of orgasmic ecstasy. It's great sex and combined with the other elements, it's the reason this story is a standout in the bestiality genre.

Technically ... Spelling and grammar in the updated version are as well done as we're likely to find in an amateur online story. The characters are well crafted; the narration is absorbing and full of rache's quirky humor. The plot is over-the-top, or so it seems, but with a small twist at the end which so many readers have commented on in the past. "Why didn't I think of that?" being the most common response and it's simple ... We don't think of it because Lisa didn't think of it and that's proof of immersion, suspension of belief, and rache should take it as a compliment.

It isn't her best story, but rache has given us something far better than a lot of the mundane bestiality we come across on the internet and if you love dogs like I do ... Yeah, this one is for you, baby!

My ratings?

Technical: 9 Plot: 9 Appeal: 10 Stroke: 8

Reasons why it's my best story ever!!!

2008-10-22

Reasons Until After: Ashley is sixteen and when the quarterback of the football team falls in love with him, everyone assumes the boy is gay. This would be bad if it didn't suddenly bring Ashley to the attention of the three hottest girls in school, cheerleaders determined to teach him all about life, love, and a little thing they like to call "girl fun" ... What could possibly be wrong with that?

Story Codes: fff/m, teen, romance, reluctant, oral, cd, cheerleaders, and angst, lots and lots of angst

Romance/Some Sex

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

I'm posting my subversive novel "Reasons Until After" and yeah, it's one of the very best stories I've ever written about anything. Convincing people to read it is of course problematic, but I'm used to that. This story does get spanked, as do I, for having the gall not to regurgitate what most readers are looking for. Spank me all you want, I'm not going away and I'm not going to change. I have no fear of anyone around here.

Sorry if that frightens you. (oops ... that'll get me another 1-1-1) Thankfully, I do not suffer from a lack of self-confidence and I trust my own judgment far more than I trust the scoring system on SOL.

Luckily for me, I'm also blessed with my fair share of attention. A lot of people like this story quite a bit. A lot of people who presumably know what they're talking about, probably more than I do, and I like that. I always learn a lot and try to pay attention. Some of the feedback I've received has been over-the-top cool, like this one...

San Francisco GYM (Gay Youth Movement) has included this little note in the reviews section of its newsletter which is very flattering. Among other things, they said:

" ... Unsurprisingly, recent fiction has included a number of female authors exploring male sexuality; among these ... Rachael Ross [has] given us stories which are at once familiar and fresh in their scope and appeal. 'Reasons Until After' stands out as an exploration of sexual identity crises and revels in a romantic, non-prejudicial world-view..."

That was pretty nice of them and their email was very generous, as was a note from the Advisor of the Akron Pride Center Youth Group in Ohio. He asked me for permission to distribute the story in print form, to make it available " ... as an example of a story of love and self-acceptance." That's a sweet thought and it made me smile, as you can imagine.

Getting letters and feedback like that is very nice and gratifying, considering I wrote the story with little more intent than to entertain myself for a few hours. I received another note, from someone familiar with publishing stories a similar themes, suggesting I clean it up a bit, meaning tone down the sexual content and rework the relationship between Ashley and the three girls to be less explicit, and market the story as a novel.

I'm not too sure about that, but I can see the appeal of my little novel. The story, when I posted it under the rache pen name, scored very low. I think a number of readers were expecting something different and so I got punished for not meeting expectations. It merely reinforced my already strong opinion that scores are meaningless. The amount of feedback was substantial and positive, without exception. Many of my emails wondered, "Why is it scoring so low? Are people idiots?" and of course, I have no answer to that.

Technically? It's a very good story, plot and character-wise. It's been edited and proofed pretty well, although only by me. I'm sure a real editor could find some things to fix, but what's the point? When I bother to do it, I'm a better editor than most of the editors around here anyway, if you'll excuse a bit of immodest honesty. Half the editors don't answer requests for editing and half of the rest can't edit their own offers of assistance. Have you seen those??? heh! Editors ... Don't get me started. I have a real love-hate thing going there.