On Reading WoT For The First Time

At the time the first Wheel of Time books came out, the norm for fantasy trilogies were either single stand-alone books, franchise books that were published serially without end, or trilogies. 

I mistook "Eye Of The World" for the first book in a new trilogy and immediately put it on a mental wait-list for purchase. After all, the author was an unknown to me then. I found it interesting that the only copies I saw then were in trade paperback format, not hardcover. Being young and poor (-er) at the time, I only bought paperback books. Why - my reasoning went - pay full price for a book that's going to come out in paperback? EotW was the first book that messed with that, because it wasn't really either a paperback or a hard cover. What it wasn't was a trilogy that was finished, so I did not buy it. 

When "The Great Hunt" came out, I was even more intrigued. The trade paperback format looked really good, there will still no hardcover books that I could find anywhere, and people were starting to talk. I would go to a book store and if there were two people in the scifi / fantasy section, they would be standing near EotW and discussing it. If there was only one, they would ask if I had read it yet, then tell me it was a "must read." Those small gatherings were like little mini-conventions. I was a little afraid of the fervor of those spreading the word of Robert Jordan, but also intrigued. How good did a book have to be to get that kind of word of mouth? But I was young and poor-ish, so I put off buying the paperback as long as I could. 

When I finally did buy the first book (in paperback), I waited until a Friday night when I knew I had no plans that weekend to read it. I binge read it, as I did with all books I read at that time, and walked away as punch-drunk in love with it as all those weirdos from the bookstore. By Saturday night I was done. On Sunday morning I walked to the mall (something like a five mile walk?) and bought the trade paperback of tGH. I managed to maintain enough self-control to wait to read it until the next weekend. Then I was furious with myself for not waiting longer because the third book wasn't out yet. 

"The Dragon Reborn" was the first installment in the series I saw available in hardcover. It was also the first hardcover book I ever bought. Imagine my chagrin when I finished it and discovered to my horror that it wasn't a trilogy. 

I was hooked. 

Every book after that I pre-ordered. For some reason, I recall the books being released late mid-week. Thursdays, maybe? Wednesday? I would buy them, then admire them for a day or two before I allowed myself to read them. The anticipation of the read was almost as good as the read itself. Those days were like the last day of school before summer vacation. I did things, but all I could think of the book I was about to read. 

I would take that Friday off - skipping class in college, taking a personal day once I started working - and read them straight through by Saturday night with almost no sleep and less food in between. I did drink Coke-Cola, though. Coke-Cola was my lifeline. There would be maybe some candy, or a brief break for a fast food run. Pizza was always a favorite because it meant I could spend less time procuring food and it lasted for more than one meal. Which meal didn't matter. 

The time between books was agony. Months and years sometimes of waiting, only for it to all be over in a span of a long weekend of reading. It almost never took me more than forty-eight hours to read a new book. For most of the books, I had a ratty old recliner that was great to curl up in, with a coffee table to one side to hold sustenance as I read. For me there was no "slog." There still isn't. I consumed each book in a state of near awe. My love of the books was a solitary thing I seldom shared. Critical thought took days or weeks after a read. There was a lot to be critical of, but none of it dimmed my passion for the books or the series. 

For "Memory of Light," I took a week off of work. I knew this one was special, and I wanted to savor it. By then, Robert Jordan was gone, but his work remained. I was also married during the last few books, forcing me to find ways to self-isolate to try and recapture the singular focus the readings as a single personal had allowed. I forced myself to go slow, to take breaks, to go for a walk or eat a meal, but there was no point. I still read aMoL in about three days. 

And then it was over. The ache of that is still in me and always will be. Fandom and the series to come don't come close to filling the hole in me left by Robert Jordan's passing and the completion of his vision. 

Better Late Than Never: "Bingo-Bango" and "The Sex Machine: Dimitri's Plan"

A kind fan noticed I was missing links to a couple of my stories. Links to "Bingo-Bango" and "The Sex Machine: Dimitri's Plan" have been added in the sidebar under My Writing. While I never made any post at all for TSM:DP, "Bingo-Bango" did merit a self-promotion post over at TGComics.com. Here's that post:

My latest story "Bingo-Bango" is now available for sale on Amazon.

Story Description:

An unexpected sexual encounter leads to an even more unexpected transformation. Trapped in the body of the woman that seduced him, this former man only has one option to become a man again: find another man that will agree to have sex with a young, willing, attractive woman. Once the act has been consummated, all he has to do is say the magic words for their roles to be reversed, turning the other man into the woman.

It seems like a simple enough plan. The problem is that whatever life this former man takes as his own is the one he'll be stuck with for the rest of his life. So which life will he choose?

(Transgender Erotic Fiction, Approximately 56,700 words)

This story is one of my most sexually explicit to date. While I haven't shied away from descriptions of sex before, the act of sex is a big part of the premise of this story. Because of that, there's a lot of "action" going on. There's also - kind of - two endings. The first is the one that resolves the main character's story, but there's also an epilogue that deals with another character's ultimate fate that I wanted to add in to wrap things up a little more tightly. My hope is that the two different takes on how the different characters deal with similar circumstances will make the story appealing to more people.

This was supposed to be a short story. Ha! I really need to work on that. I want to tighten my writing up so I can start putting out shorter stories more frequently. My goal for this year was to put out one story a month, ten pages each, or 120 pages a year. With this story I'm at about 100 pages. Here's hoping I can carve things down and be a little more prolific. Fingers crossed!

Last thing. This story is priced at $2.99, a departure from my other stories which were all put out at higher price points roughly based on length. This is a little bit of an experiment for me. If this story sells better with the lower price point, I will almost certainly put out all future stories at that price, regardless of length. (Old formula I was using was something like $0.50 / 10 pages unedited, adjusted downwards to make the price look pretty, if anyone cares.) Of course, you can read the story for FREE if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, so there's that.

That's all! I hope you all enjoy the story. Thank you as always for your support.

- Sara

... And the cover image for "The Sex Machine: Dimitri's Plan":

New Story: "Running On Empty"

After almost two years, it's time to put up a new story!

The story, "Running On Empty," is now available for sale on Amazon.

"Running On Empty" is the story of Riley Merchant, a college student with a troubled past and an uncertain future. I intend for this to be the start of a series of shorter, much more explicitly erotic stories than anything I've put out before. After some exposition to set up the universe, the story dives right in with graphic depictions of sex. If you like that kind of thing, you should like this story. If you like your stories a little more PG rated, this is not the story or the series for you! The rating here is definitely NC-17 / X.

I look forward to having an ongoing series in an existing universe I can use to blow off steam from time to time. Plus, I really like the idea of being able to write shorter, more frivolous stories that allow me to publish more often. While there is a meta-story, this series is intended to be some lite (as in low calorie, low mental effort) summer fun for me before going back to other unfinished projects. Those projects are less graphically sexual, are longer, and in general require more thought and effort to get right.

Story Description:

A young man comes home to find his roommate in possession of a real, true magic wand. While the wand’s power isn’t unlimited, there’s enough magic stored within it for the roommate to turn the young man into a sexy young woman cursed with strong sexual appetites and an eagerness to please. But now the magic stored in the wand is all used up. Without more, this man-turned-woman is at the mercy of his own seemly bottomless well of desire.

This story came in at 39 pages in my standard format. It's going up for $2.99, which seems to have become the new standard pricing over at Amazon KDP. While I might still set a higher price for my more typical stories, the ones in this series will all be the $2.99 price point. Or at least that's the plan right now. Oh, and if I ever do a compilation, that will be set at a higher price that's still a savings over buying the stories individually. Maybe even with a dead-tree format? Time will tell.

What Women Want

Once upon an age ago, when I still had a proofreader to get feedback from, I asked her about a story I was working on. My friend - let's call her Susan - had read my stories and enjoyed them for years and offered me a lot of helpful feedback. So I asked her about an idea I'd had for a story set in a high school. The basic idea was an insensitive guy leaves a girl for a prettier, more popular young woman. She comes into possession of a device that lets her transform anyone in any way she wants. Pretty good setup for a TG story, right? I thought so too. I asked her to think about the situation and tell honestly what she thought she as a young woman that had graduated from high school not so many years before would do in that given situation.

Her answer surprised me. Actually, to be honest, she gave me several answers / scenarios. All of them left me confused and disappointed.

In one, she used the device to make herself better looking and joined the cheerleading squad to drive her ex mad with jealousy, so she could turn him down when he wanted her back. In another, she turned herself into a duplicate of the other girl so that the ex would have to choose between them based on personality instead of appearance. In another, she made all of the nice girls pretty and all of the mean girls ugly. Then there was the one where she turned herself into a copy of the girl so she could act out and get the girl her ex had chosen in trouble.

I think you get the idea. None of her ideas was in any way involved turning her ex into a girl.

When I asked her why, and this is the point, she said something that has stuck with me. I don't remember the actual words she used, but the idea she communicated to me was pretty potent. It boiled down to the idea that for the ex to pay, he still had to be her ex. If the girl in the story turned him into a girl, he would be too focused on his own predicament and not focused enough on her and how he had hurt her. She didn't want to change his body; she wanted to change his mind and mend his ways. Or put another way, the only revenge she wanted was emotional, and in her view a physical transformation could only get in the way of that.

Susan's feedback made me feel ashamed that I hadn't done a good enough job imagining the inner life of the women I was writing in my stories. What did they want? Why did they want it? Were the motives I gave to them realistic, or simply opportunistic attempts to move the story in the direction I wanted it to go?

While Susan's feedback hasn't stopped me from writing stories where the antagonist is a woman seeking revenge for ill treatment (The Birthday Girl is a great example of this), it has made me hyper-aware that the reasons a woman might transform someone are more complicated than a simple desire to make a guy "pay" for his bad behavior. In The Birthday Girl, for example, a transformation that first appears to be revenge for ill-treatment is revealed to be more about a desire to do whatever it takes to break a cycle of abuse. Punishment has very little to do with it. Preventing other women from being subjected to a cruel man's emotional abuse is the point. Katrina makes a huge personal sacrifice, giving up her very identity in exchange for one that is less than ideal, all so she can protect other women from a man she views as a menace. The man's transformation and potential redemption are secondary to Katrina. She doesn't transform him to punish him, or to save him; she transforms him to save herself and other women from him. If the way she goes about doing that seems like revenge, it's only because her goal is to force him to open his eyes and accept the reality that he is a woman and the world will see him and treat him that way. That's a story that I never would have told if it hadn't been for my proofreader's feedback.

All of which is prelude to my point. The story I'm currently working on - CJ, a Halloween story - is about a group of college students, most of which are female. While my own college experiences inform the story, Susan's feedback about her perceptions of motive have led to a story where the women relate to each other on an personal and emotional level, while the men in the story are focused so hard on the physical that they almost can't see the emotional impact of what they say and do. The main character, who is of course transformed, becomes torn between these two perspectives. That leads to an epiphany about how they see the world, and a choice about how that revelation informs their sense of self-identity. I owe that element of the story to Susan's perspective.

Damn, I miss having a proofreader.

New Story: "Texas Hold 'Em"

My latest story, "Texas Hold 'Em" is now available for sale on Amazon.

I started working on this story in June of last year (2016). It was originally one of my procrastination projects, based on a simple, sexy premise: a guy loses his manhood in a poker game. Poker led to Texas hold 'em, which made turning the main character into a sexy Texas cheerleader an inevitability. The name of the game also led to what I think is an obvious double entendre. (Double. Get it? Bah-dah, bum. *Tish.*)

The story was originally supposed to end after chapter 13, Into The Sunset. By the time I got that far, though, the story and its characters had taken on a life of their own. What I intended as a short, fun, sex romp became a more serious dramatic conflict that segues into a romance. It felt very organic as I was writing it.

As for the romance itself, if you liked the ending of "The Party Favor," I think you may like this story's ending even more. I think that what I'm most proud of isn't where the story ends up, but the journey the main character takes to get there.

Story Description:

The popular saying about everything from Texas being bigger is the main reason Ken's favorite football team - and their famous cheerleading squad - is from the Lone Star state. When he has a chance to win big at his weekly poker game, he bets big and loses even bigger. Now he's stuck as a buxom Texan beauty, forced to cope with a body that's a real handful ... and then some! But the real game begins when the night is over and the stakes are raised to include his marriage, his children, and the direction the rest of his life will take.

(Transgender Erotic Fiction, Approximately 78,200 words)

The story is my longest to date. So long, in fact, that I'm working on a paperback version. Yes, it's long enough to be made into an actual book. It comes in at about 280 pages in dead tree format (closer to 190-200 in my standard working format; the smaller page size adds to the length). That version is going to be on sale as soon as I can get the *insert choice profanity here* formatting to do what I want it to do. If you can't wait, the ebook is priced at $5.95, unless of course you have Kindle Unlimited, in which case it's FREE with your subscription, as are all my stories.

Enjoy!

- Sara

PS - For those of you keeping tabs on what I'm up to, my Twitter feed is now probably the best way to keep track of me. Most of the time, I post there. If I have too much to say for Twitter to handle, I still use Blogger but include a link back to the post here in my Twitter feed. 

The Blank Page

The blank page is often used as a way to portray writer's block. The image of a tortured writer staring at a blank page with nothing to write has become so common that it has become cliche.

I do not find that to be the case. I find the blank page liberating. Michelangelo is once purported to have said, "Every block of stone has a statue inside of it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." In a similar vein, I would say that every blank page has a story inside of it, and it is the task of the writer to discover it.

And therein lies the problem. Unlike blocks of stone, every blank page is the same. If offers no clue as to what lies within. Worse still, every word is a chain meant to tame the infinite, invisible beast of imagination. It gives the beast shape and scope. It gives it more clarity and definition, delineating its nature, describing both what it is and what it isn't.

How sad it is to me to think of the poor soul that looks on a blank page and sees only ... nothing. For me, the blank page is a wonderment. A miracle, even. In it, I see worlds of infinite wonder where quite literally anything is possible.

Rejected

I got word by E-mail that my submission to Topside Press was rejected. I was copied on the E-mail as a BCC, so I suspect this was a mass rejection.

This is a first for me. My first story, "Shoes," was submitted to TG Forum. They were kind enough to publish it even though publishing fiction wasn't really what their site is about. "Shoes" was on their site for many months until they did a site reorganization, at which point they removed it from their archives. I never did find out why.

Reluctant Press published me with such speed and gusto my head spun. Right up through my last contacts with them, they were polite, courteous and eager to publish me.

When I was looking to self-publish "Alien Body Suit: Under Her Skin," femur, the head honcho over at TGComics.com reached out to me when I posted in the forums there looking for an artist. The next thing I know, we're collaborating on publishing not one, but two of my stories. You all may have seem my posts here about the sequels, which will also be published there. (I hope and expect.)

While the results of my efforts at self-publishing have been mixed, falling about halfway between Reluctant Press and TGComics, they've still been a fun, profitable endeavor. I would have to call that a success.

So getting rejected by Topside Press is, I must say, kind of a downer.

:_-(

Ah, well. Back to work.