After 4 and a half years and several bouts of writer’s block I have finally finished my novel “Alice”.
Loosely inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland “Alice” is a 21st century fairytale for adults. This book has explicit sex scenes as well as surreal references to popular culture so it is not a book for children.

As I have put a lot of time and effort into creating “Alice” I have published it at SmashWords.com. Read the first 5 chapters for free then use the coupon code “SWS50″ to get 50% off when you buy the full book (Coupon Valid until 31st July 2010).

I have a couple of short stories to finish up then I hope to resume work on Justine. The first chapter of Justine (Seducing a girl) also started life as a short story and I have a feeling that one of my short stories (if not both) will also end up having sequels.

I’ve just received the proof copy for the paperback version of Alexandra and there is some universal law that states the errors will appear in the hard copy version that where completely invisible on screen, no matter how many times you have read through the manuscript!

I am also revising Alice and hope to be able to publish the paperback soon after Alexandra.

I am also plotting Justine. I was struck on Chapter 2. After all the flash backs in chapter 1 I was unsure how to write rest of the novel. Writing the entire novel as “overlapping flashbacks” seemed firstly very difficult and secondly could end up being very hard to read. I could easily get lost writing flashback after flashback, and the reader could become totally confused. But I think I have devised a way that will work.

Also If I want to publish Celia as a paperback I will really need to rewrite it. Celia was my first novel. And it is not at all up to the standard that I write to now. I have ideas for other novels set in the same storyline telling Becky’s, Jazz’s and Sam’s stories(characters in Celia). So If ever want to write them I will need to rewrite Celia.

So I’m proofing Alexandra, revising Alice, plotting Justine and maybe rewriting Celia. And maybe working on Becky(I have an outline of chapter 1 from years ago), Jazz and Sam.

And yes, I have noticed a trend in the names of my novels(though in this case Sam is a boy).

Below are the videos of me reading Seducing a Girl, the first chapter of Justine.

The playtime is nearly 50 minutes and I’ve had to split it into 5 clips as YouTube only allow each clip to be 10 minutes long.

Please leave a comment, either here or on YouTube. If you do go to YouTube to watch them please rate them.
Thanks

I have been busy working on Terminal Singularity but I also spent a couple of days this week working on Justine as well.
Terminal Singularity (From now on Abbreviated to ‘TS1′) is where my head is, but Justine is where my heard it. The thing is that TS1 is already fully plotted, that is I have a complete story and list of scenes for the whole story worked out. I just need to sit down and write the actual text. But I keep being inspired by Justine. I keep finding little snippets of story, and sometimes even complete scenes, from Justine popping up in my imagination. So I know that I need to write Justine. However the exact story is not yet well formed. I have a beginning in Seducing a Girl and I have the last chapter where Justine finally accepts John’s love, but all the scenes in the middle are jumbled up and some are completely contradictory to others. So I know that not all will fit into the finished story. And I always hate writing a complete scene only to have to cut it out later when I can’t make it fit. Thought breaking the story to try to fit an inappropriate scene is even worse.
Don’t get me wrong I am enjoying working on TS1 and in the past week I have had a burst of inspiration and now have the story line for the sequel, which I have called Terminal Singularity 2(TS2), and have the general story outline for TS3 as well. So I am fully engaged with the story and the characters of the TS universe(if 3 books make a universe)
However with 3 novels and about 10 short stories, already started, but not finished, the last thing I needed was to start another two novels. But that is just what I have found that I have done, with the pivotal scene of TS2, where the character Trigg saves the others, coming to me in a burst of inspiration and forcing me to write it.
So basically I am saying that while I have been battling the many distractions that divert me from writing, even when I am writing I am being distracted by too many stories.
But still I am making progress – honest I am.

January I started the new year with a burst of quality work, on both Justine and Terminal Singularity.
However in February we moved house and that was a little bit of an interruption. To say the least. I kept working on both novels, but I keep changing my mind about which one I should concentrate on. Justine is the more interesting, and personal, for me. But Terminal Singularity is fully plotted and 25 percent of the way through it’s first draft. So logically I should work on that. But I keep getting great ideas and character insights into the story of Justine.

I also implemented another new plan for success. Since I can’t make money at my Ideal Job, I have decided to continue the tradition of novelists having a wide variety of jobs by starting my own blog network to try to generate an income from advertising and affiliate sales. If you want to stop smoking read this blog.

I blame you guys

At least those who have commented and e-mailed me about Seducing a girl. About half of you seem to think that more will be seen of the girl on the couch and that she might play some further part in Justine’s and John’s story. This had not been my plan. She was supposed to have just a “walk on” part. She was never going to be seen again.(Look people, I didn’t even bother giving her a name.) But now that several people have mentioned that they would like to see more of her I can’t get ideas for her out of my head.
There is also another “walk on” part for a girl towards the end of Justine, and now she has that part as well. She fits the part and now there is an extra thread running through the story’s universe, so it is all good.
She also now has a name, “Julie”. Originally she was just going to be a sex object for Justine to use to play with John, and you don’t need a name for an object. Now you guys have got me thinking about her she has become a “real” person with a name and she wants her own story line!
However I don’t have space for her story line in the novel Justine. Except for her two brief appearances at the party in the beginning and towards the end, in a scene that shows a fundamental change in Justine, but which I can not describe without telling you half the story of the novel, there is no space for her. So she has ended up having her own “mini series”. I have a story outline for her that is about 4 chapters long (25,000 words). Now all I have to do is find the time to write it!
If you look at the sidebar on my site you will see a section titled “Work in Progress” there are currently 3 novels listed with a progress meter for each.
However I now have about 20 other stories started, or outlined with a plot and an plan. But I can’t work on every idea I have or I would never get anything finished. So only the 3 stories I am currently working on get a progress meter.
So if you see “Julie’s Story” popping up as a progress meter in my sidebar you know that she jumped up and grabbed me by the throat and won’t let go until she has her story told.

I can’t place the blame entirely on my readers. I did after all spend most of last weekend working on plotting/developing/outlining and writing some key scenes of another novel entitled “Domestic Service”. Again this is a brief flash of inspiration that grew into an entire novel almost over night. It started with a couple of images of some Manga that I downloaded from the Internet (Ragnarock City if you must know) and some of the costumes caught something in my imagination and out popped a future history of an overcrowded earth, with 99% of the population living in poverty, not knowing where their next meal was coming from, and the elite 1% living in luxury enclaves behind hi-tech security in a 21st century paradise: flying to orbital space station spas for week long parties, having the latest medical procedures and their every whim administered to. The story is about a young girl, called Aimee, who enters “domestic service” as a sex slave in one of the luxury enclaves to escape the life of poverty that awaits her on the outside.
However Aimee is also a character with a mind of her own. Not content with being a sex slave in one novel she has demanded a trilogy where she ends up leading a revolution that overthrows the corrupt social order and the whole story is written “by her” as she sits in her prison cell awaiting the verdict of a tribunal set up to try her for crimes against humanity.
However Aimee’s story is now parked and I am once again concentrating on writing Terminal Singularity. Then I’ll finish Justine and then I’ll finish Alice. (At least that is the current plan.)

So Happy birthday Julie, you are now a character with her own story. And you get to star along side the third most important character in Justine. I say he is the third most important character because he plays a pivotal role in the development of Justine’s and John’s relationship. Although he still doesn’t have a name, he is just called “Master” in the story. But “Master” does suit his character. We will eventually see how Master instructs Julie in the finer arts of BDSM submission and self esteem. I say “we” because I don’t quite know what is going to happen in that story because it seems that all my characters have a mind of their own.
But I think I am looking forward to the adventure.

Having “raped” Justine the last time I worked on Justine. I was a bit reluctant to work on it some more. But then I had an idea of how Justine meets her second major lover. And then I realised how she could heal her heart from her first love.

Here is a fragment of the scene when she achieves “enlightenment”:

“So he never loved me,” Justine.
“I can’t say what he felt,” Master replies.
Master and Justine are silent for a moment
“So do you love me?” Justine
Master sighed, “What is love?”
—————-
“Are you asking do I like you? do I need you? Do I desire you? Do I want set you free?
Justine looks up, “Do you want to set me free?”
Master smiles, “I can’t set you free. No person can set another free. Only you can set yourself free.”
“He enslaved me.”
“No one can enslave you, only you can make yourself a slave.”
“I didn’t want to be his slave.”
“Then why did you stay with him?”
“Because I loved him.”
“Did you?”
“Are you going to tell me that you know what love is, and what I felt wasn’t true love!”
“Since time began countless philosophers, poets and general layabouts have tried to define what love is. None have ever succeeded. You can’t define love, you can only feel love.”
“I felt love for him.”
“Did he feel love for you?”
Justine started to answer, then paused.
“No,” she answered after a long moment. “He didn’t love me. He doesn’t love himself, so how could he have ever love me.”
Master smiled, “Now that you have looked into your heart of hearts and seen the truth, now you can set yourself free.”
“And once I am free?” Justine looked up at Master once more.
Master broke into the widest smile Justine had ever seen. “Once you are free, then you can fine true love.”

“Master” might at some stage get a name.

It is only a fragment of a first draft, and it is of storyline that happens before the action in Justine, so I will probably never finish the scene. But after telling you the other day that she had had a fight with her first lover that “tore her apart emotionally and left her slumped on the ground crying her eyes out” I thought that you might like to know that her story has a happy ending.

OK not really. And for those new to my blog Justine is a character in a novel I am writing.
But I feel as if I have hurt her.
I wrote a scene a few days ago. It was an argument between Justine and her first lover.
The scene is from a period in Justine’s life before the events in the novel Justine take place. So the scene will never see the light of day.
It starts with Justine telling her lover “You don’t love me, you just love the things you do to me.” and ends with her lover tearing her apart emotionally and leaving her slumped on the ground crying her eyes out. There was no actually physical violence in the scene, but the emotional intensity cut straight to my own heart.
Even though it is just a fictional exchange between fictional characters, and I am writing, actually creating the story, it still left me a little shaken.
I haven’t written anything, fiction wise, for the past few days.

No not my posts to my blogs, but my novels Alexandra and Justine. 15 years separate the two novels and yet the themes I explore in both are remarkably similar.
They both deal with love, and finding true love, and knowing whether what you have is really true love. They both end in happy endings. And, yes, I know I am just a big, old, soft romantic. But I guess the concept of love is an important one to me.
The main difference is that Justine will be more overtly explicitly erotic, with BDSM themes coming in chapter 3 and beyond.
Of course I am in danger of doing the same thing with Justine as with Alexandra. With Alexandra I started out to write an explicit, erotic novel, but ended up with too much plot and not enough sex for the novel to be considered as mainstream erotica.
But I guess this literary streak runs deep within me and I feel the need to show my characters as real three dimensional people, who happen also to have sex with each other.
Take “Seducing a Girl”(the first chapter in Justine), there are 7,225 words in the chapter, but only one sexual act.
Of course I like to think of the whole chapter as being just one long sex scene, rather than just the part where Justine and John are physically “making love” to the girl at the party. I want to make the reader as aroused as John is throughout the chapter.

But I also like to leave questions in the readers mind. The title of the chapter is “Seducing a girl” but …

• Is John seducing Justine?
• Are Justine and John seducing the (unnamed)girl?
• Is Justine simply using John to seduce the girl?
• Or is it in fact John that is being seduced, and perhaps even corrupted, by Justine, and hence is Justine being seduced by John’s corruption?

And why is the girl unnamed, while a throw-away character like Barry gets a name(and a birthday party)? Is she just another throw-away character, a girl to have fun with and then discard without a second thought?
I have another unnamed character, who appears in chapter 3, who will be central to reveling Justine’s past and her true feelings towards John.

I know that my unique take on erotic fiction does not fit a traditional market. I get comments both that there is too much explicit sex and comments that there is not enough sex in my novels.
And that is one of the reasons that I have started this blog. I want to find an audience that shares my taste in erotic literature.
The great thing about the Web is things that are not mainstream can still find an audience, the worst thing about the web is that so many things, both mainstream and not, are competing for attention.
But my fist, faltering steps at marketing must be working, because you are reading this post.

I’ve just read this post from Rich Minx about her receiving her first Adsense cheque. She had been waiting since 2004 to accumulate the $100+ one needs before Google will write you a cheque(or does Google cut you a check).

I’m still waiting for my first cheque/check, and yes I put my first Adsense adds up on a web site in 2004 as well.

And yes I know that I should have been busy working on Chapter 2 of Alice, which I said over a month ago was nearly finished, insead of reading other people’s blogs. But hey I have added over 300 words to it this week, but I keep getting distracted by ideas for Justine.

PS now you see why it took me five years to write Celia, my first novel!

Well I can honestly say that I dillied and dallied for the past couple of days. I did very little work on Chapter 2 of Alice. My reason/excuse is that my wife has been away on business for the past couple of days and what little free time I did get on my computer was spent on web site maintenance. I also got a bit bogged down doing research, in other words I started to surf, and finding loads of wonderful stuff about space technology, rather than focusing on getting the information I needed and getting the job finish in a reasonable period of time.
When I did get back to writing I started to work on chapter two of Justine. Yes, I know I said that I said that I would leave Justine as it was going to be part of a trilogy rather than a stand alone Novel. But now I’ve changed my mind and I will be writing it as a stand alone novel. The ideas I had for the first two books that were going to be in the trilogy will work as a good back story for Justine. Her back story will be partially revealed in the novel as needed in order to fully describe her character and motivations and her relationship with the other characters.

Well I’ve dillied and dallied, and have not finished Chapter 2 of Alice yet. I mostly spent my free time the past couple of days catching up on mailing lists and web sites that were updated while I was in Italy. There was supposed to be Wi-Fi access in our hotel room, but I couldn’t get it to work, nor communicate my problems with the staff, so I didn’t get any Internet access while I was away. However I didn’t have very much free time even if I had of had access. I did write a little of Alice Chapter 2 (about 250 words) while I was away though.
Also a short part linking one scene to another in Alice Chapter 2, originally envisioned as being a sentence or two, has expanded into a scene all of its own.
The good news is that the rest of the chapter is written and I should have more time tomorrow to work on this(and not be distracted by anything else). So Tuesday is looking good for the full chapter to be posted.

As for Justine, the story has now expanded into a trilogy, of which the first chapter that I have posted is actually the first chapter of the third book.

So I have decided to finish Alice first, while working on the story line, characters etc, for the Justine trilogy. The whole Justine story needs time to settle and formulate within my mind, and on paper, before I take a run at writing it.

So this month I’ll concentrate on Alice Chapter 3 (once I have finished Chapter 2 of course).

Well … sort of. I did spend 2 hours setting up a new blog for my wife. But I also wrote a big chunk of Alice Chapter 2. I now have the ending written and another bit in the middle finished, but I need to join them together. Most of chapter 2 is written, well over 2/3rds. Nothing major happens in the bits that are missing, I just need to lead the story from one scene to the next(in a logical and self consistent manor). it’s just a matter of knuckling down and writing it without giving in to too many distractions.

Mostly today I spend working on the story line for a prequel to Justine.
There are some references, in later chapters of Justine, to a previous relationship of Justine’s. One which hurt her really badly emotionally. And I have just today, during my free writing warm up exercise merged another recurring fantasy that I have with Justine’s backstory to come up with the outline of another complete novel. The story of Justine’s first major relationship. Which happen before the events recounted in Justine. The story is really compelling so it has immediately been bumped up to No. 3 in my to-do list (Alice and Justine are 1 and 2. Senna – Alice Pt. 2 is now at No.4).

I seem to be in the habit of wanting to write prequels to my novels. The same thing happened with my novel Celia. I want to write the stories of Jazz, Becky and Sam, as well as a sequel continuing Celia’s story.

And the same thing happened to me with my novel Alexandra. I keep wanting to write the story from both Alexandra and Jasmine’s point of view. (Did you know that Alex and Jasmine knew each other before either met Kevin? I didn’t until just recently). Both stories are more interesting than Kevin’s. It’s just that when I first sat down to write Alexandra the Kevin character shouted the loudest and so I told it from his point of view.
I guess there was more of him in me that I want to admit, or maybe I just had to write him down on paper in order to get him out of my head.
I not sure that I am a good enough writer, yet, to do justice to either Alex or Jasmine, so you will have to wait to hear their stories.

So, the long and the short of it is, I am not going to get Chapter 2 finished today(the 23rd). And tomorrow I will be running about bring the dog to boarding kennels, packing suitcases and buying last minuet supplies. So I may not get it finished tomorrow either.
I am bring a laptop with me and I am sure that they do have Internet cafe’s in Italy. I’ll probably have Internet access in my hotel. So I will work, some of the time, when I’m not celebrating my brother-in-law’s wedding. And I will post the results my labours next week.

I believe that I have now updated all the links to reflect the new layout of the site. So you shouldn’t get any 404′s/”Post not found” errors. If you do please let me know.

Of course all this faffing about(that’s my word for this week )  with the site layout means that I didn’t get to write any more of Alice Chapter 2 today.

I am going on holiday on the 25th till the 1st August, so I might just get Chapter 2 of Alice finished before I go, if I don’t find something else to distract myself with.

However that does mean that I won’t get Chapter 2 of Justine  finished by the end of the month. So those of you waiting to see what happens in the Chinese restaurant will have to wait till next month.

Story statuses:
I am still working on Alice and Justine. The main problem with posting online as I write is that I do not write sequentially or contiguously. For instance I have one third of Alice written, but that consists of two big chunks in the middle and the ending. But I only have half of chapter 2 written. I can’t really give you chapter 9 and chapter 12 when some of the other chapters have only a few hundred words written and some are completely blank. For one chapter I have no idea what happens in it yet.
A similar situation pertains to Justine where I have written chunks of the next couple of chapters but they are are not continuous in terms of story line. I have even written the last 3 paragraphs of the ending for Justine, but I don’t know how many chapters there will be in the story yet.
Thought in the past week real-life has been very distracting and I have not done much writing.

Web site status:
As I have posted before I have joined Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind mentoring program. I have been working through his course material and updating my web site with plug-ins that he recommends. You might see a few more changes to the site in the coming weeks and months, but I will be concentrating in the next few weeks on getting chapter 2 of both Justine and Alice finished.

General:
I have spent much, much too long trying to get a new broadband modem to work on either of my laptops. I used to have a DSL Line, I have been without broadband, using a Dial-up 48K, connection for 2 years. You might be able to imagine how frustrated I feel having had a 2Mb line and then having to go back to dial-up. You can imagine how I feel at having a modem in my hands that promises to give me a high(er) speed connection, but which will not install on either laptop!

Conclusion:
Less faffing about and more writing for the next 2 weeks so I will have both chapter 2′s posted by the end of the month.

I have just uploaded the first chapter in a new, if slightly unusual, erotic romance, entitled “Justine“:

Justine is not the sweet little innocent that John at first thinks she is. From their first date onwards Justine takes John on a whirlwind sexual adventure that leaves him begging her for more.
From exhibitionism, to threesomes and BDSM games Justine leads John into places he never imagined existed.
But does Justine’s freewheeling, devil-may-care attitude hide something deeper, deeper and darker, underneath?
Can John tame this tiger?
Or will it all end in tears?

As this story is still a work in progress the text may change, but I do not think that there will be any changes to the story line.

Enjoy