  I've been holding off my writing for a big project on the work end of my life. A project which is now finished, putting me back to the 'normal' state of affairs. So now I'm sitting here, with a million ideas working through my head, just sort of relaxing before I dive in. I've got Alandra to get out, and I've got a chapter of something I'm working on 'under my non-erotica pseudonym'. There's a ton of personal projects and duties that have been on hold, and well - all sorts of general business. Anyway, I'm excited to be getting back to things. I hope to have a chapter of Alandra out there for all of you as soon as I can. The kids are at the critical moments of their journey - when it all sort of starts to resolve itself into something. The finale of course, is going to be in the weekend, but Friday makes the end of the school week.
Anyway, lately I've been looking at books on writing fiction, to see what they have to offer that I don't yet have in my head. We'll see if I get anything out of that, or if I just waste money. I bought this one: Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing School , and I've got another on urlLink Writing Dialogue in the mail.
If nothing else, the reading will distract me while ideas brew. Sometimes I get interesting conflicts in my feedback . My top rated story is urlLink AI Girl and even though it was written in 2002 it still generates a decent amount of feedback. From two recent entries: "i like positive stories about caring relationships between man and woman without sex being the main reason. " "maybe u could've described their lovemaking a bit more after all it is an erotic story" That second one is the closest thing to negative AI Girl has ever received, and it began with the sender telling me they loved the story. I've long been amazed at how much this story touched my readers - although it was very personal for me, and maybe that's what it takes to touch people so much and so deeply.
But it's always funny to get two feedbacks in direct conflict with each other. I have to say that with AI Girl, it was a conscious choice to write an erotic story where none of the sex was ever described. I wanted to see if I could do it, and what kind of impact it would give - I had a feeling that while it would decrease the 'stroke' value it would offset that by increasing the emotional impact.
That seems to have worked, although now I face the difficulty of all my work being measured against that first entry... :P Which doesn't make things easy, but it doesn't stop me either. I love doing this stuff - love writing - and I'm not anywhere close to giving it up or slowing it down. So... I'll see you all soon, and hopefully I'll have some new work for you in not too long. A final note for the geeks among my fans - and the rest of you as well: urlLink Firefox 0.9 just came out. This is a nice small browser in the 'Mozilla' line that keeps popups out of your way, and lets you control what comes up and into your computer when you browse - without making the process something only a geek could handle. Mozilla is what happened to the Netscape people after they got wiped out by corporate greed - seems the fans and people inspired by Netscape's ideology regrouped and made an open source free browser. Open Source means the entire program is out there where all the geeks can drool over its programming code and get off messing with it like it was the newest Playboy or something... Basically it makes it free, accessible, and open to the people - provided those people can understand it. For the rest of us the free and accessible part is the important part, that and the fact that it is a labor of love by it's developers rather than a corporate paycheck or corporate grab for power like IE is...
This is a good one to put on your mom's computer, so you don't have to get those phone calls at 3am asking why the computer is eating the goldfish or something... Yeah, if you're a geek, or even half computer savvy, you know what I'm talking about here. :P A slight warning though: if you have an older version of Firefox it seems the upgrade turns off your extensions (optional upgrades/expansions you can add in), and they no longer have the same list of them that they used to.
I had a nice one that caused my browser to open on the same page I closed it on, and now it's gone... But for people stuck in IE land, get it - you'll be glad you did. You'll get less spam, less viruses, and less spyware, and no more fucking popups. Plus you can feel like you're 'sticking it to the man' - which is always a nice feeling when you get trampled on everyday in every other aspect of life. 
