Independent Porn Studio

I swear this involves porn so bear with me.

I've been a video gamer since I was about 7. I think the first game I ever played was Pac-Man at a bowling alley. The balls were too big for me to lug but I could move a joystick. See? We're talking dirty already.

As I grew older, I kept playing video games. I had an Atari. I had a Nintendo. I sunk hundreds of dollars into Street Fighter II. I shot zombies on my Playstation and saved battled Ninja babes on my X-Box. I spent hours playing a city manager and a movie mogul on my pc. When my birthday rolls around, I alway know what video game is on my wish list.

I am a lifelong gamer but yet the mainstream gaming industry doesn't give a fuck about me.

See, the most popular kind of game right now is either first person shooters or real time strategy games. These are games that rely on reflexes and constant action. I tried to keep up but the fact is that I am thirty-five and I am not as fast anymore. Games are now so reflex based that I lose often and get frustrated. I also don't care. My happiest gaming memories involve decisions I have made or stories I have uncovered. Games today are about killing and conquering. I've grown up and games have not. My game purchasing the last few years have dwindled and lately I didn't buy the next generation of console games like I usually do.

The reason the gaming industry left me behind was out of money. The twenty-something market drives game sales. Game studios look at the sheer millions that World of Warcraft makes and they want to make millions too. So game companies invest money into games that look awesome but cater to a young twitchy mindset. The development time is also insane as they make these games that they literally bet their existence on. Publishers are not interested in making a quirky neat game that some people love; they need to create the must-play super fabulous game your nephew loves and will badger his friends into playing too.

The good news is that while large game companies are busy making the equivalent of shallow summer blockbuster movies, smaller game studios are busy making the quality independent films that are worth watching. These tiny game companies sell their product online to a small targeted audience. Many of the games are inspired by classic game models you loved to play but companies have given up on.

Did you love X-Com? Well now you have Laser Squad Nemesis. Did you love Zork? Now there are entire websites dedicated to hosting text adventures. Miss Wing Commander? You have to try Cellblock Squadrons.

The graphics and sounds are rooted in the 90's but the quality is light years beyond games being made today. They have to be. With no advertising budget, little to no coverage in gaming magazines and an audience that is adult, they have to rely on word of mouth to sell their games.

Porn bloggers can learn a lot from this. The porn that is sold in bookstores is targeted at a different audience than the audience who reads online porn. Porn videos are aimed at an audience who might never click on a Sugasm. Porn that costs money to make needs to appeal to the base lowest common denominator of the paying audience in order to recoup loses.

Porn bloggers have no cost other than time. Porn bloggers should stop emulating the crap that is being sold and produce the work you can only do with risk free creativity. Create your own genre. Create your own porn niche. Use the body types that appeal to you. Use the fetishes you enjoy in the way that you enjoy them. If it is quality, people will read it. If it is not quality, well shit, I bet you still had fun making it.

Stop getting your inspiration from commercial porn and turn to yourself. Stop trying to make your blog look as snazzy as Playboy.com and make it an expression of your own tastes. Quit trying to imitate the sex blogger who got a book deal and forge your own identity.

Porn bloggers are the ultimate independent studio. Be fearless. You have nothing to lose so why make something safe? Do the kind of blog that commercial companies wish they could make.

Happy Birthday

I turn 35 today. I don't feel old as much as I feel seasoned. I think I may spend the day writing which would be really fun. I don't have any new wisdom to share but I do feel like wisdom could happen at any moment.

And just for my amusement, Muse's 'Invincible'.



Do it on your own
Makes no difference to me
What you leave behind
What you choose to be
and whatever they say
Your soul's unbreakable

Extra Credit

In the long story writing process, extra credit doesn't have a linear place. Ideally you are doing extra credit from the very beginning. On the other hand, some of the best extra credit I have done is in the rewriting process. The goal of this lesson is to get you thinking about extra credit at every part of the process.

What is extra credit? It is anything you add to your story that makes it better. It can be a neat gimmick, how you pace your story or some sort of innovative presentation. You have already determined what the story is going to be about, this is an emphasis on how you tell it.

The first thing I want you to consider is your medium. Back in the day, i was limited to presenting my stories in txt files. With a blog as my medium, I can really cut loose. I can add images. I can add video. I can make links to lead the reader to other parts. Think about how you want your story to be read. Think about how you want your chapters listed in the sidebar. Get your mindset out of thinking about books and use your blog potential for all it's worth.

Another thing to think about is pacing. I think the greatest secret to any kind of writing but especially sex writing is the use of cliffhangers. There are a million blogs out there and you need to keep your long story on your readers' minds. Sometimes you can do this with a story long mystery but the easiest way to do it is to always have a question at the end of your chapter that the reader wants answered. Sometimes it is a hint of what is to come and sometimes it is a mindfuck that leaves the reader wondering what just happened.

DO NOT INTERRUPT A SEX SCENE FOR YOUR CLIFFHANGER. When was the last time you had your sex interrupted and you were happy about it? Don't do it to your readers.

Use images but be a good person and credit the images you use. Better yet, make your own. Consider one image that you use for all of your story parts as a sort of brand identifier. Don't fill your story with lots of random porn images because that is just tacky. Think of images as enhancers, not content in themselves.

Finally, have fun. If you come up with an idea that makes you smile, go for it. make e-cards for your story. Make fake blogger profiles for your characters. Do whatever amuses you and odds are you'll amuse others.

I could fill this page with more extra credit ideas but I'll hold back. The point of extra credit is to upgrade your story through personal innovation. What is a good idea for me might not be for you. Look at the other mediums you enjoy and see how you can wrap them into your story.

That concludes my lessons about how to make a long story. I hope that you feel comfortable making that sexy novella that has been percolating in your head. I firmly beleive that every person has one really good long sex story inside them. Sex is something that was meant to be shared, so get working and share your lengthy masterpieces with the world.

Rewriting and You

At this point you have written your story. You have a tight plot. You have characters you love. You have worked and worked and worked at this story. You've been working hard and you can't wait to share your story. You want to post that baby right now.

The bad news is that you are not close to being done. This is just the first draft. I know: you never did second drafts in high school or college. Brilliance flows from you on the first try. It's just porn, so why work that hard on it? It's just going on the Internet.

My first snarky anwser is this: In high school, when you wrote a paper with a flaw, you did't get e-mails seven years later pointing out typos and plot holes like I do now.

Your stories, even the ones on the Internet, last a damn long time. Why not do it right the first time?

Other than fixing mistakes, there is another excellent reason to rewrite your stories. Rewriting gives you the chance to turn a good story into something wonderful.

Back in the day when I first starting posting stories to newsgroups, the popular fad was to get an editor. This was a person who reads your story, corrects your types and asks you what the hell is up with the threesome in chapter three. Sometimes the editors would even jump in and rewrite chapters where the action was unclear. I know in at least one case where an editor got more credit than the writers who wrote the stories.

I am here to tell you that having a proofreader is helpful but don't let them be your crutch. Honestly, you will be a better writer if you do your own second draft. Your confidence will increase and quite frankly, so will your skills. By all means, if someone wants to proofread, take advantage of it. Just don't let them be your safety net for your own sloppy writing.

Hopefully I have convinced you to do a rewrite. How should you go about it? Everyone is different but here are some tips I use.

First things first. Once the story is done, walk away from it. Write another story. Go out on dates. Start a new hobby. Do something to give your mind a break and take you away from being mindful of your story. We are trying to get you far enough from the story so that when you come back to it, you are coming back as a brand new reader, not the writer.

Now that you have almost forgotten the story, come back and start reading. Resist the urge to do any writing this point except fixing obvious typos. At this stage you are reading with an open mind and more paying attention to yourself than you are the story. You are looking to see where you have written plot lines or hooks that go nowhere.

For example: Let's say in our kinky high school story, we open the story with our main character being scolded by her father. As a writer, we just want the scolding to set the story but what if the father says something about a trip to Europe that he used as a bribe? As the writer you may have meant it as a throw away line but as the reader, you might be wondering more about the trip. You might see the trip as a possible major source of motivation for the main character to shape up. Considering that you know the trip never comes up again, you have have a problem. Either eliminate the trip altogether because it sets up false expectations, or retrofit the prize of the trip throughout the rest of the story so that enhances your story.

You would be amazed how often this happens in a long story. I've had interesting characters appear and vanish too quickly. I've had sex toys appear but never get used. When you write stories, you know what is important at the moment and write accordingly. When you re-read, you realize that the reader will build up expectations and in some cases, preferences, that do not get satisfied by the current draft of your story.

I'm not saying you have to satisfy the promises laid out by your writing but you need to be aware of them so you can make the choice to either satisfy it or remove the expectation altogether.

Pay attention to tone. Long stories get written over a stretch of different moods. What was awesome in the heat of moment might feel out of place in the context of the longer story.

For example, when I wrote Cell Phone Slave the fraternity chapter was much harsher. All of the frat students were jerks and there was a lot of verbal humiliation. In my mind, I wanted to show that Amaya would obey even if the people she served were not pleasant or handsome. I still like the chapter but during my re-read, it occurred to me that these side characters were one of the few glimpses we get of the kind of people the romantic male lead would associate with. In my mind, I knew he found these jerks to make them a test, but the reader wouldn't know it unless I spelled it out. In the end I rewrote the chapter to make the frat students much nicer and respectful. I think the first version was hotter but this version made you respect the mysterious male lead more.

Feel free to really change things around. You've done the hard part of writing it. This is your chance to really get creative. I look at my long story like it is a bunch of building blocks. I move chapters around. I try adding characters and writing them through the whole story line. Much like a DVD with deleted scenes, feel free to cut whole chapters and see what havoc or blessings it creates in your story.

After working hard to forget your story now is the time when you really learn your story inside and out. You can be more objective at this point. After all, you've written the story you wanted to write. Now is when you notice things like that wonderful side character is really just a drain on the plot. After rewriting a few times, you can cut characters without hesitation.

Let me make a note about sex scenes. You might have a crisis of faith in yourself once you have read ten of your own sex scenes back to back. I know I do sometimes. When you write a lot of short erotica, you pick up habits that don't become apparent till you see three separate scenes that use the same descriptions for oral sex. Don't get too discouraged. Use this as an opportunity to better your story and yourself as a writer.

Now you are done. Well, you will know when you are done. It is a cross between never wanting to see the story again and knowing deep down in your heart that you've made something really special.

Next time, we cover extra credit.

Your homework assignment is to become a rewriter. Learn to fix your own mistakes rather than leaving them for an editor to find. Slow down and take the time a story needs to be perfected rather than posting it as soon as possible.

This assignment counts towards 20% of your grade.

The Three E's of Writing.

You have your plot laid out. You have your characters fleshed out and they are chattering non stop in your head. Now all you have to do is write the long story. That is so much easier said then done.

This is the breaking point for most writers. Stories die in infancy with barely a chapter written. Grand designs slow down until all is left is bitterness and e-mails from readers asking for the next part. This is where your story has the greatest chance of failure because odds are it will never be finished.

Now, I don't have a cure for writer's block. If I did, I would have marketed it and bought my own island by now. Instead of a gimmicky cure, I want to teach you what I beleive is the fundamentals necessary for a long story to be written.

Enthusiasm

You have to be excited. You have to love your story. You have to be obsessed with it. Your friends need to be jealous of your story because you rather spend time with it then them. You have to fucking love what you are writing.

A lot of my friends have created stories they knew were good and original but in the end they never finished them. Why? Because once the charm of the novelty faded, they realized they needed to crank out even more pages. They fell out of love with their story and that is the kiss of death.

Writing is work. Figuring out plot problems and writing difficult chapters can be a pain in the ass. Writing takes up time could be spending in City of Heroes or fucking people. If you don't love your story then you don't prioritize your story which means you will do other things rather than finish your story.

You have to love your story like a girlfriend because it is so much more demanding.

Environment

Your creative mind is a machine. It wants to work but sometimes it needs to be tricked. It needs to be put in writing mode. If you do certain thing every time you write, then your mind will respond when those certain things happen. Much like your body remembers dance moves from years ago, your creative mind will do the task of writing.

How you craft your environment depends on the individual. For some people, it's the music they play while writing. For other people, it's the special set up they have for their word processing program. Pay attention to the things around you when you get the most writing done and recreate those situations. Over time, your mind won't be able to stop writing if those stimuli are present.

Time to write is often the most difficult thing to achieve. You need to figure out how to carve writing time out of your day. It is not a matter of knowing a secret to making time, as much as it comes down to you making time to write out of sheer force of will. Get up early before every one else, stay up later or just sacrifice what time you have for entertainment to write instead. No long story was written during five minute breaks. You have to have a good amount of time to let your creativity go.

There are other tricks I use to keep me thinking about a story even when I am not writing. I usually pick a wallpaper for my computer that reminds me of the subject I am writing about. For our kinky school concept, I would use images of sexy school girls or bondage. I rent movies with a school theme. I keep myself submerged in the subject which helps keep my enthusiasm up as well as keeping my mind on the task. Sometimes when I am out and about, I ask myself how one of my characters would handle whatever I am doing. What would a kinky schoolgirl buy for groceries? What movie would she want to see?

You go to a gym to workout. You go to an office to process work. You need a creative space to do creative things.

Exclusion

You know this. You really do. You know that if you want to get a big project done, you don't have time to do other little projects. This is a little different from enthusiasm, because you can be excited by something and yet still spend your time doing something else.

If you really want a long story done in your lifetime, then you need to work on it at the exclusion of other things. That means no stopping to write short little stories. No stopping to "get this idea down on paper." This means no writing other commitments while working on the big story.

Of course there can be exceptions but you learn these in time. I still create role-playing game adventures while working on long stories. I don't write short stories though. I am good writing about writing, but if I start entertaining, then I start taking away from my long story energy.

Some people take breaks when they are stuck in a long story. I personally think it is okay to take a break from writing, but I don't think you should write something else on your break. A long story requires a very high level of mindfulness. You need to know where you are going and where you have been. Writing something else altogether takes you out of that long story head space. Again, for some people it works but for me it is fatal.

A long story requires your best focused work. Be faithful to the story. Your other stories can wait.

Now you have written your story. Congratulations. You are almost done. There is another step to take and we will cover it next lesson.

Your homework is to apply the three E's to yourself. Plan out your writing environment. Plan out what projects and commitments you will delay during this long story. Build up your passion for your long story and really make yourself want to read it.

This assignment counts towards 15% of your grade.

Character Evolutional Theory

After following the plan detailed in our last lesson, Solving For Plot, your have yourself a plot, a setting and a chapter outline. Now you need characters to fill your story.

Sometimes characters emerge from your imagination like Athena. They are fully formed, well rounded and carry a pet owl. That's awesome. This act of fictional parthenogenesis is an amazing miracle and if are a witness to this, more power to you.

For the rest of us, we have to make our characters. Every birth is unique but they tend to share these common concerns.

First of all, your plot that you already laid out will be very helpful. The type of story you want to tell as well as the scenes you have already expressed an interest in writing will give you an idea of the shape of the character hole you need to fill. In our example, we decided on a plot involving a kinky school for post high school, pre college women. We decided on a slutty uncouth girl who becomes refined through the ordeal of the story. Just from this description, I bet most of you already have an image of this character in your mind. That's good but don't lock that image into stone just yet. It is very important to stay flexible at this point.

Go through your vague outline and ask yourself what kind of character will be good in this story. If you absolutely have to have a detention scene, you need to know if you would rather write about a character who doesn't deserve her detention and is being unjustly punished, or if you have a bad girl who deserves it. If she deserves it then why? Does she smoke? does she talk back? As these questions arise, you will gravitate to the answers you like best and this will flesh out your character.

At this point, the demands of your plot might require a character you have no interest in writing. For example, my first thought was of a woman I knew a few years ago that I pretty much despised. Obviously I don't want to write about a character like her. Lucky for me, I can think of other character models to use. If I couldn't though, I would go back to the plot and tweak it. Maybe I would change it to a good girl who wants to be valedictorian so the theme changes to can she be the best instead of a grand change altogether.

In a long story, character creation is more like casting an actress for your text movie. You are looking for characters that fit your story as opposed to coming up with an all purpose cool character. It might be cool to have a computer student without a gag reflex, but is that the kind of character best served by this story?

At this stage I kindly suggest the role less taken. Especially in genre fiction, I feel it is important to create characters who break stereotypes. Hot young thin girls with big tits are the stars of BDSM fiction every where. Go with a different body type, a different racial type or cultural type that you haven't read before. Unless your story absolutely demands the typical cliche character, don't be trapped into using them.

Once you have this main character in mind, it comes time for that very special moment where you name them. Do not treat this lightly. Not only are you creating a name you will have to type and work with for several months, but you will create a name that you might have to keep hearing till the day you die depending on how popular your character is. I'm just so glad I like the name, Amaya. The same goes for Amy Valentine and Bethany Taylor. Names have power, and the name you pick will imprint into your readers.

Personally, I like using web sites that give me the most popular baby names for specific years. I plug in the year my character was born and start searching through the choices available. It is surprisingly effective in creating names that people unconsciously identify as belonging to a certain age group.

I also do a lot of work in picking names that hold certain meanings. Sometimes a meaning can help me remember the role a character has. I picked the name Hannah in my story about an unhappy house wife because I read that the name means 'passion'. I wanted a reminder as a writer that when in doubt, rely on Hannah's passion to drive the story.

Some times, I pick a name because of the way it looks on the screen. In my Spring Break BDSM story, I liked the name Cassie because it has the word 'ass' in it and I knew I wanted a lot of spanking. I picked Amaya for a chubby Asian girl because all those 'a's and that 'm' are a bunch of curves. It's a curvy name that is exotic, much like Amaya.

For this example, I would go with the name, Samantha. It was the 5th most popular name for the year the character was born. It has an 'S' that makes me think of sub, slave or slut. It can be shortened, which in mind is what young people do to their name until they hit adulthood. Anything that leaps out at you is legitimate. For the most part, these are things that will never come up in the story. These are just for you.

About now I write a short description of my main character. Samantha is a young woman who was blessed with really beautiful brown hair at a young age. This spoiled her for attention early on, which led to her having rather easy sex as a way of affirming her esteem. So this beautiful, self centered girl with long brown hair fancies herself something of a superior sexual being and wants to go to the kinky school. There she will find her willingness to fuck anything that moves to not be an asset, nor will her beauty get her what she wants. Heck, maybe her hair will get cut at some point and she will rebuild from the blow to her image. I don't know yet. I'll lock it down as I make the other characters.

As you can guess, the other characters follow similar processes. The key difference is that Samantha is now an element that the characters conform to. Since I decided to make a main character that was obsessed with her hair, I might define other characters by their hair. Or maybe I'll define them by school movie cliches. The important thing is that Samantha is now a central point of navigation. All characters lead back to her. I would go so far as to say that if a side character doesn't teach you anything about Samantha, then they need to be replaced.

At this point and at every point, you have the ability to go back. I came up with the idea of making Samantha's hair important a few minutes ago. I can go back and revise everything if I wanted to. Or I could decide it's really dumb and take away her great hair and maybe make her love of oral sex is what made her a popular slut. Either way, reformat your long story idea many times with your new information. Some of my best stories come from a late addition that I retrofitted back through out the rest of the plot.

Look what you have so far. You have a plot with chapter ideas. You have a main character. You have a cast for your character to interact with. Now what?

Now you have to write the damn thing. That's next lesson.

Your homework assignment is this: Cast your main character. Give them a name and explain why that is their name. Give them traits that matter to you and matter to the plot.

This assignment counts to 30% of your grade.

Solving For Plot

When I start a long story I always outline the story before I start. The Internet is littered with the first chapters of stories that are never completed. In my mind, this is because the writers wrote themselves into a corner that could only be solved by rewriting an earlier chapter. That's a bit hard to do at chapter 4.

Today I'm going to sketch out my creative process for you. My method might not work for you but heck, it might help some aspiring porn writer out there. My method won't get you a publishing deal or millions of web hits, but it may help you make a story that you love for the rest of your life.

The first thing I do is get a sense of what kind of story I want to do. It can be something as vague as wanting to do a BDSM story set in a circus, or wanting to tell a romance set inside a brothel. I feel the most important thing to do is pick something you absolutely fucking love because you might spend the next six months thinking about this story. You need to pick something that will interest you when you are at your most frustrated and depressed. Pick something that excites you, interests you and intrigues you. Pick something you are willing to be committed to because these long stories are as intense as relationships.

For this example I am going to pick BDSM school. My vague idea is that I want to write about a formal school setting with lots of BDSM elements. At this point I may be thinking of something like a British school complete with uniforms, corporal punishment and very stiff lips. I might recoil a little at the idea of doing a British school since I have read that a million times. In that case I poke around a little and see how a Japanese public school is run. Or maybe I think that is a cliche too and I decide to go with something different and weird like seeing how Russian schools are operated.

Google and Wikipedia are my friends at this stage. I am reading and learning obsessively. The more you know about your subject, the more confident you will be with your story. Research also gives you your best ideas. I might come across an article about how private schools are funded and it could give me ideas about the background of my school. Reality is far more weird than fiction; use it to inspire you.

As you can see, I even at the idea stage I am not locking myself down into anything. You let your mind gravitate to obvious ideas and then if you love it, fine. But if something strikes you as something you've seen written everywhere, then look around to see what you haven't seen before. Sometimes the novelty of your new idea will excite and inform the rest of your story.

For this example, let's say that I decide to go with an American school system set in some remote rustic location. I decide that for legal reasons, all of the characters are over 18, and that this school is voluntary. In fact, this school is an underground secret school that you can only get in by recommendation. Maybe some sort of foundation pays for it all. I like the idea of a kinky school that young women are sent to in order to become better kinky women in life because I am a sucker for coming of age stories. This school is meant for pre-college girls, so the school more resembles a public school as oppossed to college life.

This is when I make a list of all the things I like about the genre my story is set in. I base my list on movies, books and experiences I have had with the subject of school. I include things that I want to write about, or things I think are so important to the setting that I need to take them into account. My list for a story like this would look something like this-

school uniforms, hall passes, detention, school sport, school mascot, rulers, bookbags, desks, principal, school nurse, chalkboards, cafeteria, lockers, passing notes in class,

Some of these ideas just lay there on the list and that's okay. I can't think of anything sexy to do with a locker but I keep it on the list just in case. On the other hand, as soon as I thought of detention, I imagined a special room just for detention that would be all these restraint devices. I know that no matter what, my character needs to get detention just so I can do a scene there.

At this point it is crucial to me to have an idea of an ending. You may find that weird considering I don't have characters, a plot or much of a setting. The thing is, you have to know where you are going before you can set out to go there. I ask myself what is it that I want to be the climax? When people are done with my story, what do I want them to take away? What do I want to see?

For example, do I want the final scene to be a student over coming all odds to be kinky Valedictorian? Do I want to write about a group of friends who graduate together and learned an important lesson about friendship? Do I want tell the story of a good student who goes bad, or a bad student who goes good?

You don't need to write the final scene. You just need to have some sort of idea of where it is all going. You are creating a theme for your entire story which climaxes at the end. Once you have an ending, you know what kind of story you are telling and more importantly, what are the key characters and scenes that will bring about this ending.

Often, this is when I find out my setting doesn't work. If I decide on that my ending needs is about the journey a teacher goes through, as opposed to a student, then I need to change my approach. That's okay. We're trying to solve for what kind of story you want to tell. The only right anwser is coming up with a story you are willing to write for the next year.

For my example, I am going to say that I want to do a story about a trashy slutty girl who becomes a refined submissive slut. The ending will be a final exam where she puts all of her lessons together and does a splendid job. I get the vague idea that the final exam is a sort of gangbang ordeal, where she must adapt and serve one teacher after another in rapid succession.

With that ending in mind, I have can start extrapolating the story. For the final scene alone, I need to have several teacher characters, a bad student who goes good, and some important lessons. I start sketching some of this now. I might write up a list of teacher types: the 50-something strict female teacher, the learing male teacher who likes students in short skirts and the sadistic fitness teacher. Each of these characters suggest their own chapters or plot threads. Maybe the gym teacher becomes an inspiring figure. Maybe the learing male teacher is a romance plot. Toy around and see what you like.

I tend to work backwards. From my ending, I ask how do we get there and where did we come from? My brain at this point is bubbling with ideas. I am constantly reading about my subject matter and watching movies that I feel are similar. I take millions of notes. I might sketch out the romance plot with the male teacher and then decide later it is too distracting and toss it all. I might see a movie where there is a scene set on a bus and I decide that somehow, I need a bus scene. That leads into thinking that I need somewhere to go, and that makes me think about field trips. I might get inspired and plot out a chapter on where they are going and what my character does.

At this point, you have a theme, a setting of some sort, an ending and lots of chapter ideas. Now is when you really need a character to anchor this story on. We will cover that in our next lesson.

Your homework is to start thinking about a long story plot. Come up with a theme, a setting and climax.

This assignment counts towards 35% of your final grade.

Bitch in Heat

'Bitch in Heat' is an erotic comic series that I keep coming back to. Considering that it started around 1997, that's a pretty nice achievement. I read a lot of erotic comics in the late 90's. Most of them were European because quite frankly, they have a fearlessness that we can learn from in our porn making. I might flip through my collection once a year but 'Bitch in Heat' is something I always go back to when I knew to kick start my erotic writing mind.

Written and illustrated by Giavanna Casotto, and published by Eros Comix, every issues has several self contained stories with a wide range of plots. Sex acts range from bondage, to blackmail, to domination, to threesomes to role playing.

To me the strongest draw to this series is the fact that the protagonist is the same brunette woman in every story. She might be a maid in one story and a rich lawyer in the next, but she is always there. She is physically based on Giavanna, and normally I would say something snarky about writer's egos, but for this medium, it really works. It creates the illusion that you are following a favorite actress in another porn movie. As watchers of porn, hell, as watchers of television, we are conditioned to follow favorite actors no matter what they do. People don't stop watching Harrison Ford because he is no longer Han Solo. They follow him and are predisposed to like his brand new character at the moment.




It works the same way with this female character. I would make the argument that it makes the BDSM elements even more enjoyable. It is a little hard to feel sorry for the victimized teacher when three pages ago you watched the bitch terrorize her doctor coworker in another story. It creates a cyclic feel of nothing is permanent. She's not always the victim, which makes when she is all the more special.

The other reason I keep coming back to these 11 year old comics is that they capture the range of stories you can do in porn. Many of them have ironic endings while other stories end with a a simple joke. Some of dark stories of betrayal while others are more slapstick farce. Although bondage and voyeurism are common themes, the stories touch on damn near everything after awhile. That's good. Too many writers focus on niche interests, repeating them over and over like a polished act. 'Bitch in Heat' however is a sort of erotic fiction primer. If you are a starting erotica writer, picking up an issue will show you how one person handles many themes. It's porn 101 which I have to say, is not as easily available as you may think.

Finally, I really enjoy the art. Black and white is an under appreciated medium in erotica. There is a playfulness that manages to not cross over into camp. On the other hand there are images that are just vulgar but the black and white transform a close up pussy shot into something exotic. Every issue is just beautiful.







Go to Eros Comix and order yourself some already. At $3.50 an issue, you can't go wrong.

Dear Reader

*This is not an April Fool's Day Joke, by the way*

I was thinking of a short idea for a post tomorrow. Nothing complicated, nothing too long but hopefully worth your time reading it tomorrow. I just finished writing a four part story that I like but it won't be ready till next week at the earliest. Rewriting takes forever sometimes but it is worth it.

Anyway, I came up with a cute short idea but then I started thinking about it. I started sketching it out. I started to get a little excited. I started to get a little afraid. It was going to be big. It was going to be silly. It was going to be insane.

The only problem is my first estimate says it would take at least three weeks to do this story. That's three weeks of working on a story might only amuse me. On the other hand, that's three weeks of working on a story that I am going to really enjoy writing. Well, you know, unless there is a hidden plot problem that will drive me mad. That shit happens all the time.

This is where the schedule of blogging gets annoying. I shoot for three posts a week. I try to do a short story and failing that I aim for something like pictures or maybe personal thoughts. It is not a full time job but man, it does squeeze your free time. I also accept that when you don't post something of note for awhile, then people drift away and they are not there when you do post something of note.

So what to do? Back in the day before I blogged, I used to post my stories to newsgroups. I did this little silly thing called Thigh Vs Thigh and it had a grueling self imposed once a week schedule. At one point I had a great idea for a long story but I knew that there was no way I could write the long story AND Thigh vs Thigh. With a heavy heart I wrapped up Thigh vs Thigh and started that long story.

That long story was Cell Phone Slave, which is pretty much the most popular thing I have ever written. I don't know if this new story will be as popular. I seriously doubt it. What I do know is that I am excited to write it, and I haven't been this excited since I wrote about poor Hannah. I think I have to take that shot and write this story. Whats the point of being a amateur porn writer who doesn't do it for the money if you don't write the wacky things you want to be doing?

In the mean time I want to keep the blog rolling. I will cut down on posting fiction but my ego is sufficient that I will keep writing about my own opinions on writing and porn. I have been wanting to include some more erotic comic reviews anyway so that will help. Maybe I will downgrade to a Tuesday/Thursday schedule.

No matter what I do, I just want you to know that I am still here, writing like mad. And if this story becomes as crazy as I think it will be, you will want to see it. It will either be awesome, or the neatest failure you have ever seen.

P.S. No, I won't tell you what the long story is about because it might BLOW YOUR MIND.