Showing posts with label Al Steiner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al Steiner. Show all posts
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Time Travel Stories
Writer's Journal: I thought I was drafting The Adjusters #25 these days, but it turns out I'm drafting #26, and I'll need to go back and do both #24 and #25 next. At least, I know what the sex scene for #26 is—or at least I thought I did, since it is morphing just as I'm writing it. Funny how that goes.
Real life has kept me busy this week, so I do not have a lot to talk about.
Still, I can give it the old college try. (Weird expression, that one, by the way—as if college was the first place where you get to try to do something even though you don't really know how to do it—sounds like much of my grade school experience, frankly.)
A week ago, I mentioned one of my favorite classic story on StoriesOnline, namely Al Steiner's Doing it All Over: "Have you ever wished you could go back to your teens and re-live your life, knowing what you know now? Bill Stevens, a burned-out, 31 year old paramedic, made such a wish one night. Only his came true." As I said then, this is a wonderful romantic story, with real characters and a fairly realistic treatment, after one gets over the fantastic opening element. Al Steiner is a wonderful writer.
The funny thing is that this last week, I remembered that there was another story with that general theme, that of going back in time and reliving your life, using what you've learned the first time around to avoid the mistakes you did the first time around and make your life so much better. I have to admit it's a rather irresistible fantasy, one that probably every one of us has had at some point or another in our life, generally when reflecting back over the one that got away, or just wondering about those doors that we closed while choosing—wisely or not—to open others.
And thus (cue-in Ira Glass's voice in your ear for maximum freakiness) I present you two other stories on that theme.
Rlfj gives us A Fresh Start: "Aladdin's Lamp sends me back to my teenage years. Will I make the same mistakes, or new ones, and can I reclaim my life?" This one is a bit of a tougher sell for me, but you may like it. Give it a try. The biggest sticking point I have is that the hero is a bit too together when he goes back in time. On the other hand, he does deliver quite a few bits of revenge that will have any reader that has ever been bullied cheering in the stands.
The second story I have not read yet. I ran across it last night, bookmarked it, and will enjoy it (or not!) leisurely in the coming weeks—probably sending it over to the Kindle, which I've been sorely neglecting lately, poor girl. It's by Coaster2, and is called Repeat Performance: "Lee North suffers a fifty year setback after an accident. Fifty years into his past, he's having to start his life over again. It wasn't going to turn out the way it did the first time." Coaster2 seems to have a bunch of other stories that look interesting, so I'm hoping I've just discovered an author I enjoy.
Any other stories on the going-back-in-time-to-relive-one's-life theme that I've missed and that you'd like to suggest? Please do so in the comments below. I'm always on the lookout for good hot stories.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Smut on my eReader
Writer's journal: Now that the A Day in the Life series of episodes for The Adjusters is over, time to start the last lap to the finish for Book II. I spent the last couple of days revising and nailing down the structure of the upcoming episodes—I almost, almost, had to resort to the good old index-cards technique to work out what that structure should look like—and I'm glad that the drafts for #21–23 that I have are essentially okay. Except that #23 becomes #25, and needs to have a couple of scenes rewritten in it. A pain, but not altogether surprising. Had I not written those drafts, I would have had no hope of figuring out what the right structure looks like. (In case you're wondering why I don't post episodes faster, there you have it: drafts need to ripen. And for those that think that I take my smut too seriously—what's your point exactly...? <grin>) The one worrying thing is that I need to come up with a sex scene in my new draft of #23, and to be honest, I have no idea who should get it on with whom. And I do want to have at least one sex scene by episode. That's one of the constraints that I've imposed on myself. Any suggestions?
Earlier this year, I received a Kindle as a gift. I had been meaning to try out an ereader for a while now, and despite my initial get-off-my-lawn knee jerk reaction at anything new that threatens to kick my established habits in the balls, I have to admit that it's a nice little gadget, and physically an attractive and comfortable device.
After playing with it a bit, I decided to get serious. I did the first obvious thing one does with an ereader—I raided Project Gutenberg. After getting my fill of Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and finally reading H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy, I did what everybody and their mother seems to do and downloaded a copy of Tolstoy's War and Peace. We'll see what happens. I like Dostoyevsky, but have never been able to wrap my head around Tolstoy. I'm curious whether I'll stick with it this time around.
Then I did the second obvious thing one does with an ereader—I investigated smut in the Kindle store!
I downloaded two ebooks that I had heard about, and that had caught my eye: J. W. McKenna's Office Slave, and N. T. Morley The Embezzler. McKenna is an unknown quantity for me, but I liked the sample chapter I read. Morley I know from his short stories that have appeared here and there, and I love how he writes. Both are just up my alley—in the absence of good mind control tales, a good blackmail story always satisfies. I'll let you know what I think of those books.
If you have any recommendations for smut I must check out in the Kindle store, please post it in a comment.
One thing I like about the site StoriesOnline is that they supply ePub version of their stories. So I've been re-reading some of my favorite classics hosted there, stories I hadn't read in a long time. Here are two, both by Al Steiner, a very gifted writer that many of you undoubtedly know. First off, A Correct Destiny: "Ken and Meghan are a happily married couple going about their lives. And then along came Josephine, an enigmatic, strangely alluring woman who is not quite what she seems to be." Second off, Doing it All Over: "Have you ever wished you could go back to your teens and re-live your life, knowing what you know now? Bill Stevens, a burned-out, 31 year old paramedic, made such a wish one night. Only his came true." Both very hot, both very romantic, and both stories you should read.
Now, the Kindle doesn't read ePub, but there are a few conversion tools. I use Calibre, which has a command-line tool that makes conversion between formats nearly trivial. (Actually, I just noticed, preparing this post, that Storiesonline now has support for a Kindle-compatible format. Ah. I'll have to try it.)
I'm really curious to see what I'll do with that device as time goes by. Right now, it still has a high gadget factor for me. But I've been using it less and less on a daily basis for the past month. At home, I still prefer the reading experience of an actual physical book (the font is usually much better, and I prefer my text black on white). I admit that the Kindle is remarkably convenient when I'm on the road, as it sure beats lugging around a pile of books.
I'll leave you with a recent article by Lev Grossman that appeared in the NY Times, From Scroll to Screen, which gives an interesting historical perspective on the tradeoffs between physical books and electronic books. Worth a read.
Earlier this year, I received a Kindle as a gift. I had been meaning to try out an ereader for a while now, and despite my initial get-off-my-lawn knee jerk reaction at anything new that threatens to kick my established habits in the balls, I have to admit that it's a nice little gadget, and physically an attractive and comfortable device.
After playing with it a bit, I decided to get serious. I did the first obvious thing one does with an ereader—I raided Project Gutenberg. After getting my fill of Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and finally reading H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy, I did what everybody and their mother seems to do and downloaded a copy of Tolstoy's War and Peace. We'll see what happens. I like Dostoyevsky, but have never been able to wrap my head around Tolstoy. I'm curious whether I'll stick with it this time around.
Then I did the second obvious thing one does with an ereader—I investigated smut in the Kindle store!
I downloaded two ebooks that I had heard about, and that had caught my eye: J. W. McKenna's Office Slave, and N. T. Morley The Embezzler. McKenna is an unknown quantity for me, but I liked the sample chapter I read. Morley I know from his short stories that have appeared here and there, and I love how he writes. Both are just up my alley—in the absence of good mind control tales, a good blackmail story always satisfies. I'll let you know what I think of those books.
If you have any recommendations for smut I must check out in the Kindle store, please post it in a comment.
One thing I like about the site StoriesOnline is that they supply ePub version of their stories. So I've been re-reading some of my favorite classics hosted there, stories I hadn't read in a long time. Here are two, both by Al Steiner, a very gifted writer that many of you undoubtedly know. First off, A Correct Destiny: "Ken and Meghan are a happily married couple going about their lives. And then along came Josephine, an enigmatic, strangely alluring woman who is not quite what she seems to be." Second off, Doing it All Over: "Have you ever wished you could go back to your teens and re-live your life, knowing what you know now? Bill Stevens, a burned-out, 31 year old paramedic, made such a wish one night. Only his came true." Both very hot, both very romantic, and both stories you should read.
Now, the Kindle doesn't read ePub, but there are a few conversion tools. I use Calibre, which has a command-line tool that makes conversion between formats nearly trivial. (Actually, I just noticed, preparing this post, that Storiesonline now has support for a Kindle-compatible format. Ah. I'll have to try it.)
I'm really curious to see what I'll do with that device as time goes by. Right now, it still has a high gadget factor for me. But I've been using it less and less on a daily basis for the past month. At home, I still prefer the reading experience of an actual physical book (the font is usually much better, and I prefer my text black on white). I admit that the Kindle is remarkably convenient when I'm on the road, as it sure beats lugging around a pile of books.
I'll leave you with a recent article by Lev Grossman that appeared in the NY Times, From Scroll to Screen, which gives an interesting historical perspective on the tradeoffs between physical books and electronic books. Worth a read.
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