Growing Chapter 10 (Gemma)

I've gotten more comments about Chapter 10 than all the other chapters, most particularly on the fact that Jake allowed Gemma to take control, or dictate terms. That really surprised me, although I guess it shouldn't have.

To me, just because someone is dominant does not mean that they require everything to be completely under their control. As Jake's dad said, there is a spectrum, and people all the way on that side, people who have to be control of everything around them, are more meglomaniac than dominant.

I think that Jake's allowing Gemma to set the terms of their relationship, particularly terms that he was quite willing to accept, was well within his personality. I don't feel that every activity is one that defines dominance and submissiveness; one can be dominant while still listening to others ideas.

Upcoming Stories

I've got a ways to go on Growing, but I've finished another story as well, and I'm nearly done yet another.

My next story is a mind control story, sort of. Even when I start a story with a different angle in mind, the same themes keep creeping in. I've got to stop that. Anyway, there is mind control, and some nice D/s as well. This story actually has some darker areas than my previous stories. You've probably noticed that my stories all have happy endings, no jealousy, and nothing too bad happens. That's because they are fantasies, and my real world has enough issues that I don't need them creeping into my fantasies.

Nevertheless, I realize that the stories suffer from it; they would be better stories with slightly more realism and conflict injected into them. Actually, in this story, I did not set out to do that. I was writing, and it just seemed to flow in that direction. Who knows, maybe I really am starting to mature as a writer. Probably not. :-)

The other story is a rewrite / extension of Hotel Room Disturbance. After reading it I had to fix it, and then all the new ideas came in. It's going from three chapters to around ten (not finished yet, so I don't have an exact count).

If I manage to keep my editors ahead of me, then I should post the mind control story (still trying to settle on a name) not too many days after Growing ends. It's fourteen chapters, so that will kill another two weeks. Hopefully by the time that all these stories are posted, I'll have another story at least started.
M.

Completed vs In Progress Stories

The typical mail that I get is a one liner expressing satisfaction with the story, or a paragraph pointing out a particular scene or theme that I've pleased the reader with. I love those; keep them coming! Feed my monstrous ego!

Occasionally, however, I get a long, carefully though out email about a particular topic. I got one of these recently, and one of the points touched upon was whether it was more or less difficult to complete as story before I begin posting it.

I am actually of two minds about this. Before Growing, I wrote the stories on the fly. As a result, I got many suggestions, quite a few of which made it into the story. I think this made it a better story. On the other hand, lately I've been having trouble finding time to write. Growing took over a year to finish, not because of it's length or the depth of research that I had to do, but because there was nearly a year between that it lay untouched.

I personally find it difficult to follow a story when there are weeks or months between postings. Given that I don't know when or if I'm going to finish it, I just figured that I'd do it all first, then I'd know that the end was coming.

As I said, I'm torn over which way to go. I do know that I've gotten good suggestions on things to add to Growing that I can't add, because it would be too hard to fit into the completed story. So I guess that in the future, I'll have to play it by ear, and try to decide if I really have the wherewithal to finish it on the fly.

M.

Coming of Age

If you've been reading Growing so far, then you'll see its yet another coming of age story. I seem to fixate on that period a bit. I mean, which of you wouldn't want to have a couple of people like Girl and Katherine, or even Jake's father, guiding you through your earlier years? I assume that most males, and likely most females, fumbled through those formative years.

For me it was even worse; all boys schools right up till college, I didn't even know a girl except some of my younger sister's friends, until I was in college. I think that's why I take such interest in that stage of life in my stories. How would it have been to have a Katherine teach me how to date? Have Girl in my bed?

Ah well, that's what fantasies are for; to live vicariously through the characters as they get that which you never did.

One other note: The most common question I get about Growing is when I'm going to post more. You don't have to ask. Until I say otherwise, I'll be posting one chapter a day. If you want more, sorry. If the wait between chapters is too much, wait a month and start reading again. My web site is one day ahead, so that might give you a little fix.
M.

Problems reading chapters on my website

I've gotten a couple of complaints from people about chapters on my site not showing up when they should. The issue is caused by the fact that I've put placeholder pages in, and if you've looked at the page before, it might be cached in your browser. Just do a page reload and all should be well.

Of course, that won't work with chapters that I've not posted yet. :-)

M.

Maturity

One of the most common requests that I get is to write additional stories in the Favor and Tired universes, but almost equally as frequently are requests that I finish my first story, Hotel Room Disturbance. Since I have had a bit of free time recently, I decided to re-read Hotel to see where I had left it.

I have to tell you that I was quite embarrassed when I read it. I still like the theme, but the technical aspects of the writing are absolutely awful. I can't believe that people would have read all the way through it, let alone gave it a high score! After that read through, I knew that I would have to rewrite it, if only to fix the massive numbers of grammatical, typographical and punctuation errors in it.

If this taught me anything, it is that you really do get better as you mature. I do not claim complete credit for my improvement; quite a few people were good enough to point out the flaws in my early works, and my initial editor, Peter Z, spent quite a bit of time trying to educate me on various points of grammar, though I still have some major issues. (Sorry Peter. I know you tried to get me to understand the difference between lay, laid and lie).

Nevertheless, I realized that the experience of writing a few full length novels certainly has improved my technical ability as well as my sense of flow and writing style. I'm not saying that I'm William Shakespeare or anything like that, but when I compare my last works with Hotel, it's clear that I have gotten a hell of a lot better at this.

I'm not saying this to toot my own horn. I'm using this as a lesson in experience and maturity. When I first started my career, I knew that I didn't know what I was doing. Every day, I was sure that my bosses would figure out that I was bluffing my way through everything. A few years later, however, I was hit with the realization that I was pretty much able to answer everyone's questions, usually correctly, and that it was not really a bluff, it was skill.

I feel the same way about my writing. It was not until I just re-read my original story that I finally realized how far I'd come.

In one of the management training courses that I've taken, the instructor went over the four stages of learning:

1. Unconscious Incompetence - You don't realize that you don't know what you are doing
   
2. Conscious Incompetence - You realize that you don't know what you are doing
   
3. Conscious Competence - You know what you are doing, but you have to think about to do it right
4. Unconscious Competence - You just know what to do, and you can do it without thinking about it

To demonstrate these stages, they taught us to juggle. I kept up the juggling long after the class was over, and I'm finally at the Conscious Competence phase with that. If you acknowledge that I am competent in writing (something I'm not quite sure everyone will do), I think I've finally hit the Conscious Competence stage with that as well. I think that for me, someone to whom writing was always a chore, and who was convinced that I would never be able to write well, I think that is a great achievement.

And the point of all this is that in writing, as in juggling and in my career, I've learned that if you work at what you are doing, and you do something that you really enjoy, you will be able to better yourself far than you ever dreamed possible.

M.

Sorry about the missing words

I just discovered that the program that I wrote to convert my format to html ate a bunch of words. Sigh. I fixed my program, and I've reposted the previous chapters. Many more coming.

For those who keep asking when the next chapters will be posted, they'll come one a day (or two on days when the chapters are short).

And while I'm here anyway, I want to thank everyone who wrote to me with their comments. So far they've even been almost all good. :-) Keep them coming.

M.

The Start of Growing Up a Master

Well, I've finally begun posting Growing Up a Master. I will be posting approximately a chapter a day until it is finished (around 36 days from today). It will show up on my site shortly before it gets to SOL.

I started this story over a year ago, and it lay dormant for quite a while. I had stopped writing for a quite a while, but when I recently started up again, I dusted this off and finally finished it. As apparently is the case with most of my stories, it ended up much longer than I initially intended.

I start with a core of an idea, one that I usually get in that time of the morning between being asleep and being awake. I mull it over in my mind for a while, and then I start writing it. I occasionally have quite a bit of it mapped out, but usually I have a couple of scenes that I want to incorporate, and I just write and let the characters and the story go where they may. In the next story that I'll be posting (it's done, so it won't be quite as long between stories this time), I started with an idea and by the time that I was done that original idea occupied less than a chapter. After I had written the whole back story, my people just ended up in a different place.

Anyway, back to Growing. Quite a few people in Master/Slave relationships have kids, and they have to hide their activities from their kids (quite appropriately so), restricting their lifestyle. But what if someone didn't? How would that affect the kid? What kind of advice would his parents give, and how would he be able to use that advice? What if that kid was me? That was the original idea.

Now before you send me your long letters explaining how horrendous and abusive this idea is, realize that I am not advocating this behavior! It is wrong, and if you do it you will screw up your kids and may end up in jail.

However, when I write, I can imagine a world where things work differently, where a boy can be that fantasy child that I always wanted to be, with the ability to understand power and consequences. The main character of this story is wise beyond his years. Actually, he's wise beyond my years.

For those of you that squick on young children, this may not be the story for you. It is primarily about a teenager's journey into becoming a dominant, however there is a small section where he is younger and is exposed to sex. If that is your hot button, you may not want to move on (though if you've already read the first chapter, than you are beyond that). On the other hand, you may not want to read this story if BDSM, anal, oral, mF, mf, ff, FF, teen, humil, piercing, incest or water sports aren't your thing either, but then again, you probably won't be reading most of my works if that were the case; I like to offend as many people as I can. :-)

As with all my stories, they turn out far better when I have an editor/proofreader. In the past Peter Z has editing all of my stuff, and we worked very well together. Unfortunately, he is no longer able to edit, and I will miss our working relationship. Luckily, a few others have stepped into the breach and corrected more errors that I'd like to admit that I had, and in general improved the readability. In particular, Skyrat, etoymaker and BanditIRA contributed greatly, though there were a couple of others as well that I will attribute when I get their permission.

And finally, as usual I want to hear what you think. I know during the year that I was gone I got a lot of mail that I was unable to answer. I'm sorry about that, and I hope it did not discourage you. I will try to respond to all my mail going forward so please, drop me a line and tell me what you think, either as a comment here or by sending me a personal note.

Hope you all enjoy!
M.

I'm finally back!

I've been gone for about a year, but now I'm back. I know that a lot of people sent me mail that I didn't respond to. I've been pretty much off the air for quite a while, and I don't have access to much of the mail that I recieved during this period.

I'm sorry about that.

I will try to respond to all new mail that I get, when a response is called for.

I have completed another story, this one quite long as well, called "Growing Up A Master". It is 39 chapters and approximately 325 printed pages. Right now it is out at an editor, and I expect to start posting chapters shortly. I have also started on my next story, probably not as long, but that seems to be what I say every time.

Hope to hear for you.

My new blog

I've moved my blog here so it is more accessible.