it’s been a minute, as the kids say, since I’ve been here (or fucking anywhere).
I’d say sorry but who’d notice?
life fucking gets in the way. Family shit, health shit, job shit.
just, you know, shit.
details later. I’m ok, but too overwhelmed by piles of trivial stressors to get my mind back in a writing frame as yet.
to be continued at some point.
As long time readers will know, xmas eve, 2013, my friend Brandon Dawson died of an overdose.
Brandon – despite the obvious – was a kind and generous human being, and a good friend, and i’m forever grateful to him for hosting so many of my (and my friends) blogs, free.
However, his demons won out, and when he passed away, he left me locked out of our server (he’d recently updated passwords, and didn’t give them to me, or did, and I didn’t write them down). I struggled to get access to our server, but was unable to do so.
Several friends lost blogs when the server was taken down; I was lucky to be able to export all my writing from THIS blog, though I lost a few others (one that was sort of a secret, exorcising the demons and confess the sins sort of thing which is probably better gone, anyhow).
As i’ve mentioned, I was able to recover nearly 1400 entries; everything, basically. But in rebuilding all of this, i’m finding a vast number of broken links, including internal links (my direct links used to be at site/blog/archives/<title>.php, but is now site/title), lost images/songs/etc, as well as the simply outdated (links to news articles, links to now-gone blogs, etc)
All in all I had more than 1500 broken links. I’m gradually repairing all this (sometimes by deleting no longer relevant entries, sometimes by just un-linking, and going forward, sometimes updating links). But, it’s quite a bit of work.
Why do this? Well, first, broken links hurt SEO, which I am trying to improve to bring in more readers (and by more, I mean, higher single digit counts; i’m keeping expectations low here). But also, for the couple of friends who may delve into archives (Hi Liz!), broken links are annoying (and annoying for me as well).
I’m down to 1350 broken links as of this writing, but I think it’s just going to take weeks of a-few-at-a-time to get through it all, with the image posts being hardest (trying to figure out if I have the original images someplace, and then uploading, or replacing, or just un-linking).
or i’ll give up and quit dickin’ around and just wrote porn instead.
Mmm. Porn.
By the way I now have ‘subscribe’ option for new updates, when you comment, so if you’re aching to know the second I put up something new, comment and look for subscribe options.
It’s been interesting to look at stats since I got more active.
I used to be able to judge engagement by comments, and had sitemeter (I think it was called) to measure hits. I learned a lot as to who was hitting from where, and how much, and when someting had gone viral (as when I blogged about Snakes on a Plane, back before it was actually made, and my post went viral when the whole SOAP thing took off).
However, in the last 10 years or so, things have changed a lot. Far more users have privacy blocks of various sorts, including what’s built into IOS and MacOS, as well as various browsers.
The tracking tools I have are vastly less informative than in the old days. Thus is a good thing in privacy terms, obviously, but, as a blogger who wants to know if anyone is reading, the whole thing is a bit of a mystery.
I had a burst of hits a week or so ago, which I took to mean a combination of SEO and frequent updates (and a big increase in my activity on Twitter) were paying off, as was my own increase in activity on blogs; i’ve been liking and commenting anywhere I can find, and was seeing increase in activity in logs. But, no increase in comments, which is the only way I can actually tell if I’m getting read, and, after that burst a week ago, there’s a sudden drop both in stats data, and in ‘like’ activity.
It’s all a bit of a head-scratcher at this point, and i’m back to assuming that, aside from one (new) friend i’ve made, i’m not actually getting much readership, even if something hits my posts and pages.
But, the point isn’t just being read (though it helps), the point is to write more. For me at least, shark-like, I have to move or die. If I stop writing, I fear I won’t start again for years.
So as much as possible, daily updates will keep coming.
It’s not that I lack things to write about; it’s that I lack time to write about all the things I wish to, and often don’t start for fear of doing a half-assed job.
As always though, if you read this, please comment. I don’t need a real name, or a real email, you can put junk in there. But I do like to know someone got this far down the page.
As I re-explore the blogosphere (in an attempt to rebuild a network of connections and, of course, to re-acquire an audience of readers), i’ve been using WP reader to discover active bloggers.
I’ve been reading a number of blogs with some very good erotic content – mainly poetic but some otherwise. Not classic ‘here’s a sexy story that sounds like penthouse forum’ erotic, but more heartfelt, personal content; at least, that’s what’s reaching me currently.
It’s been quite a lot of years since i’ve written any fiction, erotic or otherwise, but these people – some of whom i’m linking to in my side-bar (or bottom of hime page if you’re on mobile) – are inspiring me to create.
Almost all the writing i’ve done in the last three months has been in the form of life stories for my friend Liz, who only recently discovered that i’m a writer. She was the person who got me to pull Wanton back out and share, then to start working on a revision. I credit her with re-awakening my need to write (as I have re-awakened hers).
But now i’m getting a desire to revisit my erotica skills. I have old (some extremely old) work in an archive I need to revisit, but that will happen later; now, I need to start.
My best writing writing all began as dreams; the vividness of a sexual dream stays with me on waking, and if I can capture the atmosphere of dream, I know the writing will work, because atmosphere is what I do.
I had such a dream last night – a young woman I know vaguely in real life, on a couch next to me, at a large social gathering. She begins to fall asleep, all her masses of long blond hair spilling onto my shoulder as she slumps into me; and I pick her up to carry her to bed, almost the way you’d carry a sleeping child. But as soon as we’re out of sight of the social gathering, she rouses, begins kissing me. I carry her to her bedroom, and – well, as soon as my fingers find my way inside her clothing, I wake. Frustratingly, the scene ends too soon, before I get enough to become a story.
But it may be sculpted into something, later, as I’ve done in the past. I have a character now, and a beginning, but from there I may be able to invent.
Either way, hopefully, i’ll begin something. I’m feeling inspired, but need to find both an image strong enough to move me, but also (and this is the much, much harder part), the time to work.
As I resume this whole thing after a long hiatus (Really. Fucking. Long), i’m trying to figure out ways to find those individuals (like Bacchus at ErosBlog) who never stopped, or people who are new (ish) and have something to say that I like.
In the old days, the best way to promote one’s blog was to coment on others, which we collectively would all do to builds a circle of cross-links.
Thats’ not working as well now, I rather think, because people tend not to comment that much; they are, however, clicking like buttons, and finding other WP blogs via things like wordpress itself (wordpress reader seems to facilitate this rather well).
So i’ve installed a like button, and ask you to please give that motherfucker a poke if you could be so kind. It’s at the end of each post (but you gotta click post title to get to the comments/link/share buttons).
Meanwhile, the reason i’m posting this is because I just found a blog I really dig: journeychase.com.
There’s no about, no info about the author at all, but what there is, is some erotic poetry i’m finding inspirational (I suck at poetry, but reading journeychase just made write out a thought in a vague verse like form, which is more than i’ve done in probably 15 years; i’m not posting it, because it’s almost certainly crap, but, the person I was thinking about when I wrote it may get a look at it later.
In any case, props to the writer for being inspiring.
Anyone who’s known me more than about 15 minutes knows i’m utterly filthy and love anything erotic; my writing is mostly of the bent. Finding other writers who share that is one of the things i’m after.
An excerpt from Spread me open
I know if you
ran your hands
up my stockings
the world
would stop turning
for just one moment
Click links above to get more. That’s just a taste.
Wow, I’m pleased to find my favorite sex blog (which I used to write for on occasion) is still around; http://www.erosblog.com.
So many of the blogs I used to follow are gone, it’s good to see those still fightin’ the good fight.
Hey I know a few people are hitting this space. I see it in activity meters.
Unless you’re just all robots but it’s ok, you don’t have to admit it to a Turing test.
But in any case, let me know you’re here.
It’s funny, when I started this blog, which was mumble years ago, it was utterly free. Nobody read it, nobody knew it existed apart from my friend Jen who originally hosted it.
There is a pure and complete freedom to write without any audience. I could say anything, do anything, didn’t matter.
Social media changed that – orkut, in this case. People followed a link and I gradually picked up readers, first random strangers, then later real life friends and family.
Suddenly the externalization of inner voice might be read by the people I was talking about, and I started writing to an audience, or worse, not writing because of an audience. It changed
Now, it’s come full circle. Nobody is reading; in all likelihood, they never will. So I could do what I originally started this for, howling into the void, free, honest, unfiltered,
I dunno if I’m ready for that. Or if the internet is ready. Maybe I’ll find out, though.
For the first time in at least a decade, i’ve updated the About page for this site (also linked on side bar and in menus, here here here, oh, everywhere, as the Genie said.
You should read it, it’s unimaginably brilliant. Really.
Also, on the off chance that anyone is reading out there, I really appreciate comments. You don’t have to use a real email and i’m definitely not saving anyone’s emails; that shit’s just there to ward off spam comments (which, despite nobody reading, I still get a cubic fuckton of daily).
Well, today I more or less announced myself as a writer in Facebook.
which won’t be big news for the people who used to read this space, or for the very few who have read my fiction, but in the modern, post blogosphereera world of social networks, I don’t think many of the people I interact with know me as such, despite this site having been linked from FB and Instagram for years.
but after completing a marathon revision session on my novella Wanton, I both needed acknowledge my own progress, fighting back from years of feeling unable, as well as, I’ll admit it, hoping somebody would go read it. I don’t work in a vacuum well; I’ve always needed an audience to write for, or at least hoped my work would find one. So while I did t link direst to this site or to the novella in question (yet), I am hoping I get a hit or two and somebody says, I’d like to read that.
One thing that’s changed since I wrote this is the need to trigger warning it; I never before felt I needed to label my work, despite it being largely erotic, because I consider Wanton, at least, to be fiction, a love story, rather than a wank-piece. It may get you aroused, and I hope it does, but the intent is to tell a story about two characters in an obsessive, destructive relationship. It’s about the people, not about what they may do.
but, the story is filled with blood, pain, come, drugs and both physical and emotional harm. The last two people I shared it with pre-edit, I didn’t warn, and I think it gut-punched them in different ways.
going forward, then, it has warnings.