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Behind the Scenes With Barnaby

By: Barnaby



Hello. My name is Barnaby Crockett. Some of you know me from my stories on LIT. For those of you that do, consider this as a DVD-style “Behind the Scenes” companion to my writing. For those that haven’t yet read my work, I hope you’ll want to give it a try after reading this crass infomercial.

It’s a cliché but it’s also true. Your stories are like children that you’ve nurtured to the point where they’re ready to make their own way in the world. When you write a story and put it out there for public consumption, you want it to do well. To date, I have published 19 pieces on Literotica. What follows is a story by story look at my “children.”

I started writing fiction in grade school. In my closet, I have a large box of outlines, very short stories and unfinished novels written between the ages of ten and twenty-four. Most of my archive consists of mysteries and sword and sorcery type fantasy stories. My first erotica was in my early twenties. 

I published my first non-fiction article in AMAZING HEROES magazine a few years later and pretty much abandoned fiction for a time in favor of more non-fiction pop culture pieces. Over the years, I published enough to be pretty impressive for a non-professional. I also wrote a few radio commercials and some comedy sketches for a local performance troupe. 

About six years ago, I came up with an idea for an erotic short story that would play with the clichés of the genre. I told my wife about it and she thought it was a great idea and encouraged me to write it. I tried…several times. I told a young female employee of mine named Liz about it and she also encouraged me to finish it. I did the opening about three different times but always abandoned it. I just didn’t feel comfortable with writing fiction.

Around this time, I went through a traditional mid-life crisis that ultimately screwed with my work, my marriage, my health and my finances. I found myself working with another young lady named Dru. One day, Dru noted that a certain adult magazine was offering a thousand-dollar prize for best erotic short story. She told me she planned on winning. I had read some of her fiction and she was good. I challenged her by telling her about my unfinished piece and how I was going to win the prize myself! Time went by and neither of us finished our stories. Then I discovered LIT!

I don’t recall exactly how I found out about LITEROTICA but I explored the site for a few months before deciding to join. It was a fascinating, complex combination of sleaze and class that seemed amazingly supportive to writers. Around this time, yet another young lady at work had shown me her writing. Her name was Meg and I was so impressed that I decided to give it a try yet again. I considered submitting several erotic pieces that dated back years but I wanted to finish my long-delayed story. I found my original attempts, read them, tore them up and started from scratch, eventually, finally, finishing BUZZWORDS.

I was still not satisfied with it. Apparently, I’m one of those writers that must constantly tweak. Who knew? I took the “fiction” portions of the narrative from an earlier partially non-fiction piece entitled ALMOST ANAL. My wife loved the final version but I assumed she would be prejudiced in my favor. Since she had inspired me to ultimately finish it, I showed the story to Meg. I sat with her as she read it. Let’s just say there was very little doubt that she was enjoying it. She made a couple of suggestions that I took. Then I sent it in. When it was posted, reaction was good but not overwhelming. One writer called it “a little gem” and several praised it for its uniqueness and quirky sense of humor. One marvelous letter came from a lady who didn’t even have a computer. She had been shown BUZZWORDS by a friend and found it so hot she was going to print it out to take home for her husband to read. I emailed the piece to Liz who barely remembered me describing it to her years before but was happy to hear from me. Eventually, I showed the printed piece to Dru, who immediately called my wife and said “Your husband is a dirty, dirty man and I can never look at him the same way again!” My wife asked if she liked it though. Dru just giggled uncontrollably. 

Delighted with my reception, I sat down and wrote a second erotic story, SUMMER MAGIC, in about an hour. Five years for BUZZWORDS, one hour for SUMMER MAGIC. This second piece was vaguely inspired by the relationship between William Holden and Kay Lenz in the movie BREEZY that I had seen on TV the day before. On another level, though, I was a middle-aged man with a lot of young female friends with a leaning towards witchcraft. It’s not much of a stretch. I based the female character on Meg (who suggested her name) and the male, in retrospect, is just kind of there. This was a quickie in every sense of the word. For awhile, it was my most successful piece and I began referring to it as “the little story that could.”

My incredibly understanding and supportive wife helped me with the next story, CAN I HAVE YOUR AUTOGRAPH (Hey, LIT, whatever happened to my question mark in that title?). We worked out the basic plot together but I did the actual writing. Years of experience working in bookstores gave me the background and I again tried to incorporate humor and real characterization as well as satirizing porn cliches. My wife naturally loved it. It’s still her favorite piece. Meg laughed but felt it needed kinkier scenes where the female character was tied up! I was beginning to learn a lot about that girl.

I was anxious to follow it up quickly and I had several ambitious ideas such as REPEAT, a GROUNDHOG DAY style piece in which a young man loses his virginity over and over and WITH APOLOGIES TO GERSHWIN , about a composer who seduces women with a pre-written song he claims to write just for them. It was around this time that the dreaded Writers’ Block hit. I would sit and stare at the blank computer screen for what seemed like hours never writing more than an unsatisfactory sentence or two. 

I delved into my archive and reluctantly submitted a rewrite of ALMOST ANAL as FANTASY GIRL. It was the most personal of my stories as much of it was true. No real plot or characterization, just sex. Let’s just say that both my wife and Meg, my two biggest fans, were less than impressed. 

I managed to pull out another new piece. Originally, I called it MOMENTS IN RARE MOONLIGHT but I shortened it to RARE MOONLIGHT. It was a conscious attempt on my part to write a more romantic piece. The early scenes and dialogue had actually occurred with Meg not long before. I took the story much further than happened in real life but still tried to be realistic by including safe sex. Oddly, this became my most controversial piece and inspired one reader to vote it a “one” and complain that condoms weren’t allowed in fantasies. Hey, this was MY fantasy, not his! This didn’t help my Block.

I tried to come up with an entry in the Lit Halloween Contest that year with NAKED SOULS, a fun little piece about ghosts inhabiting human bodies for a little recreation on Samhain. Still beset by “the Block”, I did various rewrites and finally gave up. My planned ending was for the two human characters to turn out to be brother and sister. This idea was universally hated by all that heard it. Halloween came and went and NAKED SOULS ended up in the unfinished pile. I delved deep into my past for my next effort. 

FULL MOON FANTASIES was originally written by a virginal Barnaby in early 1982. I had been sort of dating a certain young lady whose regular boyfriend was good for sex but otherwise abusive. She and I had done lunch, dinner, movie and club dates for over a year but she always returned to him at night. For his part, he figured he was saving a fortune and keeping her in his bed by letting me take her out. For my part, I remained ever hopeful that I could eventually convince her to leave the SOB and, despite the lack of carnal pleasure, I was getting to spend a considerable amount of quality time with her. 

Perpetually horny, she asked me around this time to write a story with her having sex with her celebrity heroes (these included George Burns and Muppets. She was a tad loony.) I accommodated and then went on to put my own desire for her down on paper as FULL MOON FANTASIES. As much as possible, I included real life references in a not so subtle effort to make her realize that this could happen in real life. The dirty book was one I had loaned her that her little brother stole and got caught with. I really did work cleaning up the office building next door and we really did have an actress friend named Mindy, a buxom twenty four year old brunette that both the young lady in question and I had expressed some desire for in the past so, naturally, she was included. I’ll never know how much, if any, influence this story had on her but that summer, when she finally did give in to my considerable charms, I myself, remembered the part about the office building and she took my virtue on the conference table.

Because of the Block, it was a struggle to polish it up so I decided to split it into two parts. Part One was well received and Part Two soon followed, receiving my first “H” vote. With Part Two, however, I still wasn’t feeling it. I stopped after just a scene and submitted, intending for Part Three to follow soon. It didn’t. It was six months before I returned to writing at all. In the meantime, I asked my muse, Meg, for some insight. She said that the problem was obviously the fact that this story wasn’t me…anymore. As much as it detailed my fantasies of a time long gone, it was not who I am now and no amount of polishing would change that. With her advice in mind, I began again on Part Three, this time abandoning the original version entirely and writing the ending from scratch. My Writer’s Block was broken and I was back to writing new fiction again!

There IS a sequel: FULL MOON FANTASIES-THE SECOND NIGHT was finished in 1982, also. Because it’s “not me” anymore, I don’t plan on publishing it at this time. For the record, though, it deals with Tracy’s attempts to get my character to take her friend’s virginity and our adventures at an all black radio station. If anyone reading this has any interest let me know. I could possibly be persuaded to rewrite that one, too, if my fans demand it! 

Before I even got around to finishing FMF, I posted a new piece inspired yet again by Meg. She had run into two ex-boyfriends at the Mall on the same day and another friend said that she led “an interesting life.” She herself suggested that I take it further and tell what might have happened if she had invited them both back to her new apartment. AN INTERESTING LIFE debuted with my highest rating to date, the most votes I’ve ever had and the most readers (over 20,000 to date. Thanks!). I was back!

KELLY AT THE CASHWRAP was actually a fragment of an aborted piece I had begun back in February. It was to be another bookstore story. It was too good to leave unfinished but I couldn’t recall where I had intended to go with it so I polished it up as just a hot little scene. One reader said it was his favorite of my works.

Around this time, I hired a young lady who had actually worked as an editor. She had never read erotica before but offered to sample my stuff and critique it. For the first time, I was given serious constructive criticism and I determined to take it forward. She and I even talked about a unique format for a collection of my writings. Then she moved away. 

Also around that time, I met Dani as a customer at my store. Undoubtedly the single best conversationalist I have ever met, Dani can discourse for hours on fascinating subjects. She hung around my store that first night and we talked for three hours between customers. She was nineteen, funny, and opinionated on everything…especially sex. I knew I wouldn’t see her much longer though as she was moving out of state and I was switching jobs for the first time in twenty years. One night before I left, I asked Dani, Meg and Natalie, another co-worker, out after work. At one point when Dani and I were alone, I told her about my writing and suggested we sit down for an interview about sex to be published on LIT. She was intrigued by the idea and immediately agreed. 

At this time, I began toying with another ambitious piece inspired by Dani to be called TIGER STRIPES. I let her read the first page but with all the changes going on in our lives, I didn’t want to rush the story so it remains back burnered.

The behind the scenes details of THE INTERVIEW PROJECT are printed elsewhere on Lit. Suffice it to say that Dani was incredibly impressive, bringing much more than I expected to the table with her candor, her enthusiasm and her background. We ended up with a lot more than just a hot little talk with a teenager about sex and everyone, including my wife, encouraged me to do more than one. In fact, my wife was the one who told Dru about the project on the phone. Later Meg lobbied to get in the mix and ended up with a fascinating, funny interview. Natalie and even Liz were brought in to round out the piece at five. My wife wanted to be the sixth but with all the troubles I had getting past the Lit censors, we’re not sure that would work. In fact, I interviewed myself, doing both parts as a companion piece to the regular series but my wife and Dani both found it incredibly sad and depressing so I decided to drop it. Sigh. 

Dani became so enamored of Lit that she began writing her own stories based on her real life. To date, STATIC IN MY HEAD and SEDUCTION have been published. I found her pieces to have something mine lacked, a sense of reality that I hadn’t been able to achieve. I began AN INTERESTING LIFE PART TWO in an effort to find that reality. Part One had been written in Meg’s voice, which I knew well. Part Two was also, but I incorporated a character based on myself and chose to tell most of the story in dialogue. I had trouble finishing it when the premise unexpectedly came up in real life with her. I was angry with her for her unsafe practices but I recognized that on another level, it actually turned me on. Out of these mixed feelings, I wrote SEMANTICS.

I emailed Dani an unfinished version of SEMANTICS and explained the emotions behind it. Surprisingly, she said it was the hottest thing I’d written yet. I posted a finished version soon afterwards to quickly climbing readership and high voting. Eventually, I let Meg read it but I’m still not certain how she took it. 

With the encouragement of success, however, I was able to finish the leftover NAKED SOULS (with a new ending suggested by my clever wife) and AN INTERESTING LIFE PART TWO with what I felt was some of my best writing so far. I’m not satisfied with it in some ways (Hey, the ice cube scene seemed funny at the time!) but the characterizations are aaaalmost there. As of this writing, Meg has not yet read this piece due to personal issues. 

In fact, Meg’s promised follow-up interview has yet to happen and seems more and more unlikely. Both Dani and Dru have suggested follow-ups but without Meg, it isn’t worth it. After all, she really does lead an interesting life. 

Anyway, for a little over a year, I’ve enjoyed my Lit experiences immensely for the most part. I’ve made new friends, inspired other authors, gained experience, pumped up my resume and, best of all, my “children” have prospered on-line, giving me the encouragement to write not just erotica but any and all things! Special thanks to those few who have bothered to offer feedback, particularly The Bragis and Damppanties. As I said at the beginning, if you’ve read my stories, thanks! I hope this was an interesting look at them. If you haven’t, now would seem to be the perfect time. Click on my name above to go to my full list. Read! Enjoy! Vote! 

Barnaby 

Behind the Scenes With Barnaby 02



In my first Behind the Scenes piece, published at the end of 2003, I discussed my writing and the inspirations behind my stories published to date. At that time I was just beginning to come out of a writer's block. Since then, I have more than doubled my Literotica output with what I consider some of my best erotica so I felt it might be time to once again look behind the creative curtains.

During this period, I was still cleaning out my old stuff including THE RESTAURANT, originally written as a comedy sketch in 1982 and the amusing trifle MOMENTS ON A MORNING AFTER, originally entitled UNWANTED LOVER and written around that same time. POP MUSIC parts one and two were suggested by my ex-girlfriend, also in 1982, and were, in fact, originally the sequel to my previously published FULL MOON FANTASIES. Although completely updated and rewritten, they were not well-received so the third part, set in an all-black radio station, remains unfinished and unposted.

Speaking of said ex-girlfriend, my non-fiction piece FIRST AND SECOND was based on extensive notes written the morning after my very first times with her. It reveals my very real feelings at the moment of losing my own virginity. The fact that it remains one of my lowest rated pieces on Lit says volumes about the history of my sex life. 

Coming out of my long writing funk, I finally finished the long promised TIGER STRIPES, completely scrapping all four previous starts and writing a largely dialogue-based piece that featured Tiger, one of my most memorable characters. It is an odd little meeting between an older man and a young woman on a winter day. It's a bit schmaltzy I'll admit but it works for me. Tiger was partly inspired by my friend Dani Meadows, now a Literotica author herself with two popular stories and a couple more I've been privileged to read as works in progress. The first time Dani and I met, she doffed her shirt in a mall store aisle to show me the Tiger tattoo on her back. That right there makes her memorable. The fact that she's one of the best conversationalists I've ever met led to her being my first subject in my INTERVIEW PROJECT. Although several states away now, Dani has proven herself a good friend and will always be special to me. 

As to my popular INTERVIEW PROJECT, I did do follow up interviews on girl number 4 and girl number 5 but was unable to pin down numbers 1 and 2. Meanwhile number 3 steadfastly refused involvement in spite of the fact that she's the one who has had the most interesting changes. Thus the two that were done remain unpolished and unposted.

Girl number 3 was Meg, whose sexual philosophies and escapades made her my muse for several early stories. Girl number 4, Natalie Rose, took her place for one of my most popular stories, PURPLE DAZE. One day in the summer of 2004, Nat called me up and asked if I would help her dye her hair purple. Oddly, my wife agreed that as a middle-aged man I wasn't likely to get that kind of offer from a 21 year old girl again anytime soon so off I went! The whole day was a comedy of errors from the buying of the hair dye at Hot Topic where the clerk thought I was Natalie's father to the point where we ended up sitting together in her tiny bathtub scrubbing up purple stains with rubbing alcohol. When the alcohol finally ran out and I asked, "How am I going to explain to my wife that we ran out of alcohol while sitting together in your bathtub?" Natalie suggested I take it all a little further and make it into an erotic story. Throughout the day, I was allowed to enjoy scrubbing purple stains off of various portions of her anatomy, too, so the thought of this being erotic had already occurred to me!

Natalie moved away soon afterwards but returned for a visit last summer where I arranged a dinner with myself and Meg who had just accepted her own bisexuality. Natalie arrived this time with bright pink hair! Three hours at the restaurant during which our explicit and increasingly loud conversations nearly got us kicked out (and got the waitress a big tip) evolved into the obvious three-way sequel, PURPLE PASSIONS, another conversation-based story that has proven to be very popular. 

While Natalie was in town, I even set up an afternoon at the mall with her, Meg, myself and Dru from TIP number 2! Dru had left her husband but had just spent a hot night with him. Her discussion of it led the other girls to a discussion that nearly got us all banned from the mall permanently. Afterwards, Dru and I stood in the parking lot with her still going on to the point where I told her I had to go home and jerk off. She giggled and said, "Oh, goody!" I don't see Dru often enough!

Natalie at one point offered to work with me on a project whereby I would send her sex toys and she would write reviews and her in-depth feelings during usage. I sent her a lapping tongue toy, a vibrator and a set of ben-wa balls but nothing ever came from it (except Natalie). I was talking to her on the phone once when she started to ask me how you get something out of...she paused. At that point you could here the sound of a metal ball bouncing on the hard wood floor as one of the ben wa balls fell out of her vagina. "Oh, never mind, " she said. Apparently she and her boyfriend both enjoyed the research but no article. Natalie has gone on, however, to post two stories of her own on Lit, both edited by yours truly. BREACH OF SECURITY and CHRISTMAS PROMISES WRAPPED IN DREAMS (my title) have been very successful and I continue to encourage her to write more!

BEWITCHED, BOTHERED, ETC. was a non-erotic piece based on a true incident in which Meg, a real-life witch, attempted an "energy transfer" with me with surprising results. It deserves to be finished someday but has not been popular so it's been back-burnered.

That story served to reignite her as my inspiration, though. PUTTING PANTS ON PAULA, another MFF story has become my most read story and one of my most popular. It was inspired by my agreement to buy my friend Meg a new pair of jeans. Again, taking it a step or two further I had a story. In this case, I even got Meg to write a paragraph explaining how the main characters feel about each other.

Around this time, I became email friends with three folks from London, each of whom gave me surprising and unexpected insight into both my stories and myself. I know I've thanked them before but let me thank them again right here. My writing is all the better because of your input.

I even let a couple of them read my next story in advance which led to it being changed considerably. SECRETS KEPT AS WISHES was my attempt to exorcise if you will all of my fantasies about Meg, incorporating things she had said, things I secretly felt and emotions I rarely acknowledged. It was to be my first B/D story. My advance readers assured me that while I might have a good B/D story in me, this was not meant to be it. Thus I let it set awhile before going back and taking out most of the darker elements. The end result, in my opinion, is the ultimate distillation of my now familiar "friends to lovers" theme. Apparently readers agreed as it, too, soared in popularity. Meg was angry that I didn't consult her (a submissive) when she heard it was a B/D story. She was even angrier when she started to read the story. She left it unfinished, never really realizing that in a way it had turned into a love letter to her. Sigh.

Leaving her behind for awhile (pardon the pun), AAAL-MOST ANAL and BREAKFAST were marginally inspired by an old girlfriend who previously had inspired FANTASY GIRL. Both were lighthearted, fun stories with lots of dialogue. I always read my dialogue out loud either to my very supportive wife or to myself. If it sounds off to me, it probably reads off to you. That's when I change it. The best compliment given to me by a Literotica reader was that I create very likable, realistic characters.

Around this time my wife, the most understanding and supportive woman in the world, wrote her own erotic story, something I had been encouraging her to do for years. Posted on Lit under the nom-de-porn, Mystical Folds, her vampire story with a twist, FIRST CONTACT, was renamed DARK DESIRES:FIRST BLOOD and has a higher rating than anything of mine! Sequels are forthcoming.

It was back to my usual muse for CRYSTAL CONVERSATIONS and A DREAM SO WET AND DEAR, both based on actual incidents but both featuring, in spite of the explicit descriptiveness, no actual sex between characters. They were not popular. 

In the meantime, I posted 5 poems on Literotica to little notice and actually sold my first erotic story to another site. Originally entitled BOOOOOM! but retitled THE LIGHTNING STORM, it was heavily edited and rewritten but made me a professional writer. With that encouragement, I have since sold my first non-erotic short story which was recently published in an anthology. Even my local library has it! Another non-fiction piece is coming soon in a book and there's a chance that some of my erotica will be reprinted, too. I even started a popular blog which, to date, has more than 500 articles published!

I haven't abandoned erotic fiction, though, nor Literotica. The nurturing atmosphere of Lit and its forums has been my writing workshop and there is more in the pipeline. In fact, I was a bit nonplussed when I realized I had no less than fifteen unfinished stories in various stages of completion! REPEAT, the sci-fi story I started as my second contribution to Lit way back when is still a possibility. CAR TROUBLES, CURTAINS, THE TROUBLE WITH SNOW DAYS and CONFIGURATIONS are more mused pieces. Meg and I even attempted a collaboration about a year ago on a B/D story she called THE GAME and I called ON THE ROPES. Her enthusiasm waned quickly so it remains unfinished. As with my wife, Natalie and Dani, I've tried to convince her to try her own hand at writing erotica but so far no luck.

Also on the virtual shelf are HAYLEY'S AGENDA, BUS STOP-THE HOLLIES, TRIVIA TIME, MAN OF THE HOUSE, ILLICIT AGREEMENT and DRAGON, my first bi-curious piece. I write in bursts. If I don't finish something, it has to wait until the next burst and hope something else doesn't keep me from getting to it. With any luck at least some of these will get finished. They're good. If you've read my already posted stories, thank you. I hope you enjoyed some of them. I try to make them hot and dirty, fun and funny. If this is the first time you've seen my name, please click on it above or below to read and vote on my stories. Then tell me what you think. I could never have become a professional without Literotica.