The World of Letoria
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2/25/2013 Update: It
feels like I haven't accomplished much here lately. Actually managing
this website, learning to use it in a practical way that actually shows
up as something coherent to you the visitor, is a very slow process.
The program I use is supposed to be very easy for beginners to grasp,
and I suppose it is, but I always seem to miss a step somewhere along
the way. Last week, I managed to lose an entire story from the Friends'
page. Thank whatever Computer Gods there are for my savior Data001. He
has pulled my cookies from the fire more times than I care to remember.
In spite of that, he remains cheerful and eternally optimistic, never
letting even a hint of frustration come through in his emails to me. I
don't think he knows just how grateful I am for everything he's done
and continues to do for me. If I could buy him a wickedly naughty,
decadent chocolate cake, I would do it in a second.7/9/2013 It's been another long spell since I've written anything here. Some personal health issues
have made things more difficult than they would otherwise be, but I'm
also suffering intermittent spells of old fashion writer's block. I
think I've managed to work my way out of that particular fog,
completing the rough draft of Chapter 11. Now begins the next step, the
editing.
Editing in my case is fairly involved. Once I've finished writing a chapter, it's a mess. There are highlights, comments, symbols, ellipses, gaps, bolds, italics, you name it. All of these are notes to myself in one form or another. The first step is to go back and deal with the issues those notes were put there for in the first place. Then begin the read-throughs, usually six or seven. In the first, I'll read the chapter in its entirety for the first time. So far, I've only read it in discrete blocks, usually as I'm writing. I don't usually write from the beginning of the chapter straight through to the end. I move back and forth from beginning to end to middle and back and forth. It may seem odd, but I rarely have a crystal clear picture of what is going to happen in a chapter when I start writing. Even when I do, it's as often as not wrong, and I have to go down a different path. In a sense, it unfolds in front of me like it does you, the reader.
In that first read-through, I look for glaring misspellings and grammatical errors, painfully bad sentences or word choices, and formatting issues. With successive read-throughs, I weed out more errors and frequently rewrite entire scenes, or slice off things that it turns out don't belong. In Chapter 9 I sliced off a total of 15 pages. I hope you didn't miss them. Once I've read it through so many times I can almost recite it in my sleep (and trust me, at this point I'm getting quite sick of it), it's delivered to my first editor, my wife. I'll read it aloud to her, and she'll ruthlessly critique. After incorporating her suggestions and polishing things, I'll read it to her again. She's listening for the sound of the story, its rhythm and whether or not it hurts the ear. She's good.
Once the chapter has met with her approval, it's time to involve the outside editors. I have three. The first isn't an editor per se, but rather my Rock, the gentleman who has been with me from the start, the one who puts up with my moodiness and foolish histrionics and offers me a steady, guiding hand. He's as responsible as anyone else for this entire story. I can be high-strung at times, yet he never deserts me. He's always there with gentle (but oh so correct) criticisms, guidance, suggestions, and reassurances that I'm not an idiot. At least half of this story evolved from his suggestions. Anyway, he gets the first crack at what I've finally pounded out. Once he's gotten a copy, I have two other editors. One fine lady proofreads the chapter for small spelling and grammatical errors (and oh my god! I'm shocked at the number she always ferrets out). My "real" editor in England reads it looking for problems with continuity, plot and character development, stylistic and usage errors, and basically anything that I've overlooked.
All of this is meant to say Chapter 11 is about halfway there, though the second half usually goes quicker than the first. I also want people to know I take writing this story very seriously, and I hope that shows when you the reader sit down to read it. I will never give you something I don't take very seriously. If nothing else, you have my promise that I've done the best I can with anything I put out. Nothing is half-assed.
I've recently received some very encouraging and supportive emails from readers. Whenever I get a comment from a reader, it's like receiving a royalty check. Reader feedback is my pay. That said, the recent comments I'm referring to came to me without a return email address, either anonymously through ASSTR, or a broken address link. If you are one of the writers of those emails, THANK YOU! I am not being arrogant or rude by not responding. It makes my day to know people are enjoying the story so much. I will answer every single email comment sent to me as long as there's a way to write back.
As a final word, I ask for everyone's patience. Chapter 11 will be out soon, I promise.
5/1/2013 - There's an ironic old saying that "The more things change, the more they stay the same." I sometimes take things I see on the news a little too personally, more than is healthy in all likelihood. As wrenching as the recent drama in Boston was (and I live relatively close to Boston), I find myself much, much more upset by the story of the teenage girl in California driven to commit suicide after she was raped by "friends", and graphic pictures of her after were splashed across the internet. As troubling as that was to me, another story in the same vein much closer to home has caused me sleepless nights.
It seems this 14 year old girl in an especially rural part of the state where I live was outed as a lesbian. I don't know who outed her -- a "friend" she trusted with her secret, someone with an ax to grind -- and I suppose it doesn't matter. What matters is that she was suddenly subjected to intense and unrelenting bullying by her peers for being gay. She and her family did everything by the book, going to school administration and reporting it, contacting police; but nothing was done. What makes that even more astonishing is that the principal of her school is obviously a lesbian herself. So, bullied relentlessly, not receiving any help from those who are supposed to help, she hung herself. There we go, that's a fine and decent outcome, isn't it people. Drive a 14 year old girl to kill herself because she's a lesbian. That's real goddamned 21st Century.
I often get asked why I didn't come out until I was 30, married to a man, and with a teenage son. I was 14 in 1982. If this is the kind of shit that happens to 14 year old lesbians in the 21st century, why is it SO GODDAMNED HARD to understand why I buried myself in a closet 30 frickin' years ago? Excuse me, I was not brave enough to even contemplate subjecting myself to that kind of peer pressure. It was ever so much easier to lie and pretend to myself and everyone around me that I was as straight as an arrow. Some have called me cowardly. So be it, but I lived to fight another day. That girl didn't.
So I was under the delusion that things had changed for the better in this country for LGBT people, and I suppose by and large they have, but they didn't change for that girl. She's dead. Those who drove her to kill herself are complicit in her death, and I hope they have enough conscience that it haunts them every day for the rest of their lives.
So you see, the more things change, the more they stay the same. We have a looonnnnng way to go.
3/12/2013 Update Chapter 10 of K&L is very slowly coming along. It seems the muses Calliope and Eros haven't been very forthcoming about exactly what direction the Chapter needs to go, so I sometimes feel dead in the water. However, I am making progress.
I've had some major issues with my Yahoo email account. Some of you may have tried contact me either through the form here on the site or directly. If I haven't gotten back to you, it's because I didn't receive your mail thanks to Yahoo. I'd appreciate it if you'd resend your comments to my other address, [email protected]. It's impor.tant to know that if you write to me with comments, I will write back
Editing in my case is fairly involved. Once I've finished writing a chapter, it's a mess. There are highlights, comments, symbols, ellipses, gaps, bolds, italics, you name it. All of these are notes to myself in one form or another. The first step is to go back and deal with the issues those notes were put there for in the first place. Then begin the read-throughs, usually six or seven. In the first, I'll read the chapter in its entirety for the first time. So far, I've only read it in discrete blocks, usually as I'm writing. I don't usually write from the beginning of the chapter straight through to the end. I move back and forth from beginning to end to middle and back and forth. It may seem odd, but I rarely have a crystal clear picture of what is going to happen in a chapter when I start writing. Even when I do, it's as often as not wrong, and I have to go down a different path. In a sense, it unfolds in front of me like it does you, the reader.
In that first read-through, I look for glaring misspellings and grammatical errors, painfully bad sentences or word choices, and formatting issues. With successive read-throughs, I weed out more errors and frequently rewrite entire scenes, or slice off things that it turns out don't belong. In Chapter 9 I sliced off a total of 15 pages. I hope you didn't miss them. Once I've read it through so many times I can almost recite it in my sleep (and trust me, at this point I'm getting quite sick of it), it's delivered to my first editor, my wife. I'll read it aloud to her, and she'll ruthlessly critique. After incorporating her suggestions and polishing things, I'll read it to her again. She's listening for the sound of the story, its rhythm and whether or not it hurts the ear. She's good.
Once the chapter has met with her approval, it's time to involve the outside editors. I have three. The first isn't an editor per se, but rather my Rock, the gentleman who has been with me from the start, the one who puts up with my moodiness and foolish histrionics and offers me a steady, guiding hand. He's as responsible as anyone else for this entire story. I can be high-strung at times, yet he never deserts me. He's always there with gentle (but oh so correct) criticisms, guidance, suggestions, and reassurances that I'm not an idiot. At least half of this story evolved from his suggestions. Anyway, he gets the first crack at what I've finally pounded out. Once he's gotten a copy, I have two other editors. One fine lady proofreads the chapter for small spelling and grammatical errors (and oh my god! I'm shocked at the number she always ferrets out). My "real" editor in England reads it looking for problems with continuity, plot and character development, stylistic and usage errors, and basically anything that I've overlooked.
All of this is meant to say Chapter 11 is about halfway there, though the second half usually goes quicker than the first. I also want people to know I take writing this story very seriously, and I hope that shows when you the reader sit down to read it. I will never give you something I don't take very seriously. If nothing else, you have my promise that I've done the best I can with anything I put out. Nothing is half-assed.
I've recently received some very encouraging and supportive emails from readers. Whenever I get a comment from a reader, it's like receiving a royalty check. Reader feedback is my pay. That said, the recent comments I'm referring to came to me without a return email address, either anonymously through ASSTR, or a broken address link. If you are one of the writers of those emails, THANK YOU! I am not being arrogant or rude by not responding. It makes my day to know people are enjoying the story so much. I will answer every single email comment sent to me as long as there's a way to write back.
As a final word, I ask for everyone's patience. Chapter 11 will be out soon, I promise.
5/1/2013 - There's an ironic old saying that "The more things change, the more they stay the same." I sometimes take things I see on the news a little too personally, more than is healthy in all likelihood. As wrenching as the recent drama in Boston was (and I live relatively close to Boston), I find myself much, much more upset by the story of the teenage girl in California driven to commit suicide after she was raped by "friends", and graphic pictures of her after were splashed across the internet. As troubling as that was to me, another story in the same vein much closer to home has caused me sleepless nights.
It seems this 14 year old girl in an especially rural part of the state where I live was outed as a lesbian. I don't know who outed her -- a "friend" she trusted with her secret, someone with an ax to grind -- and I suppose it doesn't matter. What matters is that she was suddenly subjected to intense and unrelenting bullying by her peers for being gay. She and her family did everything by the book, going to school administration and reporting it, contacting police; but nothing was done. What makes that even more astonishing is that the principal of her school is obviously a lesbian herself. So, bullied relentlessly, not receiving any help from those who are supposed to help, she hung herself. There we go, that's a fine and decent outcome, isn't it people. Drive a 14 year old girl to kill herself because she's a lesbian. That's real goddamned 21st Century.
I often get asked why I didn't come out until I was 30, married to a man, and with a teenage son. I was 14 in 1982. If this is the kind of shit that happens to 14 year old lesbians in the 21st century, why is it SO GODDAMNED HARD to understand why I buried myself in a closet 30 frickin' years ago? Excuse me, I was not brave enough to even contemplate subjecting myself to that kind of peer pressure. It was ever so much easier to lie and pretend to myself and everyone around me that I was as straight as an arrow. Some have called me cowardly. So be it, but I lived to fight another day. That girl didn't.
So I was under the delusion that things had changed for the better in this country for LGBT people, and I suppose by and large they have, but they didn't change for that girl. She's dead. Those who drove her to kill herself are complicit in her death, and I hope they have enough conscience that it haunts them every day for the rest of their lives.
So you see, the more things change, the more they stay the same. We have a looonnnnng way to go.
3/12/2013 Update Chapter 10 of K&L is very slowly coming along. It seems the muses Calliope and Eros haven't been very forthcoming about exactly what direction the Chapter needs to go, so I sometimes feel dead in the water. However, I am making progress.
I've had some major issues with my Yahoo email account. Some of you may have tried contact me either through the form here on the site or directly. If I haven't gotten back to you, it's because I didn't receive your mail thanks to Yahoo. I'd appreciate it if you'd resend your comments to my other address, [email protected]. It's impor.tant to know that if you write to me with comments, I will write back
Several changes, some obscure, some big, should be apparent with this update. I continue to receive comments about assorted errors within the body of the various "Karen and Laci" chapters. Most still revolve around age discrepancies (see below for an explanation of where those little gremlins arise from), but some involve formatting and grammatical errors. At any rate, I decided to go back and have a look at each chapter and update each one. Frankly, I'm appalled and embarrassed at some of the stuff I let get by. I'm trying to fix all of the annoying inconsistencies, error and formatting problems (missing paragraph breaks and missing italics are the primary mishaps). I have read each of these chapters in one incaranation or another nearly half a hundred times or more -- trust me, it's not because I'm especially enamored of my authorial skills, but because the little mistakes have to be ferreted out relentlessly, which requires reading them over and over again, and mistakes still get through. Once I've read a chapter enough times, I find it nearly impossible to do more than skim over the text. That said, one fan has graciously offered to reread the whole thing start to finish and highlight the errors that remain. In the meantime, I've tried to do the same on my own with this update. Which reminds me, any time you as a reader finds a mistake, I do appreciate it being pointed out so I can fix it (Just don't do it in a "Nyah Nyah, gotcha" way).
The next change readers should notice is a big one. I'll have added individual author sub-pages for each author posting stories on my Friends page. This will allow each Friend to have his or her stories collected in a single place and not buried in with other writers. This time around, I'm addding stories by Yiru and Jetboy, both of whom are very special to me in personal ways.
Yiru is a young author just finding his voice. He is, while a wee bit rough around the edges, extremely talented. I've likened him to a young HP Lovecraft, both in content and style (and talent). His raw talent as a writer has been apparent from the first, but the amount of improvement I've seen in the year or so I've known him is astonishing. He has shown a great deal of personal loyalty to me, and now it's my chance to return that favor. Yiru tends toward fantasies and alternate worlds, but he defies pigeonholing. I'm starting off with a story of his called "Cassie the Lassie", which will include a link to an online dictionary of Scottish slang, which I'm sure many readers will appreciate. I offer my love and appreciation to my dear friend Yiru.
Jetboy is a writer of astonishing skill and polish. He posts primarily on LesLita, which somewhat limits his gift to a small, largely unappreciative audience (unappreciative in the larger sense). To me, he has the singular honor of being the only male author I've run across who consistently writes outstanding lesbian erotica. That's a skill few lesbians can master, as I am acutely aware. Jetboy was my first editor and mentor. For some reason, he thought he saw some talent in my first offering, K&L Chapter 1, and oh-so graciously offered to help me work on my skills as a writer. The improvements you see as you progress through the chapters are largely the result of his mentoring. As I've told him, I have learned more from him than I did from every English I ever had. A Warning: Jetboy writes primarily on the Ff/Fg themes, so if that bothers you, don't go there. He tends to get down and dirty with the sex scenes, but only within the context of the story -- and those scenes are just soooo exquisite! Very, very few writers can get me aroused, and he's one of them. He's also one of the very few who have gotten an A+ rating from my wife's own unique grading system.
Jetboy has given me the honor of choosing which of his stories to offer you as his posting, and I've chosen "My Angel Ariel", a deeply poignant story which provoked strong emotions in me. Though the emotions were negative, a good story stirs some emotion, whether positive or negative. It's a fine example of outstanding storytelling and erotica.
1/29/2013 Rant This piece was originally posted on my Storiesonline Blog. It's a rant on stupid spelling rules, and writers who post stories on sites like ASSTR and think things like proper spelling don't matter. It prompted an apparently well-educated professional (i.e. paid) author to call me an arrogant bitch who needed to get off her high horse. Yikes! At least in his lead up to that, he was nice -- unintentionally I suspect. Readers can decide for themselves whether the description is accurate or not.
The most asinine language arts rule I was ever taught was the spelling mnemonic "I before E except after C." It's weird that such madness could get enshrined as a rule resistant to either educators or bureaucrats. Yet by eighth grade, we've all at least heard it. It reigns supreme despite being the height of counterfeit aids to learning. It's a heinous educational sin.
Alright, how many words in that paragraph? 62 for those who don't want to count. How many violations of the I before E rule? I'm not telling. If you're not sure, drop me a line and I'll tell you. Relatively speaking, there are a lot. Of course the paragraph is silly, but it's grammatically correct and structurally sound, so it works as an example -- besides, it's the best I could do off the top of my head while sitting here at the computer at one o'clock in the morning.. For the record, the British have expunged the rule from their educational rule book (I think they have a Ministry of Stupid Language Rules).
When I was in elementary school, every week our teacher would give us a list of 10 words we had to learn to spell. The following week, she would give us a test on those words (all of my teachers until junior high were women). By Fifth Grade, the words she chose were invariably those that, in the eyes of an 11 year-old, didn’t follow any discernible rule, such as "thought" and "would". I vividly remember having a moment of utter brain lock over the word “caught”. I knew she wanted the “I caught a cold” variant, and I knew how to spell it. Somehow, it got diverted to the nether regions of my brain when I tried to retrieve it. I finally shrugged and wrote “cot.” What else was I going to do? Then the teacher would toss in some words that complied with I before E, and some that snubbed their noses at the rule.
Her point in all this? The only rule when spelling English is that there are no rules. Spelling English is not easy. I’m not sure that spelling is even taught anymore, what with the ubiquity of spell check programs and instantaneous on line resources like Dictionary.com. If that’s true, it’s sad. It’s like letting teens take their driver’s license test without taking a Driver’s Ed course because they've played video games since birth. Taught or not, it ought to be a rule that anyone who writes for public consumption must pass a basic spelling competency exam.
Pick a random story here on ASSTR, and the odds are you'll find at least a handful of misspelled words, but likely as not you’ll have to wade through gross lots of them. Personally, I don’t care how hard it is to learn how to spell correctly. There is no excuse for more than the occasional typo when it comes to spelling. Turn on your spell check! When a little red line appears under a word, it’s misspelled. Right click the word, and the damned program will even give you the correct spelling. Since spell check is hardly infallible (though a darned good starting point), there are back-up resources for those times you’re not sure: On line dictionaries, real dictionaries, editors – you know, those fine people who actually paid attention in spelling class, and who now volunteer their services at no cost to the author.
With all these resources, incorrect spelling in a story is inexcusable. And yes, it does matter. Consistently misspelling words shows you don’t give a shit about your story. If you don’t give a shit, why should I? If you can’t be bothered to make an effort with such annoying details as correct spelling, why should I be bothered with making an effort to read your story?
Always remember, it’s your responsibility to make sure whatever you’re trying to convey to me the reader is clear. It’s not my job to decipher your gibberish to figure out what the hell you’re trying to say.
1/28/2013 Update This update includes Chapter 4 of 'Island Girls.' It took me a while to complete, because 'Karen and Laci' has priority on my writing time. Once 'K&L' Chapter 9 was completed and posted, I had the time to finish Chapter 4 of 'IG.' I hope the end result is worth the wait.
Several readers have written to me pointing out that there are discrepancies with Laci's age, especially in Chapters 3 and 4. These discrepancies (which I was aware of) were the result of carelessness on my part when trying to comply with the posting rules of a certain site I use. Their rules clearly state there can be no characters younger than 14. Though in my head Laci is 13, I was OK changing her age to 14 for that site only (very few sites allow characters under 18 -- though they'll allow murder, torture, cannibalism, etc -- so in order to cast a wider net, I post anywhere that allows it). The thing is, I wasn't very careful when changing everything back. I was able to fix those discrepancies with this update. Please let me know if I've overlooked any.
I want to thank everybody who has taken the time to send me feedback and questions. I think I've responded to everyone's comments. If I haven't, I apologize and ask that you let me know so I can thank you personally.......
Best to Everyone..... Letoria
1/16/2013 A Little About Me: Since it seems everyone wants to know, here's a little background on me, Letoria. I'm a perfectly ordinary 40-something woman. I'm average height, on the slim side, and I've have curly brunette hair up off my shoulders. If you passed me in the supermarket, you almost certainly wouldn't give me a second look, nor would you think I write erotic lesbian love stories as a hobby. My wife (yes, we live in a state where same-sex marriage is legally recognized), the love of my life, and I have been together for 10 years, married the last 3. I was in a heterosexual marriage for 13 years before coming out, and from that temporary union, I have an adult son, the second love of my life. I am by nature calm, caring, and very maternal, though I do have a sharp temper, and I can be high-strung at times.
My wife is my active partner in writing these stories. She suggests ideas, and she gets first dibs on critiquing my writing. We're both nurses. Nursing school is the sum total of my formal, post-secondary education. I took a single Freshman Comp course in nursing school, and I have no other formal education in writing anything.
I like cats -- I have a beautiful gray and white tabby who loves to curl up on my chest and purr. My favorite authors are John Steinbeck and Annie Proulx. I have never read Harry Potter or that vampire series -- not my cup o' tea. I'm partial to classical music, especially the masters, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin (I know, not very original, but I like what I like), though I'm very fond of the music of my adolescence, 70s and 80s rock. I don't watch TV -- maybe an occasional movie on TCM, or a hockey game. I don't smoke or drink more than a rare glass of wine. My vices are negative: I don't like working out, and I don't like dieting. Enjoying sex and erotica are not vices, nor is it a vice to think teenage girls are beautiful by nature.
I take writing my stories very seriously. I'm never going to make a dime off them, but they matter to me. I put a lot of time and effort into them in the hopes that what you see on your computer screen is as good as I can make it for you. I do hope you find them enjoyable and entertaining. With that, welcome to the world of Letoria.