Love in Dark Settings

Here's a full list of the stories I've posted/reposted/published in the past year. As the boilerplate warning for all my stories puts it, "All of the stories feature love or respect, though sometimes it takes a while to get there."

With one exception (marked below), all of these stories are available free online. If you'd like to buy an HTML e-book containing all of my writings as of April 2009 (700,000 words of fiction and 28 collections of fiction recommendations and nonfiction), visit Love in Dark Settings Omnibus. If there are any topics you prefer not to read about, be sure to read the warnings.

If you prefer to browse by series or story cover, you can visit my home page. If you want to, you can Friend my blog or sign up for my updates e-mail list. ( Read more... )

On September 11, Doug and I visited Rock Hall in Kent County, just north of Tilghman Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It's an old watermen's community, and though the watermen have nearly been squeezed out, there are a couple of museums there that have watermen's devices. Then, two days later, we took a return trip to Dorchester County - in particular, to Hoopers Island.

( Rock Hall )
( Interlude in Lewes, Delaware )
( Hoopers Island )
( Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge )

I'd love to go back to Hoopers Island in late October, which is when my character walks across the upper island - I'd like to know what wildlife is out, and how much bird noise occurs then. (Dorchester County is part of the Atlantic Flyway for migrating birds.) But that would be pressing Doug's patience, so I'm going to have to use my imagination to fill in the gaps.

Now I just have to convince him to take that much-delayed trip to Southern Maryland. "We just got back from Hoopers Island!" he said when I tentatively pointed out on Wednesday that I had only ten days left before the research portion of my year ended.

( Third Priority Resolutions: Stuff Taking Up a Lot of Space )

"Our new program is staffed by a diverse group of professionals and volunteers, bound together by their desire to serve your research needs. . . . Online chat hours will be expanded in the future. We are using cutting-edge Meebo technology that allows users to chat live with our researchers directly from our web site. No software or messenger accounts are required, and since you can reach us from home, even clothing is optional!"

--An advertisement for the research services of the Leather Archives & Museum.

( Background to my entries )
( Simplicity: Internet time this month )
( Simplicity and Writing: Gathering and burying nuts for the winter; plus, Eastern Shore memories )
( Home: Money )
( Mentoring: Lunch with a slave )
( Simplicity: My ideal wardrobe )
( Simplicity: Scanning my winter reading )
( Writing: Prison City research - countdown to the finish )
( Writing: Prison City research - almost finished with the Chesapeake research )
( Mentoring: My apprentice's health )
( Mentoring: An exchange between me and my apprentice )

( Reply to mightymaeve about researching nineteenth and early twentieth homosexuality )

Hurrah, I think I've replied to all the comments at my blogs from this year and last year. (But, um, not from 2007 yet. *Cough.*) If I missed you, just nudge me.

( Reply to mightymaeve about nineteenth-century homosexuality )

Don't worry, I haven't fallen off the Internet addiction wagon. I decided at the beginning of last month to move this week's Internet day to Thursday, because Labor Day weekend is a big festival weekend in my hometown.

( Second Priority Resolutions: Health )

The highlights:

—It is considered embarrassing to be forced to admit that your primary tool for curing patients was developed by a group of torturers. ¶ The first two novels of The Eternal Dungeon are published, and a novella begins to be serialized online.
—He lived in fear that, if he made any complaints, the mister would tire of him. ¶ A master/servant science fiction story is posted at Prison City and cross-posted at Darkling Plain.
—Halvar leaned forward; his eyes were the color of an arctic sky. "I am not a fool, Egon," he said softly, "so do not treat me as such." ¶ An expanded version of a slave story is posted at Master/Other.
—Blind to all images, he waited with tensed muscles, straining his spirit to hear the Jackal's approach. ¶ The Three Lands novella "Bard of Pain" is published in braille and DAISY.
—New recommendations have been posted of gay and gender-blending fiction, nonfiction, and art.

The details:

Fiction.

Other People's Fiction and Nonfiction.

General Announcements and Upcoming Fiction.

I actually didn't set goals last fall, because . . . well, you'll see why. It was sort of like having someone shove the United States's multi-trillion-dollar debt in one's face, saying, "Here! Figure out what to do!" It took me months after my mother's death to even work out where the exact problems lay in my life, much less start to come up with solutions.

In this series of four posts, I'll be listing the physical and mental objects in my life that I gradually realized needed to be organized, the goals I set for myself over the past year, whether I met them, and my goals for next year.

( First Priority Resolutions: Internet, Writing, Etc. )

WEEK OF JULY 12
--Days online: 6.
--Hours online: 14.

WEEK OF JULY 19
--Days online: 6.
--Hours online: 16.

WEEK OF JULY 26
--Days online: 1.
--Hours online: 8.

WEEK OF AUGUST 2
--Days online: 1.
--Hours online: 6.

WEEK OF AUGUST 9
--Days online: 1.
--Hours online: 5.5.

WEEK OF AUGUST 16
--Days online: 1.
--Hours online: 3.

It's official. I'm in remission from my Internet addiction.

(*Bells ringing.* *Fireworks exploding.* *Twenty-one gun salute.*)

I still have one more major challenge ahead of me: this winter will be difficult, since I plan to go online less and will have fewer offline activities with which to distract myself (since I'll be homebound and won't be able to read standard-sized print, the way I can in the summer). But in celebration of what I've accomplished so far, here is a roughly chronological list of the steps that I took in my battle against my Internet addiction.

Success took me twelve years.

( My multi-step battle against Internet addiction )

"Only on [the Erotic Romance Writers Forum] would someone have an 'immediate need' for text on fisting."

--Cupnjava, responding a couple of years ago to one of my research requests.

( Background to my entries )
( Two exchanges with my apprentice )
( Prison City research: The oyster wars )
( REVIEW: Recommendation of Syd McGinley's The Complete Dr. Fell, Volume 1: Lost )
( Historians need to be sent back to school )
( Protocol prep )

( Reply to lee_rowan about electronic piracy )
( Reply to spiralred about me and my apprentice )

"As for the intellectual property, I try not to get too worked up about it. There's a lot of people angsting about piracy and copying of stuff on the Internet, publishers who are very, very worried about the whole idea of ebook piracy. I like to get a little bit of perspective on it by remembering that back before the Internet came along, we had a very special term for the people who buy a single copy of a book and then allow all their friends to read it for free. We called them librarians."

--Charlie Stross.

( Background to my entries )
( Internet time )
( Finished culling books )
( My apprentice, me, and david stein's new book on gay masters and slaves )
( Publishing season finished )
( The dog days of August )
( Preparation to clothes culling )

( Reply to emansil_08 about simplicity )
( Reply to spiralred about Dorchester County, Maryland )
( Reply to telepwen about The Unanswered Question )
( Brief replies to mightymaeve, lusiology )

( Possible spoilers below the cut )

( Possible spoilers below the cut )

( Possible spoilers below the cut )

By popular request, I'm splitting up the comments posts for Transformation. (Well, okay, I received one query, from Optimistic fatalist.) If you'd like to, post your chit-chat in these four threads.

( Possible spoilers below the cut )

"My definition of 'porn' as opposed to 'story' (and I don't have a problem with either one, but I do think there's a distinction) is not the ratio of sex to whatever else, or sexy stuff (eg slavery) to whatever else, but basically the lack of complex characterization and motivation driving the characters' actions, in porn. In porn, you don't need any motivation beyond 'Laura is horny, the pizza deliveryman is there, grunt grunt grunt' whereas a story is like, 'Laura was so incredibly bored and sexually frustrated that morning, on account of David being on the antipsychotic medication that killed his sex drive, that when the pizza guy showed up they had all kinds of wild crazy sex. She felt no guilt; as the pizza guy drove into her, drawing her body slowly towards its peak of ecstasy, she reflected that it was surely no different from taking iron supplements when you became a vegetarian for moral reasons. She'd stay with David, of course, see him through his difficulties, but there was no sense wasting away through neglect of her own body's needs. The only trouble was that the pizza guy, be he ever so well-hung, was no more a satisfactory substitute for David, David's dear familiar body over hers, his eyes gazing down at her as they had done before the hallucinations began, the sweet married sex with no fumbling, than iron pills were a substitute for a good juicy rare sirloin. Afterwards, the pizza guy, who was younger than she'd guessed at first, with a heartbreaking little soul patch on his chin, wanted to cuddle, but Laura managed to fend him off and get him back into his uniform-- "Franklin," said his nametag, which she hadn't bothered to read before undressing him. She tipped him generously before shutting the door. Franklin. Jesus. No wonder he was up for boning bored housewives. She wondered briefly whether she'd just deflowered him, then got down to the business of getting the sheets in the laundry and the pizza buried deeply in the trash where David wouldn't see it when he got home.'"

--Maculategiraffe, in an idle moment. As one commenter to her journal put it, "Why the hell can't I write plot that easily?"

( Background to my entries )
( 'Rebirth'; plus, my Internet time this week )
( Looking forward to next year's publishing season )
( My optimistic plans for writing and editing this winter )
( Stage One of my book culling ends )
( Why old books deserve to be reread )

The adults-only August 2009 issue of True Tales: An Erotic E-zine of Masculinity and Power features recommendations of new gay fiction, nonfiction, and art in the Leathermen section. (And no, we haven't forgotten about the promised Prisoners issue. It's been bumped up to next year.)

( Summary of the issue )