My Sexual Memoir.

Spring is in the air and a young man's fancy turns to you-know-what. Even though I'm getting older now, I ain't exactly immune.

Right now I am putting off writing another science fiction novel. I know that I want to do more, but I have reasons not to do it right now.

One thing I really ought to write is another mystery novel. ‘Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery’ sells each and every month in a number of stores, including Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Sony, all of them really. I have one novella, set at free, and two mysteries involving Inspector Gilles Maintenon, i.e. ‘the series,’ which is known for selling long-term better than stand-alone works.

I need to do another one of those this year just to support those readers and build up the brand, in other words Inspector Maintenon.

I write what grabs me at the time. I need a plot. If I had a good science fiction plot I would be more enthusiastic about writing another science fiction book. The mystery is easier, (maybe) as I already know it must be a murder plot and the Inspector will be involved, it will happen in the thirties and all that sort of thing.

Much of the visualization work is done in a sense, and I learn more about the genre, the themes, the era, with every story I write in terms of mysteries. Theoretically that should get easier.

Pen names divide up the works by genre, so readers find it easier to get the books they think they are getting from authors they know and like.

So when I wrote some erotica, I assigned that work to a pen name. When a few books sold, much to my surprise, naturally I wrote more stuff. Now after a time it all starts to catch up. Each and every pen name needs to produce new works on some regular basis—just as I must produce another mystery within the year.

And yet I must write what grabs me, what I have the ideas for, and what I have a plot/no plot for…the reasons are obscure for writing any one thing. But they all add up.

All of a sudden I’m in a bit of a bind. I started something I first conceived of as erotica. It turns out it’s not so much erotica as literary erotic fiction, and it’s also kind of a memoir, and the whole consideration of what pen name to assign the work to or publish it under eventually came up. And maybe the thing isn’t really appropriate to Louis Shalako. And yet who knows? Maybe that’s what I should do. It does bear some thinking about. The problem is that it’s not really in keeping with my thriller/crime guy, nor my erotica girl, etc. It doesn’t fit with any of the existing pen names.

And if I do another pen name, it sort of begs further support if the book sells in any sort of manner (or at all.) How many freakin' sexual memoirs can I possibly make up? (That sounds like a lot of work.) I don’t have all the answers, but I won’t have the story done for a while yet either.

Hopefully it will come out around 25,000 words and then I’ll have my first literary erotica novelette. That would be so cool.

The protagonist is a guy called Devlin and he gets an anonymous note.

As for a title, I simply have no idea, but something will suggest itself.

It usually does.

The Hygiene Effect.

Dr. Al Jenny. Wiki.



The hygiene hypothesis is a simple one. In modern society, we are exposed to far fewer pathogens in the everyday environment.

Over the long term, this causes an increase in the numbers of people reported to be suffering allergic and immunodeficiency diseases.

Our grandparents for the most part grew up on the farm, and worked in the outdoors. Their city-bred counterparts lived in tenements, and less than exemplary conditions in the old country in the case of immigrants.

Our parents took us camping and worked in industry, and lived in cities and towns where the air and the water were poor. Back then, poor people might have had two kids in a room, or five kids all in one bed.

Very few westerners live that way anymore. Kids play indoors, on the computer or game-box.

They camp in a trailer park with showers and working toilets…they’ve never drank water right out of the lake, or from an old-style farm pump in their lives.

One of my fondest memories is of my four year-old brother and the neighbour girl sitting in the driveway eating dirt…just dirt. When I laughed and told my mom, he started crying and it all dribbled down his chin and neck…a priceless memory.

I never wore disposable diapers. My mother used cotton diapers. She rinsed them in the laundry tubs, washed them, put them through the wringer and then hung them up on a line in the backyard to dry in the wind and the sun.

Are these really new diseases? Basically what is being said is that these are not new pathogens—they’ve been around as long as we have, and as they mutate over time our defenses also adapted over time.

But now, in the modern world, there is an increase, and a steep one, in the incidence of these diseases. It’s not a new set of ailments, but it is a whole new environment. If thirty years ago one kid in a hundred was born with blue hair and nowadays it’s thirty-five out of a hundred, it’s not a new disease but a new phenomena…a new vector.

What about your mental health? In the past, weren’t these things talked about or reported, or is there really an increase in this type of health issue in the modern world? That kind of depends on who you ask, and what they are selling, doesn’t it?

I’ll let the reader rely on their unspoken prejudices and provide their own answer, but first I would like to point out, that in the mental health sense, we live in a whole new environment, one that we arguably haven’t come completely to terms with.

Because in the good old days, no one went insane, no one went postal, and no one espoused an alternative point of view…right? Or maybe we’re being exposed to new kinds of psychological pathogens. I’m just saying.

When I write a story like ‘Lenny lays an Egg,’ or ‘The Second Coming,’ or ‘News from the Future,’ there are plenty of people who might object to those stories.

“Those are just crazy stories, Louis.”

Why in the heck would any serious writer do something like that?

I’m trying to poke and prod at your subconscious assumptions, your prejudices, (we all have them,) and your unspoken attitudes. I’m trying to arouse your objectivity, and force your critical faculties to adapt to the modern world, rather than rely on old, outmoded and archaic thinking, which in the end is merely a dogmatic incantation of the most superstitious sort—like how noble royalty is, and how indispensible for local politics in the global village.

I just want you to think about things.

One of the most troubling aspects of modern life is the tendency to try and make everything safe. Everything must make sense, serve a purpose, or turn a profit. Everything must be tasteful and polite, and inoffensive to all comers. It must be politically correct to be valid as art, and to me that’s just so much copulating nonsense.

You can get all that on Canadian TV. Right? It’s all they do.

First, it simply isn’t a credible goal or outcome, secondly, I don’t want any part of such a boring world as some may contemplate, where everyone is labeled for life by their economic status at birth, and all crimes of the mind are punished swiftly, and a difference of attitude is somehow criminal.

That is the difference between art and commerce, I suppose.

It’s like a delicate flower. They come for the honey and spread the pollen. The ideas bear fruit elsewhere and then they take on a life of their own.

I figure it’s my job or something to try and change the world.

Ceremonial Hockey Stick.




Nick5001

 





I often thought if I had to join a repressed minority group, I’d like to be rich.

Sarnia, Sarnia, what a town, gotta love it. Plug in your electric shaver and the streetlights get dimmer.

I wish I was like one of them people who had more money than brains, although some say in my case it would be about eleven bucks. Not worth it, I guess.

People tell me I’m losing weight, it’s not exactly a compliment though. Kinda skinny, you know. I sorta gotta run around in the shower to get wet.

I like thinking, I do a lot of it. Someone told me if I think too much it will wear my brain out. And then I’ll be an even bigger idiot than I am now. I don’t see how that’s possible, you know?

Middle age is a time of maturity. (How old are you, anyway? –ed.) (Fifty-two…and a half. My birthday’s coming up in August and I want blah blah-blah blah-blah blah…)

So like your typical middle-aged man I have the mind of a fourteen-year-old boy trapped in the body of a seventy-year-old. (Let’s not go down that road, keep it light. –ed.)

Um, um, oh yeah, when I was a baby I was so ugly my parents fed me with a slingshot. (Hey!) And, and, they had to tie a pork chop around my neck to get the dog to play with me. (Are you quite finished? --ed.) I have leadership qualities. (Really? –ed.)

People look up to me.

(You ARE unusually tall. Have you thought of getting an earring and tying a red hanky on your head? –ed. )

{Nope. –Louis.)

I saw a TV commercial where they said “Our national reputation is riding on a hockey puck!” (Your reputation is sliding headfirst into your own goal with the puck in your mouth and your stick--!!!) {Let’s not go down that road!--Louis.} (-all fouled up in your equipment. –ed.)

{Whew! Almost had me worried there. --Louis}

(You ain’t the only one. –ed.)

I don’t actually play the hockey. But since it is a part of Canadian culture I keep a hockey stick around the house for ceremonial purposes. It’s not a prohibited weapon.

As a Canadian, I enjoy the Easter, and the springtime, and the long speeches ever so much. It is such a jolly time to dress up in our colourful native costume.

(Which is what? Faded jeans, tacky running shoes and a plaid hunting shirt? -- ed.)

(Yes, --ed, that’s right. Oh, yeah. Don’t forget the dumb-looking hat…)

One more thing, if you are wondering why I don’t have a girlfriend at present, it is because I’m saving up for a real good one.

(You can’t seriously expect to buy a girlfriend.--ed.)

I expect to buy a Porsche. The girlfriend thing will take care of itself.

{And on that note I expect I best be going…--Louis.}

{ expect you best…better…aw, the heck with it. – ed.}

You're using my brackets. (Doh! -- ed.)

“As a man thinketh, so shall it be.” I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. And with a face like that, I’m going to need some kind of an edge. So I’m not really that shallow and superficial. It just sounds that way at first glance.

{God grant us patience…--ed.}

(--yeah, me too.-Louis.)

…AND THERE HE WAS – GONE.

Today’s special bonus link.

Vancouver knows how to riot.

Running Pen Names: I just don't know who I am anymore.

by the Evil Dr. Emile Schmitt-Rottluff


Pen names are fascinating. They are all unique individuals, and seem to acquire their own voices very quickly. They have separate constituencies. Each audience is unique. Trying to think in those terms is challenging and insightful. (What sort of thing would that person say? What sort of book would that sort of reader like to read?) It takes up 'x' amount of time just developing their platform, and of course I have to write all their material for them.

Besides the Shalako Publishing imprint, I’m also running three pen names. Simple things like signing out of one Twitter account and signing into the proper one when following up new followers with another pen name aren’t hard to figure out.

When I open up Astor Fondue’s e-mail account and click on a link, it takes me right to Twitter.

It’s not immediately obvious who I’m signed in as on Twitter—I have to click on the little carat beside the gear symbol and see who I am. If I’m signed in as Svetlana Getonanov, then Astor wouldn’t be following back at all. Svetlana would be following back Astor’s new followers.

@louisbshalako has about 6,700 followers. But I have three accounts. I have @ShalakoBooks and @hyperlouis. When people are following people in their interest group, I have three chances to snag them as they’re going by, based on the weight of my numbers—those other accounts might have less than 2,000 followers, and in fact I’m tweeting identical content. That’s easy enough to maintain when setting out, although I could take any account and go on a big list-building campaign. I could easily target a new audience with any account. Let’s say pen name Ivan P. Krumholtz gets fifteen new followers. I can sign into any account and follow them back, say if @louisbshalako is building his list that day. Ivan has maybe sixteen hundred followers right now. The other couple of accounts are really only up to maybe 2-300 followers on Twitter.

They all have a separate e-mail address, or they couldn’t sign up for Facebook. They all get Facebook notifications by e-mail. I’m going to turn that off. I can confirm friend requests and like things directly from Facebook. In terms of network security, they have different passwords.

A hacker might knock out one account, but he won’t get my whole network all at once. Most hacks are either someone you know or your phone or laptop was misplaced or stolen. No one really cares about me anyway. I figure I’m pretty good there.

With an account like Smashwords, when pinning to Pinterest, or posting on Reddit, it’s always going to be posted by the default account; i.e. the one listed under the important payee information; either that, or the one you are presently signed into on Pinterest. I’ll try and analyze that further. Since all my pen names have the same payee information, you have to copy the link and go directly to Pinterest to post that under the proper pen name. Only one of my pen names is on Pinterest. None are on Stumbleupon, Goodreads, Kindleboards, etc. All of them are on Facebook. One of them is on LinkedIn. It takes time to build these names up. This is a long-term project.

Two pen names are male and one is female. It’s interesting to try and project some sort of personality through what are essentially characters into a social network. It’s challenging, but I’ve learned a lot too.

Men are easily fooled by a pretty face. Women don’t respond to the erotica ostensibly written by a member of their own sex. My approach and presentation are all wrong for that to work. I thought the big abs would do it, right? But they want to see a woman on there too, and some sort of romantic background images. She must be in expensive underwear—this is my gut instinct. And men don’t buy erotica—they just go off and look at porn pictures on someone else’s website, in other words not my website.

Men find the pen-name character fascinating, especially guys from eastern cultures. A sexually-liberated woman, and a good looking one, one is who accessible, is a rare find. They’re hitting on her, mostly nicely, which brings certain insights to this male writer.

The ones that don’t hit on her are quickly forgotten and relegated to the bottom of the list. Interesting glimpse into the female mind, and probably all human minds there, boys and girls. It’s a glimpse into the minds of my fellow males, because it’s quickly become obvious that I’m a little too shy with the ladies. I’m nowhere near forwards enough.

Most of them are pretty nice guys, really, they’re just a bit lonely and really don’t have much to lose by it. It was an interesting thought process that went through my head the first few times some guy opened up the chat box on me…

It struck me just how much of a pain in the butt real beauty must be sometimes. It would take some maturity and some experience in letting the poor fellows down nicely, with a little compassion, and trying to handle things in a nice way—although I’m tempted to send them a free ebook and ask for a five-star review. I reckon quite of few of them would do it, as there is a sucker born every minute according to one well-known source.

Sure glad I ain’t one of them.


Editor's Note: Dr. Schmitt-Rottluff is a regular contributor to this blog and also appears in a starring role in, 'On the Nature of the Gods.'

The Parting.

All good things must come to an end.

Fuego lay in the entrance to the cave all morning long. Soaking up the wan, late-summer sunshine, should have brought contentment and a sense of well-being. His belly was full, having sated his hunger on a fat buck three days before. Fuego had nibbled on a few choice greens to aid in digestion, as was his habit these many years. The aches and pains were mostly gone.

Sooner or later they would flare up, and he should have been enjoying the sloth, the ease--the sheer luxury of not having to work for his living. But it was no good.

At first, he thought she wasn’t coming, and his heart ached. But it would ache, and it was going to ache, and there was nothing to be done about it. As the sun rose higher in the sky, his ears caught the click of a stone, dislodged from its habitual resting-place with a small cry of indignation. He knew it was her foot that had kicked it. A flicker of white dress caught his eye through the trees lining the trail. He sat up then, with anticipation, and a sense of dread. He watched the gap in the cedars with the intensity of the hunt, with his big old heart beating coldly but insistently in his deep, hard, barrel of a chest. Flaring, pebble-skinned nostrils sought her precious scent on the wavering breezes. Her complex tangle of emotions were sensed rather than seen, although there were signs; as she clambered up the bluff to the base of the cliff, where the caves began and the forest was dark, wet and thickly-festooned with creeping vines. Something about the tension in the neck and shoulders, a clue in the tightness of the chest, the unhurried pace somehow languid and hopeless-looking; unconsciously putting off the telling of some unpleasant truth. He could feel the heat of her now. Even closing his eyes, he could follow her path as she managed the last few twists and turns.

So it was true, then.

Diana was going off to school. There was nothing he or she could do about it. Higher powers had decreed it. And once having gone, there was no coming back. He knew he would inevitably lose her. Little girls grow up and turn into tall, healthy, intelligent young women. They go on to other things. The slender, raven-haired girl, with the bottomless, sea-blue eyes, with her berry-like lips pursed up in tender pain, looked at him, and he just knew.

“Fuego.” She said it with pleasure, and regret.

He cringed and cowered at her feet, tongue hanging out, and then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he rolled over on his back, exposing the wide, flat, cloud-grey scales, fading into the sky when he hunted, just where they were the smoothest and the finest.

What had to be had to be, but not just yet. One last precious moment with her…

She stood just ahead of his thigh, and reached over and scratched him so, just the way he loved it. As she stroked and scratched at his abdomen, just where the ribs stop to make way for the soft, white underbelly, he rolled from side to side and his tail whipped gently and yet with blinding speed around to sweep itself about her feet and then crawl up to wrap her hips in a loving caress. He held her there, with a tender gentleness that belied his sheer size, speed and strength. The very symbol of courage, wrapped around her little fingers, if only; if only; as he tasted the base of her throat with his lighting-forked tongue, with the red centre, and its long stripes of jet-black on each side…the two lobes as sharp as a pin at the extremity. But he could never have hurt her. Never.

“Oh, poor Fuego.” She was half  laughing and then a sudden catch, like the very breath had seized up in her throat.

She stared into the hollow orbs of his golden eyes and he felt a kind of panic at losing her.

“Oh, Fuego."

She was uncomfortable with this moment, and yet it had to be done. He felt her pain as she shifted a little, back and forth, and forwards and backwards. He danced with her in sweet regret and joyful longing, a kind of grieving for a past that they could never forget, still laying flat on his back and swooning in physical contact with her. She put her hands into his wickedly sharpened talons, and they danced there for a moment, both feeling the same unspoken song of sadness, and love, and parting. He lay on his back and danced with her.

“I’ll never forget you.”

He carefully jetted out small bursts of smoke and ringlets of fire from his nostrils.

It was his way of saying that it was okay. Since they had known each other for quite some time, she understood. He had watched her grow up. She had gotten to know him as a gentle and lonely creature, with no other creatures like himself to be with. The girl walked over to the ledge and he followed. She stood beside the dragon for a moment, looking out over the valley, with its horses, pastures, fields of softly-bending ripe grain. They could see her manor, the red roof of the house where she lived on the far distant hill-top. He only had eyes for her, as she stood there with her arms wrapped around herself in a kind of desolation. Fuego lay on his back again, with his legs and forepaws sticking up in the air as if gravity had gone on vacation, and just stared at her in hopes of remembering this moment forever, to remember her just as she was at just this moment.

“I want to see you fly, for one last time, Fuego.”

The dragon felt her using both hands to rub and stroke him under the chin, which always made him feel so sleepy…but this time he felt tears, big salt drops of tears, each enough to fill a bucket, forming in the corners of his golden-orbed eyes, with their inscrutable, black vertical pupils.

To spare her as much pain as possible, he leapt up ever so carefully, yet startling in its sheer quickness, spinning right-side-up, and flapping his wings in a joy that he hoped was well-feigned, hoping to fool her. He fluttered up and down in lazy figure eights, backing and diving, and hovering there in an exhibition of pure, unrivalled vitality. She looked down at her feet for a moment, and he knew that he had failed, but it was all right, that she understood, and he settled to the ground momentarily. The strong beat of his leathern wings slowly subsided. The dragon rested his heart, aware that she had a long journey ahead, and that so did he; although he was trying not to dwell upon it.

Standing there, she looked so alone. The girl allowed him to approach; and yet what courage she had shown the first time they had met! What kindness…what compassion.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close.

“Good-bye, Fuego.” They clung together for a long time.

He had to let her go, to set her free. He could not keep her forever. To attempt to do so would be wrong.

Fuego sighed deeply. Sucking in one huge, vast, barren sob of air, he tried to speak. It turned to a low, forlorn howl, starting deep and low and building to a siren-like crescendo of love, and longing, fearfulness, and loneliness, grief, and despair. She stepped back, her eyes staring at his face, all lumpy, and green, and with the bones, great huge bones so alive and hard under the skin, as his muscles worked in response to emotions he could not articulate. Tears ran down her face.

Fuego turned his back on her; forcing himself to take two, then three steps; and dropped over the ledge, and then catching the rocks and boulders one by one with his talons, he thrust himself into flight over the hillside, with the gloomy darkness of the trees coming up from below. He gave a series of strong beats, with the heart and lungs responding magnificently, with his wings reassuringly flexing without unexpected cricks and aches. Turning into the stronger winds coming up from the far valley to the west, cautiously hooding his eyes internally to avoid burning them in the blazing globe of the sun, he stroked his way up to safety. With careful timing, matching his breath to the beating of his wings, purging his vast lungs each time with a forceful grunt, he clawed his way up, and out over the river, foaming in the rocky valley below.

And then he had no choice but to turn again…

There was time for one last look back, to see her standing there in fragile dignity. Her outstretched arm, the pale glimmer of her outspread fingers, her last, gentle, farewell wave, was almost more than he could bear.

She was all grown up now, and it was time for them both to move on.

End

This story originally appeared in Breath and Shadow.