www.intermittentrain.com

I may post on occasion here, but the bulk of my activity will be at the new site.

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1. A very strong, sexy hero.
2 A spunky, spicy heroine.
3. A sensual plot.
4. Red-hot scenes.
5. Teasing, bold dialogue.
6. Ecstatically satisfying ending.

In other words, if you can fill in the blanks and write well, there you go. Well, that’s not what he’s saying, but that’s one way to read lists.

I always have difficulty with lists. On one hand, it’s all true. For me the first reactions is often something along the line of, 1) can I get away with going slightly off-perfect examples to make it more interesting? Like a hero that doesn’t seem strong at first? Or a heroine who is excessively spunky, but later changes or was being misunderstood? Or any other way of sneakily appearing to not fit the perfect structure?

And then, for me, I go to 2) If I do follow the rules, how can I make it my own? This usually means creating another entire structure that runs parallel to the given elements of the “assignment”. Like taking the given elements but making the story as much as anything a representation of ethical issues surrounding euthanasia, or an exploration and comparison of mental health issues by having a character with anorexia and another with drug addiction.

Or just twisting things in a simple way. Make the hero/heroines gay but only one openly so? Or go the other way; one is trying to appear gay but in truth is not? Maybe the hero tries to give the appearance of being gay because he’s striving to become a fashion designer but he’s actually hetro?

I dunno; but it generates fodder for thought anyway.

The party was taking place in the house of some friends. They were moving out but had left behind some chairs, sofas and the like to use the empty house for one last big party. People were spread out all over all the rooms of both floors making it easy for my girlfriend and I avoid each other by splitting up and finding separate areas of the party. I headed downstairs with my beer while she went upstairs with her wine. Her parting words were that she’d find herself a ride home.

It was a costume party, with a Roman or toga theme. I had borrowed a costume from a friend which had come complete with a short white tunic, gold belt, gold floral headband, and a shield. It was a lot more elaborate than most as much of the crowd had simply wrapped themselves in sheets. A lot of bra straps were visible where women had draped the sheet over one side and under their arm on the other side like a toga. I guess the Roman women wore bras of a different style.

Downstairs had been designated as the dance room. It was a pretty open area as it was largely unfinished, and it was dimmer than upstairs with a few people jumping and bumping in the middle of the room while others sat on sofas or stood along the walls while the stereo thumped. I grabbed the first of my beers and tried to chill.

Many beers later I was still sitting mostly by myself on a wobbly old bar stool when a tall pretty girl with long blond hair wrapped in a light orange toga (sheet) came nearby and smiled. I tried to smile back but I still wasn’t feeling too enthusiastic. It must have been pretty obvious because she took her fingers, placed them at the corners of my mouth and tried to pull my lips up into a smile. I laughed and said I was just a bit down. She said that she had noticed and that’s why she had come over. I told her that my girlfriend and I had had a fight. She said that she had an argument with her boyfriend yesterday and he hadn’t come to the party as a result. We commiserated over our similar situations for a while which made me feel a lot better.

She asked me if I’d like to dance and I said sure. We went out and danced a couple of numbers before someone switched the music mix to slow dances. I wasn’t sure if she was interested so I looked her in the eye and raised my eyebrows as a question. She smiled and leaned in to me and we continued our dancing. In her heels she was a little taller than me and my ear rested on her cheek as we leaned in and touched our heads together creating a small intimate space in between us. Her hair smelt so good.

In the middle of the song someone turned off the rest of the lights. All that remained was light coming from stairway from upstairs. There weren’t a lot of people downstairs anymore so I guess someone figured the other few wouldn’t mind. I sure didn’t. We drew in closer to each other and I could feel her breasts on my upper chest so I tried to swing my upper body opposite hers so that her breasts would rub across my chest. Our knees kept bumping until I worked my right leg in between her legs and which allowed me to move in closer. She responded by squeezing my leg between her legs. With my short tunic and her toga draped to one side it was skin on skin and it felt fantastic.

My hand slipped lower on her back until I reached her butt cheek. I spread my fingers wide so as to grasp as much as possible and then squeezed it, the sheet of her toga slipping slightly against her under my grasp. She moaned softly and wriggled her butt in my hand to indicate her encouragement. I continued to alternate squeezing with releasing until my other hand reached her other butt cheek. I pushed some extra sheet in between my hands before grasping the other cheek and then grabbed both cheeks. Then I used the looseness of the sheet to allow me to alternately spread her butt cheeks apart and then back together again.

In this case a literary agent, going by the username of @SlushPileHell started a contest. To enter the contest, you tweet a title using the #badkiddybooks tag. To vote, you re-tweet someone’s entry.

I went there, thinking of entering, but the ones that I read there were just too good and instead I spent my time reading, laughing, and voting. I don’t even know what the prize was.

I asked SlushPileHell if it was okay with him if I posted my own list of favs, so here they are:

• gr3b0: “‘Do Babies Bounce?’ and other science experiments for
  older siblings
• weirdlucy: Hitchhiking, a Guide for Girls Daddy Never Loved
• GeneDoucette: Rachel Has Seven Mommies: A Childrens Guide to
  the Book of Mormon
• LisaLOwens: “Santa Is Watching” and Other Lies Your Parents
  Told You
• alc417 Anorexia: How to Avoid Being the Girl With the Good
  Personality
• SesshasWorld: The Hunt for Harriet’s Hymen
• SesshasWorld:  Your Ass – The Final Frontier
• hmmille: Everybody poops: now with photos
• AngieLedbetter:  Encyclopedia Brown: The Case of Strange Noises from Your Parents’ Room
• tedopon: Bi Curious George
• Calbion: Charlotte’s Bed
• tedopon: The Scat in the Hat
• taojoannes or: One Fish Two Fish, Black Fish Jew Fish
• midos_mom : The Velveteen-Corsetted Rabbit and Her Leather Whip
• lkblackburne: The Very Hungry Flesh Eating Bacteria
• Buddhapuss: Dick and Jane Discover Coke, A Scratch and Sniff
  Book
• darrenpardee: Hop On Pop (Mommy’s Version)
• timdonnelly: Green Eggs and Botulism
• Scionical: Green Eggs and Ecstasy
• AVgrl: Ashley Has Two Daddies. And They’re Both Going to Burn in
  Hell

And my personal (twisted) fav:

• ianthealy: Willy Wanker and the Chocolate Highway

As of right now, I don’t know if the winner has been chosen or indicated, but I think all the readers were winners!

Update: He’s putting a list of top 25 on his own site later.

Update again: Official winner:

• MJsRetweet: Daddy Has an Itch. Mommy Smells Like Fish: A Child’s Rhyming Guide to STD’s

Some months back I had read another of his earlier books (of which “Digital Fortress” is another, lest you rush out hoping it’s a new Dan Brown novel) all of which have found renewed interest and reprinting as a result of the big ones and the movies. What became more and more obvious to me is that he is a writer of plots, without a lot of character development or straight ahead writing ability. If you read “The Da Vinci Code” you get a sense of this, but it really becomes obvious when you take a step back and read some of his earlier books.

I don’t know whether he got better as a writer by the time he wrote “The Da Vinci Code”, or he just got a better editor who improved his books more as time went on. In any event, I sped through “Digital Fortress” by reading only the first line of each paragraph, and later on by only reading the first lines of the first two paragraphs in each chapter.

Nice plot, not particularly well written, not particularly interesting charaters.

———-

The room in Cefalu had a small balcony but not much of a view. We were on the third and top floor but our view consisted of the trees across the street and in the far distance was the ocean. The balcony was a porch that the rooms on the floor shared and was separated by a wall that was taller than Jeff’s 5′ 10″ for the first part and then sloped down to the height of the railing, probably to allow more viewing and sun. If you looked straight down over the railing you could look into the porches of the second floor because their balconies were much longer than ours.

We didn’t plan to spend much time in our room anyway. Cefalu is an amazing city of natural and historic views and in good weather there’s no reason to be inside if you are a visitor. Our first full day had been spent hiking the hill up to “Tempio di Diana” (Temple of Diana) and after that excursion we decided to sleep late and then spend a lazy day at the beach. Because the hotel was a distance from the beach and central areas of town we packed everything that we might want so that we wouldn’t have to return until we were done for the day.

The beaches are made of beautiful golden sand and at this time of year are covered with all shapes and forms of tourist bodies like ours. Thin bodies, wide bodies, dark bodies, some painfully white bodies (I hope they were well sunscreened), kids bodies, old bodies. I like to look at bodies so I was entertained. Jeff is more narrow in his interest. Where my interest is not restricted by gender or shape, he’s only interested in looking at women and mostly only ones that meet his tastes, which means cleavage that you could easily bury a cell phone in or butt cheeks that are well rounded and more than a handful. Maybe that’s why he was so interested in climbing the hill to see Diana. My cleavage meets his minimum interest level and I know that my butt is one of my best assets thanks to Jamaican heritage on my mother’s side. My sure-fire method of generating interest on his part (not that initiating is normally needed) is to bend over at the waist to look at something, preferably while wearing thong underwear covered by a soft cotton dress that molds to outlines well, as well as being easy to lift.

So the major part of the day was spent sunning, swimming, reading and looking. There seemed to be a lot of different nationalities which would make sense given the time of year, and the beach traffic was largely youngish and definitely provided enough samples for Jeff’s tastes. I enjoyed pointing some examples out to him as they arrived so that he wouldn’t miss out. He’s slightly nearsighted and refuses to buy prescription sunglasses so when he’s wearing sunglasses that means that he’s not seeing distances too clearly. It’s fun to discuss though. I know it’s objectifying a body that belongs to an actual person but at the same time it’s also like appreciating art or a beautiful sunset; it just is and it’s there, so why not discuss and share the enjoyment.

So this is my official hello world. Gradually I’ll transfer all the private postings that I’ve been maintaining elsewhere now that I have a semi-permanent home for them.