General Comments on My Stories

I'll weigh in with yet another posting supporting the comments in Jay's blog entry on story feedback. I recently got an email where the writer crowed that he gave one of my SOL scribblings a "1."

He said, in part, "Having given my first and only 1 rating, I assume you may wonder why. This is not a rating for the NiS universe. This was my opinion on your..." and he goes on to tell me why he so strongly disagrees with the material I wrote!

Fascinating, irritating, but in a way, rewarding. Why is a "1" rewarding? Well, I chose to look at his comments in a positive way. Apparently my writing engendered such passion in this reader that he felt compelled to react so strongly that he voted the story down and then wrote me about it. Isn't that a writer's dream? To evoke such a strong passion in a reader--positive OR negative--that he has to communicate that passion to the author?

In a way, that's one of the best compliments an author can receive. Knowledge that one of my writings so strongly affected a reader. Pretty cool.

Thanks for your nice comment. Unless I have a major brainstorm, I don't think there's much more to be said about further NiS activities. After all, the gang killed the Program off in two countries. I could try to come up with something about how Alaskan high schools ran the Program--after all, that's U.S.A. too :-)>

So maybe. We shall see. Take care.

I can see your point. But I knew a MGySgt during my Army days and the guy, MGySgt Mike, insisted that he be called either Sgt or "Gunny." He was the humblest man I ever met but was a decorated fighter (Silver Star, Korea) and I knew him as a the chief NCO of instructional operations at Quantico. Even though I was Army, I had many jarhead friends at Quantico. This was the Vietnam era and there was less "status" posturing between NCOs and officers than was the case even 10 years later. And as a Corps of Engineers officer, the Marines treated me like one of their own and not like a regular lowly "Army" grunt.

I suspect that the MGySgts you knew were not as secure as Mike was in their personal self-image and needed the additional validation of their higher rank when being addressed. Mike was nothing like that.

I was an officer instructor in a service school which held field operations at Quantico where I assisted in training Marine officer candidates, FBI, and DEA agents. I taught practical combat courses there along with Mike's instructors, who told all of us instructors to "just call me Sarge. My friends call me Gunny." The guy treated his staff like family and they loved him. The base's senior commanders were extremely respectful of the guy--truly a gentle warrior.

I modeled Stuart Denison after Mike.

Hey, I tried hard to show the general's respect for Denison in the parade ground scene in Ch 9:

“It was my real pleasure to honor them, Sergeant, and you too. As far as my leadership, Master Gunney, a senior officer is only the leader of ideas. Marines like you are leaders of men, and the real backbone of the Corps. Never forget that, Sergeant,” and he saluted Denison.

I think the only other place Denison was called "Sarge" (except by the narrator--I struggled with referring to him as Master Gunnery Sergeant or MGySgt but thought that most of my reading audience would think that usage was being pedantic, so I used "Sgt" and skipped the extra wordiness on the text) was by the MPs responding to the kidnapping. At Pendleton, the MP unit is directly under the command of the staff operations unit which is led by a MGySgt as its chief NCO. So those Marines would be part of Denison's command and could be very informal with him. In my military career, staff interactions between NCOs and their support troops were very unlike those in combat units where the protocol of address was strictly enforced.

(In my own Engineers instructional division, the NCOs and officers all were on a first-name basis with each other in private conversation. I tried to keep that idea of closeness as part of my story too.)

Glad you enjoyed my storytelling. Thanks for writing.

First, pardon about the delay. Your mail wound up in spam and when I moved it out, it somehow went lost--but now it's found.

Thanks so much for your praise for my stories. Some thoughts on future work:

It's difficult to develop viable plots when all I've been interested in writing (so far) is my anti-Program stories. How many ways are there to say it's bad? So far, I have the Program being opposed in North Carolina, Georgia, California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Alaska, and even London U.K. -- the whole country, actually. I could try writing about Australia, but there, anything goes and if their government tried the Program, people would ignore it and simply vote the government out.

My plots need to be realistic and plausible and the situations must occur without twisting reality. That said, the idea of a Program in an Amish school won't fly because their schools are private -- like the old-time one-room schoolhouse private. It's just like the case where the Program couldn't be forced to be run in a Catholic parochial school. The religions' first amendment rights would be violated in those cases.

I know little about Guam and Micronesia but I assume that the people there are totally integrated into western, even American culture, since the U.S. military has a major base on Guam. Since the French and British were major colonizers of the region I suspect that most natives are Roman Catholic, so a Program story there wouldn't be much different from, say, Puerto Rico, where the culture is fairly conservative. (Of course, it's too bad that Haiti with its vodun -- voodoo -- religion isn't part of the U.S. Now that might make for some interesting NiS antics... But things there are so bad that the schools are a mess too.)

I have a germ of an idea I'm toying with, not in the NiS universe, but one which brings together the people in my five stories. I have a few ideas but a big issue is coming up with the right kind of story conflict to provide challenge, momentum and suspense.

Once again, thanks for your kind comments.

I appreciate your thoughts.

You wrote ...without writing the same thing all over again.

Yes, true, and even moreso not mimicking another author's ideas. The plotlines of these erotica universes do converge somewhat and after a while, one story tends to look like many others.

You wrote ...and like I said they got a lot of Voodoo there as well.

Actually it's practiced in the entire southern Louisiana region and up the Mississippi to the lower Missouri River area, but not so much in the past 20-30 years. This is Cajun territory. French Creole. Mainly Catholic (French, then Spanish colonists originally, then expanded by the slave trade). And Vodou is a mix of animistic practices which came out of west Africa with the slave trade and merged with Christianity in Haiti and then came to Louisiana where it became known as Creole Voodoo or Louisiana Voodoo. (I'm a scholar of comparative religions.) The New Orleans association is mostly because the city had, for many years, "popularized" the idea as a tourist attraction which is why lots of people associate voodoo with NOLA.

You wrote ...But it would create a whole other setting for the program and the opposition against it.

Also there is the Creole-Cajun distinction--or rather non-distinction. They are more similar than different, actually. And both populations range across the entire economic spectrum. As in most urban areas, there are many poorer districts. There are a number of NiS stories set in poor neighborhoods and they are done well, at least conveying the atmosphere of poverty. I'm not sure I could write that well in a setting of economic hardship. But see my comments below.

You wrote ...Even in that heat, nobody likes to be force-stripped.

Don't forget the biting bugs! Every time I visited, the skeeters feasted. Clothes free? I shudder.

You wrote ... I think there is an interesting story to write on this concept, but I leave that up to you to decide.

When I suggested the idea of vodou to you, I already had a germ of a story idea that goes a bit into the mind-control realm but the story's plot is so far being elusive. When I write, I get into the head of the character in the story, who tells me what's happening, and I just write that. Then I have to keep control of the story or else the characters just take it over. That happened in my first story, actually.

You wrote ...Not much exciting bound to happen there, but maybe you got an idea on that.

That is exactly why that plot isn't going anywhere, unless I can figure out sources of conflict and tension. I thought of possibilities but so far they've been so overused that that they're timeworn and total cliche.

That's a reasonable suggestion. I think I'm like a lot of authors who, when the story idea comes to them, it's already populated with the prime character, the main protagonist. In every story I've written, when the plot coalesces in my mind, I become the protagonist or have become so closely attuned to the character that it's the character who directs the story flow--not me. My characters seem to take over the writing and they tell me who they are and what they know.

I know I'm not unique in that way. Many authors have that experience.

In fact, in "Roger and Cynthia," I included a character, Elliot, and he talks about being fat, ugly, and an outsider. I worked with trying to fit more of him into the plot but it didn't work well--the story line would become too cumbersome.

I'm at work now on another story and the protagonist was originally supposed to be underprivileged and poor, a loner, not particularly good looking and growing up in an area one step above a slum. Well, it started out that way, anyway, but the character took over and is currently working her way out of her beginnings. It's a coming of age story, not a rags to riches one, and it's based in the universe of the five previous stories I've posted. But this one has a serious twist.

This story might not be exactly what you were looking for. It kind of started as a story of an underprivileged kid but grew like Topsy.

Thanks for the nice comment about my writing.

SN