I posted this story because I really like it; I think it's well written and interesting & I wanted to share it. But I also did it as an experiment: would anybody react negatively to a story filled with such explicit sexual content? Would people unsubscribe because of it? And conversely, since most of the story is behind a paywall, would people sign up (and get a free book) in order to read it? So far the answer has been a resounding **nothing**. Two people have 'liked' the story; one person has made comments, nobody has unsubscribed and nobody has signed up for a free trial. These are all-time low marks. My 'provocative' story is evidently as inert as neon. Oh well.
I'm gratified that at least some people seem to be taking my post in the spirit in which it was posted — which is, basically, for want of a better word, fun. In my 'What's the frequency, Tom?' post I riffed on what one might call Cosmic Coincidences and Astral Connections, and the 'Nadine' story is kind of a distillation of the essence of that kind of thing. I'll tell you, seeing that photo on the cover of that newspaper in coffee shop in the basement of the Purdue Memorial Union was an absolute thrill. It really did feel like some cosmic entity was sending me an approving message filled with love & humor. I don't have any deeply held beliefs about such things, but I do recall that feeling, and I wanted to share it.
Good ole Kuro5hin. I spent WAY too much time on that site around the same time, and it actually figures into the origin story of my relationship with my wife through some strategically-written diaries around 2002.
Trivia for some folks who might not appreciate its significance. In addition to being a place that produced writers that I'm still running into two decades later (our proprietor here, as well as some other), Kuro5hin was also the project that produced the Scoop content engine (as a reaction to whatever Slashdot called their engine). Given its support for user diaries and being one of the more advanced community-centric content engines, it served as the basis for the influentail political sites DailyKos (set up around the time the Howard Dean presidential campaign was going hard), and that was followed by RedState, a conservative version of the DailyKos during the mid-Aughts.
You can thank the conservative community over at RedState (when it still supported reader diaries and hadn't become a thin mouthpiece for a conservative publishing company) for coming up with something called the Precinct Committeeman Project, a grassroots effort launched in the waning days of the Bush administration to stock local parties with conservative true-believers, which gave rise to the infamous Freedom Caucus in the early 2010s, and was been the playbook that Trump's fans executed very effectively to take over the local GOP party organs.
There might be an alternative universe where Rusty Foster didn't build Scoop for Kuro5hin and all of this unfolded on another platform, but as someone who watched it unfold in real-time, I doubt it. Scoop was ahead of its time for bringing together tight-knit communities in ways that it took the Movable Type (RIP) and Wordpress sites to start to establish almost a decade later.
I think I will have to do a Sundman figures it out! story or two about K5 and HuSi, and also about me & Rusty. I can't get him to acknowledge my existence these days, but back then he was, with two of his friends, an overnight guest at my house, and he gave a talk about community, virtual and IRL, as part of my wife Betty's lecture series at Vineyard Haven Public Library. A year or two after that he drove me around San Francisco in a rented jeep in the rain on a mission to retrieve a few boxes of my books for me to sell at an O'Reilly conference. A K5 diary written by one "Farq Q. Fenderson" was the spark that ignited my push to write the novella that became The Pains. Yes, K5 and then HuSi were big parts of my experience, and very impactful on my writing career, such as it is.
I'm sure this is great stuff & maybe I'll read it some day but what I would like to know now, Chris, is what you thought of my Nadine the Travel Agent story!
Nov 15, 2023·edited Nov 15, 2023Liked by john sundman
I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I don't dip into erotic fiction much (only by accident), but I was hooked up pretty much from the beginning. I think what I enjoyed the most was the amount of atmosphere and place you were able to convey, with relatively little descriptive writing.
Thank you. I don't read much in the way of erotic fiction either, & this is the only thing of that kind that I've published. I think of it as a story about some amazing cosmic coincidences, unreliable memory, sincerity vs bullshit, the life of grad students in 1978, the dislocation I experienced upon my return to Senegal after having been away for nearly two years, and then again upon coming back to the States 8 months later — among other things. But there is no way that I can think to convey what I wanted to convey that doesn't involve an honest account of the brief but astoundingly intense sexual connection at the core of it all.
Thanks again. It's nice to get a substantive comment on it!
I posted this story because I really like it; I think it's well written and interesting & I wanted to share it. But I also did it as an experiment: would anybody react negatively to a story filled with such explicit sexual content? Would people unsubscribe because of it? And conversely, since most of the story is behind a paywall, would people sign up (and get a free book) in order to read it? So far the answer has been a resounding **nothing**. Two people have 'liked' the story; one person has made comments, nobody has unsubscribed and nobody has signed up for a free trial. These are all-time low marks. My 'provocative' story is evidently as inert as neon. Oh well.
I like it
Just for fun...I was born in December 1978. 😂
Your comment elicited a legitimate laugh out loud. Thank you! (It also made me feel old, but I'm kind of used to that.)
Excellent. I aspire to provide value in any way that I can, especially through humor.
I'm gratified that at least some people seem to be taking my post in the spirit in which it was posted — which is, basically, for want of a better word, fun. In my 'What's the frequency, Tom?' post I riffed on what one might call Cosmic Coincidences and Astral Connections, and the 'Nadine' story is kind of a distillation of the essence of that kind of thing. I'll tell you, seeing that photo on the cover of that newspaper in coffee shop in the basement of the Purdue Memorial Union was an absolute thrill. It really did feel like some cosmic entity was sending me an approving message filled with love & humor. I don't have any deeply held beliefs about such things, but I do recall that feeling, and I wanted to share it.
Good ole Kuro5hin. I spent WAY too much time on that site around the same time, and it actually figures into the origin story of my relationship with my wife through some strategically-written diaries around 2002.
Trivia for some folks who might not appreciate its significance. In addition to being a place that produced writers that I'm still running into two decades later (our proprietor here, as well as some other), Kuro5hin was also the project that produced the Scoop content engine (as a reaction to whatever Slashdot called their engine). Given its support for user diaries and being one of the more advanced community-centric content engines, it served as the basis for the influentail political sites DailyKos (set up around the time the Howard Dean presidential campaign was going hard), and that was followed by RedState, a conservative version of the DailyKos during the mid-Aughts.
You can thank the conservative community over at RedState (when it still supported reader diaries and hadn't become a thin mouthpiece for a conservative publishing company) for coming up with something called the Precinct Committeeman Project, a grassroots effort launched in the waning days of the Bush administration to stock local parties with conservative true-believers, which gave rise to the infamous Freedom Caucus in the early 2010s, and was been the playbook that Trump's fans executed very effectively to take over the local GOP party organs.
There might be an alternative universe where Rusty Foster didn't build Scoop for Kuro5hin and all of this unfolded on another platform, but as someone who watched it unfold in real-time, I doubt it. Scoop was ahead of its time for bringing together tight-knit communities in ways that it took the Movable Type (RIP) and Wordpress sites to start to establish almost a decade later.
I think I will have to do a Sundman figures it out! story or two about K5 and HuSi, and also about me & Rusty. I can't get him to acknowledge my existence these days, but back then he was, with two of his friends, an overnight guest at my house, and he gave a talk about community, virtual and IRL, as part of my wife Betty's lecture series at Vineyard Haven Public Library. A year or two after that he drove me around San Francisco in a rented jeep in the rain on a mission to retrieve a few boxes of my books for me to sell at an O'Reilly conference. A K5 diary written by one "Farq Q. Fenderson" was the spark that ignited my push to write the novella that became The Pains. Yes, K5 and then HuSi were big parts of my experience, and very impactful on my writing career, such as it is.
Some local Maine reporting on the Scoop phenomenon.
https://www.mainebiz.biz/article/getting-the-scoop-software-developed-on-peaks-island-powers-influential-political-blogs
Also, I am intrigued by your line about 'strategically written diaries,' lol.
I'll share one of these days. Might make a decent Valentine's Day post on my own Substack once I take it out of deep freeze.
I'm sure this is great stuff & maybe I'll read it some day but what I would like to know now, Chris, is what you thought of my Nadine the Travel Agent story!
I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I don't dip into erotic fiction much (only by accident), but I was hooked up pretty much from the beginning. I think what I enjoyed the most was the amount of atmosphere and place you were able to convey, with relatively little descriptive writing.
Thank you. I don't read much in the way of erotic fiction either, & this is the only thing of that kind that I've published. I think of it as a story about some amazing cosmic coincidences, unreliable memory, sincerity vs bullshit, the life of grad students in 1978, the dislocation I experienced upon my return to Senegal after having been away for nearly two years, and then again upon coming back to the States 8 months later — among other things. But there is no way that I can think to convey what I wanted to convey that doesn't involve an honest account of the brief but astoundingly intense sexual connection at the core of it all.
Thanks again. It's nice to get a substantive comment on it!
I have it bookmarked to read this weekend when I'm of sound mind and not running around like a headless chicken trying to hit some deadlines.