Welcome
Plunging Into The Pool
What if you gave in to desires you had never dared to confess?
This genre-defying blend of personal memoir and steamy erotic fiction reveals my answer.
I thought John was safely confined to the realm of my secret fantasies,
but his reappearance rekindled smoldering desires that had never been fully extinguished.
Drinks after work led to a subtly flirtatious dinner, tensions increased when we met again, and I realized I would be unable to resist if he would only make the right move.
Would he satisfy the longings I had thought could never be fulfilled?
If we took the Plunge Into The Pool, the release of pent up desire would surely be so forceful
as to result in an encounter that, when described in explicit detail,
would definitely not be appropriate for readers under 18.
Mark and John hadn’t seen each other since high school, but John’s return after 24 years leads to an encounter unlike anything either of them had ever experienced.
Readers expecting to get right to the explicit details will be disappointed. This confessional novella is more about how this encounter came to pass, why it was important to Mark and what he thought about it.
Still, all the juicy details are included, so this title is for adult readers only.
Still, all the juicy details are included, so this title is for adult readers only.
You can read the beginning of my story in the posts immediately below,
or follow this link to the entire story:
Free Epub available here.
Free PDF available here.
Dedication
My story is dedicated to the female reader. I love talking to women, sharing my thoughts with them, and hearing their stories. So I decided to write this description of my experience in full detail to give a little back for all the pleasures women have provided throughout my life.
I hope there are at least a few female readers who will be intrigued by my story, and who will enjoy getting into my head to hear what I thought about this experience.
I hope there are at least a few female readers who will be intrigued by my story, and who will enjoy getting into my head to hear what I thought about this experience.
I also hope they enjoy the mystery of reading a story that unfolds slowly, trusting that the author will explain everything, eventually.
(This website is for adults only; if you are not an adult, please do not access this site!)
Your "dedication" just shows your internalized homophobia and will kill your book before it even takes off. You're a man who only feels comfortable with his male/male desires if it in some way involves or references a female. You're so consumed by this that you need to let your readers know BEFORE the story even starts, thereby alienating any readers who don't need or want to know that about the author. Why? Simply so no one thinks or assumes you are gay. What's funny (and sad) is that this is common and tired. The fact that you truly believe you wrote this "for women" is one thing. The fact that you feel compelled to let readers know this is something different altogether. It is an insult to gay men and is laughable. It fetishizes homosexual desire and sex. You seem to think this is something new or cutting-edge or presents some story worthy of telling in and of itself. It's old, it's lame, and it shows how sensitive your ego is about your actual or perceived sexuality.
ReplyDeleteYou raise a valid point, Thomas T. As I finished my story and thought about publishing it, I was worried that some readers would react the way you have. I suspected that some might think that I was belittling gay men by treating gay sex as an object of fascination and titillation – by fetishizing it, as you say.
DeleteYou're right about that; I will own up to fetishizing gay sex. But I don’t think it has to follow that I have insulted gay men. My experience has been that often some people can be intrigued by something that other people find to be quite ordinary, and I think that’s the case here. I understand you to mean that my story sort of says “oh look at that, isn’t that weird and exotic” about something that other people would say, “no, not at all, in fact, that’s my life every day, can’t I just get on with it without you pointing at me?!” I would only respond that I tried to be as respectful as I could, while remaining true to myself and honest with the reader that in fact, for me, gay sex is actually quite fascinating.
You are also exactly right that for me, the idea of gay sex is not really exciting without the presence (at least implicit) of a female observer. In some ways, my story is about why I feel this way and what are the results of playing this idea out. You say its because I'm homophobic, and you're entitled to your opinion, but I don't feel that way. Anyway, anyone can read my story and draw their own conclusions.
Although you don't seem to believe me, my dedication does explain my real motivation for writing my story - whether or not it’s a proper motivation I have to leave to the reader to judge. I put it up front, before the story starts, because I know my story is a little different from some others and so I think readers should know my motivation at the beginning. If my reason for writing this story would put someone off, I would rather they know that before they waste their time reading it.
I know it's impossible to write anything without bothering or annoying some people, but at least I can apologize if what I wrote caused that reaction for you. I didn’t set out to criticize anyone.
As a white person, I have written a book about my desire to have sex with a black person. I wanted to be clear about that from the beginning:
Delete"My story is dedicated to the white reader. I love talking to whites, sharing my thoughts with them, and hearing their stories. So I decided to write this description of my experience in full detail to give a little back for all the pleasures whites have provided throughout my life.
I hope there are at least a few white readers who will be intrigued by my story, and who will enjoy getting into my head to hear what I thought about this experience.
I also hope they enjoy the mystery of reading a story that unfolds slowly, trusting that the author will explain everything, eventually. This is not to say, of course, that blacks will not also enjoy reading this story. It’s just that I did not write this story for them."
I then go on to tell a story about how I finally lived out my fantasy of having sex with a black, but again - I did this for whites.
Hopefully reading your words in a different context will illuminate a little better why it is not only insulting but homophobic and oppressive, just like the above dedication is has undeniably racist overtones. If you can't see how this is wholly problematic for your book, then I'm not sure what to tell you. If it is your goal to be a successful author, then I simply suggest you leave this out. JK Rowling didn't preface her book by saying "I wrote this for children. If adults read it then that's fine but I wrote it for children."
Writing should be accessible for anyone and everyone and again your need to alienate your readership based on your own personal tastes says more about you than it does anything else.
Thank you for your follow up post, it was helpful in understanding you and I think this is an interesting discussion. Like I said before, you make a valid point so I don’t disagree with you entirely, but I do have a few things to say in response.
DeleteFirst, at the risk of being obvious, one reason for my dedication is that there are many women who like to read m/m fiction. I’ve thought for a while that this is interesting, so as I was thinking about my story, I asked myself, what if someone wrote a m/m story specifically for women? Does that work as a concept? I understand that you’re saying it doesn’t work, but even if it doesn’t work, I think it’s ok to give it a try, just to see what happens.
(I recognize that this plays to a stereotype, and it's not possible to write something “for women” in the first place. Obviously women readers are looking for lots of different things in a book and I can't pigeonhole what "women" would want to read. But that’s a different question.)
Second, I thought it was interesting when your first post said I had written my dedication to demonstrate that I was not gay. I agree with you that it seems to say that, but when I looked at it again, with your point in mind, I realized that what I wrote is open to the opposite interpretation. I say I enjoy talking to women, etc., but I never say that I am romantically or sexually attracted to them. And, since my story is (spoiler alert) partially about moving away from heterosexuality, it’s almost as if I am saying the opposite. That is, since I am gay and therefore wouldn’t be involved with women romantically or sexually, I’m writing this story to do something for women in a different way. Again, I’m not trying to argue with you; it was just interesting to me that I wrote the dedication in a way that’s open to either interpretation.
(continued)
(continuing ...)
DeleteI understand your real point is that writing should be accessible and welcoming to all readers. I agree that is a good goal, but what I’m trying to say is that there is more than one way to reach that goal. To take the example in your second post, certainly I see the racial overtones of what you say, but think again about it. Let’s say there’s a white person who wants to persuade other whites to be more open to interracial relationships. So the author writes a story about living the fantasy of an interracial relationship, and says up front that the story is written for whites. Is that really so bad? Does saying that the story is written for whites mean that others can’t also enjoy it? Like I said, I see your point of view, but I don’t think there’s only one possible interpretation of that author’s motives.
Even more important is how an author should think about their audience when writing. The difficult question is whether it’s good or bad for an author to focus on a specific audience or type of reader. I think your JK Rowling example actually makes my point. If she had included that dedication on her books, I don’t think adults would feel any worse. Adults might even think it’s neat that JK set out to write a book for kids, but adults like it too. And I just don’t think that if an author writes a book with one audience in mind, and even if the author says that directly, that means the book isn’t accessible to other readers.
The fact is, when I wrote my story, I thought about women I know and what they might like to read. I thought about women who like m/m fiction, and what in particular they might like about it. I thought about what kind of story I would like to read, as a man, if a woman wrote about her experience with another woman. All along, I knew that any story like this is going to reach a limited audience, so I wasn’t worried about having a lot of readers. It just seemed to me to be a neat idea - something I wanted to do, literally like I said, for female readers. And so when I was done, it was natural to me to explain what was on my mind as I wrote the story – what was my inspiration – so that readers could know where I was coming from.
I understand why you were put off by what I said, and I apologize for that. Most of all, like I said before, I think you are right that my story fetishizes gay sex. As I said, I tried to be as respectful as I could, but to be blunt, that's the nature of my story. My story isn't about gay sex or gay relationships. It's about what straight people think about gay sex and relationships. It's about a straight man's journey in that direction. You are right that this is a very touchy subject, and I'm open to the criticism that I've mishandled it. But I don't think there's any subject that should be off limits, if it's handled in the right way. And it was partly because I realized this is a touchy subject, and that my story is different from other stories that appear on the surface to be similar, I wanted to say something up front so readers would know where I was coming from.