Note: Reasons Until After

Reasons why it's my best story ever!!!

2008-10-22

Reasons Until After: Ashley is sixteen and when the quarterback of the football team falls in love with him, everyone assumes the boy is gay. This would be bad if it didn't suddenly bring Ashley to the attention of the three hottest girls in school, cheerleaders determined to teach him all about life, love, and a little thing they like to call "girl fun"…What could possibly be wrong with that?

Story Codes: fff/m, teen, romance, reluctant, oral, cd, cheerleaders, and angst, lots and lots of angst

Romance/Some Sex

Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

I'm posting my subversive novel "Reasons Until After" and yeah, it's one of the very best stories I've ever written about anything. Convincing people to read it is of course problematic, but I'm used to that. This story does get spanked, as do I, for having the gall not to regurgitate what most readers are looking for. Spank me all you want, I'm not going away and I'm not going to change. I have no fear of anyone around here.

Sorry if that frightens you. (oops…that'll get me another 1-1-1) Thankfully, I do not suffer from a lack of self-confidence and I trust my own judgment far more than I trust the scoring system on SOL.

Luckily for me, I'm also blessed with my fair share of attention. A lot of people like this story quite a bit. A lot of people who presumably know what they're talking about, probably more than I do, and I like that. I always learn a lot and try to pay attention. Some of the feedback I've received has been over-the-top cool, like this one…

San Francisco GYM (Gay Youth Movement) has included this little note in the reviews section of its newsletter which is very flattering. Among other things, they said:

"…Unsurprisingly, recent fiction has included a number of female authors exploring male sexuality; among these…Rachael Ross [has] given us stories which are at once familiar and fresh in their scope and appeal. 'Reasons Until After' stands out as an exploration of sexual identity crises and revels in a romantic, non-prejudicial world-view…"

That was pretty nice of them and their email was very generous, as was a note from the Advisor of the Akron Pride Center Youth Group in Ohio. He asked me for permission to distribute the story in print form, to make it available "...as an example of a story of love and self-acceptance." That's a sweet thought and it made me smile, as you can imagine.

Getting letters and feedback like that is very nice and gratifying, considering I wrote the story with little more intent than to entertain myself for a few hours. I received another note, from someone familiar with publishing stories a similar themes, suggesting I clean it up a bit, meaning tone down the sexual content and rework the relationship between Ashley and the three girls to be less explicit, and market the story as a novel.

I'm not too sure about that, but I can see the appeal of my little novel. The story, when I posted it under the rache pen name, scored very low. I think a number of readers were expecting something different and so I got punished for not meeting expectations. It merely reinforced my already strong opinion that scores are meaningless. The amount of feedback was substantial and positive, without exception. Many of my emails wondered, "Why is it scoring so low? Are people idiots?" and of course, I have no answer to that.

Technically? It's a very good story, plot and character-wise. It's been edited and proofed pretty well, although only by me. I'm sure a real editor could find some things to fix, but what's the point? When I bother to do it, I'm a better editor than most of the editors around here anyway, if you'll excuse a bit of immodest honesty. Half the editors don't answer requests for editing and half of the rest can't edit their own offers of assistance. Have you seen those??? heh! Editors...Don't get me started. I have a real love-hate thing going there.

Some people wondered about the social permissiveness and ready acceptance of Dan and Ashley by their peers and my explanation for that is simple. The story is about self-awareness and growth. It isn't a me-vs-world story; most of the conflict is internalized and so there was no reason to create external conflict beyond what exists in two characters, Roger and Billy Felder. They represent non-acceptance by expectation and brute conformity, and they're overcome rather easily and in ways that reinforce or inform Ashley in his struggle with his self-identity.

It isn't really about being gay, or being transgender, it's about a teenager struggling to understand who he is, how others perceive him, and where he's going as he matures. It's a story we all live through and I chose the characters largely because they're at the extreme of acceptance. They make it easier for me to make my point. It was a decision based on what would serve the story best and not really one of personal preference or anything like that.

If I had my first choice, it would have been a lesbian story. Danielle was the new girl at school and she falls in love with Ashley, another girl, and it would have worked fine. But for whatever reason, that sort of story is so much more acceptable to the general readership. Everybody loves lesbians and sometimes I cater to that, sometimes I'd rather buck the system and push people to read something they wouldn't normally look at. That really is one of my goals as a writer, whether it's erotic or mainstream or whatever. I already know that I have the audience that will be looking for a story of a certain type, so my real aim is to grab the readers who aren't looking for it.

The emails that start out, "Normally wouldn't read a story like this, but…" those ones are among the most rewarding emails I get. I love those.

I guess that's about all I have to say about it.

T.S.Severe