Veteran plaza authors: Which of your works are your favorite?

[Gromet]

The only greatest hits around here should be MsBehavin keeping me locked in her dungeon with her using a riding crop to make me do more updates. Thwack...

[TeaSer]

he he.
There was a story about a BDSM-writer being taken captive by a reader, dissatisfied with her accuracy. So she was locked into a dungeon, urged to write more fiction based on the mistreatment.
Maybe this plot should indeed be used on you, Gromet Of course with the small alteration that you are to release stories, not write them

TeaSer

[Shelley]

Hi Folks

Cannot pick a favorite of mine but the top 2 were

the Subterranean Sally series, mainly because I wrote it in the first person rather than normal her and him.
the Heather in the Highlands series, it was a private memorial to my closest friend.

Hope everyone is feeling good.

Regards

Shelley
xxx
AKA Wingco

[AmyAmy]

It's been a while now, but Betrayal will always be a favourite of mine.
I was in a particularly angry mood when I wrote it, and in a roundabout way it vents against so many things I hated about the erotic story scene: default objectification of women and glorification of white male privilege, racism and stereotyping, gratuitous scenes of torture, shallow revenge plots, absurdly unrealistic pony training, implausible body modification, and a bunch of other stuff.

Of course, if you take it at face value, Betrayal seems to include all those elements, but I thought I did a passable job of taking each one and undermining it in a way that would make a reader see them a little differently in future.

I thought my writing crossed a quality threshold with Betrayal, but whether that's true or not I've begun to wonder. Readers certainly stayed away from it in droves. It's not exactly fun, or easy reading, but I didn't think it would be quite so alienating. Certainly, if I was recommending something for somebody new to my stories, it wouldn't be my choice. But in terms of clearing the slate so I could move on to lighter themes, it did a lot of the work.


I'm also quite fond of Pale Recluse in that it tied up some loose ends from The Doll Factory in a way I was particularly pleased with, and introduced a conflicted duo of not-quite-humans I would like to write more for one day.


I would have picked Pretenders, but due to a mix-up it hasn't been posted yet. I think it's my sexiest story.


Original Sins got the best comments I've ever had, though they got wiped in the crash. I like it, but it's not my favourite.

[Zephyr]

I like writing the love story (with a twist) like between Shack and Tina in the "Shack" story series just concluded on the plaza. I generally write happy-ending stories and this one is an example. I try to write stories, with people as real as possible while keeping the audience in mind (we're not looking for Clive Cussler, more Jacqueline Susann or John Norman). I still check out semis when I drive past one with a sleeper and the wind-wings at the back of the cab to look to see how crowded it looks back there, and well, just in case...

I started out as "Dodger Rabbit" and posted a four-part sequel to a classic, "My Self-Bondage Nightmare part 2", where I had a lot of fun and took the female lead character a lot of fun places through the story. I've received permission from Teann to clean it up a little (I used a million commas back then!) and re-post it as Zephyr. At the time I posted it there was another author active on the site, Jeff Zephyr, and I didn't want to step on his work or get readers confused between the two of us.

I loved the situation in "William Shelton". One could be forgiven for dreaming of being around a girl like Marcie and I had seen in my life a few young ladies that had daddy issues like she did and where they took them, and it was sort of catharsis and perhaps a warning to the dads among us (like me). She too winds up with a good man who loves her where she's at, another happy ending that I wished for the ones in real life I knew.

The Nel and Don and Greg in "Consent" and "His Birthday Present" and "Scare Me" (there are at least two more stories with these characters in the works) are based on people I knew (with myself as "Greg") and the overall situations is autobiographical of me in my high school years. I did date and love "Nel" (we had a normal teen-age relationship, not the sort of relationship described in the stories and I would *never* tie her to a railroad track, even a spur line) although we lost each other when I went into the military and she found, from what little I can tell, a happy life with someone else somewhere on the other side of the U.S. from me.  Sadly the real-life equivalents of Don and Cindy both passed away in their early 20s of differing illnesses.

And Gina, both from "By Invitation" and "In the Grass." I am having fun with Gina and Carlos in "Grass" but I think I'm more proud of the Gina in "By Invitation." She is a fighter with a bit of an acidic sense of humor and a strong person who despite falling into a bad situation will work through it and emerge on the far side still herself and unbowed. And like Lara in "Self Bondage Nightmare" I got to take her a lot of fun, hot (for me at least) places.