arcadiaberger-blog

[arcadiaberger-blog]

Help With Smashwords?

I was rolling along writing for Smashwords.Com, having a great time, but I can’t seem to get my stories formatted right.  They keep getting bounced back to me for reformatting, and I nuke them and repost them and they get sent right back to me.

It’s kind of discouraging.

I know there are other people on Tumblr who are writing for Smashwords -- how do you handle their formatting requirements?

Is there a web site which has advice for good Smashwords formatting?

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 When I was little, I loved Trilobites an awful lot.

These days, I really love Anomalocaris . . . .

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/793940

#Inktober  #Cartoon  #Anomalocaris  #Phone  #Trilobite  #Trilobyte

Inktober: how does a phone work underwater half a billion years ago anyways?

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Pride and Prejudice and Purchase Price, Chapter One

[What do you think of this, folks?  Should I write more of this, or do something else -- or anyway, do something else first?]

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a slave.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that some one or more of their daughters is considered his rightful property.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his First Slave to him one day as she kissed his feet and then pulled his stockings on, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

“But it is,” returned she; “for Agleth, Second Slave of Mister Long, has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

“Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his slave impatiently as she buckled his shoes with care.

“You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”

This was invitation enough.  She smiled up at him, rubbing her cheek against his thigh through his breeches.

“Why, my Master, you must know, Agleth says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his eunuchs are to be in the house by the end of next week.”

“What is his name?”

“Bingley.”

“Has he any slavegirls?”

“Not a one, my dear, to be sure! A slaveless man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”

“How so? How can it affect them?”

“My dear Lord and Master,” replied his slave, “how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his purchasing one of them.”

“Is that his design in settling here?”

“Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may come to lust after one or more of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.”

“I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party, although it would pain me to part with you.”

He showed how highly he still regarded her by undoing his fly and directing her with his pointing finger to pull out his stiffening cock.  Happily she did so, stroking it to full erection with her fingers and cheeks, planting small kisses along the shaft and on the head as the head emerged from his retracting foreskin.

“My dear, you flatter me,” she said between kisses. “I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a slave has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty.”

She began licking around the head of his cock in slow circles, the way she knew he liked it best.  Two decades of service to him as a slave, since the day he had purchased her from her father, had taught her well just how to please him in this, as in so many things.

“In such cases, a slave has not often much beauty to think of.”

She interrupted her ministrations to look up at him and say,

“But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood.”

“It is more than I engage for, I assure you.”

She took his head into her mouth and plunged her head up and down rubbed his cock several times, then rubbed the head against her cheek while she said,

“But consider your young slaves. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lector Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account, for in general, you know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him if you do not.”

“You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his buying as many as he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.”

She gave his cock a playful squeeze and flicked her tongue across the slit.

“I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.”

“They have none of them much to recommend them,” replied he; “they are all silly and ignorant like other slavegirls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.”

“Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves.”

She resumed pumping her head up and down vigorously, the tip of his cock now brushing the back of her throat on each thrust.

“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least.”

She raised her flushed face with an audible pop and shook her head at him.

“Ah, you do not know what I suffer.”

“But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.”

“It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them.”

“Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all,” he said, and took her head in both hands to begin the final phase of his slave’s oral service.

Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his First Slave understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters sold off at a good price, as that would reflect well upon herself and benefit her Master.  If they were sold off locally, an added solace would be visiting and news.

A more immediate solace was given to her when he came in her mouth, with deep groans, and she had the privilege of swallowing his essence, a task she always did with the true devotion and enjoyment of a natural slave.

[arcadiaberger-blog]

“Modification Requested”

Smashwords keeps asking me to modify my stories, tells me that they’re showing formatting errors, but every time I re-edit them and re-post them, they just throw error messages again.

It’s reaching the point where more of my stories are errant then not.

Can anybody tell me what to do?  Are there any Smashwords writing groups online?

[arcadiaberger-blog]

What Should I Write Next?

I have too many stories to write -- which should I write next?

Hyde in Plain Sight

Biologist Hilda Jekyll hopes to marry a dashing young colleague, but she’s ten years older than he is.  If her latest experiment works, she can rejuvenate herself -- perhaps then he’ll propose to her?  But it works too well.  It turns her into a mousy little adolescent who looks nothing like her.  She has to assume a new identity as Jane Hyde, a servant in her own household, while she waits for the treatment to wear off -- if it will.

Academy for Difficult Girls Student File #8: Helen

Helen Russel lost all of her teeth to illness at the age of 32.  She has been saving money for five years to have her dentures replaced with implants so she can return to normal dating life.  Now she’s been carried off to the Academy, where she’s told she won’t be allowed to have her implants.  Instead, she has to learn to use her toothless mouth to please men, in spite of how humiliating she finds it to even let anyone see her without her dentures.

Masked Passions: Blue Bolt and the Red Giant Versus the Green Witch

In the hidden world of caverns beneath our feet, Blue Bolt fights for the freedom of great nations against a lustful tyrant who covets his body as much as she does new nations to conquer.

The Lumberjills Reunion

The Lumberjills spent the summers of their lives at Camp Red Lodge.  Now they have returned as grown women for a reunion where they discover that some of the events they remember as amusing campfire stories may be more real than they suppose.

A Son’s Birthright

Jaime comes home from JROTC camp on his 18th birthday, knowing that he is aging out of his group home but expecting to be hired by his foster father’s business.  Instead, he finds that his foster parents have abruptly divorced, his foster mother Trudy has taken up with her former lover Claudia, and something is rotten in the entire group home.

Masked Passions: Perisphere Payne and His Planet Patrol

Perisphere Payne runs a private interplanetary security firm out of the Perisphere, left over from the 1939 World’s Fair.  He and his multispecies crew fly their rocketship all over the solar system taking care of business.  They work hard and they play hard.

Taming a Tomboy: Shasta

A homeless veteran tries posing as a teenaged runaway in the hope that she will get more sympathy, but she finds that being a kid has some painful and humiliating limitations that make her wish she’d never surrendered her adulthood.

Half So Precious

A story I read as a Ribald Classic in Playboy years ago, and couldn’t find anywhere in an Internet search, so I decided to write my own version, about a man who buys magic seeds which grow a field of dicks, which he sells at the village market to make his fortune.

Slaves of Castle Frankenstein

The Baron’s bride watches what he creates with the help of his hunchbacked assistant and is fascinated, horrified...and aroused.  What scientific obscenity will come out of the Baron’s laboratory next?

A Journey Into the Interior of the Earth

Inspired by A Journey to the Center of the Earth.  Not another of the “Secret Story” books, where I take the public-domain text of a classic novel like The Time Machine or From the Earth to the Moon and turn it into porn, but a new work inspired by Jules Verne’s novel, in which a small group of spelunkers enter a cavern complex and discover an amazing new world, complete with some surprisingly sexy troglodytes.

We Hunted the Minotaur

A group of adventurers enter the dangerous wilderness in search of minotaurs, hoping to return with minotaur treasure and minotaur skulls.  What they find instead is quite surprising indeed.

See what I mean, folks?  Way too many stories.  Which do you think I should write first?  I’m open to suggestions.

I’m also open to patronage, at Patreon.Com . . . .

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Yeah, watching things in the middle of the night can be that way sometimes.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/512218

i watched this episode of ben 10 at 4 am and I was convinced I dreamt the whole thing up except I didn’t, here are some clips that gave me an emotional crisis also kevin found dead in miami

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Rolling Home, Deleted Scene

[It just didn’t fit in]

They cuddled together in Iekika’s bed.  She snuggled up closer to him, which somehow was possible, in spite of how close they already were.

“So, crossing the Equator and stuff, you must have seen all kinds of secret rituals and mysteries of the sea that civilians don’t know anything about, huh?”

He stroked her dark curls.  She kissed his chest, between his pecs.

The last time she had kissed his chest, he’d barely had any chest hair.  He still didn’t have a lot, but it was now a respectable red thatch, decorating the space between his chest muscles, his beautiful pink nipples. 

“Well, I told you about crossing the Equator, and celebrating Christmas under the icecap at the North Pole, yeah.  I really wish I’d been around for the Summit meetings, though.”

“Okay, I’ll bite.”

“Um, please don’t bite me there....”

“I will, unless you tell me what the ‘Summit meetings’ were.”

“Okay, okay!  From like the late Sixties to the early Nineties, on the first full Moon after the New Year, American and Soviet nuclear submarines would gather at a spot in the Eastern Pacific which is the farthest place from land on Earth.  It’s west of Easter Island, and east of Pitcairn Island -- you know, where the crew of the Bounty went after their mutiny? -- and north of, well, really, nothing but Antarctica.  It’s really out in the middle of nowhere.  That’s why the subs went there, to be in a really out of the way location to meet up.”

“Wait, you’re telling me Americans and Russians met up out at sea to hold, like, secret summit meetings?”

He laughed.

“No, that’s just what they called them.  They were really completely unauthorized.  If the Pentagon had found out what we were up to, the American sub crews would all have gone to Navy brigs for a long time.  The Soviets would probably have all been shot.”

“But they met in secret to, what, make plans for world peace?”

“I think that was the original idea, back when they started doing it in the Sixties.  I think they might even have had some idea of using their nuclear missiles to blackmail the nations to get rid of all the other nuclear bombs.  But by the 1980s, when the guys I knew on the Anomalocaris were going to the meetups, it was just a big party.  There’d be eight, twelve, sometimes twenty subs on the surface, some of them strung with lights, kegs of beer, life rafts going back and forth, music playing.  Somebody would be showing off his holographic projector or his drone aircraft, stuff like that.  Sort of like Burning Man in the middle of the ocean.  Man, I wish I could have been there.”

Iekika shook her head sadly and went back to kissing down the center of his chest.

“But the Cold War ended, so the summit meetings ended, and besides, the whole thing was a tall story that they told to the new guy to see how much he’d believe!”

She punctuated this statement by pressing her lips to the skin of his belly and making a rude noise.

Harlan chuckled.

“Yeah, you figured it out a lot faster than I did.  But then, a story like that can seem a lot more believable when you’re aboard a nuclear submarine under a kilometer of seawater.”

He ran his hand down her smooth brown back.

“You’d be amazed what you’ll find yourself believing, at least for a little while.”

[arcadiaberger-blog]

I really enjoyed writing this story, which symbolically represents a relationship which I recently renewed (even though that relationship bears basically no resemblance to the relationship between Harlan and Iekika).  I think you’ll find it to be very romantic and also very sexy.

Writing it gave me an excuse to listen to this very dear song many times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP2jYXPgJc4

[arcadiaberger-blog]

But my darling...

My Valentine...

You are a person.

You are you.

You are beautiful.

You always have been.

The Velveteen Rabbit was wrong to say, “You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you.”

Mister Rogers was right to say, “People can love you just the way you are.”

One more thing: I was disappointed to finally notice that this was a quote from Requiem for a Dream.  That’s that junkie movie, isn’t it?  Too bad.

I’d been hoping the immense bevel-tipped hypodermic indicated that the lovers were inhabitants of a micro-world like Animula in The Diamond Lens, which I loved long before I turned it into a SteamPunk porn story: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/436056

Darren Aronofsky | @wnq-movies

Happy Birthday.

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As a Patreon content creator myself, I'm really relieved by this news also, and grateful to David for providing this video to pass the word that Patreon has reconsidered its policies.

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Well, it was already long past time for Patreon to be replaced by a co-op.  Now there's an even stronger incentive.

Can anyone suggest existing alternatives to Patreon?  I'd be delighted to sign up with them and help promote them.

Patreon slammed after pitching fee hike as boon for creators

Patreon is to lower its percentage but apply a 35c fee to every transaction, according to a confusing announcement that’s thrown the funding site’s userbase into chaos. It sounds good for the platform’s stars, but ruinous for creators dependent on dollar pledges.

The crowdfunding platform for artists currently takes a fee of 5% (creators also pay fees charged by payment processors like Stripe or PayPal) from each pledge. That changes on December 18, when patrons will start paying 2.9% plus 35 cents for each individual pledge, according to Patreon’s product update page.

Patreon says the reasoning behind its new policy is to let creators keep a larger cut of each pledge. “With this update, creators will now take home exactly 95% of each pledge with no additional fees,” the company explained on its update page.

The 95% applies after the transaction fee, and a lot of the confusion was over whether that thirty-five cents gets eaten by the recipient (who then would get only 60 cents or so) or stacked onto the donor’s dollar (thereby making them pay $1.35 or so). The latter is reportedly the case, but either way, the only people benefiting are whoever gets those enormous transaction fees.

From one user: “Patreon has decided to blithely insult the collective intelligence of their clientele with happy talk.”

It’s as much, or more, that @Patreon has decided to so blithely insult the collective intelligence of their clientele with happy talk.

— Tom still 2017 tho (@TomDarbyHey) December 7, 2017

If Patreon finally has to pass on the per-transaction fees that banks impose to its users, that would be understandable. But one breakdown identifies it as a shift mostly to Patreon’s own benefit. And whoever there thought they could sell this as rainbows and unicorns made a mistake so obvious maybe it’s not a mistake at all. Perhaps it’s aimed more at investors or buyers interested in Patreon itself? This would stand to reason, especially given its recent crackdown on adult content.

https://boingboing.net/2017/12/07/patreon-slammed-after-pitching.html

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Gee, @mysjwdestroyer, I sure am glad to hear that you don't care if people are offended, because you must be bitterly offended that there really is a Social Justice League now, the Justice Democrats, and they are kicking the asses of the antisocial injustice warriors formerly known as the Republican party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4woYXorepqE

BTW, read my erotic text story series Masked Passions, in which famous superheroes like the Black Terror and the Fox Phantom Lady fight for justice and "socialize" in uncensored stories that their 1940s comic book publishers could never have told: https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/26316

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I don't think my stories get anything like enough reviews, so when my friend @GreenGypsy told me she'd reviewed "My Brother's Child", I was delighted, even though she warned me it wasn't all that favorable.

Review by: GreenGypsy on Sep. 30, 2017 :  * * * Ok so how was My Brothers Child? It was a nice readable story but I wish there had been more resistance on Alice's part. She had several times that she could've pushed back at least as I saw it. If she had I would've given it 4 stars.

Yeah, I'd rather she had gushed over it, but I'll admit, her critique is a valid one, and if I had it to do over again, maybe I'd do it differently.  Maybe I will, even -- online publishing allows that option.

Anyway, thanks for the patronage, and thanks for the review, GG.  Hope you like the next one better.

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Madame Senator, you performed an heroic service which deserves greater recognition.

On Tuesday, Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii interrupted her treatment and surgery for stage four kidney cancer to come vote against the catastrophic sham of a healthcare plan.

Unlike John McCain, Senator Hirono received little public praise for her truly heroic act to protect all Americans.

Senator Mazie Hirono deserves recognition and thanks for her bravery and longstanding dedication to justice.

[arcadiaberger-blog]

Speaking as one veteran to another, Alana, thank you for your bold and timely words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJqsrEF4gw4

A note on transgender military service:

I want to remind everyone that people who join the military most often do so due to economic hardship, misguided patriotism, and promises of a better future.

I will additionally remind folks that yes, I am aware that in reality our military is the tool by which United States imperialism is enforced across the globe.

A final reminder: look at the big picture. In practice, this ban isn’t much different from before. Trans people will continue to serve in silence when they are forced to by social pressure and poverty. Those who are currently in the military but out as trans have a rough road ahead. But again, big picture: this is yet another step intended to make clear that trans people are not welcome as members of society. Our government is doing everything possible to make us the unwelcome and unwanted “other” as they have done with black folks, non-european immigrants, disabled folks, first nations people, and more.

All you “trans for Trump” types out there: wake the fuck up.

All you homonationalists: I hope you know you’ll be next.

And the rest of you: if you support any part of this bigoted imperialist, white supremacist garbage, I know you as my enemy. I’ll be seeing you.

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This is very much how I feel.

Back when I was writing fanfic under another name, I had a friend who was fond of quoting Chris Claremont;s saying he always asked himself if there was any reason a new character couldn’t be a woman.  Said friend asked me if I was asking if there were any reason a character couldn’t be gay.

I replied, “Not consciously....”

You're work is usually very queer friendly with representing characters and stories. It's clearly something you're very conscious of? Where does that come from?

That’s very kind of you, it’s a hard thing to be gracious about because basically my feelings are, I don’t get why it’s unusual to try to include decent portrayals of marginalized people. It’s just…it’s frustrating. We should all be doing it, we live in the real world, and as much as I appreciate those writers who make the effort, I just get endlessly annoyed that that’s not the industry MINIMUM. It’s baffling. It’s a thing that if I start dwelling on it, I just get angry.

And I don’t have a lick of any additional sensitivity or perception, any recognizable humanity for lgbtq characters comes 100% from exposure to the lgbtq readers and creators who were kind enough and gracious enough to help steer me towards something less cliché and trope-y.

I am proud of having a lot of characters that are lgbtq, especially at a time when that wasn’t more common at the big two, but credit has to go to the people who would show up in the signing lines and had the courage and generosity to talk to me about it and ask why there weren’t more characters like themselves in comics.

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This is stunningly weird and creepy, and relevant to some of my own recent writing.

So glad that (AFAIK) all of my own digestive biology is public domain (although some of my medications are under patent).

All the Second Life rabbits are doomed, thanks to DRM

Every Ozimal digirabbit in the venerable virtual world Second Life will starve to death (well, permanent hibernation) this week because a legal threat has shut down their food-server, and the virtual pets are designed so that they can only eat DRM-locked food, so the official food server’s shutdown has doomed them all.

Ozimals LLC, the company that created the digipets, shut down last year, and Malkavyn Eldritch, a volunteer, kept their food-server online. Edward Distelhurst and Akimeta Ltd say that Ozimals shut down owing him a lot of money. The case has dragged out at great length, with court orders and reported bad faith from the owners of Ozimals.

Edward Distelhurst and Akimeta Ltd sent a cease-and-desist to Eldritch, demanding that he “cease all use of Ozimals intellectual property.” This means that he’s shut down the server, which immediately killed every virtual puffin in Second Life – the virtual rabbits will take longer to die, because they can retain some virtual, DRM-locked food in their bellies before they starve to death.

https://boingboing.net/2017/05/20/breedables-vs-drm.html