Chum: I've received exactly one e-mail from a reader, fortunately positive and asking for more stories. I now understand why readers are encouraged to respond as the silence, for me, has been discouraging.

Thanks for raising an issue that concerns many of us.

Yes, it can be very depressing, can't it? My three stories have been opened, some 30,000 times. But I believe I can count the number of reviews on one hand, and the number of individuals who have e-mailed me (some more than once) on the other. Many thanks to all those who have done either.

Perhaps those numbers say more about my stories than the communicativeness of our readership; :-) let's hope not.

But while we authors bemoan our fate, let's also ask ourselves a question -- how many reviews have you and I written? How many e-mails have you and I sent? Almost certainly you've read some stories here that tickled your, um, fancy, right? Did YOU drop the author a line? I've read (at least parts of) a lot of stories here, ranging from great to execrable, and my rate of response isn't a whole lot better than that of my readership. Shame on me.

If we authors alone (I imagine there must be over 100 of us) were each to sit down and pass along kudos to the authors here whose stories we have most enjoyed, (and in some cases inspired us), we'd surely be a happier band, don't you think?

In fact I'm going to check the lists and refresh my memory as to some of my favorite titles and make some comments here tomorrow; why don't you do the same? Why don't we all do the same?

Chum: While my stories lack little details like character development (why bother when you have a readership of one - me -since I knew everything about these people already),

Now that's a defeatist attitude, It seems to me; if you're going to go the trouble of writing at all, why not make your story the best it can be? Not for us, but for yourself. In the final analysis, if you're proud of your story, it shouldn't matter what the rest of us think. No matter what you or I write here, it cannot possibly please all of the varied tastes of our readers; the best we can hope for, I think, is that we REALLY please those who happen to share our own particular taste in erotica.

Finally -- I read one of your stories (forgive me, I read it a couple of days ago and I don't remember the title and I don't think I can exit this screen to check it without losing everything I've typed) and it was a nice effort. Keep up the good work! But, speaking for myself, I'd rather read a few good-to-great stories than a lot of fair-to-middling ones. So if you elect to send in a number of other stories, as I hope you do, take a little extra trouble and make each one the best you can; you'll be glad you did. And so will we.

Cheers,

Boccaccio