Out of the Frying Pan

[Harold]

Moggy,

Thanks for opening this thread. It's a topic I've been wanting to discuss for a long time, but never got around to.

First, however, since you brought it up, a few words about the end of the story, since I've had comments in both directions. When this story popped into my head, I viewed it as a horror story rather than an erotic one and perhaps this was the wrong site to post it to. It's a story about being a victim, about ignoring the warning signs, and about wanting something too much, about seeing a relationship as what you want it to be rather than what it is. To me, this makes the ending inevitable. I don't mind if readers don't like the ending as long as they don't like it because of the nature of the ending. If, on the other hand, readers have a problem with the ending because they think it was poorly written, constructive feedback would be appreciated.

Now, to the main topic. I've always been annoyed by the story fragments (9k, 10k, 12k) that get posted to this site. That's just not enough to bother with. As a result, I've made a habit of posting only complete stories. I didn't think it was fair to the readers to get them hooked into a story, only to be interrupted by "to be continued". However, the practice seemed to be so widespread that I finally decided to try it myself.

I've been rather astonished by the result. This story has gotten more traffic, more reviews, and more emails than anything else I've posted here to date. I've found that to be rather disconcerting in that I don't think this story represents my best work.

Not having much to go on, I've jumped to the conclusion that the reason this story has gotten more attention is due to the size of the initial segment, which was 49k. The story posted prior to this one (the Mock Rape sequel) was 204k when posted and I think a lot of people were put off by the size of it, although I consider it a better story than this one.

I would like to hear comments from readers as to how they feel about serial stories as opposed to complete stories. I would also like to hear from other authors regarding their experiences posting complete vs. serial stories.

My current inclination is to abandon my previous practice and henceforth post my stories in serial form. Any comments?