Draft 1 of Becoming Monsters Book 2 WILL be finished in November!!

 

I've made a promise with myself. I want to not break it, but I've broken promises before. I am going to NaNoWriMo-ish the rest of the book and just obliterate this draft in the next month. Not a true NaNoWriMo, I'm already 200k words into the book and I don't plan on doing anything else as part of the challenge, but I plan on following the spirit of the event and get to writing. I say I've made a promise, but I'm scared I might not have the willpower to fulfill it.

Addiction is hard to deal with. Not the kind of addiction people talk about like "I'm addicted to this show!" or "I can't get enough of this cake!" I mean the hardcore stuff some people are just hardwired to need on a desperate and visceral level that changes brain chemistry and forces people into dark and terrible roads.

Despite what movies and media would have you believe, most people live their entire lives without becoming detrimentally addicted to something. There is an element of control and people can live their lives without the need to do some thing or take some thing. I envy those people.

Twitter has become an addiction for me. I probably should have stayed away from all social media, I used to Facebook so hard I had to completely delete my account just to have the willpower to remember to eat properly. Twitter is worse in some instances to me, but I can't bring myself to walk away from a marketing tool that might be the linchpin to gaining financial independence with my writing. In an ideal world, I'd have my butler handle all the social media-ing while I sipped fruity (non-alcoholic) drinks on my yacht. I'd just say some rando thing and Jeeves would hashtag away.

I've always known I had a thing for addiction. My father is a hardcore addict and only through decades of therapy has he been able to climb out of his problems and have a life. When I thought I might have those same brain wirings, I decided early to stay away from all forms of substances that would even be a little addicting. I've never had a single drop of alcohol, I've had caffeine a few times from soda but no more than a few sips. No drugs, no smoking, nothing. I don't even like to gamble.

However, like Jeff Goldbloom says, nature finds a way. At the age of 12, I found my mother's massager and discovered a whole new world. Over the years, discretely talking to women, then searching on internet forums, then using neurological data from my therapist and those fancy electronic diodes they attached to your head, I found out that I'm not just a little sensitive, I orgasm in the 96% percentile for women and just looking at a picture and thinking really hard for AS LITTLE AS A HALF HOUR can have me tipping over the edge and thrashing on my bed, depending on how horny I am.

For almost 20 years, sex controlled my life. And when I say sex, I mostly mean masturbation. I got married at 25, so having actual sex was something that centered me, but I couldn't stop myself. For a couple of years I was spending about 6 hours a day masturbating, sometimes more. I went into rehab where I got some help and had a therapist assigned to me. I still masturbated there, I couldn't stop myself, but I got into the habit of scheduling my habit instead of just jilling at the drop of a hat. A whole pile of daily anxiety meds helped as well.

Nowadays, I joke as Ai on here and Twitter because I think I'm funny, making the lewd and seeing who squirms the hardest. Because for all my problems with masturbation and sex, currently 3 people know I have this problem (spouse, therapist, Editor-kun). Coming from the family and background that I do, I can't bring myself to tell anyone else. I'm still gripped with the most powerful dread that someone is going to tell my family and then I think I might literally die from a panic attack. Yet, it is so liberating to just talk about smut and write smut and all of it feels so wonderful.

I'm Icarus, happy to be flying and feeling the warm sunshine on my face.

So, pulling back from this really long tangent, I've been spending too much time on Twitter. Before that, I was spending too much time rewriting little things that really could have waiting until after the draft was done. Before that I was spending all my time trying to frantically get a marketing campaign working so that I could get just a trickle of sales and use those $1 royalties I earned with $2 of advertising to congratulate myself for being an author. Justification, I might add, that I have attached a giant butt-load of to my own self-worth and I don't know how I would emotionally cope if my sales disappeared entirely.

It is all connected: I'm addicted to all these things and the worst one is that I NEED affirmation from readers that what I wrote has meaning, purpose, or just made them laugh. I know it is gouche to ask for reviews and I'm trying to do better, so don't feel like you need to do ANYTHING, this is all on me. Yet when I wake up and see a new review or get a DM on Twitter that someone out there is reading my book, I would say - without any actual experience - it is like shooting up with heroin and riding that bliss for hours. It is better than sex, and I hope you all can understand that when I say that, it must be something special.

Wow, running out of time here. To sum up, I've been lazy and strung out like an addict needing her fix. I got nothing done this week, I'm so sorry. I got hundreds of people to follow me on Twitter, I arranged 3 more interview over email and hopefully those will all show up on blogs, I entered a cover contest and started a few more ad campaigns with various websites all costing me hundreds of dollars I really don't have. Mostly I posted hundreds of links to my book while learning about proper tag use and might be dipping my toe into Twitter's promotional program soon. I even had the wonderful @SandsShay read chapters of Growing Problems out loud while edging herself with a vibe (hopefully her mostly-SFW review will be on the Amazon page soon). I've made friends I'd never thought I had and typed frankly about sex and lewd and the life of being an erotica author.

So what does this mean going forward? Well, if all goes well, on Dec 1st, Editor-kun will have the first draft of Becoming Monsters Book 2: Heralds. He'll get to work around his schedule and it will become a back and forth as he sends me notes and I do rewrites. When it is all edited up, he'll work on the cover and I'll work on the formatting for the Status boxes. Somewhere in there, I'll put the whole first chapter into Book 1 as a preview and set up the promotions for release, likely giving a leadtime of a month for presales and letting me get all the marketing in place for a proper release. I'm not going to do what I did with Book 1 and just throw it out there, this will get all the bells and whistles. Once the book is released, I'll work on the audioporn, a CENSORED version, then a Metric version for Books 1&2. THEN, after at least a month of doing absolutely nothing, I will work on the outline for Book 3 and get to work.

If all goes well, by this time next year, I have some hope that I will have actually managed to make enough money to get out of the red and trickle into the black. That way, once Book 3 comes out (TBA sometime before 2030), I'll have enough revenue coming in I can seriously consider quitting this job and doing this full time.

A girl can dream.

Anyway, that's all I have for now. I'll still do the blog thing through November, but the posts will be much shorter just so I can maximize my writing time. I'll probably also only get on Twitter once a week just to keep myself current but nothing fancy. Book 2 will get done!

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #addictionispainful #book2willgetdone #masturbationproblems

Twat Feeds

 

Before I unload, almost finished Chapter 28, around 4000ish words. I think I need to do a once-over on it, tighten up some prose and fill in the lapdance, but keeping it moving is the most important thing right now.

A little sad to see no more reviews (except for one at GoodReads, I think? It says my rating average dropped but I haven't been able to find the review). I've been very humbled by there being a new review at least once a week since I got started, now I just need to toughen up when I don't get any. Sigh...I'm trying really hard to be professional about this, but my needy hamster brain keeps wanting her attention fix. Getting really close to the point where I'm going to stand on a street corner with a cardboard sign: WIL SMUT 4 REVIEWS!!

I've also reached the point in my life where my Twat feed (new Twitter handle @AiLovesToGrow) has completely consumed my attention. I've mentioned lightly I have addiction issues. Without going into details, I have been to rehab in the past and my ability to control or curb my appetites is as thin as the hibitions of a horny stripper. Twitting is unfortunately just another addiction for me and I'd stop but I'm actually seeing an upward trend in my KENP and sales from it. It is time consuming and life consuming, but it is working so I'm tearing myself apart trying to force myself into a middle ground when I don't know if I have the restraint to do so.

I have been slowly learning the rules and making friends and contacts on Twat, some of which I think will really pan out. First, Morgan Wright (@byMorganWright) is going to be creating an animated cover of Growing Problems and I am absolutely moist waiting to see what she can come up with! So excited! Second, Literary Express (@literaryexpress) interviewed me and will be featuring the interview on their blog ( https://literaryexpress.in ) sometime next month. I'm incredibly nervous about this because it is my first interview as an author and I don't know how people are going to react. Thirdly, a mysterious stranger has approached me about doing a collab or possibly writing fiction in the Becoming Monsters universe. More on that as it develops.

While I mostly use my Twat to tell bad jokes, every twit I send out is right at the wordcount limit and it drives me bonkers! I know the restriction is supposed to create a space to force creativity and the tighter the prose, the better. I just am WAAAAY too wordy to feel comfortable. A girl has got to stretch herself!

On that note, I am going to really try to get back to a better rhythm in my writing. I think at this point I've done everything I can think of to market Book 1 and lay the groundwork for what I'll need to do when Book 2 is ready. Mostly, I've been chatting with Brandon Varnell (@BrandonBVarnell) and his DAILY wordcount is so much longer and thicker than my WEEKLY wordcount, it is enough to give a girl Wordcount Envy. AND he has time for reading and porn when he's done. My jealousy is without limits! I've already bought a few of his books and I might have to read them just to understand how much better he is than me.

My backlog reading list is a towering monster trying to eat me alive.

Oh, one last thing because a lot of new people might be coming to read this from Twit: no politics please. I have opinions, very strong opinions in fact. I believe any intelligent reader who picks up my book and gives it a read will be able to guess what many of my opinions are. I would love to argue and nit pick all day over every facet of the political hemisphere. I worked professional in political journalism for years. However, Ai Love is here to provide smut and that is all she is going to do. Whatever your political orientation, I don't care. I write smut and I am delighted to interact with you all about smut. I hate it when others soapbox their opinions and make their stories a platform instead of writing a good story. I would be a hypocrite if I did the same thing.

Wish me luck! If you see me spending too much time playing with my Twat, don't hesitate to call me out and pull out the whip to get me back writing.

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #twatter #BrandonBVarnellisabeast #nopolitics

All Your #MonsterGirl Smut, Now On Blogger

 

Made the big move! The blog is now on Blogger.com and the next few weeks I'm sure there are going to be growing pains. However, the number one problem I was having with the Wix platform - requiring a separate sign up to comment - is gone and now I can get all your delicious brain words directly!

Yes! Pump me full of your thought seed! Harder! HARDER!!

In other awesome news, rewriting is done (for now) and Chapter 27 is done, a little less than 5000 words. Ug. Exciting because I'm back on the road moving forward in the WIP, but disappointed I can't give you more right now. I used to regularly hit 15k-20k words a week and I feel like I've been letting you all down. I was so focused, able to get everything done, but then I got dungeoned, my sales fell to nothing, I started seriously thinking about just dropping everything and walking away. In a lot of ways that matter, I didn't feel like writing and the last few months really show that. I'm sorry.

Because while right now I'm making more sales than I was making in March and April, I'm pouring hundreds of dollars in marketing money each month. Right now I'm edging towards a general net positive, but the anxiety is real that it can suddenly dip and I'm left losing even more money into this money pit.

I'm reminded of a classic Disney short starting Donald called the Plastic Inventor ( https://youtu.be/3PAwG8CgL_0 ). Seriously, it feels like my story is melting in the rain and I'm desperately grabbing at the melty sales and trying to keep my book in the air. SO MUCH effort and cash to get even the most minimum of exposure. I think marketing is going to be the death of me, I really do.

Which brings me back to Twitter. While this has only been my latest timesink, it is proving to be as heavy as the sky on Atlas' shoulders. The problem I see is that I'm actually getting traction there and I can see it in my KENP and KDP sales. Twit marketing works and my lizard hind brain keeps telling me to do more twitting to get even more sales. It is a vicious cycle of self-fingering and justification with modest but still minimal returns.

Aargh!!

I wish I were someone who could ignore things like sales and reviews and everything else. I'd be able write and write and not pull out my pubic hair by the roots. Ironically, I didn't start this seeking accolades but now that I've received a few of them, its all I crave. I've become a junkie and this ongoing obsession consumes my every waking moment. I'm surprised I can get any work done, much less fit in a word or three for Book 2.

Life is also going to get more full for me as work is moving into another busy cycle, then holidays with family, then more holidays with family. How do other people write when also working a full time job? Where do you people find time and inspiration? I need there to be another 12 hours in the day to write uninterrupted! 24 is not enough!

Got a wonderful review from a silent reviewer on Amazon! Loves and hugs your way!

Book 2 has entered the end game, the action is going to be fast and furious. Bigger boobs, longer dicks, gallons more cum! Going to be great!!

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #rewritesoverfornow #istheretwitterrehab #marketingsucks

The Last Straw: Changing Websites Soon

 Originally posted on October 10, 2020 at https://ailovestogrow.wixsite.com/mysite/post/the-last-straw-changing-websites-soon

Wix has failed me for the last time! Now the blog feed that I use to connect my posts to Amazon and GoodReads no longer works, gives the wrong link for the post. By next week, I hope to have transferred all the posts from here to a Blogger.com page.

Ug, this is such a headache I don't need right now!

I've been meaning to do this for a long time. I originally created my page on Wix because I thought I'd have a more traditional website. As the months have gone by, I've found I only use the blog function and Blogger is simpler. I REALLY hope this fixes the problem and gets me in a better place before Book 2 comes around.

Because that's what all this is about. An indy author is only as good as her last published work and Book 1 was published AGES ago. When I published, I didn't have all these little things like blogs and social media followers that a book needs to succeed in place. I just put it out there and I'm frankly surprised its made any sales at all. There were a couple of ups and downs, but when I published CENSORED and tapped into Amazon's marketing machine, I didn't just see a bump, I got an injection of rocket fuel into my veins. In July, for 2 weeks, I made more in sales and KENP pages read than all the other 8 months my book has been live, times 5, combined. Which has got my brain hampster turning her little wheel in my head:

If I use the right marketing, what is Book 2 going to do in its first two weeks?

Stuff like this is what keeps me up at night. In the last few weeks I think I went on twitter far more than I should - only got a couple thousand words done this week in the rewriting, sorry - because I'm desperate to build up a large enough following so Book 2 can really hit the ground running. And not just any following, but targeted marketing. General marketing does me no good, 99% of people are not interested in expansion/lesbian/futa/monstergirls/weeb long-form erotica. I've tried a few of those general marketing options and they don't pay out as much as I've paid in.

So half my Designated Writing Time is spent laying the groundwork for Book 2 so that when the release hits, I don't just knock it out of the park, I set up a foundation of sales and reviews that gets me out of the Red and maybe even makes me think I can quit my job and do this full time.

Give me a sec, I need to breathe into a bag for a moment.

...

Back. Ok, still have to finish Book 2, gotta calm down and eat this elephant one bite at a time.

On the plus side, if you are joining me from the Twit, welcome! I know I come off as a little manic, but I hope you can feel at home here, let down your hair, unzip your pants, maybe Jack or Jill one off with me to get you in the mood. Actually just got a new funky looking egg vibe with nodules on it that I've been meaning to try...

...oh...oooooh...this girl is more powerful than I...aaaaah!

34 minutes later

Whew! Alright, lots of love to spread! Frosty from Amazon left a wonderful review about how much my kinks keep getting kinkier. Thank you! All I can say is the kinks are only ratcheting up in Book 2 and by the time Book 3 rolls around, I plan on making sure the world is covered in a Noah amount of cum with titan-esque ladies of all types roaming the new Jizz Planet. So excited! There were also...I think?...2 more silent reviews on Amazon. I have trouble keeping track of those silent reviews because they don't come with time stamps. Anyway, thank you both so much! I also want to shout some love to Ray Flanigan who's stars look like they come from a place of weeb like myself! Thanks! I also appreciate Alet on GoodReads for their review. Critical reviews always make me sad, but that is only my own feelings and I wish Alet well and hope they come back to try Book2 and see if they like that one better.

I also want to take a moment and thank everyone that has been helping me on Twitter. I'm not particularly skilled with writing short messages but the love and attention the community has been giving me is absolutely stellar! I especially want to give a hug to @Kousakacomplex1 and @AverageJAuthor and @BunnyBardot. These three have been very kind and responsive in helping me get myself off the ground. Thanks! Super special thanks to @Kousakacomplex1 for the DM conversation we had that helped make sure I wasn't looking like a total noob!

Work is getting to be more no fun, looks like we had an OSHA violation so now the rest of us plebes have to suffer through more training. Aarrgh! I work in the office, I'm not over in the factory part...grr! And it looks like, even though I sit at a computer all day, I can't even wear nice shoes anymore, now I have to find steel-toed boots to wear to work from now on...double grr!!

Moving forward, I need to do less Twitting and more rewriting so I can do even more writing. Early 2021 is still looking good, I talked to Editor-kun and he'll have a few months at the end of the year blocked out - as soon as my check clears! - so after I'm done with the main story hopefully in November, it will be up to how badly he chops up my baby to see how long until final publishing cums around. Once the first few chapters are locked in, I'll update Book 1 to have some preview chapters. Then, I'll get ahold of my wonderful voice actress, @KatabelleVO to get some audioporn chapters done. The cover art is already done so Editor-kun just needs to format it, but I'll probably commission @Plasmidhentai to start work on the Book3 cover art so I can have it ready when I need it. After all these payments drain my bank account to nothing, I'll then busk on the subway to get a few coins so's I can eat while sales for Book 2 trickle in.

So much to do! I better get writing!

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #newvibe #movingtheblog #twitterwhore

The Music Of My Characters

 Originally posted on October 3, 2020 at https://ailovestogrow.wixsite.com/mysite/post/the-music-of-my-characters

These are my favorite kinds of pictures, something so clearly sexual and only a single pixel away from becoming explicit. One of the reasons I'm so into expansion is how clothing is always tearing apart and if the artist is particularly gifted then there is that tipping moment before the burst and...talk about a perfect O moment.

I usually have a hard time writing these posts. For everyone who is new, I keep my public life a secret because I don't want to estrange my friends and family. I'm also - in my public life - a very political person who's last job involved writing political commentary for a few affiliated websites.

(I also look around at the division politics can inflict upon people and my opinion is it doesn't matter what a person's politics are, smut should unite us, not divide us. I have opinions, very strong opinions, but unless I'm writing political smut why does any of it matter? The only opinion that should matter is whether you like the smut or not.)

Now I work for a large corporation in the food industry and I deal with a large part of the paperwork of the business. To keep my identity secret, I don't go much into this part of my life either. However, if I self-impose myself from writing about my everyday things or about my political opinions or about my job, I'm left with a very small percentage of topics I feel like I can talk about.

This is why I go into so much pop culture, mostly quoting movies. I'm a movie quote machine normally but anyone can be a fan of movies so I can still keep my secret identity secret.

Anyway, enough of that. I had planned on putting this into the end of Book 2, but I'm thinking the QA there will be more like a Best Of highlight reel of my blog posts. What I'm about to say is that the single most influential work of art for the general tone and shape of Honoka and Becoming Monsters Book 2 is the song Might+U by Makayla Phillips ( https://youtu.be/P3HvdBkJQxI ). The song is hauntingly beautiful, a passionate and slow vocal rendition of You Say Run from Boku no Hero Academia, specifically it is the main theme for the Heroes: Rising movie that came out last year.

I had this song on almost constant repeat for months, probably specifically while I was writing the outline for Book 2. And while all of the song is great and moving, it is that first line that grips me.

You're not alone.

I'm listening to it right now and I can't stop crying. There's a moment I have planned for the final climax of the book (well, not the final climaxxx) and this song is the soundtrack. Whenever I need to laser focus on the emotions of Book 2, this is the song playing in my earbuds. And whenever Honoka finds herself drowning under the troubles she finds herself in, there is a wife nearby to say those words and bring her back to herself.

I can't think of a more important message any story can give, because whenever a person reads a book, those characters become your friends. The author wrote this story so a person read it: every time a book is read the author is there with you, holding your hand and smiling.

You're not alone.

I've been through loneliness and lived through a suicide attempt. If the only thing you take away from my stories is that there is someone else out there who understands, then I am content.

Wow...um, got a little sidetracked there. If you haven't heard it, this is what Might+U does to a person, it just brings out all the emotions.

Anyway, around May I started to think if any of the other girls had theme songs. I looked over my notes and they all have music they like listening to, so I started picking music that matched their personalities. While I don't listen to these songs as much, whenever I've gotten stuck or needed to get into the zone, I've used these songs to help write a particular character. I'll leave out the names of the unknown wives for now, but I'll list their songs.

Diane: Anu Natsu He, by Joe Hisaishi ( https://youtu.be/TK1Ij_-mank )

Eve: Tease Me Please Me, by The Scorpions ( https://youtu.be/wENdZneWDYs )

Banda: Take Me Home Country Roads, by John Denver ( https://youtu.be/1vrEljMfXYo )

Quinn: Twist It, by Ray Charles ( https://youtu.be/7g8nDfUqSLg )

Padmava: Sex The First Time, by Marc C Griso ( https://youtu.be/bsQltqOFpKE )

Miaka: Here Comes The Boom Clean, by Nelly ( https://youtu.be/20WnerdIa7k )

Dolly: I Surrender, by Celine Dion ( https://youtu.be/hnjGqS1Doto )

****: Pump Up, by Nao Nagasawa ( https://youtu.be/jVaVED5L97I )

*******: Moonlight Sonata, by Beethoven ( https://youtu.be/4Tr0otuiQuU )

********: Somewhere Over The Rainbow, By Brother Iz ( https://youtu.be/V1bFr2SWP1I )

There are a few more wives introduced in this book, but their main stories will be handled in Book 3 and I haven't picked songs for them yet.

I love music, with over 100k songs on my iTunes and these are all from playlists I've listened to over the years, but I do have a Writing playlist with these and a few others that are how I get myself into the zone. It helps to have me focus on what kind of person these songs represent and maybe you can all get a better idea of what kind of person I think the main characters are.

Special love to Lonny on Amazon for the review! I've always ranted at books when characters - especially in erotica - who make choices that have no application to reality or any other form of logic. Whenever something happens in my books, I ask myself a simple question: "what would I do?" Now, I try to temper that with what I know about the character and situation, but I always have some kind of reason for what they do in my head whatever they do, and it is nice for you to see that! Thanks! Also thanks to the silent reviewer on Amazon and to those tasty starts from Rodolfo Luthe on GoodReads. Thanks!

The Twitter experiment continues (@AiLove30886336) but it is so hard to track how much is coming in from there. I've honestly got my finger in a lot of pies and any one of them could be contributing - or none of them - to my sales, which right now while not great, aren't dismal either. I'm mostly spreading myself out right now so I can get the groundwork ready for the release of Book 2.

About halfway through the current round of rewriting. Yes, I know I should have probably powered through to the end and then rewritten then, but I couldn't do it. It was like an itch in my brain that kept bothering me so I finally broke and just got to it. I'm not sure how much I got in the plus side this week, I almost completely obliterated Chapter 14 and straight up deleted over 6000 words (don't worry, I move them to other files in case I need them later, but they are no longer in the main story files). I'm seriously wondering if I should be telling you all this and how insecure I am about my own writing, but I made this blog to account for myself to you and I think it has made me a better writer. Tell me your thoughts.

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #musicislife #smutsaveslives #stillrewriting

I Lost 11 Pounds

 Originally posted on September 26, 2020 at https://ailovestogrow.wixsite.com/mysite/post/i-lost-11-pounds

The funniest part about this picture is I imagine this girl isn't wearing any panties. She just slipped on a pair of her boyfriend's jeans (those definitely don't look like they were means to fit a woman) going commando, and is now getting a fun eyeful of her kitty cat. Maybe she's thinking its about time to trim the bush, maybe she's giggling uncontrollably from a funny sounding queef. I can only imagine the model is telling the photographer with her eyes "hurry it up, there is a lot of chafing!"

I may sound like I'm in a cheerful mood, but I am not up to 100%. The bug turned out to be food poisoning - no, I don't know what I got it from, me and the spouse have checked and triple checked all my meals for a month, we don't know how I got it - and it got bad enough I spent half a day at the doctor's office with an IV to combat dehydration. In one week's time, I lost 11 pounds and let me tell y'all: it is fun to joke about losing weight that quickly but the actual reality of this kind of sickness related weight loss is that it leaves you feeling weak and wasted. I got back to work on Wednesday and I was only able to take a half day I was so tired. Thursday was better, Friday I even started to feel like a person again.

The weirdest part, in an almost prophetic Art Imitates Life sequence of events, Honoka goes through her own dramatic weight loss early in Book 2. It was eerie, because those chapters where what I was reworking on when this all hit and then it happens to me...gave me perspective into what it was like to have that happen to me and it left me introspective. And this was just me having a really nasty bout of food poisoning. I am absolutely beside myself in horror and awe at the amount of suffering people must go through for chemotherapy and then being able to smile afterwards! Here I am complaining about my little problems and all it has done is open my eyes to a whole world of pain other people experience. If any of you have gone through that, you have my respect.

Super props to Joseph Whitfield for the review on Amazon! I'm overjoyed you couldn't put it down, I know how hard it is to read such a long book one-handed (if you know what I mean ;). I really am working on Book 2, I've got over 200k words in it right now, just need to push through to finish this monster and then release it into the wild. Thanks!

Like I said last week, trying out Twitter at the moment (@AiLove30886336). I think what I'm mostly going to do on there is share #WritingErotica tips that I've learned from all the ups and down I've had getting my book published. I reason that if I get enough followers and a backlog of tweets on that profile, in a year it will probably work out as its own marketing stream. It also might not, but the problem with all marketing is: nothing is free, nothing is quick, nothing is sure. If it doesn't pan out, it doesn't pan out, but there is a possibility it might bring in dividends and that could mean the difference in quitting my job in the near future or the far distant future.

I'm thinking after this I'm going to relax and watch one of my favorite comedies, Noises Off. Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, Carol Burnett, John Ritter, the movie is comedy gold. It has that fast paced wordplay dialogue that just doesn't exist in movies anymore, the kind you'd find in a Danny Kaye or Marx Brothers film. After that I'll see if I have the energy to get back to the keyboard today, but I'm still a little sluggish and my brain needs to get back up to speed before I think I can tackle any more reworking, much less moving the story forward. Please leave suggestions for similar comedies in the comments. Whether I've seen them or not, I'd love to hear what tickles your funny bones.

DESPITE ALL THE CRAP (pardon the pun), I actually managed to get around 3000ish words done in the rewriting. I say ish because I'm jumping from chapter to chapter, embellishing scenes or deleting others, but my overall word count has gone up instead of down so that's where I get my estimate. I think I still have a few more weeks of this, but then I'll get back and push through until the end of Book2 and then it will be in Editor-kun's hands.

I'll leave you with a fun quote I have framed on my desk at work that the spouse made for me years ago:

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” -Neil Gaiman

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #miraclediarrheadietplan #sardines #isitwrongtotrytopickupgirlsinatweet

Not Covid!

 Originally posted on September 19, 2020 at https://ailovestogrow.wixsite.com/mysite/post/not-covid

I am sick and have been sick for the last 4-5 days. I am severely ill, being bedridden for 2 days now. Spouse has banned phone use so I can get better. I am using my spouse's laptop to make this post and the spouse is hovering to make sure I don't spend too much time typing. As per the current policy at my work, I also got tested but the results haven't come back yet, though the doctor is hovering around 100% I don't have the pandumbic.

I got some of the rewriting done earlier this week, but not a lot before I started getting queasy. Either I have the flu or a really bad stomach bug, but symptoms are best left undescribed as it involves violent ejection of material through most orifices and not in a fun way.

Happy to see a silent rating on Amazon, thank you whoever you are!

I'm probably going to be a little more active on Twitter from now on, probably blasting a twit every so often from now on because the weirdest thing happened this week: Anton Strout started following me. I'm a regular listener to Once And Future Podcast, I know who this guy is. He hasn't done anything else about me, just started following me, so I'm a little anxious as to his nefarious plans.

I'm probably reading too much into it. Follow me on Twitter: @AiLove30886336 .

Spouse is yanking the computer away and I'm too feeble to resist.

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #sick #reallysick #whyisAntonfollowingme

The Growth Of An Author

 Originally posted on September 12, 2020 at https://ailovestogrow.wixsite.com/mysite/post/the-growth-of-an-author

Really great authors are able to do more with less. I think Edgar Allen Poe is the best example of this, but most great writers have their own examples. I'm not yet that great. In fact, I'm like the Andy Warhol of expansion smut, filling my porny novels with pop references to establish a connection between the reader and the characters as they orgasm. The only significant difference I have between myself and every other author of this niche within a niche is my editor is very good and my books are very long.

However, back to my original thought, unless a person is a great author, as authors write they create better literature by becoming more descriptive. A painter adds detail through finer brush strokes, but a writer adds detail with more words. Great writers add more detail with better words, but I'm not there yet.

What I'm getting at is Book 2's outline started with as much story and smut as Book 1 when I wrote out the outline. Each chapter had some details and some openness to add a touch or two, but generally I had it planned out to be probably only a little longer than Book 1. As I've done a few rereadings of chapters in the past couple of months, I've realized that while my chapters have gotten longer, the pacing actually feels rushed. There are some places where the events are moving at breakneck speed and the chapter is actually twice as long as Book 1 chapter length.

I know what's happening, and if you've been following what I'm saying with this post, you've got it as well. Book 2 has a significant upgrade in the detailed descriptions in the prose and while that isn't a bad thing, it has brought on some unintentional side effects, namely pushing me to ignore some important characters.

Without going into too much detail, the running impetus for Book 2 is a large wedding ceremony. Family for all the girls (which number 10 at the moment) are coming to stay at Casa Padmava. That means for about 2/3s of the book, there are hundreds of other characters running around and some of them are important for the primary and secondary plotlines. In my original outline, I made sure to give many of them introductions and a few scenes to become familiar so their plot points didn't feel jarring.

Then I started to write. As I got further and further into the chapters, I was finding it hard to cram everything I needed to describe into the allotted time for each chapter. That meant while I was adding more details into the story, I was feeling I had to maintain certain pacing and word counts, making me choose between a bloated scene that was vital to the story or a quick sentence or two to introduce someone. Over the past few months, I found myself cutting more and more of these important little tidbits because of my own inability to use better descriptions.

Sometimes this worked out for the better, like my abbreviated joke in Chapter 6 I've talked about before and even previewed in a previous post. However, I think my OCD has dictated this story for long enough and it is time I go back and fix this problem. The next couple of chapters are vital and they need these characters introduced and proper time given to them so the climax of the story doesn't feel like it is just throwing a bunch of names at y'all without context.

For the last week I've been doing a major overhaul of the written chapters and I'll probably be doing it for a few more weeks. I'm ignoring chapter length and inserting the pieces where I believe they'll fit best. Then, to bring chapter length back under control, I'll be reorganizing and changing the chapter numbering. I'm naming them 5.1, 5.2 for right now, so the "end" of the book will still be Chapter 33 and I'm still at the end of Chapter 27, but the finished book may have as many as 40 chapters.

Why not finish the draft first then go back and do this?

I realized this problem and stopped everything to look at it because I've reached a critical point in the story where all these characters needed to act and work out their parts for the end of the story. Essentially, I was about to write about some of these characters and I need to have gone through their introductions to get a feel for who these characters are and what kind of quirks they bring to the story.

A great example of this is Chanise, Honoka's cousin. She's referenced a few times in Book 1, but we meet her for the first time in Book 2. In Book 1, all I knew about Chanise was she was like one of my cousins who loves to shop and dress up and has zero boundaries when it comes to personal space. As a reference tool, Chanise is able to let the audience know that Honoka doesn't care for fashion and clothing because Chanise is the yardstick that Honoka compares herself to. In Book 2, I found I wanted to explore that relationship more and suddenly I have a paragraph describing how they were close when the girls were younger, Chanise often using Honoka as a dressup doll and the underlying reason Honoka hasn't gone back to that close relationship is her Change was deeply rooted in shame and she pushed all her family away.

See, that's great character development, and I wouldn't have gotten there unless I wrote it out. It wasn't long, a short paragraph was all I needed, but I NEEDED that paragraph to know how Chanise would act in future scenes. I need about a dozen more of these moments before I can move forward with the story because I need to know how all these characters are going to interact with one another.

So this all had to happen. If I were a better writer, I would have finished the first draft and all this would be draft 2 or 3 work. Instead, I'm going back now because my story isn't just rough, it is missing pieces that I need to be able to finish. Sorry if this seems daft and weird, but this is my process. I also think y'all probably don't care how I write your smut, you just want more smut, but I don't know of any other way to do it. I did all this for Book 1, I just didn't have a blog at the time so just trust me, this is how I do things and I hope it creates something at least partially as entertaining as Book 1.

Thanks radiated towards Chad Denkhoff at GoodReads for the stars! Wow, Becoming Monsters got a higher rating from him than Mask Of The Template, a book I really like. I'm flattered and double thank you! It means a lot when people show as much or more love to BM as to other big time authors. Makes me feel like I'm in the big leagues! Also a big warm hug to all those participating with my polls over at http://www.process-productions.com/forum/search.php?searchid=2416766 . I find that little science experiment to be absolutely fascinating and I hope many others will join in the fun.

Keep harmonizing!!

#ailovestogrow #morelikeapollockpainting #morererwitestocum #tangentanyonereadingannabellehawthornebecauseIonlyreadthefirstbookbutnowImfindingshehaslike4booksworthandwaswonderingifitstayedthesameorgotbetter

For Once, Not Amazon's Fault

 Originally posted on September 4, 2020 at https://ailovestogrow.wixsite.com/mysite/post/for-once-not-amazon-s-fault

You heard right: I think this one's on my ignorance and not Amazon.

Let me back up.

I have made it a point to respond to every form of feedback I've received, to reach out and express how much I enjoy that others enjoy my book. I've made shout outs to every reviewer I can find on any site I visit on this blog, Any mention of my book in blog or forum that I know of I try to give detailed responses and the few who have reached out to me via email have gotten detailed and heartfelt replies as quickly as I receive them. If I've missed anyone it isn't because I've not wanted to respond, it is either because I have missed it or because I've been blocked.

All this includes commenting on every single Amazon (US version) review I have seen, sometimes just a glad acknowledgement, sometimes going into detail to answer a question. A few months ago, I visited the page without logging in and found all my comments didn't show up. I grumbled but chalked it up to being Amazon Shadowbanned and moved on with my life. I kept commenting anyway because I figured maybe someone with adult settings on their account could see them.

I then got an email from a fan this week and he mentioned he couldn't see it. I took a screencap (seen below) then realized no one could see it. I was mad all over again. After a bit of research, I realized this one might be on me.

Ai Love isn't my name and my Ai Love Amazon account isn't my personal Amazon account. My personal account has thousands of kindle books stored away, is Prime to watch all the shows and has been how I've purchased most everything I need for over a decade. Ai Love is where my book accounting is, but I've never purchased anything from it.

Well, it looks like to avoid spam, Amazon won't allow reviews or comments to show up in the feed until a person has purchased $50 or more through an account before stuff becomes visible to the general public. So even though I wrote the book - while it hasn't been a NYT Bestseller, it has generated hundreds of dollars of revenue - because I haven't bought anything I was blocked from Amazon's system.

Hmph! I have since rectified that problem, I think (I hope) with a stupid random spending spree. No change as yet, but hopefully within a week it will change and I'll be counted among We Happy Few.

Until then, I'm very happy to welcome 2 more silent reviewers to the Amazon page. They aren't visible on the main review page, but seeing that review total tick upward is always a delight. In lieu of the above realization, it might even be that they left whole essays of text going into the details of the story but they just don't show up because they haven't hit that magic $50 mark yet. If one of you superfans have done this, I hope this answers any questions you might have about Amazon's vague process. It might even be they are international reviews, I'll check those in a bit.

The email I got also asked about Patreon so now seems like good enough of a time to talk about crowdfunding. And do you know what I hate most about authors who use Patreon? When they are late. Late, or they provide a subpar service compared to other months. I'm paying good money, what have I done to deserve anything less than what I should reasonably expect from someone providing a service? These gripes are the reason why I decided to go the Amazon route instead of doing exactly what Tefler, McCrae and Annabelle Hawthorne are doing. Props to them for having a consistent schedule or forgiving fans when they have problems, but I'm not there yet. Most of them make enough money to survive on, I would take years to get up to that point, all the while fans would expect the same quality output and all these things aren't realistically possible for me right now.

I cannot express to you fans how important it is I get reviews for my longterm strategy. Every time you leave a review, a succubus gets an orgasm AND my book gets a little more visibility. Leaving long and detailed reviews helps give me more visibility. Comments on blogs mentioning my book, upvoting it on lists, leaving comments on my various videos on Youtube and the Hub, leaving comments here on the blog, etc. I would also be totally cool if someone started fan fiction or a Becoming Monsters Wiki. The reason I'm looking at visibility isn't just because that increases short term sales, it brings awareness of my brand to a larger audience so that WHEN I go the Patreon route, I will be generating enough revenue to justify quitting my job and working on this full time.

Ug! Marketing is such a pain and Amazon policies are not conducive for my longterm mental or even physical health! Why can't I just write and THAT BE IT?! Thank you everyone for sticking by me despite my constant complainy attitude to the world of porny literature.

For those of you who are super fans who want to help me out, I'm thinking I might have Editor-kun set up a Paypal donation button. Let me know if that's something you all want to do, I'll poke Editor-kun harder if I get the response. Until then, every KU page read is money in my pocket and every link to the Amazon page on a blog helps churn those SEO numbers higher and higher. If you want to go above and beyond (and probably get mentioned somewhere in the book) purchasing the book as a gift and sending it towards people who will give reviews (either on Amazon or their own blogs) is the gift that keeps on giving.

I think my next marketing move will be to post some chapters on Literotica to prime the pump there and get my name generating hits on that platform. Because of how KU works with Amazon, I can't post too much, but it should be enough to generate buzz.

Chapter 27 is almost done, got around 6000 words, but I've hit another continuity snag. For the next couple of weeks, I'll probably be going back through previous chapters so I can get some pieces filled in that need filling. Like I said, I'm not up to Tefler's level where every month he's pumping out another 30k-40k. I could probably keep a pretty steady 20k right now, but what about last month where I just hardly wrote anything? This is why I can't in good conscience ask people to pay me to write when I feel I could at any time drop the ball.

I love you all and hope you have a great Labor Day weekend!

Keep harmonizing!

#ailovestogrow #MOREgriping #spreadtheAiLove #reallyImcoolwithfanfiction