In Case I Don't See Ya...

 

Sorry.

Just a blanket sorry. There's a lot that has happened, that will happen and is happening. Rather than try and cover everything, I think an overarching apology is in order. To everyone. Casual fans, new fans, old fans, friends, rivals, acquaintances. Over my behavior, broken promises, things I have said or haven't said or will continue to not say.

I'm sorry.

At this point, there is a lot of ground to cover, so I'm going to try and give a short summary of, basically, ME: how I got here, what I wanted to do, what I did instead and the little bits in between. For you longtime followers, you can skip down a bit while I catch everyone else up. Plenty of this is covered in other posts, so if you want more details there is more detail in other posts. Believe it or not, I used to be pretty regular, so there is plenty of reading for those of you that like these kinds of details.

Umm...hi, I'm Ai Love. As this is where I write my erotica fiction, this me is allegorical and I hope you don't hold that against me. The few details I've given out include a degree in English, working for a number of years as an editor and then as a political journalist. I'm a patriotic citizen of the USA, I am happily married to my Spouse, I own a lot of guns and spend...spent...10-20 hours a week lifting weights. I like Nihon media in all its forms, I've watched too many movies and my written works are usually packed with obscure geekery.

I'm very sexually minded. I am bisexual in my perverted mind and as willing to masturbate to a pair of tits as I am to salivate over a hard cock. I wrote my book specifically to explore my own personal perversions and if you read between the lines, you'll see that hidden under all the jizz and lactate, I wrote something of an autobiography. I didn't mean to, it just worked out that way. I'd list all my likes and dislikes, but I would instead encourage you to read my book: it is all there.

I love to orgasm. I'd say I love it too much, never having gone more than a week without at least one and averaging between 10-20 orgasms a week since I was 12. After a few years of marriage, struggling to balance a job and a husband and sometimes locking myself away from reality and jilling myself into a frothing stupor, I checked myself into rehab and got the help I needed. Unfortunately, couldn't change biology, I'm too sensitive and mentally broken to ever truly kick the habit. My therapist suggested regulation, and for about 13 years I've been strict to limit myself while I lived a fairly normal life.

This might seem like an odd description of myself, but my obsession with sex is a defining trait and could even be considered a core attribute of my psyche. However, I am also deeply religious. "So what?" you might ask, but to me it is a conflict with not only my own personal morals, but more specifically with my friends, family and employer. Ergo, the main reason I am anon despite coming off as rather free with my sexuality here on the internet as Ai. This means that no matter what happens, I would literally rather die than be found out. My secret self is known only to 4 people and I am adamant in keeping it that way.

Which leads me to the conflict of who I am and who I present myself to be. Here (on the internet) I talk of my most intimate moments and crack jokes about twats and dicks. IRL, I am quiet, timid, silent to the point of rude and so anti-social that there are still coworkers that don't recognize me when they see me in a meeting. I'm not looking to change, I'm not even asking for acceptance because I know that I am screwed up. Instead, I hope for understanding.

Anyway, I've always tried to write and publish. I won't go into details, but I've started, shopped around and otherwise even self published hundreds of thousands of words of prose in a multitude of mediums in the last 25 years. There are many reasons for not getting it done, but the most persistent reason is I'm a perfectionist and am never satisfied with what I write. Also, I find I enjoy the process of world building and outlining more than I do the actual writing. I have hundreds of outlines with some of them having as much as 100k words of prose attached before I abandon a project and move to something else. This doesn't include the nearly 1 million words of journalistic work I've done in a period of about 10 years. I am a writer, I enjoy writing, yet the work I put the most effort into was Becoming Monsters.

I know that the reason I was able to finish this book was because of the smut. It drove me, and in a period of about 8 weeks I had the first draft finished. It wasn't very polished, but when I typed The End, I realized I had something I had never been able to do before. I spent a few more months working on it, tweaking it, having an old friend from college professionally edit it, then I put it out there onto Amazon.

Over the next few months, I refreshed that Amazon page 30 times a day. I watched for those reviews like a hawk and I practically lived off of them. The original cover wasn't anything to talk about, but it worked for me. I eventually got the stunning cover you see before you and my book started to take off.

...then I got dungeoned.

Dungeoned, as in Amazon blacklisted my erotica novel. They don't ban often unless a book breaks very specific rules, but they can prevent it from showing up in any of their search algorithms. I'll admit, I got pretty low then, but then I came up with what I think was a clever marketing technique. I made a censored version of Becoming Monsters and plugged that into Amazon's marketing system. I cheered, then got super stressed because it worked VERY well.

I've talked with other erotica authors, and success is based more on the number of works and those first few weeks of sales before working on the next release. Amazon turned erotica into micro fiction because that is how you survive in the world of censorship. So while I never reached sales levels like successful authors such as Cebelius, Brandon Varnell or William Arand, I was hitting numbers in my first year that erotica authors with 50+ published works and 10 years were hitting with their entire library. For my genre, I was wildly successful. Not quit-my-job successful, but in a few more years, the idea was possible.

Part of this success probably came because of my efforts to join into the world of social media. I started on GoodReads, realized I hated GR and the atmosphere there, did some stuff on Twitter, joined Parler when it was really taking off, until I found Discord and spent most of my time there. I'll be the first to admit this affected my ability to focus on writing, but I'm a shy person. I've never really had many friendships or social interaction with really anyone, ever. I played TTRPGs, I have people I'm friendly with, but aside from Spouse and Editor-kun, I had never really opened up with anyone. There is always a wall. Then I show up on social media and suddenly, the restraints are gone. I can tell people I like tits and digitally high five moments after I masturbate. My world opened up and I wanted to spend more and more time with all these wonderful people.

Sure, it was all anon and they will never actually meet me, but I found a group that would know ME, the person that I am, and I reveled in it.

All caught up? Ok.

What I haven't told many people is that I have problems. Specific, debilitating, psychological and physiological mental problems. Partially, my RL self is known for having some of these mental illnesses, so I keep it quiet. The other reason is I have a life philosophy I follow: everyone has problems. Why should I complain about my problems when others have just as many or even greater issues? Regardless, I have them and they are not minor. The problems are multiplied on top of each other and I take serious medications to function like a human being.

Late 2020, I went in for a checkup because I had trouble concentrating. This regular checkup included an MRI, CAT and CT scan with about 6 different blood tests (I have good insurance). It was determined that I was mentally deteriorating and I won't go into all the details, but suffice it to say I was told my current drugs won't be effective much longer and I was given 10 years.

Yeah...

It was decided I would switch to some new, stronger drugs and at one point last year I put a gun in my mouth. I would say I distinctly remember the taste of the metal, but if I am honest with myself and you all, it wasn't the first time I've put a gun in my mouth and thought about pulling the trigger. I still have the scars on my wrists from my attempt as a teenager. I already know what gun oil and steel tastes like. I didn't take it well. Some would say I'm still not taking it well, but at least at this point I think I've reached the Acceptance stage. I spent a lot of time on social media for the next six months because I needed friends more than I needed to finish Book 2 (which is really close, but I haven't touched it in months and I don't know if I have the drive to finish right now).

This should be the end of the story and I'd have Book 2 finished and everyone would be happy. Instead, starting around January, I started getting headaches. I'm not prone to migraines, but that doesn't mean I don't get throbbing pains in my head. I usually get them when I'm stressed, so I just grit my teeth and got back to work. Speaking of work, it got more intense and I was putting in more hours than my usual 50-60, so I had a lot of reason to blame my headaches on stress. Spouse and I had blocked out a vacation in June, 2 weeks of nothing but fun and sex. I was really looking forward to it and soldiered on.

Emotionally, I wasn't in the best place come January, as those who follow this blog know, but I wanted to ignore all the signs. See, I've been medicated since I was 20, so half my life I've been on one cocktail or another to keep my head on right. Those of you who take these kinds of drugs should already realize where I'm going with this and you would be right, I was in denial. The drugs were reacting badly, causing a reaction and that meant a few things I'm only now coming to grips with:

1) I needed to get off the drugs or they would kill me.
2) Once I got off the drugs, that ten year time limit would shrink very quickly.

I knew this in January, but I didn't want to do anything. I had run out of options. What was a little headache if it meant I could still function and think like a human being? The headaches got worse but I just popped some pills and kept going. I work out intensely, and anyone who does this kind of physical sculpting understands pain and can power through.

2 weeks ago I reached my breaking point. While driving back from work, it felt like a spike was driven through my head and I blacked out for a few seconds. I didn't wreck my car but I probably did something to the axel because I drifted into a sidewalk. I said I was fine but Spouse and I had a fight and I went to see the doctor. They scheduled an MRI. Until then, I was given some blessed drugs to dull the pain and took some sick time off of work.

((for those following, this wasn't a random physician, he was the chemist involved in my prescriptions. While there was some overlap with the drugs, he weighed that against the time I'd be taking the pain meds against determining if this was something like cancer or if it was related to my medications))

Since then I have been drifting in and out of a pain haze. I'm talking bedridden in a dark room and waiting until the pain gets so bad I pop the next pill. Then the pain fades and I have some relief to sleep or alleviate boredom on my laptop before the drugs react to the pain meds and I get dizzy and nauseous. Then the cycle starts up again. I've already been working on this blog post for 4 days and that's why it feels so disjointed.

Anyway, the MRI conclusively proved I didn't have cancer. At least, not an obvious tumor, still could have micro tumors or something. My doctor has advised I go completely off the drugs so they can find out if there is an alternative, but I need my system cleaned out first to get there. My condition is severe enough this means I will be under observation for a few months and after that...I'm not sure, but we are looking into hospice arrangements.

I'm telling everyone this because while I may or may not retain my sanity, those lapses could mean I would say the wrong thing or post the wrong thing at the wrong time. My fears and principles haven't changed, so to keep myself safe, I will be going dark. I might come back, I might not, but until I have a grip on myself and trust myself to stay safe and anon, I need to disappear.

I will have more time on my hands, so I will probably continue to write. Editor-kun recently got a lot of my old works and notes in a massive thumb drive, so even if something were to happen, he would be able to do something with them if he wanted.

I'm...I WAS sad. I've done my crying, screaming, all the things a person does when faced with something like this. I've had 20 years to come to grips and while I always thought I'd have more time, we all think that. I have a Spouse that loves me and while the last year and a half has been a marathon at work, I got some stock options so I'm no longer worried about money. Not many people get this kind of time to face their issues before something happens, so I count myself blessed. At this point I only wish I could have had a child, but I have nieces and nephews and that's enough.

And one last thing before I go: Amazon can screw itself! At the beginning of April they did something to their programming and shut down even more of their "problem authors". Not a whole lot, but one of the things they did was close the loophole I was using to advertise my censored book. My income from Becoming Monsters has dropped to a couple of bucks a month and if I published the second book today, I'd probably only make a fraction of what I made with my little roundabout marketing stunt with Book 1. If I wasn't so worried about me and my future, I'd pull it from Amazon and put it somewhere else, just to piss away Amazon getting any more money out of me.

I am trying really hard not to say goodbye. It could be that in a few months I'll be back and laughing at how doom and gloom I sound. When I started this journey I just wanted to write something that I would want to read because there was nothing else out there like Becoming Monsters. Then I made some friends and like a starving woman thrust into a buffet, I couldn't stop. I have met some truly wonderful people and my life has been brighter because of it. Thank you, I love you all.

Normally I'd say for you all to keep harmonizing, but while I think that joke is hilarious, it isn't what I truly want. I want everyone to keep laughing, loving and living!

PS: now that I have some time, I'll finally be able to sit down and read the rest of American Kitsune and TAP 2. Y'all should read them with me. Always a silver lining, right?

#ailovestolive #goodafternoon #goodevening #andgoodnight