My Dear Followers of Van1andCTCstories.com
I’m sorry if you opened this thinking it was a story, it isn’t. I wanted to tell you a little of my life story and put an idea to you for your opinions which CTC and I value.
I used to be a normal guy, bumming through life in the Australian mining industry. Australian mines tend to be located in some isolated outback shithole where the male to female ratio is anywhere from 3 to 1 to 10 to 1. Consequently, when I chose a life partner, the choices were limited, and I came to realise isolation and limited choice is as effective as beer goggles! Long story short I chose very poorly. Turned out my now ex-wife was a good actress and a fruit loop. If you read my stories, ‘Grim Reality’ and ‘The Death of a Modern Man’, you’ll get a pretty good profile of her. I had two sons with her, and life was bearable.
Then something happened at my job that was monstrously traumatic, and I ended up with six years of PTSD. I wrote a 280-page manuscript about the events to get it out of my head where it was doing damage and sent it to a professional appraisal company. In six flowery pages they told me it was crap. That’s why I started writing on Lit. I wanted to improve my written English.
Far from supporting me through my PTSD, my wife displayed all the signs of someone trying to push me over the edge. She terminated the marriage by throwing a kitchen knife at me one day.
Despite this, she was awarded joint custody, I handed over 60% of the assets and, until recently, paid her a huge amount in child support. Guess now you see where my hatred of the one-sided family court system comes from.
To limit the influence the evil bitch had on my children, I limited my work to only stuff that kept me near home so I could influence them 50% of the time. Consequently, despite being reasonably well paid and my sons now being adults which means I no longer have to pay child support, I don’t have the cash to retire early.
I did meet the love of my life through these experiences, though, and for that I will be eternally grateful.
Please rest assured I am not about to hit you guys up for any money. I have no interest or intention in charging any subscription fee for readers on the blog. Having said that, the blog costs about $1,000/year to run. Host costs, domain, security etc etc etc.
What I do want to talk to you about is the idea the missus and I have been tossing around of publishing some of my and our stories professionally.
My first question is, would you think any less of me for going down this route?
The missus, who has publishing experience, suggests it could work like this. We’d withdraw enough stories from Lit and the blog to make up about 70,000 words (somewhere between nine and twelve stories). CTC would re-edit them, fixing any mistakes and incorporating any good comment suggestions. CTC would format them for conversion into an eBook and we’d publish through an online publishing site such as Amazon. Apparently, an eBook like this would cost around USD4-7 for the reader.
Second question, if you think this is fine, and I’m not a slimy little toerag, how do you think we should group the stories?
- Grouped by writing date?
- Have a book of only funny or only serious ones?
- Group by how much I enjoyed writing them?
- By Lit score?
What do ya reckon?
I’m just curious, Vande and CTC. Are you going to publish anything in the near future either here or on Lit? I’m going into withdrawals for lack of new stories from you two.
I would love to buy the books you two would put out. I like a few others have bought books from other lit writers because they are some of my favorite stories. Especially the Delaney series. If you do put any up for sale, please let us know and I bet you would not be disappointed with the turn out. I have also started noticing several authors on lit having a link on lit to either Amazon or patreon below their name on lit as well. Please continue the great stories that put a smile on my face and make my sense of justice and humor satisfied.
With the talent you both have it strikes me that you probably should have done this years ago. Just let me know when you publish I will buy a copy just in gratitude for all of the entertainment you two have given me over the years.
Big fan of your work and would certainly click the buy button on any books you package for Kindle.
Love the Dave character.
My vote goes to pulling together a collection of author favourites.
Looking forward to hearing more when you publish.
Making a living from doing what you enjoy is the epitome of human success. You’ve paid your dues so you might as well complete the exchange.
Deepender
Group them by lit score, then there is a diversity of content. In the future maybe a funny or by axe handle if the first works
Go for it mate,
I would support you in your proposed endeavor. The grouping should be around a common theme. It would be hard to group them by score because of yours have high scores. Best to you and please keep writing and entertaining me.
I would not think any less of you. You are sharing your talent with us at a financial cost. I am more than willing to support your efforts.
By dates, would be my vote.
Do it anyway you like. I’ll buy it. You and CTC are the best authors online.
You deserve payment for your excellent efforts
I feel that you should group them chronologically. I wish you success in your endeavors. Thank you for sharing your imagination with us!
Yes, it would be good to have books with stories. I would favour having stories around themes (e.g. discovery: coming home unexpectedly, changes in behaviour etc) rather than just a set level of pick axe handles. One example could be based on noting something trivial the leads to discovery on follow-up – The examples here are from Winterfrog as I’ve just been reading his stories – noticing that wife smells of different shampoo, that the stock with a stain on the toe has moved from the left foot in to morning to the right foot after work, that a whiskey glass has been used, etc.
Some stories could have the endings changes or amplified based on previous comments,
Also it would be good to have one or two new stories for each book. This would encourage me to buy the books to have a chance of reading the new stories. Finally 70,000 words seems a bit short. 80,000 would be a better target.
Best of luck, and thanks for all the entertainment.
If ever you decided to put your stories into print I would buy them, maybe something like 20 stories per book. To many things have disapeared from the web that I have no record of. In a thousand years from now when they are doing some archaeological digs they only thing they will find are cat videos.
Well I would pay for your stories. Several Lit. authors have posted on Amazon and I have bought their offers. Todd172 compiled 3 of the Delaney series and with editing and adding a bit more to the stories made for a smashing read! SaddleTramp has posted several stories on Amazon and seems to be doing well. I think you should bundle your stories and publish, but I haven’t come to a conclusion on how to compile you vast writings yet, this is something I need to ponder and get back to you on. Several of your loyal readers suggested by pickaxe rating which makes very good sense. These stories, with new editing and maybe a bit of extension on the original scribbles could make for an enjoyable reading pleasure. I would pay. One thing to keep in mind about Amazon especially is when you buy a book from Amazon you are really RENTING the book. If you ever cancel your Amazon subscription your books that you BOUGHT disappear from you tablet or PC! Just a warning ,there is no way to save them. This includes ALL Kindle readers and tablets. I know buy experience!
What I said about Amazon is true But I still buy lots of books from Amazon Book Store I just don’t buy expensive books from them. Thinking about my first post I could have done damage to Van1 and CTC by dissuading you fine followers of the Best of the Best Loving Wives Lit. writers by not buying from Amazon, their prices are decent so please disregard my earlier statement I feel very foolish. With the extra editing and additions to the stories they should be great reads. Please give Amazon a try, like I wrote earlier just take Todd172’s 3 story merging as an example you won’t be disappointed.
I’ve bought Todd172 book despite having read his stories on lit, so would also buy yours. What Todd172 did in terms of rewriting and merging stories might not work for you, as he can use a single “universe” and group of characters, and you have different ones almost for every story, so you probably should go with a stories collection format.
Hi Van
Firstly, I must compliment CTC and you on the high quality of your website.
I’m loving it, and have worked my way through most of your stories.
Let’s face it, I really love your character “Dave” and his idiosyncrasies, and the way he deals with the situations he encounters. Even when he’s only in the stories as a third party!
As far as grouping your stories, I would be inclined to have them arranged chronologically so that we can see the development of your writing and characters. I would not necessarily want a collection of serious stories separate to a collection of humorous stories – I think it’s better to break it up. (Although, I think most of the stories are a little tongue-in-cheek anyway!)
Anyhow, keep up the good work!
Andy
I absolutely understand your need for compensation as I myself am retired. The work y’all do is second to none that I’ve read and only wish you luck. As far as ordering your work for ease of the reader, might I suggest using an html page like we used (before I retired). We had an HTML page that would scan a particular set of folders located on our web server. This would allow anyone with rights on those folders to post as we had trainers needing access to maintain the folders as well as adding new entries/training materials. This allowed simple fast updating as well as automatic menu maintenance by non IT people. One of the side benefits of using the HTML as a menu is that the menu page would scan the folders/subfolders each time it was opened and allow a click at the top of any column that was listed so the user could choose which ever column was desired. I’ve been retired from IT for the last ten+ years so I wish I could point you to a particular source. Having modified the page off and on a few times, I was impressed at the attention to detail and security achieved. With the idea and some of the specs I would hope you could fine an HTML guru to provide something of this order. Kids love to play with coding and HTML so you might find one at a local school that would love the challenge. As far as your need for compensation any of us readers that complain need to go away. I’m thinking mr/ms anon complaining about … Too long, too short, never could happen and you were wearing the wrong color sox as it was published. All about the same story. Those are not our friends. Incubus or succubus seem to come to mind but my wife has reminded me over our 55 years that I’m somewhat opinionated. Best of luck which ever path you choose. You both deserve the best!
MB
Never thought I’d be a grumpy old man but here I am rocking it {:-)
I would love to see you publish some groups of stories on Amazon myself. I’ve already bought other books that first published on Lit. The book I bought last like that was from Todd172 on Lit. He is one of the most talented authors there in my opinion. His story series are captivating and I have written to him to ask him to put more of his stories into book form and put them up on Amazon for sale. I am sure you know of him, but on the off chance you haven’t, I highly recommend you read his offerings at Lit. He seems to have slacked off on his writing, but then I found you a few months ago and find yours (and CTC’s) writing to be of the same caliber of storytelling. As for how to pick the stories, I would say to group them by a theme, or if multiple stories have overlapping character or locations would be an idea. For example, your “Simple Conversation” bunch would be a good start and you could also group the “Cliche” series with it as one book. “Gone in minutes” would be another to add to the book if needed for word count. I’m not saying that’s what you need to do, but rather just throwing an example for you to consider. But if you publish, I will buy it. I think another Lit author who is publishing on Amazon is saddletramp1956, but I haven’t bought any of his yet. If you have more question about it, I would suggest you try to correspond with one of those fellows.
I might try Smashwords (https://www.smashwords.com) as an alternative to self publishing on Amazon. I have only looked into this in a tentative way myself. Personally, when I read an anthology of short stories, I appreciate if there is a variety in each section. It also keeps me engaged, too many of a type I am not as fond of, can have me shelving the book (well, e-reader). If you were re-editing anyway, it might be interesting to sort them by protagonist name (I know you use Dave, but that is malleable is it not?), which would allow you to pick and choose stories into sections based on different things (such as reader votes, pickaxes, your personal favs, etc) without anyone really knowing but you. Regardless, thank you for your time and attention and of course for your stories. I like Van1’s deadly sins & CTC’s Garden of Grace & SA’s Nurse Penny. All for different reasons, but please know, your stories are loved and reread many times.
First of all, I see no problem with you using your stories to generate income. As to how to arrange them, I would kind to like see them in the order that you like them. It would offer some additional insight into what we know about the authors of the stories we enjoy.
G’Day Wally
If you want to know more about us, you have but to ask.
The two stories i best enjoyed (i enjoy them all) writing were:
‘Talk of Betrayal’, mainly because the idea to make the lover a good guy came to me as i was writing it and it’s an original concept i think.
‘The Death of a Modern Man’, because Dave is the no nonsense larrikin i think myself to be.
I’m loving the Cliche series (I have another 4 in the editing queue) mainly because it’s fun taking a worn-out concept and breathing new life into it.
Why not rank them by Pixhandle, which is your USP?
Go for it!
Probably group by type but mix the serious and lighter.
If you can make a good of selling books, go for it!
How to organize stories? I’ll give that some thought and responded again later.
Pick – Axe ratings.
Definitely published them, I will support you. (Your stories encouraged me to start writing).
Add illustrations. Here’s what I’ve done on Medium: https://medium.com/@cindytv/accidental-hotel-betrayal-4ffa60593678
Good luck, and let me know if I can help.
Cindy
I’m all for you publishing and selling a book. Heck, the stories you two write are so looked forward to I’d support a subscription format as long as it was not auto-renew. As for selection of stories for your book I like tales that depict the most ludicrous and disrespectful actions by the wife and the most dastardly retribution to her and her lover by the husband (having been cheated on by my first wife with her boss and all). ALSO – it warms my heart every time one or the other talks about the great relationship you have. You can feel the love in your words.
Daltown, check your emails.
The problem with publishing by rating, whether by Lit or Pickaxe is that although these are a guide everyones tastes are different and just because a rating is lower, does not mean it is not a good story. We have all seen instances where a good story is marked down, so for me, publishing my date would be the logical way forward. I know some have said they would not purchase, but purely from a supportive point of view, I would purchase them. I have noticed that some of the Authors on Lit are now offering books through Amazon as well as their own sites and if an Author is good enough to get their stories published, then why the hell not.
I love your work but lm a pensioner and naturally won’t be buying your books. Sorry mate but you become a luxury. I’m sure you understand, l think quite a lot of your readership are the same as me.
Look at the end of the day it’s your choice
I’ll keep reading u whilst l can
Good luck
Your open and honest message is typical of you guys. Definitely go for it, I’ve always been keen to support a great service and would buy something you folk wrote just to show that support and it’s not exactly expensive. The choice I think should be yours, the Lit rating system seems somewhat flawed these days. The Literhierarchy seem to one bomb anyone they don’t like for example, I’d suggest balancing on your favourites with reasonable scores. Whatever you do I wish you both the very best of luck.
Might as well make something from what you enjoy doing (I presume you do enjoy writing!) but don’t make it a chore or lose the enjoyment. I love the stories, but prefer a longer story that I can get submersed in. I like stories with common characters and it gives you the chance to develop them. You could combine several into longer episodes. I probably wouldn’t buy them myself as I don’t whilst there are such good stories available here for nothing, but in the absence of the free site I would.
Good luck with it, and well done to CTC.
I think it’s a fantastic idea I’ve always looked forward to seeing a new story from you and really enjoy your collaborations with ctc I think you’ll do well and the stories should be grouped as lit scores, as at the moment they’re your biggest critics. Good luck
Don’t go defined parameters.
Pick the best 25 stories and call it Volume-1.
I would buy only if I know CTC & Vandemonium have deep selected these 25 stories.
I never hesitate to pay if the authors are good.
Just make sure it’s available in all countries.
Regards
This guy stole your story and without giving you any credit what so ever, and it is not the first time I HAVE SEEN ONE OF YOUR STORIES THERE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6HhNW1cp-k
Cheers mate. Have commented on his story, reported him to Youtube and sent a private email asking how much his mum charges by the hour. Don’t fuck with a pissed off Aussie with a sense of justice.
Well done mate. Contacted all Lit authors whose works he’d stolen. The guy’s Youtube channel is now blank. You’ve earned the Van1andCTC public service award.
Grouping by score would give you the opinions of readers, while grouping by your enjoyment makes sense too. IMHO you should combine the two.
When I read an author I go by date and the title of the story. Also have a list of my favorite authors and keep going back to see if they have any new stories.
* Definitely support the idea of publishing
* Start by best rated ones as first book, to generate interest and customer goodwill.
* The rest of the books sort thematically (by degree of BTB, humor, whatever).
* While at it, I’m not sure why you’re hosting your own blog? There are free blog services out there.
Good luck!
The cost is in the Domain Name, apparently, so people can find it easier. The other major cost is in security. As soon as we set the blog up it got bombarded with hackers using it to sell advertising. CTC gets about 20-25 illegitimate subscribers a day caught in the security net.
I have always enjoyed reading your stories! Thank you for that. If you can make a lot of money or maybe just enough to buy a beer or two go for it! I always thought this was a training ground for writers. Go for it, now if you are asking my advice as to what stories you should use, well now I would start thinking you may not have it all togather as I think you have! Best of luck no matter what way to go.
Your stories are good enough that you should make a couple if bucks. Many not my favorite literotica authors have published books on Amazon. I don’t know how well they have fared
Pickaxes you should group them by pickaxes
Initially, I thought it would be best be done by lit score, however, that will be read from the highest to worse (if that is possible) would not be good.
The randomness by date is a good idea.
There is one option not given. Do it by rating of ax.
good luck what every you choose
To clarify, I would probably not buy it, since I am not in the habit of buying e-books. My suggestion is to group them by pick-axe ratings. When I go through your stories on your site, that’s how I typically read them.