Breakout

fmerommel

Christmas came early with your latest story! This is seriously one of your best and I think you nailed that perfect tension of highly erotic boundaries and the eventual moving beyond. And totally agree that this is clearly different than Bonds of Friendship

helen

Thank you. I'm happy to hear that. I have gotten very little feedback on f/f stories in general, and I do wonder if most readers tend to see the pairing and skip the story. I've written more recently not so much because it's more of a personal interest (although that has become more true since the early days of creating the site) but because I feel that there are more ideas that I haven't touched on. (Well, there are other reasons, too, maybe I'll write a post about them sometime. Or maybe I did already...)

The similarity to me was that Faye was the instigator of the relationship in Bonds. When she reveals her feelings, Erin still considers herself straight. So the relationship grew from one woman having feelings for a straight female roommate, which is also the case in Breakout. From that similar point, I think the actions and reactions (oops!) are very different; Emma is explicitly gay, explicitly sexually involved with Tiff, and selfish about it, while Faye is pretty much the opposite. They had in common an expectation that their friend wouldn't return their interest, and a strong desire not to screw up their friendship. (Although that was subverted by Emma's desire/need/selfishness.)

A lot of times I deliberately re-use a story idea in a different story, because I think it could have gone another way for an interesting result. That wasn't really the case here. It was more the idea that a great sexual experience could be the starting point of seduction rather than the end.

By the way, I hope you caught the reference to Bonds in Step-Something 🙂

JavaJoe

helen I don't know about anyone else, but I have always enjoyed your f/f stories. Impressions was great. Home Video was sexy as hell, even if a bit dated by technology. Play It For Me had the same sort of sweet revenge feel as The Boss's Wife, and I liked the happily ever after ending. Giving Solace was also a revenge sort of story. I liked the whole body shots scenario, but the story didn't seem to have a solid resolution between the two characters. Which is sometimes okay. Not everyone meets, has wild sex, and then spends the rest of their lives together. Sometimes they skip the last step.
And of course, as you know, I have told you before how much I loved your Daydreaming entries talking about Lauren and Yolanda. I have for years wished I could meet those real life women. I bet they are a hell of a lot of fun.
All that to say, please don't think your f/f stories are unappreciated. They are. They are some of my favorites. And for the record, Roomies is one of the stories I have re-read the most. It's at the top of the list with Susan and The Old House.

fmerommel

Haha wait so these stories are in a connected seduction universe? I'll need to reread Step-Something to look for the Bonds reference. It also cracks me up when I read one of your early classics, like Susan, where printer setup is not even needed because nobody has personal printers anymore. Reminds me that I'm getting old lol

And back to Breakout. I see the similarities you refer to now. If I had to pick a favorite between the two I would pick Breakout by a hair. It's almost like a f/f version of The Danger Zone which is an all time fav of mine. Also loved all of the character setup for Margot. Almost thought that she would be the one to seduce Tiff. Maybe she'll show up in a future story as part of your connected seduction universe 🤣

helen

fmerommel There really isn't a shared universe. I just threw the reference in because it fit so well. Spoiler: it's in Interlude 3. https://www.fantasiesofseduction.org/stories/steps/8

And yes, when I read the older stories or even journal entries a lot of things strike me as "quaint" 🙂. Videotape, diskettes, setting up browsers and servers, bulletin boards. I still have a personal printer, and still have regular problems with printers, at work and at home. There's something about printer technology that always seems a little beyond what vendors are capable of producing reliably. These days it's more along the lines of staying connected to the local net than paper jams, but they're still horrible devices.

Of course, the biggest change of all is the way that every single one of these stories, including what I'm working on now, could not happen now due to COVID. The idea of a story being obsolete before it's even published is depressing, but I really want to remember what the world can be, not what it currently is.

helen

fmerommel By the way, I should have mentioned the other reason I wanted to throw in a reference to Bonds. It's just a passing thing, and there really isn't a shared universe, but you'll notice that Sophie's sister's friend is recovering from morning sickness. Which I thought was a happy little update to Bonds.

She is name-dropped close to the very end, so that you can know that it's a reference, but unless you've been paying close attention, or reading the forum, you wouldn't know. Consider it a small reward for monitoring the forum!

helen

JavaJoe That's good to know, and also amusing. I don't know if you noticed, but I added a couple of lists to the main page just today. The first is the most recent five stories. The second shows the five most popular. To make the second list I added a database to track when stories are read, which is something I've really never had any kind of handle on. It's a ten day history, so it will keep changing, but as I saw the database start to grow I was surprised and a little embarrassed to see that Roomies was high on the list. I like it as a casual sex story, but have never thought it was very effective. I'm glad that you don't agree 🙂

"Play it for me," on the other hand, is one that I'm especially proud of. It's one of the few that I've had pretty much completely mapped out right at the start. I knew how it was going to end, I knew what was going to bring them together, I knew why they were together, which usually isn't the case. And I liked the little twist of an epilogue. If there's one story I'd like to write a sequel to, it would be that one. (I won't, because it wouldn't be good, but it's definitely the one where I'd really want to see where the women are five or ten years down the road.)

As for the endings, that's true. Giving Solace was a little more ambiguous about where it's going to go and if they're going to be together for any length of time. I suspect not, but getting her out of that situation and comfortable with herself is a happy ending of its own. I don't think the endings have to be long-term or even happy, so there's quite a mix of them. I guess in general I like happy ever after, but I don't need it.

Revenge sex has come up a few times, most clearly in The Setup.

Also, tequila body shots for the win!

fmerommel

Are you able to run reports on the most read stories of all time (or even the last few years)? That would be fascinating to see. I know I have my favs that I go back to often but every now and then I "rediscover" an older one I hadn't read in awhile and fall in love with it. Either way I love the new list option.

JavaJoe

Ha! I do that too. In fact, I looked up The Setup because Helen mentioned it. I remember reading it before, but not often. It was interesting to re-read it.

helen

I've never tracked read counts before, so I don't really have a reliable estimate. I have a stats report for 2020, and the top 5 would be: Step-Something, Designs, The Babysitter, Cabin Fever, Bonds of Friendship. Except for The Babysitter, those are all recent, and if you omit The Babysitter, #5 would be Out of Doors, which is also recent. So I guess they're just the ones at the top of the list.

The Babysitter's numbers are artificially inflated because "babysitter sex stories" or "babysitter seduction" is a popular search term, so that story gets quite a few hits directly rather than through the site structure.

I'm wondering about adding a new "random five" list below "most popular" for "impulse buy" visits, since most recent will be almost completely static and most popular won't change very much over the ten day interval. Maybe I'll just generate a new set of five every half hour or so.

JavaJoe

helen Cabin Fever is one of my favorites. It's one of those stories I can re-read multiple times without losing the spark of it.

helen

JavaJoe I re-read my own stories. I can justify it by proofing (I guarantee I find at least one error on re-reading). Some of the old stories have slid so far out of my memory that I'm surprised to find that they're better than I recall, and quite erotic.

The more recent ones, like Cabin Fever - maybe especially Cabin Fever - are so much fresher in my mind that the reaction I get is very different. I don't read the story as much as I relive the feelings I had when writing them. I find the buildup of arousal in Cabin Fever very exciting, not so much because the story is effective (it might be, but I'm too close to know) but because the feelings I was trying to convey are exciting.

My favorite section is where he's kissing her boobs through the shirt. Her reaction is so much more than she'd bargained for that his is too. At least, that's what I was trying for, and in the feelings I recall, that's the part of the story that seems the most intense. Not the later mutual sex scenes, but the excitement that grew too much for Logan to contain.

So I guess I also feel a spark, but it might be a different one.

(Update: I scrolled to that part of the story while writing this reply so that I could be sure it was fresh in my mind, and as I always do I found a proofing error right there. "She chuckled as she rolled off him. Her fingers absently pulled her tree back into place." I wonder how, exactly, she's wearing the tree?)

When I re-read "Bonds of Friendship" I get a very different feeling, because to me the core of the story isn't the erotic content, but the romance. (Though I think the erotic content is stronger because of the romance.) I realized recently that the whole of "Bonds" in all chapters has a word count that's 50% of a normal romance novel.

So you can probably guess what's going through my mind now...

fmerommel

Ooh are you working on an erotic romance novel?! Your latest stories have progressed beyond short stories and l'm loving every bit of it

helen

fmerommel I'm not, but I'm definitely thinking about it.

JavaJoe

I like the idea of you writing a longer, novel-length something.
Regarding your comment above about the feelings during certain parts, the point where you know you've reached the point of no return, that is why you are different from 99% of what else is out there. Most of what I've read concentrates on The Act. You write about what gets you to the place where The Act is inevitable. It's why I still love your writing after all these years, and re-read all of your stories.

On the topic of finding things to fix, I found one in Breakout. Here's the paragraph:
"Hope and expectation are different," she said, after a pause. "I can't say I haven't wanted to fuck you, but I didn't think it was happen, and I was content to get the straight girl horny and leave her frustrated."
I didn't think it was happen. Going to, maybe? Not sure. Anyway. Thought I'd throw that out there.

helen

JavaJoe "was going to" and thanks! I'll go change it right now. I appreciate all corrections! I hate coming across as illiterate... 😀

That story was even worse than most, because I wrote a good chunk of it on my phone, so autocorrect (actually Swype, which is generally better but when it's worse it's a doozy) made a real hash of it, and I think I spent longer fixing that section up than I would have done writing from scratch.

My thought isn't really to write an erotic romance as such (more detail on @fmerommel's comment) but to rewrite and expand "Bonds of Friendship" as a romance novel. Not erotica as such, but other than the terms used contemporary romances are often very explicit. I think BoF would work well in that context, and I think it would have potential.

And... while fixing that one problem, I found this: "I sat at the table in my robe and sipped the coffee Emma had paused." That's an interesting error.