Well... I've finally finished the last chapter. 18, for God's sake, with each chapter a medium-to-long story in its own right.
What I'm planning to do is post a chapter each week until they're done. So that's, what, about 4 1/2 months? That will give me the chance to review, edit, and check consistency. There are already a couple of places I know I want to tweak. Now that I know how it ends I can be sure that the stories connect.
Each chapter isn't quite a stand-alone story, in that it builds on previous chapters, but I've done my best to ensure that it works as a standalone encounter. And each chapter has its own erotic content; there are no chapters which simply feed into future action. The idea being of course that it's to be read as 18 separate stories in 18 sessions, with the stories fitting into the same framework.
We see a lot of the club that was important in Breakout and Entanglement. It has a name, now. We meet some old friends - Emma, Tiff, Margot, Heather, Cyndy, Josh, Dylan, Austin, and especially Anita. I'm pretty sure this will be the last Helenverse story, except for when I continue Step-Something. (Which will happen.) But that will never involve this cast.
As for reading - I've honestly been delaying answering this until I've thought about it for a while. I'm still disappointed with online fiction for the reasons you both mention. There's good erotic stories around, but as I whined often when I began creating my own, they're still about the mechanics rather than the sensuality, and there's too little erotic build-up.
On the other hand, I've read some excellent stories in the last few years. Romance writers know plenty about the build-up, though they can be a little light on the erotic content. Reading romance novels leaves me wishing erotica writers would read romance novels... 🙂
Among romance novels, I'm very disappointed with straight romances. There are too many tropes to deal with that distract from the story. Women aren't exactly presented as delicate flowers in contemporary romance, and men are sensitive - but they are also bulging with muscles, brag about their sexual prowess and are generally assholes except with the female protag.
But there are some excellent (and raunchy) writers of lesbian romances. Anything by Georgia Beers is excellent, especially the more recent novels. "Flavor of the Month," or "One Walk in Winter" are very good. "No Strings" by Gerri Hill is nicely raunchy, and a good story, with a sequel of sorts, "Snow Falls," and "The Secret Pond" is just a lovely story (with maybe a little less sex than most). "Thursday Afternoons" by Tracey Richardson and "Turbulence" by EJ Noyes are books that begin with great sex scenes between the romance partners and yet still include build up to romance and more sex scenes.
So if I've been influenced by anything I've read over the last few years it would probably be lesbian romances, though I fully intend to keep writing M/F stories. (And the main reason for the F/F setting of the new series, "Mentor" is that it is largely about the setting, since it's been established along with the Helenverse characters.)
Anyway, with luck Chapter 1, "Intern," should be online this weekend.