Phew...it was all a big mistake...

Or so Amazon is claiming and, as Annie Lennox once said, who am I to disagree.

Personally I think they just underestimated the reaction to their cleansing policy. It's a huge mistake indeed to wipe out ratings for a certain genre of books and to place thinly veiled homophobic texts, offering healing, on GLBT pages. Those are now gone. So much for a new enlightened liberal era being ushered in under the new President. Anyway, enough of politics, of which I know absolutely nowt.


It's cold, grey and wet in Blighty today, at least in my miniscule portion of it. I'm feeling a bit depressed and under the weather, a saying that probably arose under heavy cloud cover. I haven't done a great deal of writing over the last few days. I've been transferring a lot of stuff from floppy disks onto a pen drive in order to preserve it. The disks are beginning to deteriorate. At best my method of cataloguing and organising my work might be referred to as 'disastrous.' I have multiple versions of stories and poems and none of them properly dated and arranged. It's all a mess and really I need to make a serious effort to sort it all out, but I can't be bothered.


I've been trying to put some of my poems (and I use the term loosely) onto a new site. They have a certain emotional power if not actually a form that would pass the scrutiny of the poet purists. http://www.dustandshadow.synthasite.com


I've been pleased and surprised to have some good reviews for my poetry on Authors Den: http://www.authorsden.fabianblack/

Although I do love writing M/M discipline fiction, sometimes I vaguely regret getting into it. I perhaps should have concentrated on developing my writing in a more mainstream direction. A lot of people who read and indeed write 'spanking' fiction of any description, let alone M/M, are a bit embarrassed by their kink and therefore don't afford it any kind of respect. They don't mind taking it for free and anonymously, but few would walk into Borders and buy it off the shelf. Discipline fiction is a kind of underground thing, people gather in shuttered rooms to exchange it, or at least they meet up on Yahoo groups. :-) I used to be involved in a few groups and at the time I loved it, it was a lot of fun and I met some really lovely people, but in the end it all became a bit of a thankless treadmill and I wasn't getting anything out of it. I needed to move in a different direction and that's why I got into self-publishing. It offered me several challenges: to learn the whole process of layout and publishing and to improve my writing. I took a refresher course in creative writing and made a concerted effort to improve my technique without sacrificing my style. I get a real kick out of seeing my work in book form. It makes all the weeks and months of labour worthwhile, and it makes me feel that the time spent writing wasn't wasted and at least it won't just vanish overnight when the web crashes. There's been a certain flow of criticism from some readers regarding the direction I've taken my writing in. I'm truly sad and sorry about that, but I don't regret moving on (to parody one of my own titles) I needed to do it for my own sake and maybe for the sake of other writers in this genre who don't think their work is deserving of respect simply because of its subject matter. I'm hoping to achieve a wider audience for a genre of work that I feel has merit.

Well, that was a longer post than I intended and a bit rambly, but never mind. :)