The US had been struggling for a while, with slower economic growth, declining birth rates, increased political and cultural tensions, and fear of environmental collapse. However, in 2031, a popular senator from Texas by the name of Ryan Shaye had announced his run. His campaign began in earnest, appealing to multiple sets of voters at once. He appealed to y...
Obviously, step one in writing a novel, get an idea. Authors get the question all the time: "How do you come up with your ideas?" Assuming you're not one, I can answer that: Formal viewpoint. Or a functional mentality. For example, Forbes Magazine had a front page cover about how al-Qaeda was losing money, and it suggested that Osama needed a new business...
All too soon, it was time for me to resume the duties of my priesthood. It had been a lovely sabbatical, but I heard the voices in my heart, sending out their prayers for deliverance and succor, and I knew I must answer them. So we spent our days with Angela, and made appointments in the evening. Darian came along in his invisible form, and watched over me...
Welcome to Mammopolis: A Dystopian Metropolis of Obsession and Excess Nestled in an indeterminate location, Mammopolis stands as a beacon of unrestrained capitalism and radical societal values. This sprawling megacity is a labyrinth of neon-lit streets and towering skyscrapers, where corporate entities, rather than the state, hold the reins of power. In Mamm...
1 Many of us balk at the idea of storytelling being something of a clinically constructed device, but everybody has their own methods; ways of writing that work best for them. Long before I studied media I was a ball of chaotic creative energy with little conscious method beyond the dialogue and the description. I can look back and both cringe and revel...
This essay is part of a series in which I compare the ideas of philosophers on the subject of Aesthetics. I'm attempting to extrapolate from their superior knowledge and writings what I believe are important points on the creation of and critique of Art, Beauty and the Soul. I hope there are some artists/scholars out there who can appreciate my works- Beca...
Chapter Five The Sahara Desert - 3723 C.E. There was much about the Solar System that was new to Vashti. She'd already made several significant accidental errors since she'd penetrated interdimensional spacetime and materialised in the continuum in which the Anomaly's presence was most concentrated. Her primary error, of course, had been not to understand...
Chapter 30 – Culture Vultures "I should have asked, but how do you go about determining what the culture or ethos of a business is?" Dave and Ginny were sitting on the sofa in his EneRG office. Ginny stood and went to the flip chart in the corner of the seating area. She turned to a blank page and wrote: traits, behaviors, leaders, and measurements. Opposi...
In our world, the primary act around which the majority of sexual interaction revolves is vaginal intercourse. There are outliers and fetishes and foreplay, of course, but in terms of broad cultural understanding, men and women want - to put it as crudely as possible - penis in vagina. Now, what if you changed this primary sex act to something else? This mig...
Writing Smut for Profit: It's Not just an Adventure - It's a Job. Whoever told you that writing fiction for adult industry publication - for money - is supposed to be Artistic, Fun, or Easy -- LIED. Writing may look artistic, and creative writing certainly is artistic (that's why they call it Creative Writing,) but writing for a living - writing for publ...