121. Who knew?

Friday, August 05, 2005

About a month and half ago, I began recapping and reviewing this current season of the Real World taped in Austin months ago, and now airing Tuesday nights on MTV. I have watched almost every season of the Real World since the show began airing in 1990. I've only missed two seasons, London and Back to New York. They just didn't grab me early on. When I began posting my recaps, I never realized how much attention the recaps would start to get. It is just mind boggling to me. Each and every morning this week, I've come online to a filled mailbox with comments left on my recaps. The other morning I had just 30 emails alone from those reviews. Today I think I received nearly 20. I get more comments directly after the show airs, but I've been getting responses the entire week of. Some of the comments left are a bit rude, but people are watching the show and commenting based off of what they see.

My recaps have made it to the hot articles listing on the site every day. Just yesterday when I looked, three of the seven recaps I had written so far this season were all in the hot articles box under video, all at the same time. Right now, I just checked and the two most recaps are listed in the hot box. I never really imagined they would get so much attention. The site they appear on as even placed a link to a master post containing all my reviews on the sites sidebar. Since I watch the show weekly anyway, my recaps are easy to write. The show airs at 10pm PST, and by 11pm PST my recap of that week's episode is usually already up. Sometimes even quicker than that. I'm already trying to figure out what fall shows to recap and review. I've got some thoughts, and I think my plan is to recap one returning favorite and pick one new show to recap. I also plan to recap The L Word in 2006 to see if Gaywired is interested in picking those up as they were with my Queer as Folk recaps and reviews.

Last night, I didn't get much done on Crash into me. I did write a short ficlet based off a prompt on a community I am a member of on live journal. That was posted over on my fiction blog if you're interested in hopping over there. What I did do last night was give some thought to one of the contests I wish to enter this month. Torquere Press announced a new contest for this month earlier this week. The contest theme is safe sex. I kept trying to figure out a plot and a story that I could easily slip in the condom usage in. What's so difficult about that? They use a condom. Well, sometimes having the characters stop in the middle of the action to put on a condom just ruins the whole flow of the story. So I'm trying to figure out how to keep the story hot and flowing.

The things we have to sit there and think about huh? I know in the past I've read posts that have talked about including safe sex in their stories. Suzanne McMinn, I believe had a post discussing the topic in recent months. I'm not sure, but I believe it was her. What do you think about safe sex in fiction stories? Do you think it works or do you think it interrupts the flow of things to halt things to scramble for a condom? I know in this day and age the reality is safe sex is smarter sex, but are we going for reality or for fantasy with our stories? Since I write gay erotica, safe sex seems to become even more of an issue. However, it is an issue in straight stories as well, and I have seen books where the hero stops to put on protection before throwing the heroine down on the bed and doing the deed. The scenes I have read have been handled well too.

One more quick thing, I was excited to learn today that I won a giveaway of the paperback edition of Never Love a stranger by Ellen Fisher today. I should be seeing that in my mail shortly!

Hope all are well. Have a great night everyone.