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 Celestial Reviews 55 - Jan 24, 1996

   Note: The proofreading service is in full operation, and people are
reporting
successful use of it.  IF YOU WANT FREE HELP AND FEEDBACK BEFORE POSTING

A STORY, contact me, and I'll match you up with some of the reviewers. 
Remember: you're not
admitting to being a "bad writer" by asking for a proofreader.  Everyone

can benefit from having someone to help with their work.  Please note,
however, that this proofreading service is loosely organized.  I think the
proofreaders are doing a good job; but if you get a proofreader that seems
to have forgotten that you exist - or if you get an assignment to proofread
for someone who never corresponds with you - either be patient or contact
me for a new arrangement.

   Second note: I have had so many complaints about people not finding the
postings of either my reviews or of other stories that I am going to make
it a policy to repost all of my reviews at least once.  This week I am
reposting CR 54.

   - Celeste

   "Storm" by Deirdre (anal sex & sex slavery) 10

   "Summer" by Deirdre (domination & bondage) 9

   "Surprise" by Deirdre (bondage & anal sex) 10

   "Lucy in the Sky" by Sue (sex in the outdoors) 10.

   "Rocking My Canoe" by Rachel Taylor (mystery sex

   in the outdoors) 10

   "Casting my Die" by Brian Colby (sex with a mathematician)

   7

   "Churche House" by Deb Atwood (Romance) 9

   "Dr.  Quinn Meets Reality" by Reality Lines (Celebrity sex) 2

   "Storm" by Deirdre.  "Janet was very particular to warn me to do my best
to make Stacy feel at home." With these words in the second paragraph the
author gives away the basic plot of the story.  My theory is that Stacy,
whom the wife remembers as something of a frump and extremely shy around
men,.will be a conniving, horny dominatrix who will get the narrator to
have relatively non-traditional sex with her.  Either that or (more likely)
Stacy will seduce Janet while hubby looks on.

   First, let me admit that I was wrong.  Second, let me point out that I
think Deidre wrote the following lines with no pun intended:

   "OK," Janet finally said to me, "do her ass!"

   "Honey!" I managed to ejaculate.

   I say no double meaning was intended, because the guy obviously did not
cum at this time.  In spite of this faux pas, this is an excellent story.
From a psychological perspective, however, I'm not sure most women would be
as grateful as Stacy was for getting over her fear of thunderstorms. 
(Rating: 10)
"Summer" by Deirdre.  The substitute gym teacher tells the young

narrator to come to her office later in the afternoon.  He does so, and he
is instructed to fuck his beautiful English teacher while the gym teacher
corrects papers.  Eventually, however, hubris takes over and he and one of
the cheerleaders (whom I forgot to tell you about) go too far and start
fucking the English teacher at home during the summer without the gym
teacher's permission.  Therefore, they get punished.  This story is
somewhat unrealistic, because it suggests that adolescents think with their
hormones and don't follow directions very well.  Also, I object to the idea
that it's OK to fuck one's English teacher if one gets the gym teacher's
permission first; and who ever heard of a gym teacher correcting papers
anyway?

   A surprising element of this story is that the English teacher's name is
Ms.  Sherwood.  Coincidence?  I think not!  For the significance of this
name, please refer to CR 54.

   This is another weird but excellent story by Deirdre.  (Rating: 9)

   "Surprise" by Deirdre.  The man and his wife make romantic love on the
afternoon of their fifth anniversary.  That evening they are visited by her
old biker boyfriend, who ignores the woman and fucks the guy in the ass,
while his wife proclaims her love for the biker.  Naturally, this leads to
an improvement in their sex life and to further experimentations with
bondage.  I'll admit this all sounds a little lame, but the contrast
between the two halves makes this a very interesting story - even though it
perpetuates the silly myth that bikers are typically something less than
sensitive, poetic individualists.  (Rating: 10)

   "Lucy in the Sky" by Sue.  Sue goes for a short vacation in the Poconos
(that's a "holiday" in the mountains, I think, to you British readers) with
her old friend Lucy.  She is suspicious that Lucy is playing matchmaker -
trying to fix her up with a guy.  "Naw!" I thought.  "Lucy is inviting her
to an orgy." (Having met with success in predicting Deirdre's plots, I had
decided to expand to more complex cases.  This one was simple: they will go
to a mountain retreat with Lucy's boyfriend, and the three of them will
fuck their mutual brains out in the great outdoors.) I was so close that
I'm going to give myself a gold star for that prediction.  However, even
though I "knew" how the story would end, I found it to be a hot and sexy
tale.

   Sue again shows her ability to write a "rich" story - one with lots of
details that appear to sometimes appear to be irrelevant but actually add
to the story by developing the personalities of the characters or by
setting the physical or emotional environment for the sexual activities. 
This is not an easy task; it's very easy to drift into extraneous details
that distract from the story.  Readers don't want an inventory of all the
items in the physical environment or an anthropological description of "a
day in the life" of the characters; and so it's the author's job to decide
what to include and what to exclude.  I once received a critical comment
from a reader who knocked me for picking on Friar Dave in "Singapore Girl."
My correspondent pointed out that he happened to know that what Friar Dave
said in that story was all true - the way it "really happened." My reply
was that if Friar Dave were writing as an anthropologist or maybe even as
an autobiographer, then he should include details that have nothing to do
with the focus of the story.  However, since Friar Dave was writing a
story, he needed to stick more to his focus (as he does in most of his
other excellent stories).  At any rate, this ability to enrich a story
without losing balance is one of Sue's main strengths.  Authors who want to
enrich their own stories in this way should study Sue's technique.  (Sue
herself thinks she writes good stories because she's one hot chick with a
vivid imagination.  Not true!  It's because she has an ability to enrich a
story without losing balance.  Right!)

   I encountered some irritating formatting problems with this story: (1) I
frequently encountered the words "Mail" and "Save as..." at strange places
throughout the text.  Sue must have some sort of macro with her mailer that
interprets quotation marks as these commands.  I simply used my global
replace function to turn these back into quotation marks, and the story was
much easier to read.  (2) I noticed that Sue was omitting her apostrophes
for possessives and for contractions.  On an impulse, I did a search for
apostrophes in the story and found nary a one of them.  Since I am pretty
sure Sue knows about the existence of the apostrophe, I think Sue should
check her mailer, which appears to be deleting or altering some punctuation
marks.  I mention this publicly (rather than in a private note to Sue)
because this happens more often than authors may realize.  It's a good idea
to download your stories yourself to see what they actually look like to
your readers.  Anyway, I resolved not to "take points off" for faulty
apostrophes and quotation marks, but I encourage Sue to look into this when
she reposts or archives this story.

   This is an excellent story.  The following sentence contains a subtle
grammar problem.  Can you tell what it is?  "The trail was very rugged,
showing little signs of regular use.  " Answer: there should not be an "s"
on "signs".  The phrase should be either "little sign" or "few signs." The
present sentence says that there were tiny (little) signs that the trail
was used regularly.  (Boy!  Are my students in for a rough day tomorrow if
I don't have an orgasm soon!) (Rating: 10)

   "Rocking My Canoe" by Rachel Taylor.  This is another repost by William
Gann.  Two couples go for a canoe ride and stop for lunch on an island. 
After lunch, they decide on naked sunbathing, and the woman falls asleep.
She awakens with the vague feeling that someone is massaging her.  As she
relaxes to enjoy it, she realizes that she isn't really sure whether it is
her husband or the other man who is gradually increasing the intensity of
her sexual arousal.  She doesn't peek (as in peekaboo) until she peaks (as
in climax) twice.

   Being gently fucked by a mysterious person is one of those fantasies
that would be really dumb in real life but which I enjoy immensely in my
imagination.  This story gives a good presentation of that theme.  It's
interesting to compare Sue's "Lucy in the Sky" with this story, because
they both focus on outdoor sex.  Sue's is the better story, because it is
richer in detail and character development, but this is still one hot
story. (Rating: 10)

   "Casting my Die" by Brian Colby.  This is another repost by William
Gann. A young man who has recently completed a doctorate in mathematics
meets an old flame; he invites her to come up to his room to see his
etchings (linear algebra textbook); and they fuck pleasantly.  A flaw with
the story is that it's a little too unique to the Boston area; I had a hard
time getting the setup clear in my mind's eye.  In addition, although I
like quiet sex, this was a little too gentle for my tastes.  (Rating: 7)

   "Churche House" by Deb Atwood.  This is the last in this week's trilogy
of William Gann reposts.  As I suggested last week, the stories Gann is
reposting seem to be of reasonably high quality.  I am reviewing several of
them, because I think readers may be following my advice to download them.
This one is about a college woman and a slightly older male graduate
student who live in some sort of residence associated with their school. 
At the beginning of the story the woman has started writing an erotic story
of her own, and her first meeting with the guy occurs when he glances over
her shoulder while she is typing in horny rapture.

   After they have dinner and while the guy goes to a meeting, the girl
finishes her story, prints out a copy, and puts it under the guy's door. 
"This is my kind of woman!" says I to myself.  "She's hoping he'll
proofread it, correct the errors, and give her constructive feedback."
Actually, she's hoping to get laid.  I've never thought of that; I suppose
someone could write erotic stories for some ulterior motive rather than for
the intrinsic motivation inherent in giving birth to a work of literature.
Also, this story has one of my favorite pickup lines: "You're beautiful
when you're having an orgasm." I guess it isn't really a pickup line when
my husband says that to me.  To be an official pickup line it would have to
be, "I'll bet you're beautiful when you're having an orgasm."

   This is a very good story, but it reveals one of the shortcomings of
reposts.  This repost was labeled Chapter 1; Gann posted only this single
chapter.  The chapter stands reasonably well alone, and I'm not criticizing
Mr.  Gann; but if I liked it, how will I ever find the other chapters? 
(Rating: 9)
"Dr.  Quinn Meets Reality" by Reality Lines.  Sexual parodies and

celebrity sex can be a lot of fun.  I especially like the stories that take
a show that is goody-goody or in some other way unrealistic and inject
sexual realism.  For example, in the "Star Wars" movies it often occurred
to me that any sensible Evil Emperor or his agent would certainly do more
to Princess Leia than simply hold her captive.  To get her to give away
rebel secrets, the bad guys destroy her entire planet; but it never occurs
to them to rape her!  And how likely is it that the folks on the Starship
Enterprise would really spend their free time exchanging scientific
pleasantries rather than engaging in occasional ribald sexual exercises. 
So "Doctor Quinn" had potential.

   However, the problem is that the character in this story bears little
relationship to the female western doctor of American television fame.  The
title character in this story is a prissy bitch: "I'm perfectly capable of
getting out of a carriage myself," she says harshly at the beginning of the
story.  "And I won't require any help with my bags either." This is a story
about a bitch that pretty much deserves to be humiliated.  It's a parody of
Doctor Quinn as she would have been if she had been a completely different
person - which means it's a lousy parody.  A good parody would leave her
pretty much in character but force her to react to the "realities" of the
wild west - perhaps people with little evidence of a moral code, maverick
cowhands who would be eager to stick their cocks into anything female, and
whatever else the author might conjure up.

   This is a relatively weak rape and humiliation story - it's not a parody
at all.  There's no reason to believe that this author's depiction of
"reality" is any more accurate than that shown in the TV series, and it's a
lot less entertaining.  It's hardly worth the effort to struggle with the
incoherent grammar and spelling to find the plot in this story.  (Rating:
2)