Celestial Reviews 41 - Nov 29, 1995 Note: As I said in my last issue, two of the things that excite me in my role as a reviewer of stories are (1) noticing a good story by an author whom I know and respect and (2) finding a good story from a new author. For the second week in a row I am in luck on both counts. Second Note: I have gone ahead and posted (under my own name) my first story in over a year: VIRTUOUS REALITY. I won't review it, of course; but I hope you like it, and I would appreciate your comments. Third Note: Remember the Second Annual Celestial Story Contest. Simply write a short story based on the following premise: Once in flight, we flipped up the arm rest between us and I leaned against Jay who leaned against the wall. It was nice like that, and I spread Jay's coat over us like a blanket. We had hours of night-time flying in front of us. Jay held me in his arms. I felt him slip his fingers into the waist of my pants. He slowly fingered me. I opened my eyes. I felt that feeling growing inside me. The stewardess walked by. It was so strange to have Jay fingering me right there in front of someone. Jay withdrew his fingers and I could tell he was sleepy. Soon I could feel that he was sleeping. I slipped my own fingers where his had been. I fingered so slowly. I wanted that feeling, more and more. The stewardess came back and stopped. I stopped my fingers, laying there frozen. She looked right at me and then smiled. Rules: Enter as often as you like. If you enter early, I'll try to give you feedback to help you revise. You CAN alter the exact wording; as a matter of fact, I think it would be NECESSARY to modify the text to suit a particular story. The key components are man and wife on plane, woman fingers herself, stewardess notices. Send entries to Celeste801@aol.com. The winner will be announced on December 9. The last time we did this we got a couple of excellent Locksmith stories. So far I have received no entries - just three corrections of the way "waist" was spelled in the original lead-in. I could maintain that the word was spelled correctly, but "having her fingers in the waste of his pants" would require a scatological story, and that's not exactly what I had in mind. So thanks for the corrections, but feel free to submit a story! - Celeste "Girlfriend" by Deirdre (voyeurism and bondage) 8 "Glance" by Deirdre (blackmail & sex slavery) 8 "Grad" by Deirdre (bondage & sex slavery) 9 "Sisterly Advice" by DJ810 (emerging sexuality) 10 *"To Serve and Protect" by Sue (hot sex with a cop) 10 *"Hotsprings" by Delta (D&s romance) 10 *"The Chambermaid" by Delta (Sex on the rebound) 10 *"For Celeste" by Delta (mock epic poetry) 10 "Celestial Previews #1" by Celeste802 (parody of famous smut critic) 10 "Hotel" by Peggy Dupuis (romantic affair) 6 * = Repost of a previous review (because the story has been recently reposted). "Girlfriend" by Deirdre. The young girl (I'm guessing age 12 or 13) and her mother come home and hear the unmistakable sounds of sex emanating from the older brother's bedroom. The mother shoos the girl off to her room, so that she won't be scandalized. Now, knowing that this is a Deirdre story, what do you suppose happened next? You're probably close. It's another strange but interesting story. (Rating: 8) "Glance" by Deirdre. As you have probably noticed, Deirdre writes excellent stories from either a male or female perspective. This story comes to us from the perspective of a man who makes the mistake of casting an interested glance at a sexy neighbor while his wife's sister is watching. Soon the evil sister-in-law is blackmailing him, and his sins and the level of blackmail escalate, until he becomes a full- fledge, card-carrying sex slave. Let this be a lesson to all you guys out there! If you commit even a minor indiscretion, the correct protocol is to apologize humbly to your wife or girlfriend, beg for forgiveness, and accept your punishment like a man. Either that or use an axe or arsenic on the stupid bitch who is blackmailing you. (Rating: 8) "Grad" by Deirdre. I'll write this review after reading only the first two paragraphs. A woman who is in law school goes to spend the weekend with her friend, Gail, who is surrounded by sexy women who serve as her sex slaves. Gail seduces her friend, who is thus spared the ignominy of becoming a lawyer and is forced to spend the rest of his life catering to the sexual whims of a rich old lady. Well, I was pretty close. What really transpired can perhaps best be described as something between what I predicted and a nice double date that ended with romantic sex around the fireplace. However, it was still interesting to see how they got there, and I'm not really sure that becoming a sex pervert saved the narrator from becoming a lawyer after all. Deirdre is arousing my interest in this whole concept of sex slavery. I may go out and get myself a sex slave or two someday when I retire from teaching and when my husband is too old and feeble to satisfy my needs anymore. (Rating: 9) "Sisterly Advice" by DJ810 (an446077@anon.penet.fi) This was the first story ever posted by this author, and it was a joy to read. It was the perfect blend of the sexy and the normal. The older sister returns home from college for the summer and discovers that her little brother has grown up and become interested in girls. Without passing any moral judgment at all on other writers who pursue a different plot, I want to say that I found it to be thoroughly refreshing to read a story in which there was sexual tension between brother and sister without having them become lovers. The boy is struggling with how to express his sexual feelings to his girlfriend; and the older sister, who is experiencing growing pains of her own, offers him advice and encouragement. The boy and his sister have grown up to be normal, decent kids; and the anxieties and problems they face are examples of the very real sex-related problems that normal, decent adolescents face. They even have a mother (a minor character) who seems to have common sense and who wants neither to jump into bed with her children nor to inhibit their sexuality by preaching to them that sex is a sin. What is stylistically most impressive about this story is how well it maintains its continuity and has its impact by letting the characters display their feelings through their actions; and these are realistic, plausible feelings that many of us have shared. I was about two-thirds of the way through this story and I had been feeling its constant sexual tension, when I realized that the words cum, cunt, pussy, etc. had not been used at all; and I doubted that they would be used during the rest of the story. There was no need for them. Even though I have not experienced *exactly* what these two experienced, the story was close enough to my own reality that I found myself being turned on by the events and feelings themselves, even before I started to nostalgically remember similarities to my own adolescent life. Because there are several issues that are unresolved at the end of the story, it is my guess that this author plans to continue this story into a longer work. I urge her to be cautious. This is already an outstanding story. The issues that are unresolved are fine as they are - unresolved. I strongly recommend this story. It made my day. (Rating: 10) *"To Serve and Protect" by Sue (SueNH@AOL.com). If you read my review of Sue's "Life's a Beach" in CR 20, you may recall that I theorized that Sue wrote bad stories before her 8th. Well, either she has renumbered the stories or I was wrong. This one (her 6th) is one of her best. Sue is driving down a highway in Maine, mentally reliving some of her recent sexual exploits. The wind and fresh air have an erotic effect on her and her fingers begin to wander. Eventually a policeman pulls her over because of her erratic (or erotic) driving. The cop is a perfect gentleman, but after he verifies that she's not dangerous and gives her a stern lecture, he does public relations work with Sue - if you know what I mean! They don't call those Maine cops Mounties for nothing. As Sue herself says, "With a cock this big, what need does he have for a night stick! " This is Sue at her best: an excellent build-up plus detailed and graphic descriptions of the actual sexual encounter. If you want an example of excellent punctuation, you should read this story. Likewise, if you're studying the impact of Mayan civilization on the modern world economy you should read this story. You won't necessarily learn a lot about either punctuation or Mayans, but you'll certainly enjoy a good story. (Rating: 10) *"Hotsprings" by Delta . When Delta first started posting this story, I gave it a good review on the basis of the first two chapters and my previous experience with one of her stories. After I did that, I thought maybe I had made a mistake - not because of anything this author did but rather because I had gotten burned by a couple of other stories that started out good but faltered later. I thought maybe it would be better to avoid rating stories until they were finished. Toward the middle chapters of this story, I got even more worried; it was getting just plain silly with all these people wandering around the campsite wearing matching chokers. But in the end, my patience was rewarded. Everything fell into place. It really is a good story. The plot centers around the activities of the workers at a recreational campsite. Kat, the new business manager, is introduced as a beautiful but conniving dominatrix, who seems intent on building herself a sexual empire. Fred is introduced as a good, strong, patient man who doesn't want to play Kat's games. Big Jake is the free-spirited owner who loves his wife but also loves his freedom and lots of other women. He treats his wife, Jennie, and the other females pretty much like objects; but Jennie still loves him. And then there are about four other interesting characters. The author combines a lot of hot sex with an interesting plot (that I don't want to divulge) to make the story really interesting. (If it starts seeming silly, just repeat several times, "Celeste says this is interesting." It will become interesting again. As a matter of fact, if you're not intent on critiquing the story, you might not have this silliness reaction at all.) When I started reviewing a.s.s. stories, I didn't think I would like D&s (domination and submission) stories. I still don't have a driving urge to have my husband submit to torture whenever he disobeys me or fails to satisfy me sexually, but I have to admit that I enjoyed this story - especially the final two chapters, which are practically non- stop hot sex. Notice that I have labeled this story "D&s romance." Originally I thought the two concepts were incompatible; but I was wrong. At least in the world of fiction, they are sometimes compatible. (Rating: 10) *"The Chambermaid" by Delta (an248969@anon.penet.fi). I am familiar with Delta primarily as the author of some of my favorite *long* stories. My all-time favorite is "Strip Chess" - because of that story I still cannot concentrate properly on strategy during a chess game. This is a much shorter story - the kind of thing that Ann Douglas or Sue do so effectively. I was impressed that Delta could write so well in this different format. The story is about a woman who has recently broken up with her lover. A major problem in her life, she feels, is that she is too fastidious and predictable. She is staying in a motel, and she mistakenly puts the "Clean room" instead of the "Do not disturb" sign on the door knob while she takes a shower. When she comes out of the shower and is surprised to find the chambermaid (a guy) in her room, she impulsively decides to be a lot less predictable. You'll have to read the story to find out what this means. I have a personal insight into how this story was written that makes it even more impressive to me. When Delta sent me this story, she told me that she had written a message to a.s.s., but it was obvious to her that the message really belonged on a.s.s.d. However, she knew that if she posted it with the latter newsgroup, very few people in her target audience would see it. So she solved the problem by immediately writing this entire story, and then she appended the message to the story - and she could now legitimately post the combination on a.s.s., since it was a story and her message was part of the disclaimer! Actually, this is not a new ruse. You possibly know that there is some dispute over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. As I understand it, the real story is that those plays were written by a woman who was in love with her landlady, at a time when such things were viewed askance (women writing plays, that is). Anyway, whenever she sent in her rent check, she enclosed another scene or act (depending on her level of passion at the time) or a sonnet (if she was really hot). This is only one hypothesis, but I think it makes a lot more sense than the Francis Bacon theory; and it also explains why some of the passages make so little sense. From one perspective, Delta's effort pales in comparison - "Shakespeare" also put her plays into iambic pentameter and her sonnets sort of rhymed sometimes. (Rating: 10) *"For Celeste" by Delta (an248969@anon.penet.fi). It may be true that everyone gets fifteen minutes of fame in his or her lifetime; but few people get an epic poem dedicated to them. I have now received that honor, even if it is a short epic. I admit that I had a conflict of interest reviewing this poem; and my dilemma was heightened by the fact that the United States does not have a poet laureate for us taxpayers to consult. Therefore, I contacted the poet laureate of England, more commonly known on the Internet as SirBigStick, who verified the validity of this review and also offered to dub me his understudy. To be enjoyed to its fullest, this story has to be read out loud. Actually, to be enjoyed to its absolute fullest, it should be read out loud while one is eating one's favorite food and doing one's favorite thing. Perhaps being covered with warm chocolate syrup would help too. My point is that many of us in Western society have lost the ability to communicate in heroic verse, and this story should do as much as anything to restore that talent to our culture. In addition to its obvious metric qualities and excellent use of metaphor, this story/poem effectively uses understatement to describe the sexual activity between a goddess and her demigod lover in terms that can be understood by mere mortals. I showed this story to my husband, and he was at first upset. But then he realized that the line "shriveled mightily" did not refer to him, but was actually "shivered mightily" with reference to me. I enjoyed this story; and I think those of you about whom it's not will also enjoy it. It's a very clever piece of writing. It really is a good parody of Homeric verse as that form was often imitated in Elizabethan times. Or, as SirBigStick put it: "Delta! A Poet? I didn't know it!" (Rating: 10) "Celestial Previews #1" by Celeste802. This author has cleverly imitated my own nom de plume and overall style. As you can tell from the slightly faulty punctuation, however, these Previews are not written by me but by a pseudo-me - by a pretender who flatters me with this imitation. There is a really uninteresting story behind why I my e-mail name is Celeste801; and telling this story may be useful, because it will make everything else interesting by contrast. I wanted to name myself just plain Celeste. AOL said that name was already taken and suggested Celeste801. I guess I should have made a counter-suggestion of Celeste69 or Celeste469 or something; but I had no idea at the time that I would be writing these reviews for more than a week or two. So I became Celeste801. I assume Celeste802 got that name through a similar decision process. Or maybe it's just an incredible coincidence. Anyway, this is an extremely well written parody of my Reviews. The humor arises not from the parody of me per se (indeed, only the bd/sm faction of a.s.s. would take delight in poking fun at a benign but befuddled and sexy English teacher who is hardly a very cunning linguist at all) - rather the humor arises from the parodies of the individual stories that this author reviews. Read them and laugh! Many of you will speculate about the actual authorship of this set of pseudo-reviews. This isn't too hard to figure out. The author has resorted to some primitive subterfuges. I initially ruled out Deirdre as a suspect, because the story was too long and omitted apostrophes - neither trait being typical of the Bard of Sulphur Springs. On the other hand, the left side of my brain reasoned that perhaps Deirdre was *indirectly* responsible - that is, she might have had one of her numerous sex slaves write the story for her. However, I eventually ruled Deirdre out altogether, because the parody of Deirdre's story was itself weak - it involved neither mind control nor anal sex; and both of these would have been obvious possibilities - especially at a place like Kinko's. To make a long explanation short, the key clue occurred in the author's reference to the Ng Sisters. There are only four people on all of a.s.s. who know that Ng rhymes neither with pig nor with pug but rather is pronounced "ing." Since Ng is used as a verb ending in the present story, that means that the author must be either myself, Backrub, SueNH, or the Ng Sisters herself. {Note my mysterious but deliberate use of "herself" for the apparently plural Ng Sisters. Check this out in a forthcoming issue of the National Enquirer!} The rest of the logic, my dear Watson, is so elementary that I won't bore you with the details. In short, I thoroughly enjoyed this essay and think you will too! (Rating: 10) "Hotel" by Peggy Dupuis. This is a story by one of those brave new authors who not only post a first story but also send me a copy and ask for a public review. This story reminded me a lot of the Alan Alda movie "Same Time Next Year": a tale about two people, each happily married to somebody else, but each drawn by an irresistible urge to fuck their brains out with a new partner. In her cover message to me the author said that she needed to find out if she had talent, and the answer is clearly yes, she does. This is already a good story with a major strength in conveying the ambivalent emotions a woman might feel during a first extramarital romantic rendezvous. Another important strength is that the story is relatively free of hackneyed cliches; the images she evokes felt genuine. Since this review immediately follows one in which I have been caricatured as over-emphasizing punctuation, I have to be careful in what I say next. The most serious shortcoming of this story arises from the fact that it was not adequately proofread. There are numerous grammatical errors that are just plain distracting. In addition, the author goes into considerable depth on minor details that appear to be of no subsequent importance and neglects others that could add to the story if they were further developed. There are three closely related reasons why the story has problems. (1) The author is so close to her original ideas that the image she is trying to create is already clear in her own head. Therefore, it's very difficult for her to look at her own writing and say to herself, "Has my story evoked this emotion?" The emotion already exists in her own mind while she rereads the story, but that may possibly be because it was already there before she put her fingers to the keyboard. (2) Once the author has written a passage, it is very difficult to reread it to check grammar without reading what she "knows" is there instead of what she really wrote. (3) Authors have an irresistible urge to show the story to somebody. They rush to press. I know it is dangerous for a critic to cite her own writing as exemplary; and so I hasten to point out that at least two of the 300 stories I have reviewed are possibly superior to my own recently posted "Virtuous Reality." However, at risk of inviting comments accusing me of smugness or condescension, I am going to point out how I myself overcame the problems I mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I simply found two competent critics who had not seen the story and asked them to give me their honest reactions. Since neither of these two persons already knew what emotions I was trying to convey, they each reacted from their own perspective; and so I had a good way to evaluate the extent to which I was already successful and that to which I needed to make adjustments. Secondly, they easily noted and eagerly pounced on my grammatical errors - almost all of which were typographical errors. These errors were blatantly obvious to me once my reviewers flagged them; but prior to that they were invisible to me - like most of you, I don't have the patience to read each individual word when rereading what I myself wrote, but these mistakes jumped out at my reviewers. Finally, my access to these two reviewers at least partially satisfied my need to share the story with a wider audience. I was still eager to post the story, and I am still anxious to hear what more readers think about "Virtuous Reality"; but I at least knew that I was on the right track and that two intelligent people were having fun with my story. The result of sharing the story with these two reviewers was a greatly improved story. One major change was that I abandoned my original intention to write a parody of a popular Jimmy Stewart movie and shifted to a story that I think stands on its own legs pretty well. I changed the title from "It's a Wonderful Sex Life" to "Virtuous Reality." I added more action to the text. I became assured that my attempts to convey a few of my favorite insights would not be viewed as "preaching" by my intended audience. And so forth. I am convinced that I have a major advantage compared to other others in the fact that I have access to a NETWORK of readers and authors who are willing to share their ideas with me. Had the author of this present story been able to ship her story off to a good reviewer or two before she posted it, she would have probably made adjustments prior to publication; and the result would have been a rating of 10 instead of 6. However, my guess is that she couldn't do this, because she had no idea where to look for such a person. After all, the normal sources of peer feedback (parents, children, neighbors, English teachers, babysitters, etc.) may respond with dismay to realize that one of their friends or family members is a latent pervert who writes pornography. To make a long review less long, I'll get right to my final point. I think the network that this writer needs already potentially exists here on a.s.s. This newsgroup is full of intelligent people who are perfectly capable of giving authors pre-publication feedback. All we have to do is make the connections. I personally do not usually have time to make specific comments that would enable authors to improve their stories before they post them. (I do so occasionally, and the result is almost always an excellent story.) However, I am willing to begin to compile a list of "Non-Celestial Reviewers" who would be willing to interact with authors now and then to help them develop their stories prior to publication. Doing this occasionally is actually fun: the reviewer gets to see a good story before anyone else gets to see it. So consider doing two things: (1) if you're willing to be listed (name and e-mail address) as a possible reviewer, tell me so; and (2) contact an author and tell him/her that you would be happy to check out his or her next story prior to publication. (Rating of current story in its present format: 6)