In this part of the interview, carried out after dinner, with Merlot in hand, we discuss the Scratchpad idea.
I: I am intrigued by…what is it, Scratchpad. What is in it?
R: Short answer: a whole heap of stuff, some of which will never see the light of day, and some of which, if shown to regular folks, would cause them to turn a different color and move in the direction of Away. I might have to shoot you also if I find you reading it.
I: What sort of stuff?
R: Well, let me make one thing clear. I never write about anything that is illegal. I have no interest in pederasty, or extreme BDSM, or rape fantasies. And I have not even got around to thinking about vampire porn, furries or extra-terrestrials, monsters or dinosaurs. Will I get there eventually? Who knows. But right now, No.
But…within that set of limitations, I have a whole raft of sketches, ideas and stories that are like loose-leaf binders (not of the Mitt Romney kind) that is my ideas pot.
I: So what happens to items in Scratchpad?
R: Several things can happen to stuff in ScratchPad.
It can get promoted to its own book project. That is exactly how Books Of Loukas evolved. And my futuristic pentalogy (or however many books it turns out to be) also started life as a series of character sketches and as a Sci-Fi thought experiment. I later discovered that somebody else in the Sci-Fi genre had already thought of the idea, but they wrote a novel out of it completely differently. Thank God.
I also have a new book series that spent 5 years lying in plain sight as a collection of oddball sketches. First of all, It was just total self-amusement, a vehicle for my own filthy imagination. Then, as I wrote more prose, I thought it had potential, but I had no Big Idea on which to hang the stories. No compelling plot devices or story arc, just a couple of anchor characters, and a whole host of transient people appearing and disappearing. And a lot of down and dirty.
Now I have the Big Idea, although the detail still needs work. So that will be the third series of books. Will I complete it before I pass on? I dunno.
Some of the stories stay in Scratchpad, and I ransack them later for material for other stories or story chapters.
Some of them sit there, with nothing happening. Usually they were ideas that either had no potential or I lost interest in them.
And some of them were deleted. They were, no two ways about it, crappy.
Belem Knight has picked up some of the stories and is running with them. He has a more down and dirty sensibility. One of my other alter egos is also looking seriously at another thread from Scratchpad which was provisionally broken out into its own project several years ago, because a lady friend of mine was looking for a certain type of erotic fiction, and I was writing something for her. I guess that is project #4. Hmm. It looks like I may have to live a bit longer.
I: What about fetishes?
R: Well, I do have an interest in busty women. So there are some central characters who have fine curves. That is likely to be a feature of some of the books. There is another angle which smart readers may also find, but I will leave that one hanging there. You want to find out what it is? Buy the books.
Other than that, I am trying to cover all of the normal bases. I happen to believe that there is insufficient attention on foreplay and oral, so that may be more prominent, haha.