The story behind Mending Fences

 

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

MENDING FENCES

At the time I wrote mending fences, I had been reading a lot of steamy stories. 

A. LOT.

After doing some housework, when my mind always wanders, I asked my husband to give me names for 3 characters, two males and 1 female. I know. You are probably looking at the way I inconsistently wrote the numbers. I will do that from time to time. Sorry, not sorry. Grammarly will fix it later.

Anyways, the idea was this. I had three names. I wanted something with a double meaning, and I wanted to try my hand at writing 2 distinct male voices. For a first effort, I think I did ok. the story as it appears here is the original rough AF first draft. A slightly better version was put on Literotica, and omg, I got 29k views and over 4 stars rating. I was happy with that. I mean, wow, it was my first completed short story tested on an actual site. I was a little bit proud. I am not gonna lie. I put it on NSFWstories.com, and it was well-received too.

I didn't do much else with it. Then I started writing more erotic short stories on Wattpad where they were not faring quite well.  I was getting a few hundred reads. I took all of the stories back to draft at one point, so I basically started all over; then life happened, and I basically had to quit writing and put my life on hold for about 5 years.

I copied my stories offline because when I went back to Wattpad, it seemed like most of the stories were in the YA genres.  I tried reading some of the stories that were getting like 1 million reads, and I was so confused. There was editing and misspells everywhere in the stories. Mature reading was a small percentage of the stories on there. 

Once I took my stories off, I took a closer look at what I had written for Mending Fences.  I already had four stories lined up for a short story collection. I worked on 3 of the stories with no problem, but then the 4th story, simply called Ginnie, had me stumped. I had no idea how to move forward with it.

I took Ginnie offline last year and did a reread. The story started growing and expanding, and I realized it was no longer a short story but definitely a novel. I removed it from the Kissing in the Rain lineup and replaced it with an updated version of Mending Fences.  

My early inspiration picture for the story. I managed to barely blend an idea of the characters together. The story has diverse characters, if it isn't clear by the picture below. 

Here is the evolution of the cover.

This was the original cover for KITR.

then I changed it to this

and this is the most current version of the book cover

I decided that I wanted to be one of those weird writers that did not use people on their covers. This way, you can read my steamy books in public with a nice cover that doesn't look like what the inside is about. I understand that book covers sell books, blah, blah, blah, but I hope to try something a little different and hope with a good blurb it goes well. I don't plan on offering this book in print at this time, but who knows?  

If you are an avid reader, after a while (and I am not saying I don't appreciate some rock-hard eight-pack abs and muscular arms) but even the couples start looking a bit similar. So I read the story blurb or description to see if I want to read the book. I have been deceived by attractive cover more than once. Just saying!

It is also nice to see some different and unique book covers once in a while.

So my fair readers, the completed story of Mending Fences is now hidden in the Kissing in the Rain: An Erotic Short Story Collection. This collection is soon to be published.