InBrightestDay

Oh my God this is the funniest dialogue, because it kind of does sound like a goblin name! Also, just a heads-up, I have started reading part 2, but I’m delaying reviewing a bit because I want to get a little work done on something of mine tonight. You will have a review soon, though! 🙂

😄 *Joker voice* I’m an agent of chaos… Actually I swear, most days in Florida are surprisingly normal. It’s just every once in a while...

I liked it in particular because it made it feel like a carnivorous plant or something similar, where once a prey animal is drawn in by the “lure”, it still takes a while for the trap to fully close, like the slow-moving tentacles of a sundew. The sudden drop would have worked too (more of a Venus flytrap vibe there), but I kind of like it better this way. This is a fair question, and it deserves the full answer I couldn’t condense enough for the review. So, this was a solid B, I would say. It was pretty good, but I think it could have been hotter. I wanted to lean especially into the positive, however, because I’ve read enough blowjobs in erotic fiction to know that most people write them in ways I don’t like at all. The standard erotic fic blowjob tends to go a certain way. 1. The motion is kind of frantic, like the woman is trying to win a prize for time (that would have been amusingly appropriate here, but the point stands). I tend to find sexual content more arousing when it starts out more relaxed and then kind of accelerates toward the climax. 2. There’s a sound effect that gets made, and it’s nearly always the exact same sound effect too: “Glurk! Glurk! Glurk!” Suffice it to say I am not aroused by the sound of a choking frog. 3. There’s always an emphasis on the amount of drool/spit coming off the blowjob, and it usually reaches the point where I honestly find it gross rather than hot. I know I’ve read seriously arousing blowjobs in erotic fics before, but they’re shockingly few and far between in my experience. I agree that there is room for you to improve, but I gave a positive mention there because I’ve seen way worse.

Apologies if this is annoying, as you almost certainly guessed this from reading the topic, but just in case, you weren’t aware, @GeorgeGlass, I have posted a review of your holiday story. Again, not trying to be annoying; it’s strictly a just-in-case thing. 😅

Well, I responded to Invidia’s review first because of how brief it was, but by far the most detailed review of Meaningful Gifts comes from @JayDee! So perhaps there is no such thing as bad publicity. 😄 Also, many people with incest kinks were awakened that day… Honestly, I hadn’t really considered that until you pointed it out, but it is rather appropriate. I am honestly proud of how the finished product turned out, so, much like Lexi and Drew’s relationship development, this story might have happened exactly when it was meant to. 😊 That was a tricky, but I felt really important part of the story. Meaningful Gifts is a kind of incest story I rarely see. Usually in these stories the sibling relationship starts off completely normal, and then something happens that causes it to shift. I can see why this premise is used, as it works with the basic storytelling structure of the status quo and its disruption by the inciting incident of the plot. However, this was a different approach, about a brother and sister who have been inching toward an incestuous relationship for the majority of their lives, a journey of a thousand tiny steps instead of one or two huge leaps. Thus, it became very much the story of a life together, so the flashbacks were snapshots of this long, gradual evolution of their relationship toward something romantic. I was particularly fond of what you mentioned regarding the bed, because it wasn’t precisely sexual, but instead about this sense of deep emotional intimacy, and how much the siblings have come to enjoy and draw comfort from each other’s physical touch without even really thinking about it, how that started as a way to comfort each other in childhood and now became this deeply cozy form of intimacy. The messed up childhood was part of that, explaining why Lexi and Drew have always been intensely close. Their parents were never outright abusive, but at the same time they were a source of anxiety and stress, which meant the siblings had each other’s backs for most of their lives, leading to an abnormally close bond which just continued to grow, even after they got way from their parents. Thank you! 😊 That was a very late addition, actually, emerging when I was trying to structure the dialogue exchange there in the epilogue, but I think it’s very appropriate. Even if that final step into the sexual dimension of their relationship happened very organically, I like this idea that when they realized it was happening, both siblings needed to consider it and make sure it was what they really wanted before they went further. Me too! There are a few little callbacks like that, but that was the most prominent, and is probably my favorite. In the vein of the general vibe I was going for, it felt both kind of sweet and hot. Ok, so amusingly, the choker had been around for a while, but the chemise was something that only materialized in my head in December. When designing the actual gift-giving scene, I’d known for a long time, like at least a year, about Drew’s “for my soulmate” card, and then later settled on him giving his sister some kind of necklace, something that you could give a sibling, but that feels more romantic given the context of the card. I hadn’t thought a ton about Lexi’s half of the scene, until December when I suddenly panicked because it hit me: Oh shit, what did she get for him? It had to be something more explicitly for a romantic partner, since Lexi was more confident about this in general, and was also going to be the one to guide her little brother through sex, but I wasn’t sure. I finally thought “What if it’s something she wears for him?” and lo and behold, there were holiday sales going that allowed some manner of slip or sexy nightgown to be bought within the financial constraints I’d established for the siblings. I used a photo of a real item I saw available online as reference for Lexi’s chemise. I do have to go back to the choker for a moment, though, because that is one that is very up my alley. I’m not sure why, but when thinking for writing erotic fiction, there is something extremely hot to me about a woman wearing nothing but a necklace, and the contrast of the black lace band against her fair skin was really striking and hot. Glad it worked for more people than just me! 😄 Aaand she won’t be the last tall, well-endowed woman I write! Much appreciated on the point of sensuality, though. I wanted this to be...well, as you said: That is my favorite kind of sex scene, and it’s also fairly rare in terms of what I’ve found in my reading: spicy and sweet. It was very appropriate here, given the emotional context it takes place in. It’s also a reason I’m thankful that this took a little longer to write than it would have otherwise, because I feel like I only got it right during my second attempt at the scene. It is interesting to think about this in the context of another story I must get to some day. There are important differences, but this almost served like a training run for The Spider House. Yua is also a tall, full-chested woman who is deeply sensual a lot of the time, Cody comes from an unpleasant home and their first time together is likely to have some similarities to this. Hopefully I haven’t set a bar so high that TSH can’t measure up! Honestly, I am! I did have to go back and edit a few things even after posting it, but they were mostly minor tweaks here and there. By and large, I’m pretty proud of this one. 😊

Ah, congratulations! I’d imagine it’s a satisfying thing to finally bring that story series to a close. Interesting. So this isn’t a continuation of Duncan and Company’s story, but is linked to Interregnum instead. The start of a new Holiday Canon?

This is true! And a well-done Halloween story it was, in my opinion. 🙂

😆 “Gawd as my witness, that man is broken in half.” Well, next fic won’t be smut (The Lake House is non-erotic), but hopefully it’ll still be a good read!

Meaningful Gifts is my first holiday story in a long time, and my longest by quite a bit at 11,016 words. It’s an entry into a...genre? Kink? Well, “romantic incest” at any rate, whatever one wants to call that, and while one of these stories was my first ever work of erotic fiction, this is the first one I’ve published on AFF. first review comes from @InvidiaRed! 😄 Honestly I didn’t remember if I was quoting something or not. I’d seen coffee referred to as “bean water” or “scalding bean water” in a couple places, and this particular variation felt right for the moment. Also I’m glad to see you got the reference to the official corporate sponsor of Christmas-themed brother-sister erotica everywhere, Folgers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMwFWDIFVCU

As a follow-up, specifically to the @JayDee point I missed in my previous post, I too miss the days when there were tons of entries to these holiday anthologies, but maybe it’s cyclical. The other writers are still around, and if I can throw a story into the anthology after being absent from the holiday lineup for years, then you never know when someone else will reappear! 🙂

I did run into that, but my immediate concern was the fact that I wasn’t sure how many spaces to put between paragraphs to make sure the site would display them. My first attempt resulted in the story being crunched into a single chunk of text, and I don’t think anyone wants to read an 11,000 word paragraph. 😄

Well, it’s almost a week after the new year...but you know what? I’m posting it anyway! @JayDee, @Thundercloud, @InvidiaRed and all the others who were interested but who I can’t remember right now, Meaningful Gifts has been added to the Winter Holiday 2025 anthology! I thought this was going to be up earlier today, but then I had to spend some time fighting with/learning the secret ways of AFF’s formatting, specifically how to keep the site from compressing all the paragraphs together into a single chunk of text. 😅 And don’t worry about me ignoring your stories! I will be reading and posting reviews for the already posted holiday chapters over the next few days. 🙂

I am getting dangerously close to actually finishing Meaningful Gifts, but I’m probably not going to have enough time to do much more than proof-read. I’ll try and polish it a little, but it’s still going to be kind of a first draft, so I hope it goes alright for anyone who reads. 😅

*Bronx opens the door to find two men in suits standing outside* ”We work for the Irish government, and we hear you’ve been telling an unhealthy amount of stories about faeries...” “...The Irish government reads Adult Fanfiction?” “DON’T QUESTION OUR METHODS!”

🥰

Alright, that took longer than I’d expected. Invidia also has my apologies if there are a million notifications for a review, because I kept trying to fix a problem with the review of BW’s story, which meant deleting the review and resubmitting it. I put emphasis on “trying” because ultimately, the site seemed insistent upon crunching the entire review into a single block of text, removing all the spaces between paragraphs. I am sorry for how much of a pain that is to read, as it was not my intention. 😅

Well, as you all know, I was able to make progress on The Lake House, but not to finish it by a week after Halloween. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, because I was struggling with how to integrate the theme of the piece into the ending, and it wasn’t until after the deadline had passed that I realized how I might be able to use it. So the extra time will (hopefully) lead to a better end product when it’s finally completed. I’ll keep working on The Lake House, and will either post it when it’s finished or throw it into the ring next Halloween season (fingers crossed that things are still stable for me next Halloween). In the meantime, I’m working on Meaningful Gifts again and have left reviews for both Invidia’s and George’s chapters of the Halloween story. I’ll read BW’s chapter on break at work tomorrow!

Ok, I actually made some progress on The Lake House today before having to leave for work. Let’s see how far I get in a week.

Well, due to work, I haven’t gotten any work done, and we’re down to five days counting today. But if what Invidia and George said is true, and you all are ok with this even if it’s a week late or something, let’s see what I can get done quickly! *opens word processor*

There are now precisely three weeks until Halloween. I wonder...can I write The Lake House in that time? No promises, but I’ll see how far I can get! And of course, even if I don’t finish, I’ll review your works. 🙂

I was part of a cooperative writing project there for a bit (I swear, my life is a wild sequence of “this is going to take a while to explain,” events), so I peeked back in from time to time. It’s been a few months, so I don’t remember precisely, but I believe what happened was that the lease on the site/server/what have you ran out, and the person funding it simply decided not to renew it.

And they’re rude enough to only get it on when you’re in the bed right above them. *shakes head* No class at all… As for me, depending on what you consider “wrong,” I may have never written a right pairing. 😅 My established pairings have an extreme age difference, to put it mildly (18-20 year old man and immortal women centuries to eons old), and I’m working on a brother/sister incest pairing. As for why, it’s a bit difficult to explain. When it comes to the extreme age differences between human/nonhuman characters, there are published authors who write stuff like that (see the popular A Court of Thorns and Roses series), but to get down to why it appeals to me, I think it’s a fantasy I have as a man who’s always been unsure of himself, especially with women, and there is a fantasy of a shy, nervous young man being introduced to sex by a knowledgeable older woman. Kevin/Luzurial doesn’t exactly fit that mold since they’re both inexperienced regardless of age, but the other examples do, including the incest story (older sister/younger brother). The “why” on the incest pairings is somewhat more complex; I’ll return to that when I have time.

As it is New Year’s Eve, I’ll get a review for one of the holiday party stories up tonight. Unfortunately, I’ll have to delay reviewing InvidiaRed’s story, because as it’s part of the Holiday Canon, I need to go back and look at last year’s Christmas story before I can read this one. It may not be required reading exactly, but it can be kind of hard to read these things out of order.