Ashley Lister Submits
                                        Diary of an Erotic Fiction Writer

Blog

"Do you know," my seventeen year-old son reflected, "when I was growing up, we didn’t have the word blog."

I wonder if he’s going to assault me with this type of observation once he’s had me transported to an old people’s home? That’s something to look forward to. It’s a symptom of old age when you can see how the world has changed from the way it used to be in your youth. It’s a symptom of being ancient and decrepit beyond measure when your children make those same dire and facile observations.

The conversation had started when I decided I wanted a blog. I’m working on a follow-up title to Swingers. I wanted to exploit a medium where I could communicate with a wide range of people, encourage contributors to submit their swinging stories, and a blog seemed like the best way to interact with a wide spectrum of people. The only problem was, I had very little idea what a blog might be and no idea how to use one.

BLOG

In sound structuralism terms, the noun itself is not particularly pleasant. You have to spit it out of your mouth (and I prefer to swallow). You have to use your tongue (make up your own jokes for that one). And that glottal stop at the end makes it catch in your throat (it does this whether you prefer to swallow or not).

It’s a neologism that looks like a combination of Bloody + Dog, and I suspect is most properly to be used in the sentence, "Get that blog out of here before I kick it up tharse."

It doesn’t sound particularly attractive:

It could be associated with some very vulgar connotations:

Nevertheless, despite not being enamoured with the word, I sat down in front of my trusty PC and began to look into the technicalities of how I could start to blog. It wasn’t hard. We live in a world where everything PC related is made childishly simple. Which is why I ended up asking my simple child.

Seriously, it wasn’t such a great challenge. Google supply a highly rated blogging facility, (blogspot) and sign up was easy and free. Those are two words that I’m thinking of having put on a family crest: Easy & Free. They seem to say so much about me on so many levels. Good and bad.

An hour’s work. Tweaking here. Fiddling there. Then getting back to the PC and working on the blog. I typed up a short introduction, put up a nice picture of the most recent book and, in the space of a short morning, I became a blogger.

BLOGGER

I am now a blogger. Somehow, this sounds worse. Here the glottal stop sticks in your throat (whether you’re swallowing or not) and then you have to spit it out. It’s a word that’s removed from any association with literary style. I don’t mind people calling me an author or a writer. Those titles have a majestic ring. But if people start calling me a blogger I’m going to be sure it’s a euphemism for something unpleasant.

I think that, if modern technology had existed in previous eras, it would still be hard to imagine Jane Austen doing anything that sounds so lewd as "squeezing out a quick blog." And, having visited Haworth last year and looked round the revered parsonage that was home to Anne, Charlotte and Emily, I don’t think any of the Brontë sisters would have ever had a blog: there simply weren’t the facilities.

Yet there are so many excellent blogs out there today that I’m probably just being prejudiced. Madelynne Ellis, Saskia Walker and Wendy Wooton are all skilled and respected UK authors. And they are also ladies who blog. Rachel Kramer Bussel and Alison Tyler are just two of the talented erotic authors who produce highly regarded blogs from the US. And now, as I write this, I discover that ERWA has its own blog. There are many others – many, many others – penned by writers who turn this contemporary form of public diary into something rich, fascinating and compelling.

BLOGGING

So I’m resolved to keep on blogging. Authors who I greatly respect are regularly blogging, so it can’t be such a bad thing, can it? It’s certainly nothing to be ashamed about. And, when people refer to me as a blogger, I can treat it as an honest assessment of what I’m doing rather than a cheap, euphemistic vulgarism. In the future people are likely to say:

"Ashley’s a blogger now. He’s been a blogger for a long time. The dirty sod’s been constantly blogging since I first met him. He keeps complaining that his hands hurt from too much blogging. And, if he does much more blogging it’s going to affect his eyesight."

It won’t be the first time people have said such things.

Ashley Lister
http://ashleylister.blogspot.com/ 
May/June 2007

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"Ashley Lister Submits" © 2006 Ashley Lister. All rights reserved.

About the Author:  Ashley Lister is a UK author responsible for more than two-dozen erotic novels written under a variety of pseudonyms. His most recent work, Swingers: True Confessions from Today's Modern Swinging Scene (Virgin Books; ISBN: 0753511355), a non-fiction book recounting the exploits of UK swingers, is his first title published under his own name.
Ashley’s non-fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines, including Forum, Chapter & Verse and The International Journal of Erotica.  Nexus, Chimera and Silver Moon have published his full-length fiction, with shorter stories appearing in anthologies edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Rachel Kramer Bussel and Mitzi Szereto.  He is very proud to be a regular contributor to ERWA.
Email: Ashley Lister
Website: www.ashleylister.co.uk

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