Collecting Stories

I have already gotten a few emails from balloon fetishists telling me how their fetish started, and what they like to do with balloons, and what other fetishes (if any) they have, and I can already, at this early stage in the process, discern two important facts:

First, I really have my work cut out for me. These stories are detailed and intimate and open and honest, but they elicit even more questions. And I think I have only gotten a tiny hint, even with all the years I've spent in online forums with other balloons fetishists, of the enormous variety of interests and experiences that I am going to be exposed to.

Second, this is going to be a fascinating experience. Even over the course of reading just these few emails, I have found myself thinking things like, "I never thought of that," and "I thought he was leading to something just like my own experiences, until he said that."

I think that by the time I have finished researching this book, I will have changed a lot of my own conceptions about what it is to be a balloon fetishist, in ways I never imagined. And while I usually start a book or story with some idea of what the end product will look like, I have a feeling that for this book, the final form will bear little resemblance to what is currently in my head.

It might be the most interesting writing experience I've ever had.

I'm Writing Another Book

I was considering writing a sequel to Blowing It! after letting that first novel find its audience, perhaps in a year or two, because although I have made less money per hour as a balloon-fetish novelists than at any other pursuit aside from, perhaps, taking online surveys, the fact is that I have come to love my characters enough to think that they deserve to live on beyond the one book.

What I absolutely did not intend to do was write a factual book about balloon fetishes. I am no expert, beyond having a balloon fetish myself and the reading I've done, not so much of academic studies and papers, but of correspondence and online postings from the balloon community at large. And that does not give me any deep understanding of the causes of, or the details about, the wide variety of balloon fetishes in the world.

But then along comes Taboo from National Geographic. And Strange Sex on Netflix. And then thinking back to the few times others outside actual participants in balloon fetishism have tried to portray us as if they had a firm grasp of the facts and feelings of our fetish—and failing utterly. Branding us with cute names like "looners," and dividing us into neat categories like "poppers," "non-poppers," and "semi-poppers," as if we are so easily defined.

And worse yet, using the most far-fetched psychological (psycho-illogical?) theories to explain why we feel what we feel, and what balloons represent to us, and passing themselves off as experts. Do you realize the "expert" that Taboo featured is a journalism student?

And so, to combat this nonsense, I am writing a factual book, Not a comprehensive look at balloon fetishism, not an attempt to explain, but an attempt to show the human side of our special fetish, to show some of the great variety of both people and balloon interests. And to dispel some of what has been said about us in other media.

Will I succeed? The only way for me to find out is to write, publish, and wait. You, on the other hand, can help. If you have a balloon fetish, and would like to give me some of the information I need to achieve a realistic and sympathetic (and non-sensational) portrayal of people who love balloons, then drop me a line at balloonfetishauthor@gmail.com and let's start a dialogue.

Don't look for this book in a month. Maybe a year if I'm lucky. But I feel strongly enough that I really don't care how long it takes. At this point it's a book that's begging me to write it.

Corrections Complete (I Hope)

The corrections to the Kindle edition took far less time than I though they would, thanks to the ease of editing HTML in SubEthaEdit. The corrected Kindle edition is now available. The print edition is available through CreateSpace, but may take a couple of days to become available again on Amazon.com.

With luck I'd found all the errors, and Blowing It! will now be a smoother read.

Corrections, Step One

I have submitted what I hope is the final edition of Blowing It! to CreateSpace to correct the many typographical errors. For up to 48 hours (though in my experience with CS more likely less than 12) the print edition will not be available.

Next step is to correct the Kindle edition, which takes longer because I have to edit the HTML files to avoid changing any of the formatting adjustments I made. But I will be working on it daily until it's done, and I'll post when it's submitted.

Thank you all for your patience and kind words about the book. After I've corrected this book, I have another one coming up. Not the suggested sequel (sorry, not yet), but something else.

But that's a subject for another post.

Not a Bestseller, But ...

I just noticed today that Blowing It! rose from being ranked around 350,000th among Kindle paid books to 61,588th. And that's from selling all of two copies in the past day. Which means that although my book is by no means a bestseller, it tops an awful lot of other titles in the Kindle catalog.

There may be hope for me yet!

Time To Breathe

The novel has been out for a few months now. I have sold more than 20 copies, and given away 170. Now that there are people out there reading the book, it's time for me to let it go.

Blowing It! is not the kind of book you can shout out to the world about. It has a very small potential audience of people interested in balloons sexually, or interested in people who are interested in balloons. So it's basically time for me to let the book take on a life of its own, whatever that life might be.

I'll be here to fulfill orders if needed, and I am now going to dive in and correct all those typographical errors I alluded to earlier (I would have sooner, but my only printed copy of the book was with my wife, who has finally finished reading it).

And then I'll let it go, go on to other book projects that I can tell anyone and everyone that I wrote, and that may have larger readerships, though only time will tell.

Perhaps Blowing It! will catch on widely enough in fetish circles to make me think about going back to do the sequel. Perhaps not. But I'm still very happy that I wrote the book and went through the self-publishing process. I've learned a lot.

And if you are one of the almost-200 people who have read the book, I hope that I have created something that was worth your time, and that you'll eventually find a way to let me know.

And, straight from the heart, I want to say "thank you."

I've Got Readers

At least, I've got downloaders. I've given away, as of this writing, 137 copies of the Kindle edition of Blowing It! and there's still some 16 hours left on the promotion. It will be interesting to see what happens in the time that follows, if I really do sell more books after the free promotion than I sold before.

If you are one of the nice people who downloaded my book in the last couple of days, you can help. Review it on Amazon, talk about it in the balloon forums, leave comments here on the blog. Even if you didn't like the book, just talk about it.

And if you haven't downloaded the book yet, there's still time to get it for free. Right here.