Wingman on Storiesonline.net

I posted Wingman to Storiesonline yesterday morning. For those who don't know, this is a website where a lot of erotica gets posted, but so does a lot of non-erotica. I've put my share of erotica up there (Devlin's Story, Three Valleys - Sammi, and The Office stories. But I've also put the Kalliste extract stories there. You get feedback, and you get votes on the quality. It's a mixed bag at times, because it's all just impressions.

Take votes, for instance. I had someone really slam one of my stories because he didn't like the premise. He voted as many times as he could, and gave it the lowest ratings he could. Lazzo, the sitemaster, caught on, and stepped in. Your ego gets caught up in those votes, and you can get really depressed if the scores are going down. Especially because the technical ability votes remain high (that was apparently cued Lazzo in that something was going on).

You can also send e-mails to the author, and since there's a lot of erotica, the sender doesn't know the e-mail address of the recipient. When you're getting good feedback, and even praise, and scores that keep dropping, you know something's up. When Lazzo removed this troll's low scores, suddenly everything jumped up consistent with my other stories.

All that aside (you can tell it hit a nerve), Wingman has gotten a lot of responses. Apparently the story of someone recovering the body of someone he knew in 1968 resonated through a lot of the Vietnam era readers. I've gotten several very emotional responses.

Red Stevenson is a Vice Admiral in the Navy, and CNO/Aviation, which means he's the boss flier in the US Navy. A lot of what that office does is procurement, personnel moves, and so on. There's also a CNO/Surface, and a CNO/Submarine (I think there are a couple more). In 1968 he was a nugget (new aviator on his first deployment). In October of that year he was flying as wingman to Jack MacLean when the latter was hit by flak and shot down. Red ignored the FAC (forward air controller) and blew that gun away with his bombs, though it didn't do Jack any good.

Fast forward to 1997. Red Stevenson is temporarily heading a recovery team in Vietnam. He is specifically looking for Jack MacLean, whose body was never recovered. He finds him and brings him home. A year later, in a bar in Washington DC, another guy who was in the squadron in 1968, David Hughes, looks him up. The story proceeds from there.

Even though the story was posted on a site with erotica, there's no sex, or even nudity in the story. The characters do drink a good single malt, and in one scene, smoke cigarettes (which in Washington State would offend more people than the sex).

For those who haven't read Nick Scipio's Summer Camp stories, go to www.nickscipio.com and enjoy. These are erotica, but Nick has a deft hand at drawing characters. It is a 'coming of age' story that has garnered a large following and a very intense discussion group on Yahoo. David Hughes is one of the characters, as is Jack MacLean's widow, Susan. Nick very graciously let me use David, and provided some editorial feedback. He had me show the story to a public member of his Editorial Team, as well as several who aren't. And I'm sorry, my lips are sealed on who they were.

There was a personal element in working on Wingman, but I won't comment on it.

Now back to other stories.