Quote by Zhai

I guess my story of a cheerleader getting off to listening to a nerdy dungeon master vividly describe his years-long high fantasy campaign, is right out

Plausibility is highly overrated in my opinion. Write what you like.

Quote by KimmiBeGood

I agree and also have no clue where to find poetry punctuation rules. Do you? I usually try to find a poem in a similar structure to mine and then copy punctuation. Ha! It’s the best I can figure out. Poetry is a strange animal to me.

I don’t really understand the rules of free verse either.

Good question Kimmi. The rules are the same as in prose. This still applies where you have a rhyme scheme; as in most songs where the lyrics rhyme. There has to be some sort of structure to ensure the lines make grammatical sense. Shakespeare mostly used free verse but made sure that each of his lines had an equal syllable count.

Now let's talk about poetry. I'm immediately turned off of poems without punctuation. In my opinion, a poem calling itself a 'love poem' or an 'erotic poem' still has to convey some sort of logical, coherent story and follow most of the conventions of English. That is hardly possible without any punctuation. Secondly, anyone writing in one of the classical forms of poetry needs to look up what these forms actually are - a sonnet and a haiku for instance, are structured forms. Think of the lyrics of your favourite song and you are closer to writing what in my opinion is good poetry.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

That was a one- or two-off event recently because a kind benefactor sponsored the top 10.

Ok, thanks WW 😉

Quote by Ascendant

Thank you everybody for putting me on top, I didn't really expect to win (then again, I never do). And congratulations on everyone else too, there were some interesting entries, among those I had time to check

Congratulations and well deserved.

Naughty chat is fantastic, especially in the picture chat rooms. Eye Candy is my particular haunt, and I've had many arousing and intense cyber-sex and role-playing sessions there. Thank you ladies and gentlemen.

...er, I know the competition is over and everything, and I'm quite happy with my RR but didn't we also receive coins in the past for making it into the top ten? Is this still a thing? Thank you.

Well done to everyone who took part in the competition - authors, readers, judges and organisers. Lush competitions bring out the best in us. Speaking personally, competitions provide me with the impetus I need to write. Well deserved congratulations to the winners in particular and to my fellow 'top tenners'.

Quote by Seeker4

Can we just give the prize to this one?😁

No prizes required, but thank you.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

Haha. Very nice. Can't say that mine fits into any of the above, but I think Hallmark might be giving me a call at some point!

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/love-poems/small-riches

I'm looking at you WW. Worthy of Hallmark or not, I'm glad you made it in.

As end date approaches,

The poems keep flowing;

Full of fucking and sucking,

Cunts cumming and blowing,

Tales of Dommes, sluts and subs

And those tasty wet nubs,

Bi-curious and straight folks,

Daddy's girls and breeders,

But what we authors love most

Are our horny old readers.

Quote by RowanThorn

Been trying to write a poem and failing so far. Unfortunately I recently blew my poetry load on something I’m proud of, but already published. Ah well, have a few more weeks to eak out some inspiration.

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/love-poems/i-dream-of-you-dreaming-of-me-2

Mine is at the 'two A4 pages of scribbling and crossing out' stage. Hang in there Rowan.

As per instructions, here are links to stories by me mentioned in Meet the Authors 3 - Oceania Edition.

1. New Life New Life | Lush Stories

2. I Fuck for Satan I Fuck For Satan | Lush Stories

3. Sphinx Sphinx | Lush Stories

Favourite stories of mine by other authors mentioned :

The Stolen Apartment | Lush Stories by AmuseBouche

Ephemera | Lush Stories by AmuseBouche

Le Métro | Lush Stories by AmuseBouche

Lo! Baphomet! I. Cult As Fuck | Lush Stories by StarBelliedBoy

A Christmas Carol Cock-up | Lush Stories by CuriousAnnie

Thanks again to all who took part in this event.

Quote by Ensorceled

If you could provide us late risers with a copy of the text after the chat, that would be awesome!

I believe that the previous two 'Meet the Author' episodes are saved in Forum - Chat. I'm sure this one will be too.

Quote by Ensorceled

I TRIED THAT!

As a clever and creative kaiju (with three heads no less) I'm sure you'll come up with something. Hang in there.

I propose Lush introduces a new 'Comment Collector' badge. One of the competition entries is now past 80 comments and WELL DONE 👏

Totally off topic, but here's an idea for a future competition. All entrants pick one of their old stories and submit it. Include only non series, non poetry and no previous competition entries. Word limit might apply. This would be a great way to get some of our older stuff read and since we don't have to write, we can concentrate on reading. The fun comes in choosing what to submit...

A new competition ! Woo Hoo ! ...and with fewer words, the number of re-writes goes down while readership goes up. WIN/WIN

A huge 'Well Done' to TheShyThespian, Sprite and KatieTheWriter. I read and greatly enjoyed all three winning stories. To all the runners up and to everyone who participated in the competition, either as a writer or a reader - You are awesome !

Quote by deviantsusie

34 stories in so far and almost a week to go.. still a few regulars missing - can we get odds on a raunchy last minute entry with an Aussie slant and colloquial wordplay?

The quality in this one is really good.. It's taking me a while to get through them.. must be over 200K words all in so far.

You don't mean Annie the Aussie Anarchy Queen do you !?

Yeah, there's more than one. It's all to make the site compliant with various US state laws, allowing those people living in those states to participate without issue.

Returned once, hold my beer. I'm so pleased I'm not the only one. However, standards must be maintained.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

ghostly voice uninstall it... uninstaaalll iiitttttt...

Thanks WW, Actually, I'm feeling better about a certain app starting with 'G'. It turns out I had somehow turned it off on Lush. It was working fine elsewhere but not here. User friendly points aside, at least it's free.

Quote by JourneyYoung

After reading yours, my mind is churning over a possible space sci-fi idea of my own. Too bad I already have three series going so I'm not sure I have the bandwidth to work on it right now. Maybe I should take notes for the future though haha.

Notes for the future are a great idea. I keep a notebook with synopses of possible stories, some quite complete and detailed. Other story ideas might be just the ending, a key scene or just a collection of brief notes. I was already writing 'Embrace The Distant Stars' when the competition came along so I was able to adapt it. I've written a few long series in the past but a stand alone story or one set in a world you've already established is more likely to be read. Cheers.

Quote by JourneyYoung

I think I get done reading through the list then another 10k monster appears. NOOOO (but also YESSSSSS)

Guilty, as charged. I'm loving yours right now.

Mine's done, finally. 10K reached. This time I've gone for sci-fi and concentrated on world-building, murder-mystery, detective work and sex in that order. I tend to make the sex the most important aspect of my stories and it tends to overpower other aspects of the plot. So here we have a murder mystery and a lovely love story taking place in the cold, remote reaches of interstellar space...

Embrace The Distant Stars | Lush Stories

(btw My love/hate, mostly hate relationship with Grammarly continues.)

Quote by wxt55uk

Good luck! 😊

Ok, I uninstalled Grammarly and immediately got the questionnaire: "Why did you uninstall Grammarly?" You could almost feel the hurt. But I had every intention of re-installing it and now it seems to be working fine! btw It's a Ukrainian company. Let's hope and pray the Russians don't bomb its HQ.

Quote by wxt55uk

The free version of Grammarly is working fine for me at the moment over here in the UK.

Good to hear my friend. I might delete it altogether and start over. Wish me luck.

We Need To Talk About Grammerly.

Question 1. Why doesn't it work ? (FYI I'm writing and it isn't working now...) I do have a free account.

Question 2. Do you have to pay for it now? It worked for a few seconds when I pasted my competition entry into the submission box, ready to edit. The 'G' icon was there but after a few edits I got : "You are signed out of Grammerly" - no I wasn't.

Question 3. What am I doing wrong?

Quote by Jen

I've alerted all the mods to reject yours if this target isn't met 🤭

...hold my beer Tolstoy !