The old Dark Erotic Fiction site had an active community. There were multiple authors who communicated, and many readers who commented and suggested things. It was an exciting community for an author, with many stimuli, from other authors posting things that made us think, and readers who posted thanks and even suggestions and analysis.
That site died because the originator got writer’s block and got bored.
Two of us tried to recreate it, and even got it started, even with a new author or two, but it seems that the magic has gone. We attracted a couple of new authors, but they dried up, and the readership has been almost totally silent.
Those of us who write stories on the net do so because we want to be involved. The original site had an involved writer community that kept things moving.
That isn’t happening here.
There are several shared universe stories that are succeeding on the net (see http://www.asstr.org/~Thinkers_tales/Stories/The_Swarm/Swarm_main.html). They have excited interest and community support. I will consider joining those efforts later. Much later.
However, our efforts on this shared story seem to have failed. Almost no one comments about anything, and the few additional authors we have attracted seem to have wilted under the glare of unresponsive readers.
We can see the stats. There are hundreds of readers a day, and thousands a month, and they can’t all be the same person. And for some reason, almost none of them talk to us.
Writing this stuff is a serious process. It takes a lot of effort and thinking, and it takes hours of thought, writing, rewriting, and reconsideration.
One of us has already given up on posting here and has tried to post commercially.
I probably will not do that. I’ll just stop.
I posted some time ago about how we depend on feedback and participation, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
Consider this as your final warning. This site will probably be abandoned shortly, given the lack of response from the readers.