Hey all, Kai here. So ... I've not done this with other stories, but I wanted to do it with this one. Because, by all rights, I should've killed this story off near chapter 5. That's the common advice: If a story isn't getting much traction, finish it up with a graceful end and move on.
This story started as a basic concept of "religious guy goes to school, branches out, fucks around, has fun, bursts out of his shell." That was the one-line concept, or the elevator speech ... whatever you want to call it. And ... honestly? I have my own views about religion that informed some of this work.
But when writing and then editing "Rushing ΔΚΣ," it grew. A lot. I split chapters up because I kept writing. The characters took on a life of their own, which I've been told is "a good." I honestly got shivers a bit when I found ways to tie things up in ch 14 with turning a device (the cross) and phrase ("remember whose you are") and completely inverted them to show Josiah ("Si") regaining his power.
I delved into Si's head a lot and tried to imagine what he would really be going through in this sort of situation where he was a repressed, closeted gay guy and finally had the freedom to try to be who he was, at college, but with parents just two hours away. And, I wanted it to be real. Real life can sometimes suck (in a bad way), and I wanted to respect people who have gone through Si's experience ... or, who still are.
I have never, personally, been in that situation. I had and have friends who were and are. I had a friend in college who *lived* the story that Levi told in chapter 6: She was a first-generation college student, her overbearing (not religious, but cultural) parents lived about 2 hours away, and they tried calling one night and she was out. She didn't answer her phone. They called her roommate who was also out and didn't answer her phone. By the time she looked at her messages, her parents really were half-way to school. To do what? We *to this day* don't actually know. But when writing this story, I knew I wanted to include that story from my own (friend's) life.
So ... why did I consider killing the story?
Because it got fairly little engagement. On one site where I post, it got roughly half the views of every other serial story I've written. On another site I post that lets people rate stories, it got some pretty low ratings early on, though they went back up when the readership dropped enough to those who were continuing to read because they liked it ... but that doesn't mean that's necessarily a good thing. On one site, I got feedback that the sex scene in chapter 2 was kinda shit (my paraphrase). I explained that that was the point: Josiah at that stage of the story was so new to everything and so repressed that he didn't even have the words to tell you what happened. To that end, I also played with language a lot in this story, more than others. The religious imagery, metaphors, and similes were in pretty much every chapter, while quotes were in chapter 14. And, the language he uses – from saying "fudge" to finally being able to say "fuck" at the end – was all intentional and a way for me to try to show his growth.
But, this is gay erotica, and most guys reading gay erotica aren't reading for that, they don't care about a well-placed statement on glossolalia or care about someone's tears freezing and drifting away like tiny diamonds in the night.
So again, the conventional wisdom is to gracefully wrap the story and move on, and spend time writing something that more people will read.
I didn't.
That's because of the people who *did* read it and *did* comment or send me messages. I heard from at least five people something along the lines of, "I am Josiah, and you're writing my story." Or, at least in part. Some people who wrote are in or beyond their 40s and have figured out how to move on with their life in a way that brings them joy. Some people who wrote in are still at that college or grad school stage and are still working through how to be true to themselves and what that means with carrying parts of their upbringing and ideals forward into that life.
So, I kept writing. I felt like I owed it to the characters to tell their stories, and at least in a reality-based gay erotica setting, good things do happen to the religiously oppressed gay guy who's just trying to live his life. For those of you who are in that situation now and working towards a happier future, I wish you good luck and hope that you thrive. I hope that my story did justice to your struggle, and showed that there can be happy endings.
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