We hit the Hundred!

As of today at least, our Patreon has 100 members, or clients, or followers, or whatever we're supposed to be called. 102 actually. With 60 paying.

I'm thrilled! It wasn't long ago that it was just me!

It blows my mind to think that 100 people are regularly reading my writing, and many even paying for it.

This has been such a strange and winding trip for me.

When I was younger, I was a wild child. Also known as a fuck up. I screwed around a lot, got fucked a lot, made a lot of bad choices, and somehow got lucky.

In my middle-late twenties, I started unfucking my life. But I was horny as hell. I'd put myself in a straightjacket. So I ended up kind of expressing my sexuality online, masturbating in chats. I started to tell stories of some of my reckless adventures, and I got a few people who regularly got off on them.

The stories started to get deeper, more personal, reflections on my life on the things I'd done. Sometimes the people I harmed, or the ones who harmed me. Sometimes just exploring what I went through.

Eventually, I outgrew that, and went on with my life. I built a life, and now and then I'd write something pornographic or erotic, and share it with a tiny circle of online friends. I think at the end, I was down to three.

I moved. Shit happened. I moved again. Relationships came and went.

Then one day, my last reader, someone I hadn't emailed with in three or four years, out of the blue contacted me to announce he was a micropublisher, and he'd always loved my stuff and wanted to publish a book of my life journeys.

Of course I said "No! Also no! Fuck no! Never! Nada! Fuck that!"

But he kept at it, and eventually, wore me down. I agreed to, not the stuff he wanted, but for him to publish some of my later stuff, expressly fiction.

Then I spent two years being a giant pain in the ass to him. I'm embarrassed by how difficult I was with him every step of the way. I was so concerned about privacy, and demanded layers on layers of shielding, to separate this from the rest of my life, and to separate me from any possible perving.

But in the end, there was a trilogy - Perversions and Infidelities, and I was a published author, up on Amazon and everything.

And the books sold exactly zero copies.

I honestly started to feel so bad. I mean, I put this guy through shit for years, and all he wanted to do was give me these books, make me an author. And then the whole project fails.

You can't help but feel guilty.

Eventually, I asked him if there was anything I could do, and he suggested that I should try to promote my work on Literotica. I went there, and at first I just started reading, trying to figure out how this place worked. Then eventually I found my way to Patreon, and subscribed here and there.

I was so concerned with privacy, that even though Eve St. Albert was already a pen name, I went for another pseudonym - Eve was now Darrow, a nicely androgynous name, so that while on Literotica and Patreon, I could post and comment and no one would figure out that I was a woman.

Oddly, some did figure it out.

Eventually, I stared coming out of my shell, just acknowledging my sex at first, and then growing bold enough to post stories on Literotica, and eventually on Patreon.

You know what I found?

One thing, I really enjoyed writing. Before it had been an off and on thing. That early burst in my twenties, no mostly lost. And then playing around now and then. But writing systematically and for an audience is a real thrill. My characters come alive for me. I find myself thinking of things for them to do, imagining conversations. I'm loving this.

And the other thing I found is that you're all so nice! Comments on literotica or patreon on Don Silver's site were often mean. I tried to toughen myself to that, but accepted it would happen. But mostly, it doesn't. Comments are positive, friendly, some of them are thought out and deeply insightful. Even the brief "You made me really hard!" is kind of cool and thrilling.

I've engaged privately with some of you, and it's always been a positive experience. Friendly, personable. It's not super-deep friendships, but it's respectful and courteous both ways, and it's charming. I'd love to name some of you and say publicly it's been great talking to you, but I don't want to embarrass everyone. I'll just mention a guy who was so thrilled with my writing he made the effort to promote me better than I promoted myself, and another guy who shared bits of his non-porn novel and inspired me to spend a few hours getting a crash course in publishing for him. You all know who you are, and I love you all.

So much of what I was afraid of or worried about just didn't happen. Instead, I ended up with a friendly community evolving around these things I was doing.

It's wonderful.

Thank you. Thank you all so much, for just being you.

There are still boundaries. Eve St. Albert is a pseudonym. I'm a mature woman now. I have a career. I'm married. There are children. I live on Canada's west coast. That's it, the walls come down, you don't get to know more than that about my present life. I don't want to be rude, but these are necessary.

Anyway, so... a hundred followers on Patreon. That just blows me away.

I've got thousands of reads and hundreds of followers on Literotica.

But this just seems so much more substantial on Patreon. You're all much more serious in your perving.

I recognize the number will fluctuate. People sign up for the free week, read as much as they can, and go away. Even paid memberships drop off, having tired of my style, or maybe needing to economize.

I'll tell you a secret - every time someone unsubscribed or dropped, I'd get a notice and I'd feel bad, like I'd failed them somehow. I'd take it a little personally. I think I'm getting over that.

And up to recently, any time anyone signed up, I'd send a personal message. I stopped doing that lately, though maybe I shouldn't. I like saying hello. But then again, I wonder if that doesn't go over well. Does it come off as creepy or needy or off putting? Sometimes it feels silly to me to send a personal message to a person who just wants to read the porn for a week and then leave, I feel like I'm intruding.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure how long I can keep this up. I think I've been averaging around 40,000 words a month, posting weekly. That's a lot of writing. Part of it is supplementing with existing material, finally finding an audience for it - Eve's Cage, Catfish, Cuffed, my Memoir bits, all pre-existing. I've got a lot of stuff actually, so I can keep supplementing for a while.

But I'm not sure how much new writing I can do. I've got a huge backlog - maybe 60,000 or 70,000 words of complete or incomplete stuff, and a ton of notes. And lots of ideas. I think I can be productive for a long while. And maybe I can experiment with shorter vignettes, not 10,000 words each shot. Or try things.

In a sense, I now feel a bit of pressure. I'm an entertainer, you are my audience. I want to please you. But it's pressure. I'm okay with it, and I know if it stops being fun I can quit, or cut back.

But also, I love it. I love the idea that you, whoever you are, will read something I wrote, and it will make you hard, that it will thrill you, make you come. That you might laugh at some part, or find it insightful or interesting. That you might care about the characters or their situation. Sometimes I write and I think "Oh they're going to love this!" Sometimes I write or want to write and I worry that you won't like it.

I still write what I want to write, and I write what I feel the story and the logic of the situation and characters demand. I know I'm writing porn and that's all, but I enjoy it. My audience doesn't dictate to me.

But still, I'm happy that you're there, and I write for you, because on some level, in some way, I love you all. You motivate me. I hope that doesn't sound stupid.

Now onto the bad news - end of the month, I'm going to raise my subscription rate to $12.00, from $7.00. I've been looking around, and I think that's fair.

I'm not going to do tiers, or have special privileges or any of that. Honestly, I find that complicated and kind of off putting. I instinctively didn't like it. I think I understand the logic of it, some people just want to feel special and access special privileges, to have a sense of being in an inner circle. I respect that.

But I think one of the reasons I don't want to do that is because I feel like this is a community. I know its not. I only have engaged with a few of you. You don't know each other mostly. It's all just individuals gathering around the same source. But it feels like a community to me. And if we're a community, we're all together, anyone can talk to anyone, anyone can talk to me. The only rule is that we should all be nice to each other, and just enjoy the stories and the discussions.

I don't know how long this will last, we might go on for year. But right now, I want to say to each one of you, "Hello!" and "Thank you!" And if I could, I'd give each one of you a big fucking hug.

Eve