Paolo’s The Boys of Blue Creek, volumes 1 & 2, is almost publishable as it stands. The opening scene in the first chapter of volume 1 needs to be toned down for mainstream readers. Otherwise, even with at least one castration per chapter, it could gain an audience.

A while back, I sent a copy of the entire first volume to Elisabeth Piccolo, who is analyzing the EA Fiction Archive from a literary standpoint. She has been examining the top 100 and bottom 100 stories, as measured by the star ratings that readers click. (She has three articles about the fiction submitted to literary journals. I’ll post information once they see print and send PDF copies to anyone who then requests one.)

Elisabeth wrote back that she didn’t know whether to thank me or not. She had planned to dip into the story and read a couple of chapters. Instead, she wrote, she read straight through all 32 chapters without sleeping, straight through to mid-morning the next day. As a literary scholar, she thought it a great read and worthy of publication. It’s just that opening scene that would be off-putting for most readers.

I wrote a DRAFT preface for the book that’s posted on the EA to explain how it fits into general fiction. An expanded version might be used for a print version of the story:

http://forums.eunuch.org/showthread.php ... eek-Book-2 (post #3).