All Comments on 'Full Moon, Mulberry Inn'

This just never got off the ground and created little or no interest. In the end who cared?

The description of the neighborhood and the hotel were superb. The sex was hot, and the end was thoroughly creepy. Excellent story.

Why didn't you put this in Erotic Horror of Sci-Fi/Fantasy?

You had a decent story going until the end. You were rushing the story but it was going along nicely. Then you go off the rails and throw in a man-eating worm(?). Ruined the whole thing.

You know, I really didn't see that ending coming at all. Really thought you were going with the "ghost of a Hollywood starlet" thing. So two thumbs up for you!

I didn't realize this was in the contest, it came up on my "recommendations for you" list. I love the descriptiveness of the first page, I felt like i could be there with Matt, and for that alone this is a little gem of a story. I had no idea were it was going (admittedly I had thought it was just a fetish story), the silk worm totally took me by surprise, it was only the authors blurb at the end that made me realize it was part of the contest. I have to agree that even though i believe it to be a gem of a story it was possibly in the wrong category. <3 Good luck in the contest!

Categorising twist endings is always a dilemma, but mummification definitely counts as a fetish. Just not quite the one readers might have been expecting. Sadly I think you'll take a score hit for that, but I appreciated the effort!

I got suspicious when I saw the name of the inn and then the silk stockings, and "cheating husband plus mysterious woman" rarely works out well on full-moon nights, but I didn't know quite where you were going to go with this.

(BTW, is this meant to be tagged "werewolf"?)

And descriptive. I could see it all in my mind's eye. The surprise twist was perfect. Well done!

Thanks, all, for the feedback. I'm glad to see the end had the impact I intended, even of it was so shocking it put some readers off.

I put a lot of thought into which category best fit this story and knew the ending might not be well-received. I tried to leave as many clues as possible that things weren't exactly what they seemed (the title, multiple references to the full moon in the story, overall weirdness factor of her not speaking, and, yes, the "werewolf" tag) without being so obvious I robbed the ending of impact. When it came right down to it, the majority of the action, sexual and non-sexual, is driven by his fetish for silk stockings, so Fetish was the most appropriate category. I think great stories that do feature prominent fetish components don't end up in this category because they have some other story elements as well and go in other categories.

How many of you would have read the story completely differently from the beginning if it had been in Erotic Horror?

Your descriptions, as always, are sublime, as is your setting. You write sex like Nabakov writes a woman: enticingly, but with just enough honesty to keep it real and off-putting. The were-worm helps. Along with the others, I do absolutely think this would have been served better in Erotic Horror, though I understand you, and exactly why you put it where you did. When you are as demented as you and I, the stockings seem like the sexual oddity, not the horrible death.

The only thing I can offer as a criticism is that the beginning has the pacing of a much longer story. I feel like there is a shifting of gears in there that is just the tiniest bit of a jolt. To experience the wandering of your mind, is to be amazed by your intelligence and ability, but a few spots in the early going feel meandering.

Still a fantastic story.

I always admire a beginning middle and end, with patience to let sexiness build, all in two pages. I read it as part of the Halloween contest, so came in looking for that element. I imagine the build up would have read differently if I found it in Fetish. As it was, I was looking for more Halloween. You left plenty of hints about the supernatural element without wielding them like a bludgeon, which is not easy. It would have been worth five stars in Horror too.

It's certainly a well-developed, well-realized tale, and the writing is muscular and assured, and the characters (or character, really, since there's only the one to speak of, though I admit I do like the devious hipster bartender too) pronounced and credible seeming, and the atmosphere thick without seeming showy. And I have a soft spot for stories set in San Francisco and for Chinatown, so that can only help.

I guess if there's anything wrong with this story it's that there's a kind of predictability about it. Not that I anticipated exactly what would happen at the end (because, seriously, how the fuck?), but neither did I need to. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of stories on this very site, to say nothing of beyond it, about two-timing guys and mysterious, beautiful women meeting in a bar that end with the guy drained of blood or eaten or turned into a monster or with a plant growing inside of him or eggs in his brain or turned into an animal or absorbed by a succubus' vagina or whatever other colorful fate the writer's mind may have in store. So well-trod if this plot that even were you to try to subvert it you'd still be in familiar territory. And that admittedly holds it back a little.

if it had been in the more appropriate category of erotic horror. I think of fetish as a sexual quirk that is unique to the participants, not the life ending trap set by a . . . .

Don't take this the wrong way, but this read like RL Stine for adults. It had that "Goosebumps"/"Tales of the Crypt" vibe with an erotic theme. The description of the horror when he realizes what is actually happening was well done.

And terrifying! What an excellent story. Equal parts sexy and creepy, with the elegant writing belying the gruesome ending. I think it was the teeth that really got to me. Really well done. As for category, I think it fits just as well in fetish as it would in erotic horror. In fact, I think it would get a little lost in erotic horror, and let's be honest, it was Matt's silk stocking fetish that got him into this mess in the first place, now wasn't it?

OK, silk stockings and silk worms - that works for me.

Another evil twist - and agree with the earlier comment - taking out her teeth was a really effective plot shift.

Been doing it a while, then, and has kept her looks, despite her age...