As if we don’t have enough messaging sites, Mastodon is working to shoulder it’s way to the front of the pack. Mastodon is a decentralized service similar to Twitter without all of the political discourse. It’s an open-source software system that resides on different platforms, with each server aimed at a general interest or topic.

I’ve joined two social networking sites, Erotica.Social and Mastodon.Scribbler.Social. My username, @LarryArcher, is the same for both sites.

Erotica.Social is aimed at readers and writers of erotica.

Mastodon.Scribbler.Social is for writers of genres.

Mastodon is similar to Twitter except that messages are limited to 500 characters, almost twice that of Twitter. A message on Mastodon is called a Toot.

The jury is still out from my perspective, but I’m willing to give it a try. My big problem is time, and that’s always in short supply. Ten years ago when I first dipped my pen in the dirty ink well, I distributed my smut through a number of publishers. What I quickly figured out was maintaining a version of a story for each distributor became a huge time suck.

I retreated and focused on Amazon Kindle and SmashWords. Now I just have to maintain two versions of a story. Well, three if you consider paperbacks. Once I switched to Scrivener to write my dirty musings, it’s not that hard to publish to different publishing houses.

I switched to Scrivener kicking and screaming but now that I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, life is good. Scrivener is like a computer programming language, and you compile your story to get the final output. The body (or story) is the same for any publisher, but the front matter and back matter are geared towards the distributor. It took a while to get my arms around the benefits of writing with Scrivener but now I’m a fanboy for sure.

With Scrivener, the distributor (Amazon or SmashWords in my case) is selected by ticking a check box. Then compiling the story, Scrivener assembles the parts into a complete manuscript for the desired outlet.

Previously, I would have to create two sets of documents, one for Amazon and one for SmashWords. This always led to problems; you have to keep the two stories in sync, and discovering a missing comma means editing two different manuscripts.

With Scrivener, I could correct the story itself and generate (compile) new manuscripts to send to the publisher without having to maintain multiple copies. Once I learned the nuances of the program, it became easier to maintain a story.

That’s all today, boys and girls. Wifey is out of the rack and wants to be fed.

I’m Larry Archer, and I write erotic stories for the huddled and yearning masses. Foxy and I are swingers in real life, and I write about the things we do and see. While the Lifestyle is not for everyone, it’s been fun for us. My smut is explicit and hardcore but with a somewhat plot. My porn stories are generally positive and fun as this reflects how enjoyable swinging has been to us. If you’re interested in checking out my stories, I publish at all the typical outlets.

Kinky Literature

Amazon Kindle

SmashWords

Apple iBooks

Kobo

Barnes and Noble

Scribd