Neldra C. Returns

I'm a coupla weeks late in mentioning this (I was having difficulty with Blogger and a Google app not quite speaking to each other), but I need to note here that a new piece of fanta-sizer fiction has been posted on Dimensions's online website. It's a sequel to my pulpish mystical WG fantasy "Astral Thief," entitled not too surprisingly "Astral Thief II." Check it out if you haven't had a chance to yet . . .

Another Frippin' "Fat Magic" Story, You Say?

For the Spring (and posted on Tax Day), I've posted a fresh "Fat Magic" story, "The Therapy Session," on the Dimensions Online site. The piece is pretty short and to the point, and, as usual, I had a great time writing it. . .

Ye Olde Bookstore

Posted a new story for the holidays on the Dimensions online site, "The Bookstore," a tale that's meant to fit into the "Fat Magic" universe. Check it out if you're at all into fantasies about magical gain (and, if you're not, how'd you find your way here?)

Wakey, Wakey . . .

A new "Fat Magic" story has been posted on the Dimensions Online site this Labor Day Weekend: "Waking Moments." It's a fantasy that takes the Lew Baird class-based WG transformation story and puts a more uplifting spin on it. Some readers have been turned off by the somewhat darker tone of the Baird tales (as I've noted more than once, he's Richard Bachman to my Stephen King), and this is my attempt at looking through this material through a more positive lens. I'm somewhat satisfied with the results, but I can't help wondering what Lew'd think . . .

More Magickal Abundance

Must be close to the holidays ‘coz a new “Fat Magic” has just popped up on the Dimensions Online: “Belle, Book and Kindle.” It’s another of those tales connected to the publisher of my favorite arcane text (the last in this series was the comic-related “Fat Manga”), though it hopefully works as a stand-alone piece. In any event, I got a charge out of putting it together.

New Fat Magic Tale

The fifth (and probably final) “Lew Baird” tale has been posted on the Dimensions website this week. Like the previous entries, it’s a fantasy of magical weight gain, altered realities and class transformation. Unlike most of the FM tales that appear under my name, the Baird stories have a little bit of an edge to 'em: nothing too dark unlike some of the WG fantasies you can find on the web, but not as celebratory as I try to be in my own tales. Think of Lew as Richard Bachman to my Stephen King, then. In any event, "Sandra/Sandy" is online for your entertainment.

Baird And Barbers Collaborate?

Another "Lew Baird" story has been recently resurrected from unfinished manuscript limbo and completed by yours truly. Featuring the reality shifting hero of Baird's earlier transformation trilogy ("Marianne/Mare," "Patricia/Pat/Patti," & "Rachel's Story") it's an admittedly unbelievable tale of one young woman's Big Change in the American Southwest. You can find this little fantasy, "Sophie/Sofia," on Dimensions Magazine Online's "Fat Magic" page.

As always, comments are welcome.

A New Tale for Xmas

Posted my first new Wilson Barbers (as opposed to "Lewis Baird") WG story for the year on the Dimensions site: "One of Us" is a story that I've probably worked my way toward writing for several years, combining as it does my long-standing fascination with old-fashioned circus and sideshow fat ladies, in particular. The piece originally was created two years ago as a script for a proposed web comic to be illustrated by the FA artist BeakerFA, who provided some feedback on my plotting as I worked on it. Unfortunately, other commitments kept Beak' from being able illustrate the 75-episode strip, so last summer I started the task of transforming script into a full text story. Beaker contributed three illustrations to the new version, the first of which should give you an idea of what we were going for:


I love this graphic for the way it captures my rapturously singin' heroine and her soon-to-be lover Earl (the name was inspired by movie midget actor Harry Earle) and the ten-in-one tent show setting. Gotta admit, though, the first time I saw it, my initial response was a picky technical one. In the story, there's a moment where I mention Betty's lower belly knocking off an audience member's hat with her belly (it's meant to anticipate a story action that occurs a bit later). Looking at the graphic, I had to wonder whether that was even possible. Describing the ten-in-one, I was originally thinking of a somewhat lower platform on the level of this 'un (from the movie The Unholy Three):


It's a small point, but it does illustrate how differently two minds can visualize the same moment. I added a descriptor indicating that the hatless Rube was very very tall to the story, so mebbe it doesn't matter. In any event, the results of both our work can be found here.

Fat Magic Moments

Took me longer to "edit the original ms." than I expected, but I've posted the third "Lewis Baird story" on the Dimensions website this weekend. Entitled "Rachel's Story," it's a longish piece narrated by the wife of the unnamed mystery man who tells the first two Baird tales, "Marianne/Mare" and "Patricia/Pat/Patti," and it provides a skosh more background info about this inexplicably powerful figure. I enjoyed working on the Baird finale, even though it took much longer for me to wind it up satisfactorily than I originally expected.

Some readers (including Dim publisher Conrad Blickenstorfer) aren't much fond of the political themes imbedded in the first two stories, but to my eyes they needed to be there. One of the original impetuses behind this trilogy was my desire to work a theme that appears in a lot of Internet WG stories (perhaps best repped by the prolific Matt L.) of fatness being connected with lower class status. When more than one study shows a clear correlation between size and income levels (with fat workers frequently making less than their equally qualified thinner peers), this strikes me as legitimate material for fanta-sizer fiction. Once you start talking about class, it's a short step into writing about politics.

Reading some of my fellow fanta-sizers' offerings - where the initially haughty heroines' weight gain was tied into their dropping down in social status - I've long been struck by the writers' ambivalent attitude toward class. On the one hand, we're meant to see the character's weight gain as sexy, but, on the other, their diminution in class is treated with a clear measure of scorn. With the Baird stories, I tried to wrestle with this very American inner conflict, and I think I finally got it right in the third 'un . . .

Back in the Saddle Again

No, I haven’t gone away for good: it’s just that the joys of full-scale relocation (from Illinois to Arizona), a new job and subsequent financial stressors involved from trying to sell our old house in a doom-laden market have kept me from this blog for too darn long. But if I offered you a link to the story I posted on the Dimensions Online site over the holidays, would you forgive me? It’s the tale I was selling in last summer’s Wilson Barbers Newsletter, ”Fat Manga,” though as is usual with me, I’ve since made a few small revisions to the tale. You five readers who bought a copy of the newsletter: why not compare and contrast both versions of the story – and see where I’ve fiddled with the text!

My life is a towering slush pile, stacked with endless re-drafts . . .

Her Mare Self

A new “Fat Magic” transformation tale has been posted on the Dimensions Online website this weekend: first of a possible trilogy of tales written by “Lew Baird,” himself the hero of an FM story written in the 1990’s. An Alternate Reality fantasy, “Marianne/Mare” also has the good fortune to be graced with a title illo by one of the best FA artists out there: The Studio. Even if you’re not much for sudden transformation tales, why not check out the graphic?

Advertisements for Myself

For those of you out there who inexplicably visit this blog before checking out Dimensions On-Line, I probably should note that I've started a new six-part fanta-sizing serial this week. Entitled "Three Years," it's a mildly magickal story of the changes one woman undergoes after she's introduced to Aaron's Eatery, a fast food restaurant in an Illinois river city. BeakerFA has provided three stellar graphics for this tale (along with two sly story banners), and I'm utterly delighted by the way he visualizes the story's evolving protagonist. (Y'all have to wait 'til the last chapter before you get to see how our heroine looks at the finish, though.) For those of you who've been burned by Internet serials before, I should add that the story has already been completed – and, providing nuthin' catastrophic happens to yr humble servant in the meantime, I'll be putting up new chapters every three days or so. So lemme know what you think of the results!

“Denise, Denise. . .”

Those of you familiar with my fanta-sizing fiction perhaps know that this isn't my first experience with blogging: over a year ago, I constructed a "Fat Magic" story, utilizing the blog format, entitled "Mystery Shopper." Set several years back in an October much like this 'un, it tells the story of Denise Purchess, a comely Midwesterner (many of my "Fat Magic" fictions feature comely Midwesterners) who gets a job as a professional shopper just as she begins her web diary. The company, Ample Stuffing, is one that figures prominently in several of my "Fat Magic"s: it's a company comprised of FAs whose mission appears to be to transform as many good-lookin' women as possible into mega-sized BBWs. By signing on to be a contract worker for the company, Denise unknowingly sets magical forces in motion that assure her own change.

Denise's new job takes her to a series of area restaurants where she is expected to review the quality of their service and menus. As we read each day of blog entries, we quickly realize that our heroine is spending more and more time at these eateries, adding poundage to her frame at an astounding speed. By the end of the month, she's grown to ten times her old weight. In so doing, she wins the heart of her boss, an Ample Stuffing executive whose name we never learn (our billowing blogger calls him "Tripper," a joking reference that also has echoes of John Ritter's character name from the old sitcom Three's Company).

In the fantasy world of the "Fat Magic" stories, few characters regret their transmogrification into hyper-obesity: in many of these stories, their preternatural size is connected to both mystic capacity and an almost transcendental awareness of the world around them. For all of the women and occasional men in these tales, their new size proves strangely liberating. They've entered a world where conventional standards no longer apply, where culturally demanded restraint has become irrelevant. And because their changes are tied to magical influences, many of the difficulties associated with their Guinness Book of World Records weights aren't even a concern.

Crafting "Mystery Shopper" turned out to be one of my more enjoyable writing experiences: some stories require a lot of straining and head-scratching; others come trippingly to the page. "Shopper," despite its length (around 27,000 words), came fairly rapidly. Some of this I attribute to the first person mock blog format (swiped the basic template from Pop Culture Gadabout), which was fun to play with; some I connect to the story's heroine, who I found myself liking the longer I used her voice. And, as with many of my favorite creations, every now and then I find myself wondering how Denise is doin' several years down the road.

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that question though because, hey, it's my fantasy, right?