Hey all, it's Saturday night (at least, it still is here in California)! I'm on time!

Our Book Focus this time out is on Girls Next Door, a novelette I was writing at this time four years ago, after finishing A World of Difference, last week's focus book. It was an intentional change of pace for me, a story with neither incest nor sci-fi elements. And my first entry into the "First Time" category.

I'll admit right here that Kurt's story is totally wish-fulfillment on my part. There are a bunch of elements here that are drawn from my own experiences during college, mostly from my Junior year, when I lived in an on-campus 3 bedroom "apartment" unit with five other guys, with a number of their female friends and girlfriends visiting often. I had neither, being the brainy still-a-virgin among the group, included mainly because I had the highest ranking for purposes of selecting housing on campus. One of the few times that being smart was a social advantage.

As in Kurt's story, I did have some of my roommates suggest I visit a hooker. And the memory of one of my neighbors walking between the two units in January with a thin sweater and no bra underneath, her nipples obviously reacting to the cold, did happen. She is represented in the story as the character of Susan.

None of the rest happened, though -- I just wish it had.

For purposes of the story, I shifted it to Senior Year with graduation approaching and reduced the apartment to a 4-bed unit (which my school did have -- I just wasn't in one Junior year and the social character of Senior Year was quite different). Which let the neighboring "apartment" likewise have 4 women in it instead of 6. And then had Kurt be a study buddy to all four (that didn't happen in real life, either), able to function as one so long as he kept his thoughts off of romance.

The hook to this story is that Kurt overhears his roommates challenging the four girls/study buddies in the next apartment to take his virginity before graduation and he decides on a plan to get each of them to keep quiet about succeeding, so that he gets a chance to be with all four, with two of them together sufficing as his first ménage as well.

As a novelette, it's priced at just $1.49, distributed to the major ebook retailers. Although I'll ask that if you do buy it, you do so at Smashwords, as they'll pay me about $1.20 in royalty, vs Amazon paying just $0.45. Even Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, Google, etc, will pay me better than the 'Zon, but Smashwords will pay me the most. Just sayin'.