Well, the first weekend of the free ebook promotion for The Man Who Reclaimed His Virginity went okay. A handful of copies were downloaded, and a couple of hundred pages were read by Kindle Unlimited subscribers (I can see the figures in my dashboard). The book continues to be free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers for awhile, and then in May I will have another free day or two of giveaways to anybody who wants to read the novel; no Kindle Unlimited subscription will be necessary.
It’s a grim story, though. I just re-read it and was kind of startled by just how grim it actually is. I mean, I intentionally wrote it in the noir vein of “vulnerable man meets irresistible temptress,” but from a modern-era non-crime angle. Noir, like any genre, can evolve into new forms, new approaches. Not all violence is physical, of course, and I wanted to show how emotional cruelty can be as noir-like as the more typical criminal kinds so familiar to us from films and pulp novels. I was inspired, in fact, by the dark novels of Alfred Hayes in the 1950s and early ’60s–see this link. I’m not claiming that I am the first person to think of this approach.
But maybe the darkness of the tale puts off some potential readers. It’s a tale of escalating emotional masochism on the part of the protagonist, a lonely older man, Julius, who tries to have a friendship with Margaret, a younger actress he’s interviewed for an article. It all takes place in Manhattan, mostly portrayed in its oppressive aspects. Margaret manipulates Julius in mental, erotic and financial ways and he just keeps coming back for more, hoping for a connection that’s not so much sexual as simply real. This desire to be really seen by her, and perhaps even become as necessary to her as she is to him, is what propels his crucial actions toward the end of the book. It’s the story I wanted to write, but the darkness of it, the bleakness, surprised even me on re-reading it closely again a few months after publication. All told, I’ve read the book several times in the course of writing and editing it.
At the end, there is a sense of hope but it’s seasoned by the feeling that the main character is trapped in the same psychological cycle of daydreams and yearning which he will carry on simply with a different woman.
I think it is a good book and I hope it finds some more readers who can respond to it. Meanwhile, although I have an idea for potential sequel–the character of Margaret still intrigues me–the lack of response is discouraging on top of the general feeling of being depleted by the writing of this book. A friend of mine said, “This is the book you were born to write and now you’ve written it. How many writers can honestly say that?” I loved the compliment, especially since the friend is a very fine writer and creative writing teacher, but where does that leave me now? I started to think, maybe a sequel would just be repetitious anyway since it would deal with some similar material. Or perhaps this is just the voice of my “postpartum” depression speaking over the sparse number of reviews and reactions–the prevailing quietude–that has greeted this story. Of course, it makes a departure from the genre I’m at least minimally known for, explicitly erotic femdom fiction, and exists in the realm of realistic psychological “slice of life” fiction; and as such, it has not drawn the usual readers I’ve gotten in the past. I get it. People expect “fun masochism” from Irv O. Neil stories, and The Man Who Reclaimed His Virginity is something more intense and even unforgiving. But it’s also engaging and occasionally humorous, too–or so I’ve been told 😉 So scroll through the various posts I’ve made here on the blog about it, and if it captures your fancy, I hope you’ll read it and, if you can, post a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads too.
Irv O. Neil's EROTICA IS MY TRADE 
