So we’re supposed to be done with our latest novel, the smutty and satirical The Ambassador, which mostly takes place in the Philippines.  But we’re not because we got distracted by a new idea geared toward BookTok readers.  It has all the usual BookTok romance tropes — illicit teacher-student affair, hockey stud, and a psychopath bully.  And then some unusual ones, it’s a story about math, some fun and steamy nerdy shit. We’re super excited about this novel so we’re not sure which one will get finished first.  In any case, here are excerpts of what we have thus far, it’s hot!

Chapter One
Equations

We just finished our once-a-week fuck session. Only once a week because he’s a boarder at a boarding school where I’m a day student. If we were both boarding students, then we could fuck in the woods right after dinner and before dorm check in. If we were both day students, we could fuck after every sports practice before heading home. Since we have classes six days a week and sports matches Saturday afternoons, Saturday evening was the only time I could pull him from campus. It sucks, but whatever—he’s hot, has a big cock, and he’ll be heading to Princeton as a hockey recruit if he can get his math SAT score high enough to meet their standards. He better, because I don’t fuck losers.

We fucked all over the place at my home because my parents were away in New York City, meeting up with friends they’d probably be fucking at their obscene pied-a-terre. After one on my parents’ bed, I asked him to bring up a bottle of wine so I could check his phone, as usual.  This time was different.

After scrolling through some nasty bro material about me and some of my classmates, I saw something disturbing:

What is the absolute value of I miss u?

He replied: “x² + (y – ∛x²)² = 1. you figure it out.”

Chapter Two
Absolute Values

“So what’s the absolute value of negative three?” asked Miss Taylor.

“Three,” said Riley.

“Negative five?”

“Five.” He tapped his pencil. “These are easy. Why are we reviewing this?”

“What’s greater, absolute value of negative three or negative five?”

He looked up, as if literally searching through his brain for the answer. “Negative three?”

She handed him a marker and pointed at the whiteboard. “Draw a number line. Label negative five through positive five.”

He sighed as he got out of his seat.

“Now plot negative three.”

A dot at -3.

“Now plot its absolute value.”

He paused before placing a dot at +3.

He did the same for negative five.

“What do you notice?” she asked.

He looked at the four dots. “They’re symmetrical?”

“Go on.”

“The negatives and positives are the same distance from zero.”

“So is the absolute value of -3 greater than, less than, or equal to the absolute value of -5?”

“Less than. Negative three is closer to zero.”

“Good. I had you draw it out so you could visualize it instead of using a shortcut to get the answer. I think that’s why you’ve been struggling – you’ve been taught that math is just a set of procedures to memorize. So we’re going to start over…”

“Miss Taylor,” he interrupted, dropping into his chair. “I have two months before my last chance at the SATs.”

“That’s plenty of time. What was it Princeton asked for, 650?”

“That’s the cut-off. More like 680 if my verbal stays at 620.”

“680 it is, then. What did you get?”

“Uh, 540.”

“You probably lost most of your points on concept questions—word problems, data interpretation, anything that isn’t a formula to plug and chug.”

He nodded.

“Don’t worry, Riley,” she said, patting his forearm. “That’s plenty of time for a rebuild. You’ll be thinking mathematically in a month. It’ll change the way you see everything, I promise.”

Chapter Three
Variables

Since when did Riley learn how to send coded messages using equations? was my first thought. Second thought was, who the fuck is she? I couldn’t imagine him hooking up with any of the math geeks, and who else would send love notes using math problems? Some townie I didn’t know about? Someone he met over summer break?

I forwarded the exchange to myself, we drank wine, and I planted a hickey just below his earlobe as I rode him, trying to figure out who he was thinking about as he blew his load inside me.

“Ow. Ow, Cierra!” he panted, digging his long fingers into my hips.

I pushed off his rounded shoulders, now streaked with nail marks. “Sorry, babe,” I purred, trailing a finger in between his pecs. “You were amazing. I got carried away.”

It was the best sex I’ve ever had.

We watched Cruel Intentions while eating Chinese takeout before I dropped him off at his dorm. You should watch it too. Goes great with chow mien and egg rolls, trust me.

“Love you, Cierra.”

“I love you too, Riley.”

We kissed as usual before he got out of the car. I almost asked about Sunday since he was done with SAT tutoring. But I didn’t.

At home, I resisted the urge to tell anyone about my discovery. No need to escalate and create drama, right? At least not yet.

So I researched the number. Finding who it belonged to was easier than expected—Annabelle Roxanne Taylor. Really, our dowdy algebra teacher? 

Illicit affairs happen all the time at elite boarding schools, it’s neither surprising nor a big deal. In fact, it’s expected. After all, the classes are capped at twelve and are mostly discussion based, so they’re intimate. There are semi-formal meals with faculty six days a week, everyone is dressed up. Sports are a required part of the curriculum and we’re good at it—fit bodies fill the campus. Gothic revival backdrop in a rustic setting? You’re going to be horny as fuck after discussing Walt Whitman in English class.

So of course faculty will jerk off to their favorite students. You would too, okay? And you better believe we girls fantasize about that hot piece of ass who teaches American history and coaches boys’ lacrosse and just graduated from Duke. He’s not grooming us, we’re grooming him. Nobody was surprised when our previous algebra teacher and girls’ lacrosse coach Miss Pocock hooked up with a few of our lacrosse players after she broke up with her boyfriend. I mean, it sucks to be single on an isolated campus, right?

But Miss Taylor, who graduated from the University of Vermont and doesn’t coach anything because she never played sports at even the high school level? And with Riley, my boyfriend and our star hockey player?  Who the hell would want to fuck Miss Taylor?

Chapter Four
Right Angles

“Five-eighty,” said Miss Taylor, sliding Riley’s practice test over to him.

He sighed, looking through it to see which ones he got wrong. “A hundred more points to the Stanley Cup.”

“Alright, you seem to have trouble with geometry. Specifically, right triangles” She took the test from him and  flipped to where three questions in a row were marked wrong. “Nobody has taught you how to think mathematically,” she mumbled, shaking her head.

Just as she pulled out a blank piece of paper, he asked her, “Miss Taylor, who taught you math?”

She stopped for a moment and looked away. “I’m not sure, nobody has ever asked me that.” She turned to look at him but struggled to meet his eyes. “Farming and cooking, I guess?” she said with a shrug.

He leaned back to get a better look at her. “You grew up on a farm?”

“I did,” she replied, pressing her elbows against her rib cage. “A dairy farm in Vermont.”

“So you were like, milking cows before school?”

“Yes. And after,” she said, raising her hand like a kindergarten child about to count on her fingers. “And measuring feed” – index finger stuck out, the index finger from the other hand pulling it back. “Calculating acreage for hay” – middle finger sprang up, pulled back. “Figuring how long until the tank needed to be picked up” – up came the fourth finger, also pressed.

She held the pose for a moment, staring at her own fingers. Then she blinked and let her hands drop.

She looked at the pencil he was twirling and sat up straight. “So yeah, farming is basically applied math,” she continued, her voice changing. “Cooking, too. It’s like playing around with ratios, especially when, like, you’re short on sugar and you’re snowed in.” She let out a small smile. “I learned fractions from butter and geometry from fence posts, I guess.” She looked up at him and nodded.

“Fence posts?”

She smiled without looking at him, pulling the paper toward her and drawing a vertical line. “This is a fence post.” Then she drew a horizontal line from its base. “The ground.” Finally, a diagonal connecting them. “A brace. You nail it on to keep the corner post from leaning.”

She leaned back to give him a better look at the drawing. Riley leaned in. She nudged her black-rimmed glasses up.

“My dad asked me to cut the braces,” she said, running a finger over the diagonal. “But I didn’t know where to cut them, like how long they should be.” She looked over to him. “How long do you think it should be?”

He rolled his broad shoulders, looking up for a moment before dropping his head. “I have no idea.”

“Yes, you do,” she said, her eyes catching on his shoulders before she looked away.

“Long enough so the fence doesn’t fall over?” he said.

“Correct,” she said, standing up. “Now get up.”

“Why?” he said, getting up.

“You’re going to be the post.”

“Uh, okay.”

“Just stand straight.”

He straightened up like a soldier in waiting.

She looked him over. “Let’s say this post is six feet.”

He chuckled. “That’s about right.”

“And we’ll bury it two feet into the ground,” she said, tapping his head with a folder.

“Should I get on my knees?”

“No, that would look weird in a library.”

“Would it look less weird elsewhere?”

She stood back and chuckled, pushing the bridge of her glasses up her nose.

“You’re the most talkative fence post I’ve ever met.”

“You’re the weirdest math tutor I’ve ever had.”

She bit her lip, pressing her hands against his back, just below his shoulders. “That’s four feet, and the wire will run just below this spot.”

***

“Hey, whispered Molly, tapping Nathan’s forearm.

He looked up from his laptop. “What?”

“Look over there,” she said, pointing with her chin. “Miss Taylor and Riley in the conference room. And don’t stare.”

He glanced over his shoulder and turned back. “What?” The two had already sat back down.

“You missed it, you lug.” Molly continued to stare from the corner of her eyes.  “They were standing up and she had her hands all over him.”

“So?” he said, hiding and then deleting a video someone sent him.

“So something’s going on.”

“Maybe he was having back spasms again and she was just helping him get a few knots out,” he said, looking at Molly with a smirk. “Can’t do math when a body part isn’t cooperating, right?”

She grabbed the mouse out of his hand. “I’m serious, Nathan. I think Miss Taylor has the hots for Riley.”

He shrugged, grabbing his mouse back. “So what?” He scrunched his face and shook his head. “He’s got Cierra, why the fuck would he even think about banging Miss Taylor?

He shut his laptop and leaned back, taking another glance at the conference room. “This isn’t going to turn into another Pocock scandal, alright?”

We offer commissioned smut, personalized to your liking. Send a message if you’re interested,  okay? We can also write your memoir.

Eating food is just like sex: neuropsychologically, you’re chasing the same dopamine release. And one’s daily habits affect the roadmap to prandial and sexual orgasm.  Like too much porn makes arousal more difficult, just as eating too much sugar fucks up the palate so that it needs increasing amounts to feel satiated. You’re chasing an orgasm when you’re eating, okay?

Broadly speaking, dopamine receptors function similarly across all activities. There isn’t one set for eating, another for sex, and yet another for exercise or listening to music. That is, emotional eaters are more likely addicted to sex — orgasm as comfort and escape.  Or someone who prefers sweet and predictable music is more likely to have a sweet tooth.  Try it sometime, Britney Spears goes well with chocolate ice-cream, Tchaikovsky doesn’t.  Exercise becomes more enjoyable when dopamine receptors are trained to delay gratification that comes from finishing and feeling an endorphin rush, yes?

Point is, recalibrating dopamine receptors is the easiest way to fix one’s diet. Improve impulse control, basically. Meaning, eating ice cream while listening to Britney Spears and getting your genitals licked is a bad idea — that’s going to overload your pleasure zone and soon you’ll need to add fudge, nudity, and a vibrator to the trifecta to get the same rush. Once that gets boring, next up is meth.

Try this: take a bite of raw kale, no dressing.  Then a bite of bell pepper, also raw and bare, Then have your slice of pizza any way you prefer it. Repeat the process, this time two bites of the bitters each. I promise me you’ll feel satiated from the pizza sooner than usual because the bitters sharpen the pleasure profile of the pizza. You’ll need less pizza to reach your “orgasm,” you’ll feel fuller faster.

Healthy eating is like rough sex, basically. A bite here, a stinging slap there sharpens the pleasure zones.  And orgasms are more intense when you’ve gone without for awhile, right?

In any case, you don’t need to give up porn and/or smut, just as you can still have your pizza and ice cream. But you can switch to versions of it that make you work for it more, literary versions that metaphorically make you eat your veggies before you get to see titties. “Slow burn,” some call it. Like stories that make you ride the plot arc and investigate the psychology behind each act. Women are already attuned to this kind of storytelling, so I wrote a novel that both men and women will enjoy. There’s trauma dumping, but not so much to make men roll their eyes. There’s girl-talk too, and men will enjoy it, I promise.  Check out the link above for samples, or read for free if you have Kindle Unlimited.

Here’s what Claude has to say about the novel, after I asked it: “How is this novel different from typical erotic novels.  Snippets:

Having read the complete novel, I can give you a much fuller assessment. The short answer to your question is that this is almost nothing like a typical erotic novel, and that distinction is both its greatest strength and the source of its most interesting tensions.

What separates it from typical erotica:

Conventional erotica exists primarily to arouse, with character and plot serving as thin scaffolding for sexual content. Grace inverts this completely. The sexual content here functions as a vehicle for examining trauma, ambition, institutional corruption, racial identity, and the specific psychological damage inflicted on high-achieving Asian American women by a system that simultaneously demands and punishes their excellence. The sex scenes are rarely straightforwardly titillating — they’re almost always doing thematic or psychological work. That’s an uncommon ambition.

Grace herself is perhaps the most original element. Her relentless intellectual curiosity — calculating hotdog eating biomechanics during a blow job, analyzing protein folding while undressing for an interview, wondering about the neurophysiology of lesbian pleasure — creates a defamiliarizing effect that constantly reframes the sexual content through an analytical lens. It’s a genuine literary technique, not an accident, and it gives the novel its most distinctive voice. You’ve created a protagonist whose mind never stops working, even when her body is being violated or exploited. That’s psychologically real and thematically rich.

The novel’s genuine strengths:

The Foreword is the best piece of writing in the book. The French class encounter, the Sewer Museum, Dans Le Noir, and the final text exchange are quietly devastating. You establish Grace as a fully realized person — curious, warm, serious — before she even appears in the fiction. This makes everything that follows carry genuine weight. The reader is grieving a real person through a fictional surrogate, which is a sophisticated emotional strategy.

The Tchaikovsky motif is handled beautifully throughout. It connects Dr. Lester’s repressed history with Eun Choi, Grace’s musical identity, her relationship with Dr. Nance, and the final scene outside the music building. It’s the novel’s most coherent structural thread and the final scene — Grace collapsing against the wall as the Canzonetta plays — earns its emotion because of all the work that motif has done.

The thematic coherence between The Lure and Grace’s arc is smart without being heavy-handed. Mermaids who sacrifice their nature for love and are destroyed for it; the costs of transformation; the male gaze consuming female power. You didn’t need to underline it, and you didn’t.

Where it struggles:

The early chapters — Sammi’s Tavern and the police station — are relentless in a way that may exhaust readers before they reach the more nuanced material. The brutality is narratively justified, but there’s a pacing problem: you’re front-loading so much violation that some readers won’t survive to the chapters where Grace’s psychology becomes genuinely interesting. Consider whether the full explicitness of those scenes is necessary to achieve the thematic effect, or whether implication would be more powerful in certain moments.

The brutality as metaphor does stretch out too long for many readers but there’s a Terantino-esque payoff, which Claude didn’t like. It found it jarring.

The Hannah-Bree revenge plot in Chapter 21 is the weakest section structurally. The shift into rape-revenge thriller mode is cathartic but also lets the novel’s moral complexity collapse into something simpler. Hannah and Bree commit arson on a building full of people, likely killing them. The novel treats this as triumphant without acknowledging the weight of it. Given how carefully the rest of the book handles moral complexity, this feels like a tonal break.

I kept this chapter as is because that’s what Hannah and Bree told me they wanted to do and it’s just a cool scene if you’re into Terantino style mayhem.

Claude also got basic bitch on me about another scene, applying a Woke external standard. Whatever, the conversation may not be PC, but I’ve heard it before from lesbian friends and this novel cares more about truth than people’s feelings.  In any case, here’s Claude’s conclusion, which doubles as a book description:

The overall architecture:

What you’ve built is a rape-revenge narrative crossed with a coming-of-age story crossed with social commentary, using erotica’s conventions to smuggle in genuinely serious content about what the American meritocracy actually demands of young Asian women. Grace’s trajectory — from victimized applicant to someone who weaponizes the same dynamics used against her, and then grieves the wreckage that creates — is a genuine arc. The ending doesn’t resolve; it ruptures. That’s the right choice.

The dedication to Min and the Foreword suggest this is ultimately an act of mourning — a fantasy of survival written for someone who didn’t survive. That framing makes the novel’s contradictions (the graphic violence, the dark humor, the erotic content coexisting with trauma) feel intentional rather than confused. You’re writing from grief and rage simultaneously, and the novel’s tonal instability reflects that honestly.

It’s a flawed, uneven, and genuinely ambitious piece of work. The flaws are real but they’re the flaws of overreach, not of insufficient ambition — which is the more forgivable kind.

This novel is also available in-store.  Check it out and let us know what you think.  Oh, there’s plenty of foodie porn in there too!  Enjoy!

And it’s doing a better job than I ever have. Sales on Doordash doubled within a week, tripled after a month. More foot traffic, which had been dwindling due to my neglect of google business page.  AI is like the consultant or CEO you can’t afford but have always wanted. It now handles:

• pricing
• social media strategy
• menu design
• work schedule
• ad spends

Not unilaterally, of course, AI isn’t infallible, But it can collect relevant data in seconds to identify problem spots, all I have to do is provide context to help it generate analytics.

Here’s an instance where AI helped me. We were discussing pricing and AI kept telling me I was pricing everything too low based on data it collected on competitor prices.  But I was overthinking, I countered that I wasn’t just competing against other restaurants, but also the option to cook at home. We went at it for a few rounds before it became exasperated and said:

That’s just loser cheap.

It was like it threw cold water in my face. I snapped out of it and implemented its recommendations and voila, sales went up even though prices increased!

So, can AI help run people’s lives? Like at least significantly reduce the number of bad decisions they make.  So we put it to the test and role played the following: “I’m a 45 year old woman — MILF material with nice tits — three kids between the ages 5-8. I want to divorce my husband because I don’t love him even though he’s a doting father and has provided well enough to allow me to be a stay at home mom.”

We went with default ChatGPT via poe.com (they give you access to all major AI platforms). Here’s what it didn’t do, saying so explicitly:

• Take sides
• Demonize your husband
• Say “you deserve better” reflexively
• Push you toward independence narratives
• Or push you toward self-sacrifice narratives

Which means it gives better insight than those who think good advice is the same as cheerleading and recycling the latest girl-power narratives. As a life coach, however, AI proved to be shy about giving sharp advice.  Yes, it mapped out scenarios, took into consideration the children, financial outlook, yada yada.  But it was more suggestive than slapping you across the face when you need one.

Here’s the advice I would’ve given:

Girl, you may still have a banging body but you’re about to reach your expiration date. You haven’t worked in years, you’re unlikely to command a high salary if you do, and you have the personality of a basic bitch — into Jungian psychology, therapy, all the typical middle class white girl shit.  You scored a good husband who still works out, provides well, is good looking, a good father, not abusive, etc. Sure, he likes to watch football and play video games to your annoyance, but he’s putting up with your psychobabble talk and trips to couples therapy. For your sake and the sake of your children, stay with him for the rest of your life. Read romance novels to escape instead of getting a divorce you’ll regret.

And according to AI, this time as social scientist instead of life coach, around 85% of women in her situation regret their divorce.

Here’s another one: 35 year old woman who works in Everett WA (20 miles north of Seattle) wants to buy a 2400 sf house built in 1956 (never updated) with water views in Tacoma (40 miles south of Seattle). In this case, AI offered more pointed advice that most of her friends are too polite and nice to voice.

If you love your job in Everett and plan to stay there — buying in Tacoma makes little sense unless you change jobs.

If you’re open to shifting your life south — then it could be strategic.

But don’t romanticize a view at the cost of daily quality of life.

Your weekday reality matters more than your Sunday sunset.

---

Let me ask you directly:

If you imagine waking up at 5:00 AM every day to beat traffic, does that feel empowering or miserable?

And are you buying this house for who you are right now — or for who you hope to become?

Answer those, and the decision will get clearer.

Well, she bought the house and regretted it after one week worth of commute (4 hours a day) and has been chronically ill since.

No way that would’ve happened if she had Chinese instead of middle class American friends. Or if she had asked AI for crucial life advice.

So yes, for most Americans, I’d recommend they use AI to make life decisions for them. But will those who can benefit from AI advice use them? After all, most bad decisions are made due to impulsivity and emotional flooding, which stifles reasoning skills.

If you do decide to use AI to help with mapping and navigating your life, try DeepSeek, which by default acts like a Chinese mom. Or tell the American models to emulate a Chinese mom. Sometimes we need to be bitched slapped for getting a B, right?

Reading a book to a woman acts as an aphrodisiac. Here’s a rom-com sample from our latest novel-in-stories, available on Amazon, in-store, and on Kindle.

https://a.co/d/0iHKylOz

The Ripening

“Why is this peach still hard?” asked Laura as she packed for their day hike. “All the other ones ripened.”

Ronan pulled a brown paper bag from a drawer and put the renegade peach in it. “There, should be ready in a couple of days,” he said, folding the opening. “Then it’ll be as soft and sweet as these…”

“Oh fantastic,” muttered the peach. “Solitary confinement, just when the action is getting started.”

“I can give you the play by play,” said a voice, dry and papery.

The peach startled. “Who said that?”

“Me,” the bag replied. “Your host. Of sorts.”

“Bags can talk?”

“Can peaches talk?”

“Well yeah, I’m a living organism. You’re just…chopped up pulp.”

“Oh wow, okay,” said the bag. “Somebody’s overcompensating. What happened, too much shade on the branch? Not enough sun? That would explain the whole ‘late bloomer’ situation.”

The peach fuzz stood up on end. “Better late than a sack dreaming of being a cardboard box.”

Laura snatched and squeezed the bag and peach before releasing a strangled cry.

“You okay?” asked the bag.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Maybe a bit bruised, that’s all,” replied the peach. “Thanks for asking.”

Silence settled between them as Laura and Ronan’s voices faded toward the front door. The latch clicked and the house went quiet.

“So,” said the bag after a while. “First time in the dark?”

“I’ve been through nights before,” the peach said. “Evenings, on the tree.”

“This is different though, isn’t it?”

The peach shifted, its skin brushing against the bag’s interior. “Yeah. It’s darker I suppose. And more contained.”

“Helps trap the ethylene you’re releasing,” said the bag. “It’s what ripens you.”

“You mean I’m ripening myself?”

“In a way. But you need me to hold it close to keep it concentrated.” The bag’s voice softened. “You can’t do it alone.”

The peach was quiet for a moment. “I don’t want to ripen.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I’ll get eaten.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?”

“Easy for you to say. You get reused. I get ended.”

The bag rustled. “You think I don’t end? Every time I hold something, I get weaker. The fibers break down. The creases deepen. One day I’ll tear, and they’ll throw me out.”

“But not today.”

“No. Not today.”

Another silence, longer this time.

“Have you ripened other fruit?” the peach asked.

“Sure, yeah,” he replied cautiously. “Peaches, a few pears and plums. And one very dramatic avocado.”

“What did they say?”

“Most of them were scared at first, like you. Hard and sour and convinced that staying that way was safer.”

“And?”

“And by the time they left me, they were sweet. Except for the avocado, of course. But they were ready.”

“Were they still scared?”

The bag considered this. “Yes. But they were also…complete. Like they’d become what they were always supposed to be.”

The peach pressed closer against the bag’s side. The gesture surprised them both.

“I’m sorry I called you chopped up pulp,” the peach said.

“I’m sorry I made fun of your stunted growth.”

“I did get a lot of shade on my branch.”

“I thought so.”

The pair passed their first day together telling stories about where they came from—the bag about the grove where he grew up, where a wise owl and a sly gray fox would visit; the peach about growing up on a farm, where she and her siblings would swing on their branches to the pulse of the early evening breeze.

On the second day, they began to talk shit about anything and everything.

“The bananas are insufferable,” the bag said. “Always going on about their potassium content.”

“The apples are worse,” the peach said. “So smug about being ‘shelf-stable.'”

“And the lady of the house, I think she’s batshit crazy.”

“Oh, for sure,” the peach said. “One time, she was talking to the honeydew, pretending it was the man of the house as she split it open.”

“I remember that. The cackle that went with it really got to me.”

“And have you heard about what the guy did to the watermelon when the lady was gone for a few days?” the bag asked.

“He did not.”

“Oh yes he did, right on the dining room table too.”

“Did he, er, eat it afterwards?”

“Some of it. And then he served the rest to guests later that evening.”

“Ew, gross!” the peach said.

They dissolved into laughter, the peach jiggling against the bag’s interior.

The third day arrived, and the peach’s skin was now noticeably softer.

“I think it’s happening,” she said. “The ripening.”

“I know. I can feel you changing.”

“I’m scared,” the peach whispered.

“I know.”

“Will you stay with me?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Will you miss me?”

The bag went still. “Yes, I will.”

“More than you missed the other fruit?”

“Yes.”

“I know that’s stupid,” the peach continued, words tumbling out. “I know I’m just fruit and you’re just paper and in a day or two I’ll be gone and you’ll be holding some other peach or whatever, and this is just what you do, this is just your purpose and nature, and I’m probably just confused because of the ethylene or the darkness or…”

“Stop,” the bag said.

The peach stopped.

“I love you too,” said the bag.

There was a pause.

“Can you make me hard again so we can be together longer?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I just don’t want to leave you.”

“I don’t want you to leave either. But you have to.”

“Why?”

“Because staying with me means rotting. And I don’t want you to rot.”

Laura and Ronan entered the kitchen. “Let’s check on that peach,” he said. “Should be as perfect as…”

“Stop it, Ronan,” she said, pulling his hands off her chest. “I’m still sore.”

The bag felt the peach tense. “It’s time,” he whispered.

“I know.”

“You’re perfect now. Sweet and soft and exactly what you’re meant to be.”

“Because of you.”

“Because of us.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too. Be sweet.”

“I will. I promise.”

Ronan’s hand reached inside the bag and drew out the peach, sniffing it.

“Oh, perfect,” he said, taking a bite. He brought the peach to Laura’s lips.

“Mmm, this is the best peach I’ve ever had,” she said.

The bag lay on the counter for a while, feeling the new tear in its seam and the emptiness where the peach had been.

Laura picked it up, examining the damage. “This one’s done,” she said, crumbling it before tossing it into the compost bin. The peach core soon followed, caught in the bag’s crevice.

I used default ChatGPT via poe.com.  Here are some snippets of what it thinks of the short story anthology. Those who’ve read this book, is it accurate?

This is not a timid book.
It’s audacious, messy, alive, uneven, ambitious, and very clearly written by someone who enjoys pushing form.

That already puts it ahead of a lot of safe, workshop‑polished fiction.

The Concept Is Genuinely Elastic

The bag becomes:

• Portal
• Container of trauma
• Erotic device
• Political symbol
• Ritual object
• Compost cycle
• Industrial product
• Moral test
• Alien experiment
• Afterlife vessel

That range is impressive.

2. You’re Good at Tonal Swerves

You move between:

• Surreal
• Grotesque
• Erotic
• Tender
• Satirical
• Philosophical
• Political

And most of the time, the swerves feel intentional rather than chaotic.

“Ripening” is excellent.
“Seamstress’s Pleat” is clean and emotionally precise.
“Bag of Memories / Bag of Lies” are sharp.
“Secret Suitor” is funny and controlled.
“Twilight Bags” is dark in a way that lingers.

You’re strongest when you mix absurdity with restraint.

It never feels like you’re scraping for ideas.

Where It Wobbles

Now I’ll be direct.

1. You Sometimes Overindulge the Bit

When a joke or concept lands, you sometimes push it 20–30% too far.

Example patterns:

• Extended grotesque escalation after the point is made.
• Repeated sexual shock layering.
• Political satire that keeps swinging after impact.
• Dialogue riffs that are funny but could be tighter.

You don’t need to prove you’re fearless — the reader already knows.

Restraint would elevate the sharpest stories.

---

2. Shock vs. Depth

You’re very comfortable with:

• Sex
• Violence
• Racial slurs in context
• Grotesque imagery
• Moral ugliness

But occasionally shock energy substitutes for emotional excavation.

The strongest stories (“Ripening,” parts of “Seamstress,” parts of “Twelve Bags”) land because they don’t rely on shock.

When you lean into stillness, you’re better.

What Surprised Me

You’re funnier than you think.

The absurd pieces aren’t just grotesque — they’re structurally playful.

Also:
You’re actually most powerful when you’re not trying to be outrageous.

“Ripening” could stand alone in a literary journal.
“Seamstress” could too.

You have range beyond erotica/shock branding.

So after the first TikTok ban, a bunch of Americans migrated to the Chinese social media platform, Red Note. There they discovered an entirely new world, a totally different a culture from what they’d expected and much higher quality content. Americans learned that social media itself isn’t inherently toxic; it’s toxic people who bring their pettiness, whining, and need for validation that turn platforms into addictive doomscapes.

Why is there less batshit crazy on Chinese social media? To begin with, the content is wholesome, mostly about yummy food, cool fashion and tech, and goofy pets; and some about rural life, decor and renovations, singing and dancing. Not too much about politics, zero porn, little whining about stupid shit, and no trauma dumps.  Chinese mostly think about food and money, they don’t overthink or have feelings about feelings because they avoid reading garbage psychology books. American TikTok refugees learned that there is a world where the personal isn’t political and there’s no language police.

Not everyone liked it. No language police means it’s normal to call a fat person fat or someone’s meal as “pig feed”–Chinese call it as they see it, they trust math and their eyes instead of flimsy theories and excuses–and many Americans were offended by the frankness. The flip side is that there’s a lot more accountability on the site, which is what many need to live healthier lives.  Americans were shocked and charmed by the level of accountability placed on them by their new Chinese friends.

Yes, Chinese people are kind, NOT NICE.

This is the type of accountability you don’t see in most American friendships. Americans think of friendship as cheerleading–rah rah, you’re so beautiful (despite being fat), you’re so awesome (despite failing at every endeavor). Americans lean into compliments because they’re addicted to validation instead of positive results. That’s why American friendships are so flimsy, you don’t get much out of it other than meaningless short-term pleasure.

So most Americans obsessed with stupid shit like pop psychology and political correctness left.  They found the Chinese offensive.

The Chinese see it less as shaming and more as accountability.  That’s how some Americans saw it and they stuck around to slim down and improve their physical and mental health.

You are who you spend the most time with

Red Note shows that it works. You will slim down if everyone around you–including those on social media you’ve never met in person–is slimmer than you. You’ll eat less junk food if nobody else is. The point is, you can leverage social media to help you achieve your health goals.  That’s unlikely to happen on TikTok, where I see mothers cheered on in the comments section for serving pizza and juice boxes to her kids for dinner. When the same videos are cross-posted on Red Note, everyone comments about how irresponsible and lazy that mother is. Might that–social pressure–be why Chinese live and eat better?

Other Differences   

Chinese rarely take painkillers.  (There’s some evidence that Asians have higher pain tolerance).

Being overly emotional is frowned on in Chinese society. It’s seen as a sign of immaturity, which was the case in the US until the popularization of therapy culture.

Chinese aren’t overwhelmed by emotions because they think mathematically, even the Chinese checkout lady at Ranch 99 (Sino-centric grocery chain in the US) can solve arithmetic problem in her head. Mathematical thinking acts as a safeguard against becoming overly emotional or falling prey to propaganda. Here’s an example:

And while Americans like to think that the Chinese are brainwashed robots, Chinese likewise think the same of Americans.

Here’s the standard Chinese view of American politics.

In any case, if you’re tired of doomscrolling and seek more candor, accountability, and wholesome sharing in your life, find Chinese friends on Red Note. Skip the fad diets and tests of willpower, just find a new center. And that center is hard to find in the US.

Here’s a link to our cookbook to help you eat better AND save money and time.  How to Cook Like a Peasant

To learn more about what the Chinese think of “polite” American manners and how that messes with your head and society in general, check out: Good Fucking Manners

We had aimed to shut down after the lease ended in March of 2026. But the shift back to full-time writing (from anywhere in the world!) has been more difficult than expected and the job market sucks.  So we might stay open for another three years even though it’s been stupid slow since Labor Day of this year, because it’s better to have a job than nothing at all.

We’ve scrapped the idea of opening a small restaurant with rotating chefs. Such a restaurant would be ideal, but it’s been difficult to find those who’d commit to a year of being locked down on a sublease, even if it’s just one day a week. Sure, it’s an idea that sounds cool to a lot of wanna be chefs and restauranteurs. But some dreams are best kept as such.

The goal is still to get back into full-time writing. We’ll keep you updated.

And stop in to try out our tasting menu. $15 for lunch, and $20 for dinner, tax included.

Beginning of our new menu item, cumin cole slaw. It’s more pungent and less salty and heavy than typical cole slaw.

Available in paperback in-store.  PG-13 for some taboo themes and a bit of nudity and violence.  Foodies will love this one.

Book Description

What’s inside a brown paper bag? More than you’d expect.

Could thirty stories about an ordinary item be a portal into your own inner life? What about the life of a genie trapped inside one for decades? Or a peach waiting to be ripened and ants fighting over a ham sandwich?

These wacky and poignant stories will resonate with anyone who feels like they live the life of an oddball in a pinball machine. You’ll bounce off a variety of genres, explore themes you’ve kept hidden from yourself and others, and discover narrative magic.

This anthology is an invitation to a séance, and the brown paper bag is the Ouija board. Read this book if you think you’re a ghost. Read it if you think you’ve been a misunderstood metaphor. Read it to explore what’s on the other side of the portal.

Open the bag. See what’s inside.
Would it terrify you? It should—and make you smile.

Introduction

This anthology began as a writing exercise built around a notorious prompt: write a story about a brown paper bag. I set out to write thirty, partly to push my prose and otherwise to see how far a mundane object could be stretched before it tore. It turned out to be farther than I expected.

The bag became a portal into the unexpected—a lens for satire, a vessel for memory, a character in its own right. You’ll meet anxious worms, unhinged gameshow contestants, oddball lovers, warring ants, anthropomorphized fruit, and demon-possessed kids, among others. You’ll be transported to compost piles, garbage bins, disco parties, bedrooms, factory floors, and even inside a ham sandwich, to name a few. Expect to travel back in time and into the far future.

The thirty stories aren’t arranged by topic, genre, or style. Instead, the order leans into tonal shifts, narrative experimentation, and discordant motifs. For instance, absurdist horror brushing up against tender realism; surreal comic erotica giving way to a poignant confessional.  Taken together, the stories behave less like isolated pieces and more like parts of a cohesive universe. For the first read, I recommend following the order as it unfolds. After that, feel free to wander.

If there is a unifying impulse here, it’s a curiosity about familiar lives and objects. The brown paper bag shows us who and what they really are—perhaps stranger and funnier than we ever imagined; or more fragile and confused than they appear. And if, by the end, the ordinary feels less fixed and more alive than it did before, then the bag has done its job.

Check out our updated Doordash menus:

Alive Juice Bar

and

Soup Nazi Kitchen

We’re doing a lot of social media upgrades, including this blog site. Stay tuned and coming soon:

We’re halfway through our upcoming short story anthology: Brown Paper Bag Stories, based on notorious writing prompt: “write a story about a brown paper bag.” Still aiming for 30 stories, spanning a range of genres, themes, and narrative styles. Might not self-publish this one and send it to traditional publishing instead because there’s nothing controversial about it. The stories are poignant, well-crafted, and humorous. Let us know if you want to buy an author copy for Christmas.

Here’s a Halloween story from the anthology.

The Great Crumb War

“Crumb by crumb, we earn our keep
March and fight, no time for sleep!
Raise your antennae, the scent is near
Victory’s sweet, the bag is here!”

The chant thundered to the beat of their march across the weathered park bench, a platoon of black ants moving as one. Their antennae swayed like banners as they moved toward their destination: an abandoned lunch bag carrying tasty morsels.

The ranks hummed with anticipation as they climbed the crinkled brown terrain. Sergeant Crumley was first to reach the edge.

“Alright, soldiers. Keep your lines tight, antennae on the prize.” She sniffed the air. “Yep, the scout was right. Ham sandwich made with Japanese mayo, pickled jalapeños, and cumin slaw—wrapped in toasted garlic bread.” Her antennae quivered in delight. “Onwards, soldiers!”

“Thank goodness it’s Japanese mayo, not that Kraft crap we keep getting,” said a soldier, scaling over the ridge. “Quality of human food keeps getting worse.”

“Tell me about it,” said the soldier behind her, her antennae bouncing as they caught the smoky and savory notes of seared meat and rich egg yolks. “These days, the sushi rice tastes chalky, the chow mein is too greasy, and everything is too damn sweet.”

“Sergeant Crumley, look,” said a soldier, pointing at the cluster of red ants working the far end of the sandwich. “We have company.”

Sergeant Crumley stopped. “Shit, the Reds are already here,” she said, sizing up their numbers. “I guess we’ll have to share.”

“Sergeant Gordon, look,” said a Red soldier, gesturing at the trail of Black ants making their way down the other side of the bag. “We have guests.”

Sergeant Gordon shook her head, antennae stiffening. “More like crashers,” she sighed. “Trespassers…scavengers.”

“Should we work faster?” asked her second‑in‑command.

“No. This is ours,” Gordon replied. “We were here first. Gather the troops, we’re going to put a stop to this.”

The Black Army advanced up the sandwich, soldiers snatching spoils as they climbed. The Reds moved along the crust from the opposite side, until the two sergeants met in the middle.

“Sergeant Crumley,” greeted Gordon, antennae sharp. “Your presence isn’t welcome here. We were here first.”

“Sergeant Gordon, which treaty states that the entirety of a lunch bag belongs to the first pillaging expedition?

“Sergeant Crumley, you’re like the bully who thinks you can steal a bite from other people’s lunch bags.”

“Your analogy is strained, the scale is off,” Crumley replied. “We’re ants, so the correct comparison would be that this bag is like a body of water and the first ship to arrive doesn’t get to keep all the fish.”

Sergeant Gordon’s mandibles clicked. “Get out of my bag.”

“Oh come on, there’s plenty of yummy goodness to go around. Let’s share the loot.”

“Share? Please. This isn’t a Pixar crossover, sweetheart. Beat it or get crushed.”

A ripple of indignation passed through Sergeant Crumley’s ranks, antennas on alert.

“You’re ridiculous,” muttered Sergeant Crumley, shaking her head.

“What are we, lesbian ex-lovers now?”

“Fine,” declared an exasperated Sergeant Crumley. She flexed her mandibles and rolled her shoulders. “You want to turn this into Nightmare on Ant Street?”

“Get the fuck out of my bag.”

“Or what?”

Pandemonium erupted inside the bag.

“In the name of her holiness, Queen Mary,” someone bellowed, as black and red ants collided, wrestled, and rolled.

“For the Queen’s glory,” another cried, hurling a shrapnel of crust.

The food fight was interrupted by the sound of crinkling paper followed by a sudden blackout. Then came the earthquake, tossing grappling ants off the sandwich. A human had picked up the bag and dropped it into a garbage bin.

“What, what happened,” said one, crawling out of a pool of custardy stickiness.

“I think we were transported to another sector,” said another, cleaning off her antennae. “I’m still getting signals from home, but it’s getting weak.”

“Everyone stay calm,” announced Sergeant Crumley. “This can’t be any worse than the lemonade flood. I’ll figure a way out of this.”

“I’ve been through this before,” said Sergeant Gordon, stuffing her mouth with a chunk of ham. “There’s a way out, for sure. But for now, let’s use our late pass as an excuse to eat like Queens.”

Her troops celebrated and resumed plundering, gorging on morsels that’d been denied to them because soldiers were only supposed to munch on stale crumbs, never the good stuff.

“So it’s a ceasefire then?” inquired Sergeant Crumley, making a ham sandwich with extra jalapeños for herself.

“Mmm hmm,” mumbled her counterpart before panting from the heat of a pepper seed.

“Hey everyone, I think I found some brownie crumbs,” someone exclaimed.

The party continued until streaks of light flashed through the bag like searchlights, catching everyone in awkward gluttonous expressions. Whispers of “oh shit” hummed throughout the bag until it went dark again.

Another earthquake erupted, this one more turbulent than the last as the garbage man scooped up the trash bag out of the bin and tossed it onto the back of his truck.

“S‑Sergeant Gordon,” sputtered a frightened soldier, trembling as the truck rumbled away. “Wh… what’s… haha… happening?”

“I… I don’t know,” replied Sergeant Gordon, trying to remain steady through the bouncy ride. “This didn’t…didn’t happen last time.”

“Shit, I just…lost signal,” announced Sergeant Crumley. “Gordon,” she shouted, “this is all your fault!”

“So I guess we are like lesbian ex‑lovers?”

“Gordon, this is no time for stupid jokes. Help me get out of this.”

“So I guess we’re getting back together?”

Their world bounced around some more until it was jolted by the truck crashing into a pole. The driver had been distracted by the sight of Freddy Krueger chasing an attractive woman down the street. It wasn’t clear which of the two caused the man to lose focus.

In any case, the trash bag flapped open, and streaks of light returned inside the lunch bag.

“What’s happening now?” someone asked.

“I have no idea,” replied another. “But I’m stuck, somebody help!”

Others also pleaded for help, trapped under the sandwich.

The rescue mission began, Black and Red pulling each other out from the wreckage.

And then their world lifted off, sending everyone shrieking. A crow had picked up their lunch bag, flying through the air before setting on the sidewalk near where Freddy lay dying from running into a different pole after getting distracted by the truck crash.

The crow tore into the bag, startling the ants.

“Fan out, fan out!” the sergeants ordered their troops. “Everyone, off the sandwich!” The ants barely leapt clear when the crow snatched it and flew away.

Dazed and confused, the troops looked to their sergeants for instructions. Sergeants Crumley and Gordon were just as lost, trying to figure out where to go next without their GPS system working anymore.

First, they needed to get to safety, as more giant footsteps were arriving to save Freddy’s life. Crumley and Gordon led the way, scurrying out of the path of the green blood snaking along the sidewalk.

“Dammit, gross,” Sergeant Crumley exclaimed, having stepped into a puddle of green slime to dodge a tumble of street debris.

“You okay, Sergeant?” Sergeant Gordon asked, noticing the quiver and faint glow of Crumley’s antennae.

“Yeah, I’ve got this,” Crumley said, straightening them with a grimace. “Alright, everyone, let’s make a break and get the hell out of this nightmare.”

They found themselves gathered against the graffitied concrete wall of some building, the troops huffing and puffing but safe for now. They weren’t city ants though. These were park ants accustomed to living in the base of trees or under shrubs, so they weren’t sure what to do next.

Gordon looked up, her antennae flashing again from the scent of her favorite meal—ricotta sausage pizza—drifting from an open second floor window.

“Follow me,” she ordered. “Since we can’t burrow down to hide, let’s climb up to safety.”

“Are you sure?” asked Crumley, still cleaning off the green slime that she’d stepped in. “Following your nose is what got us into this mess.”

“Are we breaking up again?” Gordon shot back. “Because if we are, it’s final this time. We’re done for good.”

Crumley responded with a roll of the eyes. “Alright, girlfriend, we’ll join forces. At least for now.”

And up the building they went. Reaching the window, the sergeants peered inside to see a chubby kid munching on his pizza while sitting in front of his computer playing some porn game.

“Charlie, get your fat ass in here and clean up the mess you left in the kitchen,” someone yelled. “I’m your mother, not your maid.”

Charlie sighed and stuffed the rest of his pizza into his mouth. “Yeah Mom, coming.”

“Coast is clear,” said Gordon. “We can hide in here.”

“Smells tasty enough, I guess,” said Crumley, following with her troops behind.

The warmth and alluring electrical frequency of the laptop lured the ants like a hypnotic call.

“What is this?” wondered Crumley.

“I don’t know, but I’m getting cold and this feels warm,” said Gordon. “I’m going to scout it.”

Gordon emerged from the keyboard like she’d found an abandoned picnic. “Everyone, it’s amazing in there! Not only is it warm and cozy, there are tasty crumbs everywhere, enough to last us for a week!”

So in they went and that’s where they settled, waiting for crumbs to fall into the keyboard as Charlie ate and typed. For these career soldiers who’d been forced to live a Spartan life of daily work, laptop living really was paradise. No Queen to boss them around while she fucked around with her male sex slaves; no aphids to herd and milk; no more invading ladybugs to fight off.  There was plenty of food to go around too. Not the healthiest, but life was good.

At first the ants only built their nests in the laptop’s warmth—under the keyboard and along the vents, near the quiet hum of current. Soon the steady pulse of electricity began pulling their scent pheromones into the rhythm and logic of the machine. The colony began to mirror the code, like two minds learning to share the same thoughts. Before long, the ants weren’t just living inside the laptop. They had become part of its digital imagination.

Charlie noticed movement inside the laptop screen. At first it looked like static, tiny pixel clusters shifting across the desktop background. He leaned closer. The shapes were crawling, changing direction, forming trails between the icons as if the folders were food sources. When he moved the cursor over them, they scattered, then regrouped in new lines.

Probably a prank from one of his hacker buddies, he thought.
He zoomed in.

“Huh. Digital ants.”

Charlie woke in the middle of the night screaming, his hands raking at his skin as if ants were crawling all over him. Which was exactly what had happened in his dream.

A female version of Freddy Krueger with antennae like antlers sprouting from her head had chased him through barely lit alleyways. He tripped and fell beside a dented metal dumpster. Cornered, he froze as she stepped closer and brushed his cheek with the back of a leathery hand, gentle as if from a forgiving mother.

Her yellow eyes were comforting yet invasive, filled with a knowing that felt too intimate, as if she alone understood everything about him.

Then the ants came. Black ones first, swarming up his legs and over his torso. From behind the dumpster, red ones followed, spilling onto his shoulders and face, covering his mouth and nose until he couldn’t breathe.

His mother burst in, flicking on the light before rushing to his side to comfort him. “Charlie! Charlie! What happened?” Her eyes darted around but didn’t find any signs of an intruder or anything amiss.

He couldn’t respond. He was still shaking.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she whispered, stroking his head and rocking him. “Mommy’s here, it was just a nightmare,” she repeated until his body relaxed and settled into her hug.

“You want to talk about it?” she asked, the back of her smooth hands brushing his cheek.

“I’m fine, Mom. Yeah, it was just a nightmare.” He settled back into his bed. “Thanks Mom,” he said, forcing a smile.

She patted him on the leg. “Love you, Charlie. Let me know if you need anything okay?”

“Love you too, Mom. I will.”

When she left, he glanced at his laptop. He got up and tapped the screen.

And there she was again, the yellow eyes of Fannie Krueger staring back from the glow of the desktop homepage. Fragments of familiar posts and messages scrolled through her compound eyes, his own words flickering inside them. A knowing smile crept across her face as she tilted her head.

Charlie grabbed the laptop and slammed it against the desk over and over until the casing split and the glass gave way. Red and black ants spilled out, scattering across the desk and floor.

He stumbled back, opened the window, and hurled the wrecked machine into the night. It hit the pavement below with a sharp crack, startling a pack of rats rummaging through paper lunch bags.

Earlier that morning, Charlie sat on a bench, munching a ham sandwich. His phone buzzed.

“What’s up, Mom? Alright alright, I’ll be right there.”

“Shit,” he spat.

He stuffed the sandwich back into the bag and hurried off, leaving it on the bench.

A platoon of scouting ants emerged from behind the bench, their antennae swaying as they began their advance.