Quote by Chet_Morton
record himself in multi-track, singing it as a barbershop quartet. Is that an appropriate use of this feature?

If it turns people on, sure 😃

A worthy award for an outstanding piece of erotica. It's superbly put together. Congratulations!

Quote by TheShyThespian
If I have a particularly long story, can I break it into two or three audio files?

Sadly not, says the dev team. One story, one audio file. Nothing to stop you recording it in multiple takes and stitching them together in post-production. I do this in Audacity.

Quote by TheShyThespian
If I have a particularly long story, can I break it into two or three audio files?

An excellent question. I don't know if there's an attachment limit to stories but I'll ask the dev team and get back to you.

It is with great pleasure that we announce the return of the ability to have audio files attached to stories for Silver members and higher.

Update - October 2025

Audio files (.mp3 please, although other formats such as .aac should work) can be uploaded directly when you create your story in Lush. Just browse for the file and submit your story as normal for review by the moderation team.

≠===========≠

Original message (now outdated)

It is not yet fully automated. To add audio to a story:

1. Write and push the story to the moderators as normal.

2. Send an email to audio@lushstories.com with your .mp3 as an attachment. Also include the link to the story in your email body text.

Someone behind the scenes will attach the audio file to the story you link. Other file formats are permitted, so if you've recorded it on your phone as an .aac or something, then send that over instead and someone will convert it. But mp3 is ideal if you can, please. And remember the link to the story. Without that, your file will be ignored.

Hopefully this will become more automated over time but for now, it's a welcome return. So get your microphones melting with sexy heat for us all to enjoy...

Back on topic, yes mod time depends on their availability and the spread of volunteers in any given time zone.

As Seeker4 says, there are other variables at play besides time. E.g. some mods don't touch poetry; some don't like cuckold stories, etc. But yes, gold+ members jump the queue and competition stories take priority when there's one running.

We have a regularly revised Guidelines document but it is only that: a guide. So, while we try to be consistent, there will be variance depending on the moderator, their background, and their available time.

Quote by wxt55uk
having your story on the first page for a while could help it gain traction with readers seeing it

Makes little to no difference. How long do you spend camping on the home page and pressing refresh to see what new stories have just been published?

Competition winners get upwards of 30 days exposure on the front page, sometimes two or three months before the next competition results are announced. Want to guess how many more reads/votes that attracts? I'll give you a clue: it's single figures. If that.

People tend to camp on story category pages they like, so if you get known for writing blazing hot stories in a particular genre, you can clean up.

When the enhanced activity pages are up and running it'll be easier to see what your friends/followers are reading and liking. So as you start to build a following, the growing band of people who like your stuff and have their own followers will help spread the word about your work by virtue of their interactions with it.

Currently, you're far more likely to gain traction by:

a) reading and commenting on other stories you like.

b) posting status updates and pics on your profile wall for your followers to like and share.

c) using the appropriate forums or chat rooms to get your name and writing known.

d) working hard at improving the craft of writing.

Quote by RowanThorn
Can you submit works you’ve already published to competitions

Nope. But if it's something you've started ages ago and not published, then by all means you can twist it to fit the comp.

Yes, we're not editors. But most moderators will check for flow and certainly spelling. If you have any specific concerns, please drop a moderator/admin a note with the story link(s) in question and we'll take a look.

The squishing is frustrating when you've gone to the effort of making a crystal sharp image. It's like making a beautifully engineered piece of music and having someone play it back as an MP3 at 128kbps where it smooshes the cymbals and muddies the bass.

They have dialled back the compression since we first moved here. In the early days it was so harsh that small text was illegible. But I get the need to save server space (and hence costs on storage and bandwidth) so it's a necessary evil in some respects.

Huge congratulations to the top three in this fiercely inventive competition. Highly deserved. After submitting mine and beginning to read others, I felt my chances of even making the top ten gradually slipping away, so to place fourth feels like a wonderful gift.

I admit I haven't yet made it all the way up the list so I've not read some of the top ten. I'll endeavour to make amends, time permitting.

As always, many thanks to the tireless work of the judges, the shortlister, Jen and the team who keep the site running, and to everyone who participated in the competition or even took the time to read, vote and comment on the excellent and diverse array of stories in the running. Lush competitions are always a challenge, and it takes courage to put your hard work out there for consideration, so supporting the authors is very much appreciated.

Now of course, all eyes will be on TheShyThespian to see if he can become the first (?) writer in Lush history to top three consecutive competitions. No pressure, Jason

Aaaaand, exhibit B, for Bum...

Quote by lynnwitt

Not every sexy butt must be naked

Wholeheartedly agree.

Oooh yeah. Great shouts all round. Lush would be sunk without the boost those folk give it. Congratulations and thank you for all the hard work.

And you should be able to edit a post and remove the banner link after. The red X should be there (hopefully).

Quote by deviantsusie
I was trying to find the competition rules

The link is only visible when a comp is running. But it's always available, so bookmark it if you like.

Wait, does anyone use bookmarks any more?

Browsing by tag is (sort of) possible by clicking on one, but it's not very good at present. I'd love it to be beefed up so you could search by multiple tags. One day...

As for keeping the current story copy on-site while the other is in review, that's an excellent suggestion. Not sure if it's technically possible with the way it's set up right now (one story URL endpoint for all site users) but I can ask the question.

I have asked the dev team if it's possible to flag to mods the stories that are already published and are resubbed with only a few minor changes in them. That way we could skim the queue and knock them back on the site faster. Will see what happens.

Quote by DeclanH
does the story reappear on Lush’s New Erotic Stories list?

No, otherwise everyone would regularly "fix" things in their story to keep it in the list!

it’s a lousy product experience. It certainly discourages authors from fixing mistakes missed in review, or adding a better tag, etc... I don’t want my story to be unpublished for a couple of days because I created a better cover.

Valid points but there are a few things to note:

1. While the story does go back into the queue with the other stories, resubs are fairly easy to spot, so sometimes moderators skim the queue to find any stories that are quick to process. For this reason, as stated above...

2. ... if you add a Moderator Note that you've just changed the cover pic (or whatever you did), we'll know to focus on that. Moderator's have a View Changes button that will highlight any alterations made to the body text so if anyone says "I only changed the cover pic, guv" and tries to also sneak some text changes in to violate our terms (for example) we'll spot it. And we take a dim view of such behaviour and will cross that person off our Christmas list 🤪

3. Adding/editing tags shouldn't cause a resubmission. But please be mindful of choosing appropriate tags and don't create new ones unless absolutely necessary because it diliatee the tag pool and makes them less useful for readers to find stuff that interests them.

4. The reason we have the resub process is to avoid people having a story published and then going back afterwards to add/edit stuff that we may have asked them to remove, or that would otherwise contravene our site operational terms.

Hope that makes sense.

Neighbours or hotel guests, all of it is hot to overhear.

I haven't killed in ages.

Quote by dronette56

Add Author's Notes to things that will trigger a review.

Is that a request, or are you saying it does currently trigger a trip to the mod queue?

Should be fixed now. Thank you for the report.

I wondered why it had been quiet in there recently. It does the same for me.

Good catch, thank you. I'll get it reported.

Glad you like the place so far. Always lovely to read that someone enjoys the stories, thank you.

Awesome picks. Congrats to all the winners. A fun challenge producing some spooky tales from a talented bunch. Fab to see so many people entering. I really enjoyed reading them.

Thanks to Kimmi as always for her tireless encouragement and generosity. And to the mystery judge, and prize donors too. A worthy set of new saints for All Saints Day.