WannabeWordsmith just took care of it, and explained it was due to some bug that sometimes assigns a story to whoever approved your last one; without putting it in the queue. Anyway, to be clear I wasn’t complaining or considering it a serious hardship, but I guess it’s good I said something because no one but me knew the story was “stuck.” Still gonna take a break for a few weeks from updating my covers, to give you all a break.

After being very busy publishing five stories in December, accomplishing most of my 2025 writing goals, I haven't since been writing at all (although I'm about to restart work on my MF story Sloe Ride). Instead of writing, I have been thinking about where I want to go from here. For some time I've had a good idea of what I want to get done in time for Pride Month, but beyond that, what are my writing goals for the coming year?

One thing on my mind is how MM fiction is having such a cultural moment and (largely female) audience, So far, I have overwhelmingly written about male bisexuality, and have developed an enthusiastic male following on Lush - but I've also learned how the subject matter does NOT appeal to very many women. I think it will soon be time for me to broaden my base. Based on what I've learned appeals to the MM-enthusiast community, I think I could do a really good job of it.

My other major pondering has been about achieving Prolific and then Omnium. I'm well past the halfway point at 40 genres now, and I think I can achieve Prolific by the end of this year and Omnium by the end of 2027. More specifically I've been thinking about how to eventually take on the Novels genre, and this has finally intersected with my MM-fiction thoughts in a couple of juicy new ideas for story arcs suitable for novel, or at least novella, length.

No, they will not be about hockey.

Things must be backed up more than ever, because I’ve had a story in the queue for two full weeks now, and it’s only for a new cover image. I sure hope I put in the moderator note that that’s the only change, which I always try to do.

I think, given the backup, I’m going to wait a couple of months before updating any more cover images. I only have five left to do anyway, so this is a good pause point.

Well, in a world that celebrates tall men, here is one very decisive advantage of being a short man: guys, if you can find a taller-than-you woman who is openminded about the relative height (they do exist) shower sex is much easier if she is taller than the man. Conversely, some taller women might reconsider us short guys, at least for a fling, if they knew this. Obviously, heels nights still present a dilemma for the woman, though in my experience it was more a problem for her than it was for me.

I once dated a woman who was 3” taller. We played a lot in the shower, usually proceeding to intercourse on the bed, but we did sometimes fuck in the shower and it was super easy. Just the right heights for our parts to line up, usually doing her from behind. No squatting, straining or slipping. In fact, I will say that there was one time, wherein I held her steady against the shower wall, lifted her leg and and slipped myself inside her at a perfect angle, that I still consider the most memorable sexual encounter of my life. No idea if she does, of course.

Quote by Mandapanda2025

I decided to go for the paid Grammarly. I used AI for a couple stories. I find it a challenge to DE-AI it so Grammarly likes it

I hope you didn't use AI to write stories for Lush. That'll get you banned instantly.

What a great competition this was! Having read every entry, I wholeheartedly agree with the Top 15, and especially with the Podium finishers. All three are spectacularly worthy.

Thanks to everyone involved, especially our hardworking moderation team. And an extra thanks for expanding to a Top 15 - or else (at #11) I wouldn't have made the list!

I’ve only written about three of these. Thanks for the story ideas!

Hugh’s got it exactly right. It will take a few days, though I don’t think moderation is weekdays only.

Yes, and yes!

Why does everything need to be an app? I don’t want to download another piece of software for every web service I use and clutter up my device with hundreds of them.

Long live the web browser!

You’re not going to find “an AI” to do it all, I think. You’ll probably need multiple tools.

But at least for prompt to photo, Perchance AI can do explicit photos once you turn off the PG13 filter. It generates decent nudes in whatever setting you want, including erect cocks on men (and remarkably often on women). It goes haywire pretty fast when you try to prompt it to get your nudes to do things to each other, though.

That’s all I have tried with genAI, so not sure about video generation. Story help from genAI, on the other hand, is NOT something I would do - nor would I recommend trying, given the rules of the site.

Quote by wxt55uk

I couldn't agree more, Piquet... 😀 And I would just like to add, give every author a chance, read their stories and don't be put off by the standard they write to. There are some crackers in the list. A few that were very "unique" and at least a couple that had me laughing out loud. 😳🤣😊

Agreed! The list of entries might be long, but the stories themselves are short. I have read all of them except for the IF ones. Many are very entertaining.

Yeah, neither two-finger tapping nor long-tapping brings up a context menu on my IOS device (which is an iPhone). On a PC, two-finger tapping (on the screen) or right-clicking does bring up a menu with a Save Image As tab. Not sure I know how to help.

Many thanks to everyone who's helped make this wonderful site possible in 2025!

How is the friend sharing the images with you, that you are then able to (in desktop parlance) right-click and save them? Via email? Via a particular website? If the Santa image IS working properly, then I’m not sure it would be an iOS problem.

What happens if you do a long tap on it?

It can still take me a while to get Perchance to generate that base image that I want (although sometimes it “gets it” right away), but I spend a lot less time on that than I used to take searching porn sites for images I wanted to use.

When you did that image for Minnie’s Merry Mall Christmas last year. Seeker4, it made me go “Whoa.” It’s hard to believe that was just a year ago, and look where we are today. Not only am I using AI for all my new cover images, but I’ve gone back and used it to generate new cover images for many of my older stories. I’ve become aware that there are porn companies making a profit center out of filing “nuisance” lawsuits for people downloading and sharing copyrighted porn, so it seems prudent to me to avoid publicly available porn of unknown provenance completely.

I do think it is worth the time it takes to create a good cover image. I don’t think it’s the #1 factor driving viewership, but in my observation it seems pretty significant, especially the first day or two after publication when your story is shown on the front page (and, if you’re lucky, the Trending gallery) and competing for new readers’ attention based heavily on that visual.

I create two images for all my new stories: one “clean” one to make the official cover image and which follows Lush’s rules for that, and one “dirty” image that is more explicit, which I post to my Wall when the story is published. Just in the past week, someone has commented on a new story saying it was that image that drew them in, so I know cover images matter.

I’m happy to report that while 26 initially made text editing nearly impossible on MANY popular websites in addition to Lush, it has been fixed with 26.2. Will see if the intermittent problems with no data service and with excessive battery consumption go away too.

Personally, I had a lot of problems with the Grammarly desktop app (at least on a Mac), and do not recommend it. Their browser plug-in is much lighter weight than the app. and won’t drag down your system. Using the plug-in does mean you have to be in the story editing window in Lush itself, which might mean having to double-enter any corrections in both Lush and on your desktop, but you’re probably saving Grammarly for final checks right before submission anyway.

By the way, Wordpad is miles ahead of Notepad (as long as you turn on word wrap), if you don’t have MS Office or want to install third-party software, and lets you save as Rich Text Format, which preserves formatting like bold, italics, centering, etc.

I too have an attachment to my characters because I am the protagonist in all but one of my stories, and most of the other characters, while typically composites, are based on people I have known and in some cases loved. I suppose I will eventually follow other authors and expand my writing beyond my own narrow viewpoint - if I ever run out of ideas involving different variations of myself.

I suspect it will be a contest that finally drags me across that line. Or possibly age.

Whew! Been a busy December! Publishing mY Christmas Eve poem leaves only one of my many holiday objectives still open: Scandalous Sixties. Then I hope to ease the pace back to more gradual work on the multiple Becoming A Man stories that are in progress. Oh, and Swinging Sixties, and … well, you know how it goes …

In the black banner at the bottom of the page, under the Top Authors. There is also Top Stories there too, both have month and all-time options. 😊

Oh boy, now I know that exists, I’m going to have to figure out how to avoid checking it all the time. Especially since (thanks to having published five stories in the past 30 days) I have just cracked the monthly top ten overnight, probably for the first time and possibly the last.

Twats the Night Before Christmas is my new parody of the classic Christmas poem, a 400-word confection that may melt away as fast as one of those pillow buttermints, depending on whether you suck or chew, I guess.

Assigned to a dreary night shift for Christmas Eve, I get sent home early ... to find beautiful creatures stirring.

Wonderful advice! Good of you to share.

Quote by CuriousAnnie

A candle, solid and thick ... lol, I am feeling my way towards a sexy Beckett style story (I know, I know,) Gooning for Godot is about 2/3rds written but I am still not convinced I will get it done.

Here's hoping you get it done! An irreverent CuriousAnnie story about a thick candle being used down under, down under, in pursuit of salvation sounds like a winner to me!

I looked at all the Google results that came up, and nothing I saw addressed this particular problem. Most of the results talk about how IOS 26 now allows you to select part of a text message and paste it into other apps, which is great (previously you could only select and copy the entire message) but not related to my problem. Some talk about disabling or adjusting the Liquid Glass related settings, or problems with the select/copy/paste menu (which I can't even access on many websites) not scrolling horizontally properly.

The problem is limited to Safari (all other apps I've tried work fine) but is not limited to Lush. A few major sites (Amazon, Google) work fine, but in MOST others (including DuckDuckGo and wikipedia), I can't select text in the editing window or bring up the copy/paste menu. In some cases, if I try to tap in the editing window after entering some text, the editing window disappears completely or becomes partly obscured by something "on top" of it in the Liquid Glass scheme. I've also tried adjusting the Accessibility and Display settings affecting Liquid Glass, as well as turning off Dark Mode, None made it better, some made it worse. Since it seems to be a safari problem, my dumb workaround for now is to use a different browser (as I am doing right now) until Apple pushes a fix.

Got my entry in! Usually when the word limit is tight, I end up overshooting by 30-40% and then hacking it back down. Which does enforce a certain discipline on the writing. This time, I aimed for 1500 words, and the first rough draft came in at 1502.

So maybe this one is a bit more undisciplined? It's snarkier than my usual, anyway. See "Presents Cum Early" in my sig.

Presents Cum Early, my entry in the current Advent story competition, has me helping my neighbors decorate their apartment ... until I accidentally reveal Molly's Christmas gifts for Adam. Oh well, with the surprise spoiled, we can all start playing with his new toys right now!

Thank you! I guess I never look at the bottom of the page. Hey, I’m #13!

Also, my contest entry got published today! See “Presents Cum Early” in my signature.

I got upgraded to 26 the other night, and since then I am pretty much unable to edit text. The keyboard comes up and I can type, but I can’t select text, or copy or paste. I can sometimes move the text cursor by tapping within the text area, but even that is now inconsistent. Any other attempt to tap in a way that might bring up the select/copy/paste menu causes a flicker and artifacts flashing around the screen. Anyone else experiencing this?

It’s not critical problem, since I have access to an actual computer, but I often do minor edits from my phone and pretty much can’t do that now. I don’t seem to be having this problem with other sites or apps, and it’s only a problem on my phone since installing IOS26.

Where’s that Top Authors screen?