Another one bites the dust...

Alwayswantedto is gone. Now departed along with Turniphead and the M/S genre is the poorer for it. Sorry to see him go. Does anyone know anything about the circumstances of his departure?

I don't know the reasons, but I could see the signs. Several months ago he deleted all his posts in the forums, a sure sign he was getting ready to wind up and leave.

Shame... he was one of the better authors.

Among all the scenarios that could have caused him to leave, the best is that he found a way to profit from his work. Let's hope it's that and not one of the other reasons.

Moving to paid publishing typically doesn't involve eradicating yourself from the forums, though.

Odds are something has happened in his life that made him want to vanish -- at least for now.

RejectReality said:

Moving to paid publishing typically doesn't involve eradicating yourself from the forums, though.

Odds are something has happened in his life that made him want to vanish -- at least for now.

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If you're moving to the mainstream, it can be a reason to disappear from an erotic site. They tried to make me cut all ties here but I picked up my manuscript and started to walk out. We ended up compromising. They published my stories and I've kept this part of my writing separate.

It's worked so far.

Can anyone post a archive of alwayswantedto stories and turniphead stories? I really really really loved them

I've read a lot of alwayswantedto. In fact reading him was part of the inspiration that led to me finally posting stories here.

I was just looking at my favorites and can't believe he isn't there. Damn, it seems a little extreme that he deleted his name altogether. but I did find someone named Ialwayswantedto who joined in March 2014.

I wish him the best whatever the reason he's left.

This thread mentions health as the reason. Whether it's true or false, I don't know.

Yep, that's a pity for readers. The writing was very good. It's the nature of the Internet, though. Posters come and go.

Come to find out he was the person who sent me the anonymous feedback I posted about on Saturday.

I put two and two together because he congratulated me on making the top ten on the author list and said "Here's number nine for you" as everyone moved up one because he left.

Last I "spoke" to him it was through a pm where he wished me well with my wife's health issues and then told me he had not posted a story in over a year because he himself was very sick.

I can't be 100% sure his pulling his work is connected with the health issues, but he never expressed a desire to sell his work even when I approached him about an anthology I wanted to do in the incest genre he simply told me I could take any two of his stories and sell them for free, he never wanted money for them.

I never did that because it did not feel right to not give someone something that I could profit on.

But I believe not everyone in his "world" knew what he wrote or where and I wonder if he pulled them knowing there was a chance he might not eb able to do it later in other words an 'affairs in order' type of thing because otherwise he never had any issue here that I was aware of.

Alwayswantedto is a class act. On a site full of trolls and cheats and bickering he always reached out to congratulate people on wins, moving up the favs lists high rated stories.

he not only e-mailed me to compliment me on my story Home is where the heart is, but I found out later her e-mailed all his readers that he had in his contact list and told them to check it out.

Out of nowhere he reached out to me about my stories in general telling me I was doing a great job and if I ever needed help or advice to look him up.

There are others here just as classy, but like in the rest of life the asshats get the spotlight.

Lit is much poorer for his leaving and many will miss his work.

Personally I will miss the man and I hope his health improves.

That's a very nice summary of a generous man, LC. I never had a chance to read his stories, and now I never will. My loss, clearly...

One possibility regarding the anthology would have been to take the profits, if any, he would have received and donate them to a favorite cause of his. Next time, perhaps...

lovecraft68 said:

Come to find out he was the person who sent me the anonymous feedback I posted about on Saturday.

I put two and two together because he congratulated me on making the top ten on the author list and said "Here's number nine for you" as everyone moved up one because he left.

Last I "spoke" to him it was through a pm where he wished me well with my wife's health issues and then told me he had not posted a story in over a year because he himself was very sick.

I can't be 100% sure his pulling his work is connected with the health issues, but he never expressed a desire to sell his work even when I approached him about an anthology I wanted to do in the incest genre he simply told me I could take any two of his stories and sell them for free, he never wanted money for them.

I never did that because it did not feel right to not give someone something that I could profit on.

But I believe not everyone in his "world" knew what he wrote or where and I wonder if he pulled them knowing there was a chance he might not eb able to do it later in other words an 'affairs in order' type of thing because otherwise he never had any issue here that I was aware of.

Alwayswantedto is a class act. On a site full of trolls and cheats and bickering he always reached out to congratulate people on wins, moving up the favs lists high rated stories.

he not only e-mailed me to compliment me on my story Home is where the heart is, but I found out later her e-mailed all his readers that he had in his contact list and told them to check it out.

Out of nowhere he reached out to me about my stories in general telling me I was doing a great job and if I ever needed help or advice to look him up.

There are others here just as classy, but like in the rest of life the asshats get the spotlight.

Lit is much poorer for his leaving and many will miss his work.

Personally I will miss the man and I hope his health improves.

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CPBaudelaire said:

Alwayswantedto is gone. Now departed along with Turniphead and the M/S genre is the poorer for it. Sorry to see him go. Does anyone know anything about the circumstances of his departure?

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Thats funny you mentioned Turniphead. I actually thought YOU were a returned Turniphead under a different name/new account.
You have a similar amazing style of story telling.

lovecraft68 said:

Last I "spoke" to him it was through a pm where he wished me well with my wife's health issues and then told me he had not posted a story in over a year because he himself was very sick.

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Sadly, I suspect he's been sick for quite a while. One of his last stories, House for Sons and Mothers (published almost two years ago), was about death and the afterlife. Then his final story, A Mother Remembers, dealt with the same themes. When I read those it gave me the impression that he was facing up to his own mortality.

hobbafash said:

Can anyone post a archive of alwayswantedto stories and turniphead stories? I really really really loved them

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Fortunately all of alwayswantedto's stories are still available on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine here: http://web.archive.org/web/http://w...es/memberpage.php?uid=923141&page=submissions. I used that to put together an archive of all his stories in plain text format, available here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8joz8Gs0phxXzJMcndWbDRYUWs.

I have heard through other sources on other forums that his health issues appear to be real.

I'd echo LC68's comments. He had very kind things to say about my work as well and seemed to be a genuine, generous person.

I wish him the very best and hope he can overcome his health problems.

CPB

To get into Literotica, I don't have the home page as my bookmark, I have Alwayswantedto's story 'The Rambler', which I adore. Mostly I go on to see what's new, but always I'm drawn back to his story and read it over, yet again, enjoying it just as much as I did the first time.
Other posts seem to indicate his health was the problem and, maybe, we're all mortal. But as Bogart said to Bergman at the airport, "We'll always have Paris.", so I can say "I'll always have 'The Rambler'"...

Wow.

Great writer. Great person. He has always been very kind, supportive and considerate.
Will miss him.

CharleneBarr said:

To get into Literotica, I don't have the home page as my bookmark, I have Alwayswantedto's story 'The Rambler', which I adore. Mostly I go on to see what's new, but always I'm drawn back to his story and read it over, yet again, enjoying it just as much as I did the first time.
Other posts seem to indicate his health was the problem and, maybe, we're all mortal. But as Bogart said to Bergman at the airport, "We'll always have Paris.", so I can say "I'll always have 'The Rambler'"...

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That is a great story. I wish I had copied it to my laptop.

I am a big fan of Alwayswantedto, his stories were part of the inspiration for me to try my own hand at writing.

I wish him the best.

hobbafash said:

Can anyone post a archive of alwayswantedto stories and turniphead stories? I really really really loved them

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I have four of his alwayswantedto's stories, in HTML and .mobi format (for Kindle) from this binge I had of converting Lit stories so I could read them on a Kindle... but I'm almost positive that if I link them here, it would be in violation of the author's wishes and the author's copyright, so I'm not sure how to feel about that.

The stories I have are:


* Down Memory Lane With Mom
* It Started With A Slip Of The Hand
* You'll Get Used To It
* Piano Mom


Does anybody have any others?

fertamertoni said:

Fortunately all of alwayswantedto's stories are still available on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine here: http://web.archive.org/web/http://w...es/memberpage.php?uid=923141&page=submissions. I used that to put together an archive of all his stories in plain text format, available here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8joz8Gs0phxXzJMcndWbDRYUWs.

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Thanks for building this archive! I'm slowly downloading them now.

Yes thank you for posting the link so that a man who obviously no longer wanted his work available does not get that choice.

The man has cancer and is seriously ill, and that has been posted by several people.

All anyone cares about is "Oh, but I can't read his stories!"

Bunch of fucking vultures.

Seriously, no matter how low of a bar I set for people they still slink right under it.

In one aspect, it's a tribute to the man that readers don't want to let loose of the stories, but, yes, in another aspect, if he's gone to great lengths to erase them, his wishes there should be honored if you really appreciated him and his writing.

If you must, pass them between each other privately -- not with links on the very forum he specifically removed himself from.

There's a reason he left and wanted no trace remaining here. Whatever that is, you should do him the courtesy of honoring that, if you truly enjoyed his work and are sad to see him gone.

sr71plt said:

In one aspect, it's a tribute to the man that readers don't want to let loose of the stories, but, yes, in another aspect, if he's gone to great lengths to erase them, his wishes there should be honored if you really appreciated him and his writing.

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First half of your post is valid, but the second part is how I feel, its about what he wanted, not what others want.

Keep his work alive in memory and there are plenty of other stories here in that vein to provide entertainment


For those who enjoyed mother/son tales he was the undisputed best on the site and I dedicated my Mother/son incest story to him in the V-day contest to pay homage to him, that's about the best I can think to do.

Well, it's not all the different from the attitude lots of folks take toward copyrighted written material, songs, and photos/drawings. If it belongs to me, I'll scream bloody murder if someone rips it off, but it I'm the one doing the ripping off, it's free game.

I find myself conflicted on the subject of copying Lit stories of favorite authors.

I am not in the business of selling my work, so maybe I have a fundamentally different perspective from folks who are putting themselves out into the commercial world on a regular basis. For them, ownership is everything.

Nevertheless, it fries my bacon completely when someone tries to pass my hard work off as their own, either for credit or profit. Those subhumans should be smeared with honey and staked out over a fire ant nest. That behavior was, is and always will be completely wrong and indefensible.

However, it seems to me that wanting your own copy of an author's freely and publicly available work is an ultimate compliment. It's also natural to want to let other folks know about a writer who you think is really good and has given you pleasure with his/her works - you want to share that good feeling and somehow it seems only right that this person's work continues to get the recognition you feel it deserves.

When you connect with a reader through one of your stories, that reader often feels they have a piece of you and a sort of one-sided "relationship" is formed. I think this can lead to a feeling of ownership, even though there has not been a financial transaction. That in turn may lead to feeling it's okay to keep someone's work alive after they have departed the web site for non-commercial reasons.

So, what constitutes ownership of something net-published for free reading?

I know that if I pull all my works off Lit tomorrow, they'll resurface, either through the web archive or outright misappropriation. It seems likely that doing so might actually increase the likelihood that someone else would try to pass them off as their own, especially in a venue like Amazon.com (don't get me started.)

I would really hate to see AWT's work ripped off in this fashion. Given what we think we know about his situation, that would make me really angry. AWT has a legacy here on Lit. That's never going to go away. He had his reasons for ending his relationship with the website, which should be respected.

Where I have angst about the whole situation is when I think about someone inevitably pirating his works. With his postings down, there now isn't a good way to out any of the plagiarists that we will undoubtedly be seeing in the future. Where's the line in the sand here? Knowing that the web is forever, does it begin and end with respecting his wishes that his stories are no longer visible on Lit? OTOH, as a community of admirers and colleagues, it would be a lot easier to protect his legacy if there was still a record of his work.

Gotta love those muddy waters of the internet.