GREATEST HITS
I Wanna Give You My 12 Best and Then Some
10 just isn’t enough to satisfy us
Here are my 12 best performing stories, plus a couple of extras. Some beta readers thought that this would be a sex story, but I have no idea why. (The real joke here is the thought of beta readers. I just slap the words into the editor and sometimes hope they make sense. I made it through an English Literature degree doing it on a motherfucking typewriter, too cheap to buy whiteout. First drafts rule.)
1. The Pussy That Doesn’t Stop Loving
This is a little piece of satire that I wrote, published in June 2021, got a few giggles from, and then promptly forgot. Somehow, in early September, it went viral. As of writing, readers have viewed it 11,400 times, with 96% of the views being internal. Over 100 hours of reading. Certainly far from my best piece, content-wise, but it’s my top earner. And it’s a fun little read.
2. 5 Songs From 5 Decades I Just Can’t Stand
A listicle. While I’m not a fan (even though this article is one), they dominate my top stories. At least they’re opinion pieces about music, and my opinion on music is strong and definitely not mainstream.
3. 10 Plus 1 Covers That Blow The Living Shit Out of The Original
Another listicle, but in this one, I get to say Fuck the Beatles many times, so it’s OK.
4. The Greatest Debut Album Side 1 Track 1 Songs Ever
And yet another listicle. My listicles are better when I’m describing really shitty songs that I hate, but sometimes the fanboy in me pops out. Case in point here.
5. Where Did This Extremely Large Penis Come From?
This little piece of satire was able to ride the coattails of The Pussy That Doesn’t Stop Loving, as I included it in my Call to Action (CTA) at the bottom of the story. It received around a 5% viewing rate because of the CTA, so don’t believe anybody that tells you they don’t work. They did, at least in this case.
6. I Don’t Want To Go Down To The Basement
My Halloween 2021 playlist. It’s my only story to go semi-viral externally. Everything else has been internal. But a view is a view. And it’s even named after a Ramones song. It’s a pretty damn good playlist, and I have a Spotify playlist included at the bottom of the article.
7. Just Slide the Damn Penis In
Sex and satire sell, so this little piece of microfiction was the perfect read for a quick tantalizing giggle.
8. Medium Partner Program and Followers
My first real meta article, where I tell writers (and readers) to support their fellow writers. Despite it being about Medium, it was still Chosen for Further Distribution in Social Media (a tag I hadn’t added to the story).
9. Up By The Devil’s Elbow
Horror. Sex. Ghosts. Hot cars. Hot girls. Hot music. Drive-ins. The 1970s. How could it not be a great story?
It’s a little tale based on a rural legend from where I grew up — The Green Lady.
10. Ken’s New Penis
Another piece of sexual satire. It’s cute, but a little lame. Needed a bit of Viagra, but at least it was popular.
11. Tonight’s the Night
This was a fun piece to pull together — a coherent story that comprised multiple Neil Young song titles. My late wife loved Neil Young, so it was a nice way to honor her memory.
12. Mesmerized By Her Breasts
My first real transgressive erotica. A lot of fun to write, with at least one Silence of the Lambs (book, not movie) reference in there. I’ve written darker stories since, but this one opened the gate and has led me down that path.
My Favourite Story
The Camera in the Cabin is a Lovecraftian horror story without the ethnocentric, racist, misogynist baggage (I hope) of Lovecraft himself. It did relatively well (for fiction). I found it amusing that the Medium curators choose the story for further distribution in Travel and Self. Especially in Travel. A mystical fiction of otherworldly horrors set in an imaginary cabin in an imaginary wood beside an imaginary lake, in an imaginary county in Maine. But I appreciate being distributed.
My worst performer
This is a cute tiny story, based on what we call an Empty World — one where we made up the world, and then wrote stories about it. This is one of the stories (other than some administrative posts for Microcosm) that didn’t perform as well as expected — a couple of dozen reads, but it’s a decent 100-word story.
Those were my twelve best, at least according to the views generated by our lord, the algorithm. Hopefully, there was some entertainment for you in those stories. Even if there isn’t, read them a few times. Savor them and let the pennies from heaven roll into my bank account.
Paul Mansfield is a writer, a photographer, a guitar player, a philosopher — some he does well, some not so well, but he still tries them all. You can follow him on Twitter @pmansfield.
And if you want to subscribe to Medium, here’s a link where I get paid a trifle to sell my soul to the Corporate Overlords. The Corporate Overlords eat the Great Old Ones for breakfast.
