Holy shit. It’s been about 14 years since I first started posting celebrity-themed homoerotic wrestling fiction, in what I came to call the Producer’s Ring. Suddenly, I feel old. Honestly, though, I feel sexy, too, so if this is growing old, I’m all for it.

Back to my original point, however. If you’ve read these pages recently, you’re aware that I resurrected the old Sideline Stories archive, and rescued it from Google purgatory, by beginning to transcribe the old stories there to a new site on the updated Google platform. I’m not sure how many more reinventions I’ve got in me, if/when Google decides to sunset this version of Google Sites in the infinite search for appearing innovative and relevant. However, I’ve been painstakingly reconstructing Sidelineland Stories (reborn) here, and having a good time of it (and happy to receive comments on the stories on the pages of this blog).

I’ve been planning on doing the same for the Producer’s Ring archives, as well. Producer’s Ring actually predates the Sidelineland Stories archives by a couple of years. Producer’s Ring was an obliviously ambitious effort at world-building, setting dozens of homoerotic wrestling matches in an alternate universe where, more plausibly than in this universe, homoerotic wrestling contests break out all-the-fucking-time. The setting also allowed me some mental freedom to write my favorite celebrity crushes into the action, because if you haven’t cottoned on, I’m mentally composing homoerotic wrestling scenarios constantly IRL. I’m thrilled to report that I’ve begun the transfer from the old Producer’s Ring group site to a new site, available for your perusal without the annoying bit of me curating a membership list. I’m still sort of waiting on the other shoe to drop with pulling down the members-eyes-only wall, but so far, I’m willfully carefree and enjoying the rebirth of these old stories that I loved writing, and am surprised by how much I’m loving re-reading. I’m doing my best to keep my editing hands off of the old material, even when I find it cringy. I’m relieved that none of it has been all that cringy at all for me, but I’m sorely tempted to correct errors, reduce the repetitions, use more evocative metaphors. I’m doing pretty well at restraining myself, in the interest of letting the historical record stand on its own feet (not sure that absolutely anyone else in the world would ever give a flying fuck, but it’s meaningful to me). Check out the first re-mastered (with such a light hand) matches from the Producer’s Ring here, and you can find a portal in the Sidelineland Stories archives too, for your convenience.

To really bury the lead, let me finally get around to explaining why I accelerated the Producer’s Ring reboot. An artist at Deviant Art approached me to collaborate on a project. Low, and behold, he’s an old Producer’s Ring reader, and it was his idea (I swear!) to collaborate on an illustrated version of a brand new Focus Group match. In honor of that, and to give the new illustrated version a place to land, I’ve started by posting some of the original Focus Group matches. I’m so stoked with the fun of working on this, my collaborator working up artwork as I generate text. It’s going to be sexy as fuck, and I’m going to be incredibly proud of it, once we get it put to bed. Hold your breath, because we’re both pretty fired up with getting this puppy finished up! Details to come…