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Date Posted: 22:21:42 07/26/25 Sat
Author: Curious
Author Host/IP: 49.196.178.87
Subject: (SFFR) Her Old Flame (Smoke Diva) - A Review

Warning: This Review Contains Spoilers

Her Old Flame (Smoke Diva) - A Review

Part One: The Author

The author submitted two stories to Loring in January of 1999. One dealt with embracing the habit, the other returning too it. Beyond that nothing is known about the author other than what can be gleaned from the stories themselves.

Part Two: Her Old Flame

This story, the second and last known(1) was posted to Lorings website on 01-16-1999, four days after their first story(2) appeared. It was subsequently republished in volume 12 of the Noble Leaf Library. The protagonist is Raima, a former smoker, mother and wife to Steven an anti-smoker. A chance event is about to bring her face to face with that she once loved.

Part Three: Comments

The first thing to note about this story is that when it was republished in the twelfth volume of the Noble Leaf Library, Nick, the keeper of the library took the time to edit the story for inclusion. This is something he only did for stories that he appreciated at this point in the series. He also left a brief comment that I will be exploring later in the review.

The triggering event at the start of the story is the discovery of junk mail in the name of a former tenant, junk mail that contains a pack of cigarettes.(3)(4) The discovery unleashes memories of what she gave up when she chose to marry Steven and temptation she cannot resist. The rest of the story deals with the consequences from that decision, but not their ultimate consequences. It is for this reason that I regard this story as being lesser than the authors first, and therefore do not give it as high a recommendation.

Part Four: The meaning of Nick's comment.

At the end of the story Nick, the Noble Leaf Librarian left the following comment "I can’t see this ending well." What did he mean? Quite simply, it's that at stories end the protagonist has not only broken the promise made to her husband described at stories start, but lied to him about it, with the most likely long term outcome being similar in trajectory to AZ-Man's 'House of Cards'(5), namely a breakdown of the relationship ending in divorce. Something similar can be seen outside the Smoking Fetish realm in a review of the 2025 science-fiction movie 'Companion'.(5) Reviewer Richard Scheib, points out that while the ending is triumphant, what the protagonist leaves behind points to that triumph being very short lived indeed.

This is something that authors should watch out for especially in short fiction, a good example of the opposite kind of ending can be found in AN4's 'Mothers Day'.(7) There the ending, while it certainly contains unresolved elements that could have been explored further in a sequel, does not have long term implications that subvert the stories ending.

Notes:

1. Unless there are preserved stories not submitted to Loring sitting on someone's hard-drive.
2. 'Daria's Smoking Apprenticeship'
3. Sweepstakes mailouts with titles like 'You may have already won...." were common at the time the story was written, however I'm not so sure about actual product mailouts.
4. Virginia Slims
5. A review of this story can be found in volume 25 of the Consolidated Smoking Fetish Fiction Review, the story itself can be found in the 'Anthology of AZ-Man' and volume 12 of the Noble Leaf Library.
6. For anyone who's interested the full review can be read at: https://www.moriareviews.com/sciencefiction/companion-2025.htm
7. A review of this story can be found in volume 10 of the Consolidated Smoking Fetish Fiction Review, the story itself can be found in the 34th volume of the Noble Leaf Original series.

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