Monthly Archives: August 2016

Aug28

Inspiration

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So my work took me off the grid for the last two weeks with as very small window in my office last weekend.  For this reason my post is coming much later in the day than it has been.  Next week we should be back on schedule.  This week I am posting another chapter of Shame’s Desire! I hope everyone enjoys!

So inspiration is very important to any writer or artist of any kind I guess.  Inspiration can mean a drive to actually work on something, a new idea for a story, or even an idea to continue a story one is already working on.  Whatever form it takes being inspired is usually a good thing for any creative type.  For me, being inspired brightens my whole day.

I don’t think I have a single source of inspiration for the things that I write.  the simple drive to write is based on many things.  I always feel better when I’ve spent a day writing, or even an hour.  But when I’ve feeling depressed or sick, I don’t feel inspired to write, even though I know it would probably make me feel better.  I’m a morning writer myself.  I am always most inspired to work on my writing when I first get up.

I know new story ideas are the bane of many readers existence.  I’ve been right there with you when I just want a writer to finish a story, and here they are starting a new one.  As I’ve said before I get a lot of new ideas all the time, but I try to pare them down and finish old things before I start new.  But when I get what I think is a great idea, I am thankful for it.  Besides for those ideas already working around my head, I actually really enjoy getting promps from a challenge, or my readers, and turning it into a full story.  Late this year, or early next year, I may start accepting such promps from you guys if you are interested.  But before I do that I want to have Shame’s Desire complete and Sound of Submission well on it’s way.

Now I have to day I love when I idea inspired to continue an open story.  Sometimes I’ll start a story thinking it is going in one direction, and I hit a chapter or two where I start to struggle, then inspiration hit, and I know exactly what the characters should be doing which ends up taking them in a completely knew direction than I thought.

For me there is no idea physical thing that inspires any of this.  It mainly comes from inside, and the shifting desires of my brain.  It is why I usually call this inspirational force within me my muse.  It is from inside my own head, but at the same time it can feel very separate from me.  It’s spastic and unpredictable, and I sometimes I have to worship at it’s alter in order to get it moving.  Though I will say, comments and reviews always seem to help. 😉

Aug21

Consent

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This week I am posting chapter 17 of Shame’s Desire for your enjoyment!  Next week is going to be a bit rough.  If I can I will post Sunday morning like usually, but because of my real life job it the post may not come till the afternoon or evening.  I will be posting chapter 18 of Shame’s Desire on that day so you have something to look forward to.

Now I have talked about consent before in my blog and replying to comments and reviews.  But I thought it was a very serious subject that could use more attention.

I feel the need to start this conversation by telling you my feelings on consent in a real world setting.  There is a saying used within communities I am a part of “Consent is Key.”  This means that no interactions should happen without consent by both parties.  You don’t even hug someone without asking if that is okay with them.  Without consent you are in some ways attacking that person, and yes I even mean the hug.  If someone doesn’t want a hug, you are violating their personal space by giving them that hug, and that is an attack.

Some like to say that in a BDSM relationship consent is more important, because of the nature of what that relationship is.  But I disagree.  I think consent is just as important with any relationship.  It is just that in the world of BDSM we talk about it a whole lot more because of the nature of what we do.  I head people say that the key to a good BDSM relationship is really talking about what each person wants from the relationship.  But again I think that is actually the key to any good relationship.  It is simply that because of the nature of a BDSM relationships we tend to do this because of there can be higher risks involved in some scenes we may participate in.  I guess what I am saying is that we talk about consent a lot in BDSM but we need to remember it is important in any relationship.

Now that being said…

If you have read almost any of my stories you know that my work doesn’t really reflect the above rambles.  Many of the relationships in my stories are non-consensual.  The sub hardly ever gets to stop anything that is happening to them.  My stories are NOT examples of healthy relationships.  Rather they are dark fantasies.  They are more a refection of what a sub or Dom may wish to play out in a scene.

It is true that many of the sub characters end up enjoying what is happening to them, but that doesn’t make what the Dom characters are doing any better.  For example in Smell of Submission I spend a lot of time talking about how Harry is just trying to get Hermione to realize what she really wants.  In a fictional world he resides in his tactics are Dark, and manipulative, but maybe not exactly evil.  In the real world I world consider his tactics reprehensible and call him a cult leader.

I know many would say (Because I have been told directly) that putting these kinds of non-consensual relationships in fiction in a context where they seem normal is wrong.  That doing so just supports rape culture and makes the world a less safe place.  I obviously disagree.  I feel that people have fantasies that are clearly unhealthy to live out.  And I feel that a healthy outlet for these fantasies are in reading, writing, and expression them in ways that bring no harm to any real person.

This worry that we have about people reading, watching, or playing something that will make them feel it is okay to go out and do violence against another person is frustrating.  It belittles the real problems and the real sources of this violence.  People who look to adult fiction, video games, or TV for moral lessons are already lost.  They need help and guidance.  But that is a whole other post…

Read, watch, play anything you want.  Just remember in the real world.  Respect is Important, and Consent is Key.

 

Aug14

The Process

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As always let me start by saying I have posted a new chapter to Shame’s Desire.  And let me add that I have written several more that I hope to post over the next few weeks… I thought I was getting near the end of the story, but I keep having to add chapters as things don’t move as quickly as I thought they would.  Originally I thought this story would be about 20 chapters, and now it is looking to be at least 27.  So I keep writing and get no closer to the end…  But if all goes to plan I will have it finished by the end of the summer and I will start posting on Sound of Submission which is currently being written too!

This week I thought I would talk a bit more about the process of writing fiction.  There doesn’t seem to be any single “right” way of doing this.  Each author has their own process and the only thing that matters is that it gets results for them.  So really I can only speak of my own process because it is the one I know best.  I find that when I am working on any story I have four stages of development.

There is of course the inspiration for the story.  This is when that little plot bunny usually jumps up out of nowhere and screams “write me write me”.  On a good day I have about three to ten plot bunnies.  Which I quickly murder like 90% of them.  You all have seen the ones that survive, can you imagion how bad the ones that don’t are?  You don’t want to read the where Hermione is stuck in the world of Minecraft.  Anyway.  Getting the ideas is always the most simple of the stages.

The next stage in the process I call outlining.  This is when I grow the idea from a simple spark like, a Dark Harry shows Hermione her place as his submissive, into a full story.  This is where I ask questions like; why is Harry Dark, or why is Hermione his focus?  I start to outline the main plot points I want to include.  For some stories I make detailed maps for where they will lead, while for others only get bullet points to hit as I am going along.  And there are also those that get this step skipped as they seem to have no idea where they are going until they get there.  Examples of each of these are easy.  Smell of Submission has a very detailed plot web with spreadsheets and seating charts.  Face of Death actually is mainly bullet points that I want to hit on each chapter.  And my recent story His Blood sort of just went where it wanted to go.

After a put thought into a story it is time to start writing.  The writing stage for me is hard to describe.  And at times the story doesn’t go where I mentioned planned because in the passion of a scene my characters don’t do what I had planned for them.  There are times when I an utterly surprised with the path my characters choose and I find I am following where they lead.

Many have complained about the fact that in my story Blind Nymph Ginny had sex with Blaise when it was obvious that Draco cared for her and that she cared for him.  They I have many reviews and comments saying out she was being spiteful or silly or just mean.  But when I was writing the scenes leading up to that choice it was my character with her frustration, and fear, and own anxiety that decided a man like Blaise was the safer choice BECAUSE she didn’t care about him the same way she cared about Draco.

There is a scene in Face of War where Lord Voldemort drives the dark mark into Ginny’s hip with such force that it marks her very bone.  That dramatic event was not what I ever had in mind when I started writing the scene.  Originally there was going to be pain for Ginny, a punishment of some kind, but then Tom just broke and he needed to not only punish her, but mark her as his so that she could never say otherwise.

It us a rush for me when things like that happen. I tend to be very connected to my characters and I swear there is adrenaline pumping when there are high energy scenes like that.  When I get so focused in on what the characters are doing and feeling that the rest of the world just drops away and I am surrounding by a world of my own making.  For better or worse that feeling is the reason I write.

Don’t get me wrong, I love your comments and reviews and responses very much.  And each one brings a smile to my face to know that someone else is enjoying what I put out into the world.  But if responses were my only reason for writing, I would probably have stopped a long while ago.  My stories aren’t really popular enough to merit me writing for simple ego’s sake.

Okay so I went a little off on a tangent there…

After I get all the emotion and plot and 😉 smut on the page the editing starts.  First I’ll reread the chapter myself to find any obvious errors or mistypes.  Then I send it to a wonderful woman named Eclectic Pet who reads them over and makes more edits.  When she sends it back I read over it again to look at her edits and see if I like everything.  Depending on how many non minor edits she makes we may do this process several times before I mark a chapter as Ready to Post.

The End.

Now I want to take another moment of this post to mention Eclectic Pet again.  I would say she is my number one fan.  The reason she edits my work is because she loves to read it, and she offered several years ago to be my beta.  The only payment she gets for her work is she gets to read chapters before everyone else.  She already knows how Sound of Submission starts, and how the rewrite of Quidditch Lessons is going.  But really that isn’t much of a payment.  She is a vital part of my process and even though she has her own job, life, and writing to work on, she takes time to edit mine.  I guess what I am trying to say is that I am grateful for her, and this is the only due I can really give her for everything she does to make my stories better.

Thank you Eclectic Pet.

 

Aug7

Favorite Authors

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So let me start by saying that today I will be posting His Blood-Chapter 4.  But I do have good news for those who are interested in my Shame’s Desire!  I have written the first draft to four chapters.  Right now I am working on editing them so they aren’t ready to publish, but they are on their way :D.

This week I decided to wanted to talk about my favorite fan-fiction authors.  Obviously I like fan-fiction and nothing inspires me more to write than to read something good.  So I wanted to take some time to talk about my top three favorites.

Rrabbit (ff.net)(aff.org)-

The very top of this list would have to be a author known as rrabbit on fanfiction.net.  Her fan-fiction is mostly focused on a pairing between Draco and Ginny.  There are many reasons she is at the very top of my list and her skill as a writer is only one of them.  The first thing I read by her was a story called Envy and Manipulation.  I remember the first time I read the epic story and that it got me through a lot of late nights of serious insomnia I was having at the time.

Somehow her stories reminded me how much I liked to write.  In fact without her writing I don’t think I would have returned to writing myself.  Quidditch Lessons would have done unfinished and this website would not exist.

Her stories have a dark tone to them, and she is very good at respecting that darkness.  Rape happens in her work, but it is never sugar coated or ignored.  Horrible things have lasting emotional consequences in her work and tends to make for interested and broken characters.

Her stories are very long not only by fan-fiction standards, but but novel standards.  But this is something I really like about her work as well.  Whenever she finishes a chapter now, I tend to savor it like one would savor fine chocolate.

Out of the stories she has posted on-line my favorite would have to be her series that starts with Hate is Such a Strong Word.  Now that story is listed as a prequel to I’m Yours but since they literally leave off and then pick up on the same scene, the prequel is worth just reading first.  These first two stories focus on the lives of Draco and Ginny and the abusive relationship between them.  She is a prisoner of war when she is forced into the marriage, but nothing is ever so easy as black and white.  The third and fourth stories in the series focus a lot more their kids, but they are definitely worth reading as well.  They end up having four kids together and I really like how she has the two grow up and mature.

Nerys (ff.net)(aff.org)-

Nerys has to be my second favorite and she is singularly responsible for me even considering pairing Hermione with Lord Voldemort.  All those short stories and drabbles I’ve written with this pair are actually for a forum she helps to run.

Before I started to read her work I really didn’t like the pair very much.  I was confused why Lord Voldemort would ever hook up with the embodiment of everything he hates, and why would the brightest witch of her age ever fall for an evil controlling megalomaniac?  Before reading her work I saw a lot of pieces where they just made it so Hermione was a “secret pureblood” which didn’t really satisfy me very well.  Then I started reading The Prisoner and I was hooked.  After the first chapter I remember blinking to myself and thinking “Well shit… that is how that is done.”

After that I started reading everything she wrote.  I even joined her forum so that I could get suggestions on other well written stories with this pairing.  Joining the forum also allowed me to start working on my own pieces between this pair, and since that pair ranked 3rd in the poll I did last week I guess you guys are happy with that fact.

My favorite story by her is an unfinished story called The Apprentice, though I have to say The Prisoner (which is also unfinished) comes in a close second.  In this story Hermione is forced to work as Lord Voldemort’s apprentice in order to join a secret society of very powerful wizards.  There are many characters in this story that I really like, not just the main two.  I enjoy the glimpse one gets inside Dumbledore and even Grindelwald.  I find it to be a fun story with pretty dark themes and enjoyable smut.

Freya Ishtar (ff.net)(aff.org)-

Now my third pick is the hardest to choose actually.  There are a lot of authors I like out there and though the one and two spots are pretty firmly held, the third spot shifts much more often.  After much thought I decided Freya Ishtar wins this spot because I always end up going back to her work.  She writes mostly Draco Hermione stories but she does put other characters in as well.  Lucius and Blaise places regularly.

I think the first story I read by her was on aff.org and is no longer up for whatever reason.  It was about Draco blackmailing both Hermione and Harry into doing sexy things with him.  Soon after I read the start of one of her stories called Lessons and Hedonism about a three way relationship between Draco, Blaise, and Hermione.  It is fun, but still unfinished.

Something I both love and hate about Freya is the fact that she has so many ideas.  She literally has 30 stories started on ff.net and very few of them are finished.  If you think I am bad about finishing things you need to check out her page!  Though everything she writes is fun and good, it always makes me pout to see she has started something new.

My favorite story by her would have to be Diabolic.  A victorian era piece with Tom and Draco as vampires who seem to be slowly corrupting Hermione the innocent governess.  Though all of her stories are worth reading finishes or not.