The Novel I Never Wrote

In 2008 I decided to take a flyer and write a manuscript to sub to a publisher who shall be nameless. Although I was already writing erotic romance, this one was going to be “spicy” as they say, and under another name. I had want I thought was a great plot, a hero and a heroine the reader would love, and a romance readers could connect with.

Alas! It was not to be.

It seemed that me hero was unlikable, my heroine too irritating, and the plot unbelievable. Well, shoot, was that all? So I stuck it in my Works In Progress folder and it has sat there for the past six years. One of these days I’ll pull it out, dust it off and turn it into a steamy love story. In the meantime, here’s a little sample for you.

Tell me what you think.

It’s called Marry Me.

****** 

Chapter One

The first time Lee Sullivan saw Dallas McCord was at the picnic his company hosted every year.

Of course she’d seen him before, in newspaper and magazine shots. On television. At parties for five hundred intimate friends. Usually with some excessively gorgeous female hanging on his arm. Seldom the same one twice. All of them wearing exactly the same express: look who I’m with tonight.

But today was the first time she’d been close enough to actually look at him in the flesh. And she had to admit, it was awesome flesh. He was standing under an ancient oak tree, hands in his pockets, chatting with a small group of people. Even in a relaxed, loose limbed pose, everything about him said command.

A thin sport shirt loose over khaki shorts barely disguised the leashed power of the tall, well-muscled, heavily tanned body. Thick brown hair shot with streaks of gold was cut in short layers. Long, tanned legs looked as if they could run the marathon without halting.

I’m in charge, his body language said. While he was definitely a man comfortable in his own skin, he looked like nothing less than a jungle predator waiting to pounce on its prey. Confident. Self-assured. 

Arrogant!

He’d have to be, she thought, to own a company that bore only his name, nothing else to even identify the kind of business it was.

She’d read in Texas Monthly that he got his start working as a journeyman carpenter in construction, swinging a hammer and wielding a saw. He was a long way from that now, heading his own international land development firm. But every bit of what he had was built from that raw start. And he’d done it with sweat and savvy.

She watched the female guests, married as well as single, sneaking sidelong glances at him, sexual avarice plain on their faces. Any one of them would give it all up for him if he just crooked a finger. There were plenty of men at this picnic who thought they were top of the heap. But Dallas McCord was the real thing. No doubt about it.

Lee allowed herself a tiny smile as the man moved on to another group, different people, wearing his charm like a cloak.

The annual company event was always held on the grounds of McCord, Inc, which sat on five prime acres just north of the San Antonio city limits. It boasted a jogging track, a baseball diamond and a park, among other things. Five years running they’d won the top award as best company of the year for employee treatment.

Lee had never attended before, although her father always received an invitation and urged her to join him and her brother. But she hated functions where she was little more than Hap Sullivan’s ‘little girl” or Jim Sullivan’s ‘baby sister.” Today she’d given into to the cajoling of Clay Porter, a lawyer whose firm sometimes did business with McCord Inc. The Porters were seventh generation Texans and very wealthy, a fact her father pointed out to her at every opportunity. She wished he’d keep his nose out of her business. The only condition under which she’d agreed to come today was if they arrived long after she knew the Sullivan clan would have left.

When Clay got involved in an intense discussion with one of his clients, Lee wandered off past the fringes of the crowd, looking to give herself a little breathing room. Fetching a bottle of water from one of the bars set up at the perimeter, she carried it to a nearby picnic table.

Uncapping the bottle and taking a swallow, she wondered how soon they could politely leave. She attended enough events this size as part of her job and didn’t like any of them. Being on the mayor’s public relations staff sounded a lot more glamorous than it was.

As she lifted the bottle to her lips again she sensed a presence behind her.

“I must be doing something wrong. You can’t be enjoying yourself too much if you’re hiding over here under a tree.”

The voice was like warm syrup, covering her with a thick heat, and an unexpected shiver skittered over her spine. She looked up into eyes so dark they were almost black, framed by the kind of thick lashes women would kill for. Tiny lines bracketed his mouth and eyes in a face that the word rugged barely did justice to.

“On the contrary, I’m doing just fine.” She pulled out her political voice, friendly but cool. This was not a man you gave an opening to. She controlled the urge to check the clips holding her hair away from her face and smooth down her tailored blouse thin cotton slacks. It wouldn’t do to let this man think she had a personal interest in his opinion of her. She held out her hand. “Lee Sullivan.”

“I don’t think the mayor’s spin doctor needs an introduction.” Tiny lines crinkled at his eyes as his mouth curved in that high octane smile and his large hand enfolded her smaller one. “Dallas McCord.”

“And I think it would be hard not to know who you are, Mr. McCord. Someone as well known in the city as you are. The state, for that matter.”

One eyebrow lifted. “The cost of doing business. What’s Lee short for?”

“Lee.” She swallowed a smile. “What’s Dallas short for?”

He laughed. “Point to you.”

“I didn’t know we were keeping score.” She looked up at him, into those dark eyes. “I should think you’d have guests a lot more important than me to spend your time with.”

“You know, the funny thing is, they all seem to be doing just fine without me.” He held out a hand to her. “Take a little walk with me. I need some distance from the mob.”

Lee looked around to see if Clay was anywhere nearby.

“You’re date is in earnest discussion with a senior partner in his firm,” he told her. “I’d have picked someone a little more forceful for you than Clay Porter.”

Forceful. Well, that was an interesting word. Lee substituted control. Her grandfather. Her father. Her brother. All telling her they knew what was best for her. Making every decision. Reaching out to the unfurling edges of her life. Taking the job in the mayor’s office instead of joining the family business had been the ultimate slap in the face to them and they hadn’t spoken since then. Her heart pinched slightly at the thought but she quickly pushed the pain away.

“Clay is a very interesting person to be with,” she told him. “We enjoy each other’s company.”

“You sound like you’re describing an evening with my mother.”

She hadn’t even realized that he’d pulled her up from the bench and linked her fingers with his. That they were walking casually away from the scene of activity. That he was leading and she was following without even realizing it.

Another control nut.

No, this man wasn’t about control. He’d invented it. If her brain was working even halfway, she’d remove her hand from his grip, smile politely and find Clay as quickly as she could. But just the light contact of his hand against her sent shivers skittering along her spine and jacked up every pulse in her body. Oh, this was so not good.

The Novel I Wish I Had Written

Sacchi Green

Any novel. That’s what I want to write. No, that’s not quite true; there are a few specific novels I wish I’d written already, and characters who intrigue me so much that I’ve told more than one story about them, and want to do more. Sometimes I’ve done so much research for a short story that it seems like a waste not to use it for a novel. But will I? It doesn’t seem likely.

One novel I wish I could write would begin with the excerpt I posted last time, the beginning of my WWII story “To Remember You By.” An American nurse in London meets an American woman pilot who ferries warplanes for the RAF. They have a brief two weeks together, and then have to part, never expecting to see each other again.


Here’s how that one ends:

We parted with promises to meet one more time before Cleo’s last flight. I mortgaged a week of sleep to get my nursing shifts covered, and at Hamble Air Field, by moonlight, she introduced me to the planes she loved.

“This is the last Spitfire I’ll ever fly,” she said, stroking the sleek fuselage. “Seafire III, Merlin 55 engine, 24,000 foot ceiling, although I won’t go up that high just on a hop to Scotland.”

From Scotland she’d catch an empty cargo plane back to the States. I had just got my orders to report to Hawaii for assignment somewhere in the South Pacific. War is hell, and so are good-byes.

“Could I look into the cockpit?” I asked, wanting to be able to envision her there, high in the sky.

“Sure. You can even sit in it and play pilot, if you like.” She helped me climb onto the wing, with more pressing of my ass than was absolutely necessary, and showed me how to lower myself into the narrow space. Standing on the wing, she leaned in and kissed me, hard at first, then with aching tenderness, then hard again.

“Pull up your skirt,” she ordered, and I did it without question. She already knew I wasn’t wearing underpants. “Let’s see how wet you can get the seat,” she said, “So I can breathe you all the way to Scotland.” She unbuttoned my shirt and played with my breasts until I begged her to lean in far enough to suck my aching nipples; then, with her lips and tongue and teeth driving me so crazy that my breath came in a storm of desperate gasps, she reached down into my slippery heat and made me arch and buck so hard that the plane’s dials and levers were in danger. I needed more than I could get sitting in the cramped cockpit.

We clung together finally in the grass under the sheltering wing. I got my hands into Cleo’s trousers, and made her groan, but she wouldn’t relax into sobbing release until she had her whole hand at last inside me and I was riding it on pounding waves of pleasure as keen as pain.

I thought, when I could think anything again, that she had fallen asleep, she was so still. Gently, gently I touched my lips to the nearly-healed tattoo above her breast. Tiny wings matching mine. Something to remember her by.

Without opening her eyes she said, in a lost, small voice, “What are we going to do, Kay?”

I knew what she was going to do. “You’re going to claim the sky, to make history. And anyway,” I said, falling back on dark humor since I had no comfort to offer, “a cozy menage in Paris seems out of the question with the Nazis in control.”

Then, because I knew if I touched her again we would both cry, and hate ourselves for it, I stood, put my clothes in as much order as I could, and walked away.
I looked back once, from the edge of the field. Cleo leaned, head bowed, against the plane. Some trick of the moonlight transmuted her dark hair into silver; I had a vision of how breathtaking she would be in thirty or forty years. The pain of knowing I couldn’t share those years made me stumble, and nearly fall. But I kept on walking.

And she let me go.

On June 24, 1944, against all justice and reason, the bill to make the Women Airforce Service Pilots officially part of the Army Air Force was defeated in Congress by nineteen votes. In December, the WASP were disbanded. By then, though, after going through hell in the Pacific theater of war, I had met Jack, who truly loved and needed me, whose son was growing below my heart. His kisses tasted of home, and peace, and more unborn children demanding their chance at life.

Thirty-three years later, in 1977, when women were at last being admitted into the Air Force, the WASP were retroactively given military status. It was then, through a reunion group, that I found out what had become of Cleo Remington; she had found a sky that was high and wide enough to hold her fierce spirit, and freedom as a bush pilot in Alaska.

And she was, as I discovered, even more breathtaking at sixty than she’d been at twenty-six. But that’s another chapter of the story.


That chapter was one I just had to write, and I did. “Alternate Lives” was published in Best Women’s Erotica 2004, and when eventually a collection of my own work, A Ride to Remember, came out from Lethe Press, those two stories about Cleo and Kay were the first and last in the book. (A book, I might add, that proved to me that as a short story writer and anthology editor, my name carries next to no weight with the reading public. It sold relatively few copies, and even being a Lambda Award Finalist didn’t help. Whenever I start to think about self-publishing I remember that fact, and kick myself back to reality.)


Here’s how “Alternate Lives” begins:

In that wartime English summer Cleo had made me soar, even though I never left the ground.
Thirty-five years later, in 1978, her plane rose, and banked, leaving Anchorage dwindling in the distance. As the clouds lifted in the east, the towering glory of Denali blazed suddenly white in the sun.

“The mountain’s out!” someone shouted behind me.

“Sure is,” Cleo said, above the hum of the engine. “Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”

But it was Cleo Remington herself who took my breath away.

I watched her strong hands on the controls, remembering the way she had touched the Spitfire fighter plane that last night in England. Remembering, across the years, the way she had touched me.

The man behind me leaned forward in a genial attempt at conversation. “Cleo says you were in the service together, Kay. Were you an Air Transport pilot too?”

“No, I was a nurse,” I said. “But for the last few years I’ve been a physical therapist.” I turned slightly toward him, which gave me a good view of Cleo’s profile. Her once-black hair was silver now, thick, just long enough to ruffle—if only I dared. Her tanned face was leaner, weathered by life, tiny lines radiating from the corners of eyes and mouth; my fingers would still recognize her in the dark, my mouth would know the contours of her throat, her jaw, her expressive lips—if I had the right to touch her.

“Ah, a therapist,” he said, nodding. “You’ve come to help poor Yelena. But you were a nurse back then? Cleo’s never mentioned being wounded.”

There are wounds no medicine can heal.

“No,” I said. “We met in London, on leave, just before she flew back to the States and I was reassigned to the South Pacific. You know how it is in wartime; friendship isn’t measured in weeks, or months.” I felt his speculative gaze on my plain gold wedding band, and diverted him. “So tell me your war stories. Where did you serve?”

That did the trick. He held forth on North Africa and Sicily until Cleo shushed him with a gesture, her flashing grin so familiar it made my heart lurch. “Hey, Len, give Kay a chance to see Alaska!”

So I followed her lead, asking questions about the magnificent scenery below, while Len shifted into a tour guide routine. Denali, Mt. McKinley on the maps, was behind us as we flew south along Cook Inlet between the green Kenai Peninsula and the beginnings of the starker Aleutian Range. I tried to make the right responses, but my body was alert to Cleo’s least movement. I wanted so intensely to lay my hand where a band of sunlight curved across her thigh that my own thighs quivered.
How had I thought I could carry this off? But I savored the anguish, every searing drop. In two weeks I would return to Jack, who truly loved and needed me, who had built a life with me. My love for him had never been diminished by the memories of Cleo kept tucked away like rare, glowing jewels I could never wear again.

“Never,” though, has a different ring to it when you’re nearing sixty, and you know damned well that life is too short to waste on guilt. What you want is what you want, whether you can have it or not. I can’t be the only woman to find that as the biological imperative wanes, other passions intensify. That hidden glow can flare into a heat too intense to deny.


I should add that “poor Yelena” (Lenotchka to her intimate friends, as Kay comes to be) may be the strongest character in the story, a former bomber pilot in in the Russian all-woman air corps known to the Germans as “Night Witches,” and Cleo’s life partner ever since she defected to Alaska and crash-landed on a an ice shelf near Nome.

Writing what are essentially the beginning and end of what might be a novel has the obvious problem of tying you in to a certain continuity that limits what can happen in between. There are two other essential stories to be told, that of Kay meeting Jack in the Pacific theater of war, and of Cleo rescuing Yelena from that Alaskan ice shelf. The latter I’ve actually begun, but there always seems to be something more urgent I should write, something with a deadline. In any case, four short stories don’t make a novel, not just because of their length, but because novels and short stories call for different kinds of writing. And when it comes to marketing, a story mostly about lesbian relationships but with two clearly bisexual characters (Kay and Yelena) would be hopeless.

I have two more sets of paired stories that share protagonists, and a few more where I feel as though I know a whole novel’s worth about them, but I doubt that it will ever happen. Some people are short story writers, and that’s that.

But I will, sometime, tell the story of Yelena on the ice, and Cleo saving her, and how they come together. I know just what happens, and how, and where. The scenes are in my head, and the shape of the story; it just happens to be a short story, not a novel.



 

The Book I'd Like to Write

by Spencer Dryden

The Book I'd Like to Write

I've been married to an attorney too long. They parse words, like what the meaning of "is", is. The book I'd like to write. Hmmmm. The call did not specify how likely I am to ever write the book. My response requires parsing from the impossible, the improbable and the hopeful.

Of course, the book I'd like to write is: "How I Made Millions Writing Erotica in My Spare Time". Two more come to mind, sure to be best sellers in the guy world: "Pick-up Lines That Never Fail", and the sequel, "How to Give Her a Screaming Orgasm Every Time".

If I do write the last two, they will be pretty short books. The only pick-up line that ever worked for me I used in the least likely place for a successful pick-up—a sauna. I saw this beautiful young woman and I tried my best line, "Hi, my name is Spencer." It worked. We've been married for 25 years. But it turns out ,she had already decided I was "the one", so I guess any line would have worked. As far as the second book goes, buy her a wand vibrator-can't miss with that.

Hopefully, I'll be releasing "The Gueschtunkina Ray Gun" some time in the near future. One blast from this mythical weapon puts a woman into a state of extreme sexual arousal. If I can get it commercialized as a sex toy, I will be writing a book about my millions.

Shift from the impossible to the improbable. I became an at-home dad by accident, but stayed at it by choice. Once, I wanted to become a male Erma Bombeck, but that idea died under a pile of dirty laundry. Now it's all a blur, I can't recall the events or the parenting insights I had. I did my best every day, but on a lot of days my best wasn't very good. My boys have turned out to be fine young men. My book, "How to Raise Boys in The Brave New World" comes down to a few simple things not long enough to turn into a book: 1) Don't kill anybody, 2) tell them you love them and are proud of them every day, 3) you'll never punish them for telling the truth.

Having eliminated the impossible and the improbable, I'm left with the somewhat likely. In all honesty, I hope I'm already writing it. I am a guy who likes to tell stories. You won't see anything from my hand that wins awards for prose, but I am sincerely trying to bring forward a different take on male erotica that features humor, heat and tenderness. In the real world, I think its safe to say that most of us guys sincerely desire to please our women partners but we really don't know how and we aren't very good at talking about it. I say, the only way a guy gets better at sex, is if a woman teaches him, gently, so as not to bruise his fragile ego. That's my story.

Many of my little tales feature a common theme of a woman helping a man understand how to please her sexually. My hope is that a man reading it might have his mind opened, or a woman reading it might pass it along to her man as a way of beginning a conversation. It's probably as ridiculous a hope as writing "How I Made Millions..." or perfecting the Gueschtunkina Ray Gun.

 

 

I'm Tired of Writing Books That Don't Sell

by Giselle Renarde

I need to stop writing so many books.

I write waaay too many books. Do you even know how many completed manuscripts are sitting on my hard drive right now?  Three.  Three full novels just wasting away. And it's not like I've shopped them around and they've been rejected by publishers.  I haven't shared them with anyone yet.

I've blogged before about how getting published is only half the battle. Less than half, these days, probably. You spend all this time pouring your heart out on the page and, what, three people buy a copy?  And then you feel like you've disappointed your publisher (and you probably have, and they'll probably never give you another contract) and you wonder if you'd be happier if you just self-published. 

So you self-publish the next one and how many copies does it sell?  Three.  And you go to town marketing this son of a bitch because it's a good book (it really is! if only someone would read it!) but the marketing makes no difference. Sales slip. Across the board. You suck. You must suck, or more people would be buying your books. What's the point in writing?

I shouldn't write blog posts when I'm half-asleep, because this is what comes out. But I post these thoughts because I'm too honest for my own good and there are enough fake-it-'til-you-make-it authors out there.  Don't believe the hype. People keep telling me I'm famous, but I still live below the poverty line.

A lot of readers have told me they appreciate how close I let them get to my life. That's why I decided to publish a book of correspondences. Remember how I was off in the woods a couple weeks ago?  Well, I was on vacation with my family and all the while I wrote letters home to my girlfriend, who was looking after my cats.  You can read them now in "A Week in the Woods with Family: Ramblings of an Author in Cottage Country," which is available for FREE at Amazon until Sunday:
Amazon.com
Amazon Canada
Amazon Australia
Amazon UK



Anyway, the question was what book do I want to write?  The answer is... the book that sells.

"A Haunted Mind": A story about what I'm reading

Eyes wide open.

Nice table, an office. A blond lady in a black pant suit is sitting in easy reach next to me and has these two ring binders open with color pictures of people fucking in document protector sheets. If I scoot my chair over a little I could reach my right hand down and stuff it between her legs and give her pussy a little squeeze, see if she goes for that. Real women, they go for that.

She’s stopped talking and she’s looking at me. Maybe she’s waiting for me to make my big move on her.

“What do you think of that?” she says.

“Of what?” I said.

“Kids.”

“Kids? Fuck that shit.”

She looks baffled like a cow. “I’m a little confused here,” she says. “This house here - “ she puts her finger on a photo of a house in the ring binder (wait - houses?) “ - is in the Columbia County area which is known for some fine schools.”

“I don’t need schools.”

Blondie looks shook. Holds her breath and lets it out. “Did you just say a minute ago you have kids?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe you have kids?”

“Maybe I might have said that.”

She looks shook again. And a little mad. I guess I don’t get to squeeze her pussy hello now. Or maybe just not yet.

“Maybe I didn’t understand you the first time, yes.” She gives me this brittle smile.

“Well, maybe.”

It’s hard to listen to her because I’m imagining her tied up naked to a brass bed with bungee cords on her wrists and these tiny brass clamps on those teutonic tits and her giving me that tight little smile as I toss her feet up over her head and bang her silly Russian style. I’m distractable that way.

“So do you and your wife have any children?”

“Hang on a sec, babe.” I lift up a little and reach behind my ass and pull out a little green pocket notebook from my left ass pocket. I flip it over to the first couple pages. No. No kids mentioned there.

“No, kids,” I say. “I might have said that a minute ago.” Which is true.

She sighs and starts over. “Tell me again what kind of house you’re looking for.”

“Just a minute.” I reach into my left jacket pocket and pull out a note and flip it open. I turn in my chair so she can’t read it. I’m getting this sense. She smells like CIA. Maybe even NSA. The note says “Get something near a lake with a wrap around porch and a basement. Hod.”

Hod. That’s him. I take out a pen and scribble on the bottom of the note “Fuck you, Hod. Liberal fuck faggot.” I put it in my right jacket pocket where he’ll look for it in a while. Hod.

“What’s in that book?” I point at the binder she hasn’t shown me yet.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want those.”

“Why? Ain’t they houses?”

“Those houses are more unusual. Not really for families.”

“Like how?”

She closes the first ring binder, the family friendly binder with its nice faggoty little schools and pulls the other binder up and flips it open. The first house has a black border around it.

“What’s the black for?” I point at the black border.

“That means this particular house has problems we’re required to inform you of.”

“Kinda problems? Bad pipes?”

“No,” she says. “It’s haunted.”

Oh. Now Blondie got my full attention. “You mean you got ghosts in there?”

“This house has one ghost. A lady ghost.”

“What kind of lady ghost?”

“A lady ghost with problems. If there is a ghost. You know.”

“Fuck that shit! A lady ghost with problems?”

“If she’s a ghost she has problems. Or else why would she be a ghost?”

“Fuck that shit! What’s her problem? Does it say?”

She leans in and reads some information on the house. “Said property was built in 1923, originally a gift from Warren G Harding to his third mistress, said to suffer from severe sex addiction.” She’s reading this. I swear to god she’s not screwing with my head. Maybe she’s not CIA. Or maybe the NSA wants me to buy this house so they can fuck with my head again. She’s in on it. Should I kill this woman and run? “Died in 1926, suspected cause from administration of a concentrated aphrodisiac, most likely a distillation of Spanish Fly. Spanish Fly. Hmn.” She looks up at me. “So there really is such a thing.”

“Keep going.”

“Previous male tenants complain of unsolicited sexual assaults at night of increasing frequency and intensity resulting in sleep deprivation. Wow.”

“Shit wow.” I take out the note from my right jacket pocket and add to it. “Black border houses, Hod. That’s what we want.”

She flips the page to another house with a black border around it. She looks up.

“Yeah, so read it.”

She gives a little snort of disgust. Go ahead CIA bitch. I know what you’re thinking, see? You’re thinking your gold plated cunt’s too good for me. I can read minds too. When the NSA fucked with my head they gave me super powers and I can read minds. You think I’m a pig. But you like pigs. You like dirty pigs humping you like a bitch. She looks like she’s got a little black blood in her somewhere. Half breed back there somewhere. A little karate chop to the throat and we’ll have us some fine fried chicken right down here on the floor. “It says here - this house was built as a boarding house over a forgotten Indian burial ground. During the civil war it was employed as a prestigious brothel for the exclusive custom of Confederate officers. It burned down under mysterious circumstances with the tragic loss of all tenants, young women mostly and then rebuilt and abandoned several times. Said to remain in an ectoplasmically active condition. Male tenants complain of serial encounters with sexually demanding women and Indians leaving them in an exhausted condition.”

“Indians?”

“It says here.”

“Why’s it have to be Indians too?”

She shrugs.

“I mean, why would anybody ever fuck an Indian? Am I right?”

She looks at me, not smiling. If she gets up she’s gonna kill me. Or call in a hit squad. Time to go.

“Wait,” I say, “Be right back. Got to pitch a loaf.”

“Men’s room is down the hall, left.”

I get up and leave the room. In the hall was a water fountain but they took it away. I think.

I go outside and I’m standing on the side walk of a little strip mall on county road 55. I look behind and the store front where we was talking - it’s empty. It’s been empty a long time from the glass and the for lease sign in the window. Funny. There’s a black border around the sign.

Here’s my real problem. I think I’m dead.

I mean like seriously tits up dead. Everybody knows it but me. I think this stuck up bitch knows it, I think Hod knows it, but nobody wants to say so. So I should know. But I’m the guy who doesn’t know.

The other day I went walking in the cemetery and there’s this feeling like deja vu and I see it. There’s this grave near the back and its a new grave and its got my name. It’s even got my middle initial. If it ain’t my grave then how did they know that middle initial? You can’t explain supernatural shit like that. You got to respect that shit. And it says on the stone “I’LL BE RIGHT BACK”. Now the guy who had that epitaph put there, that guy is some motherfucker. That motherfucker knew some shit. That guy’s just got to be me.

I close my eyes. I open my eyes. I’m sitting in the cemetery on the grave with my name on it. I pat my right pocket. The note is gone. I pat my left pocket. Something in there. Hod’s been here.

I take out the note and flip it open.

“The doctor wants to see us. He has some women lined up for you but you have to check into the hospital to get at them. The women are just for you but you have to go there first. Okay? Trust me on that. Big women, just the way you like them, but only if you go there. Go to the address and ask for the doctor by name at the registration desk. Behave yourself. The next nurse you try to rape you’ll get us both locked up. I for one do not want to wake up in a cell. Not with you in my head. Hod.”

I think I’m dead. I think Hod is a ghost. I think my head is a haunted house. There should be a black border painted around my eyeballs to warn people to stay the fuck away.

I put the note in my mouth and chew it up good and swallow so those NSA motherfuckers won’t get a hold of it. I lay down on the grave and wait. Let’s see if I’m dead. There’s way worse shit than being dead.

I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m not.

These days reading:

The Future of the Mind Michio Kaku

The Collected H P Lovecraft

Haunted Places of Georgia

The Novel I Don't Dare Write

By Lisabet Sarai

Why do I bother? Another new BDSM club – they're sprouting like mushrooms these days – but it's always the same. The egos. The poseurs. The clueless wannabees drawn by imagined glamor or the trendiness of black leather with a set of cuffs dangling from your belt. The would-be serial killers gloating over the chance to draw blood. The doormats and the pain sluts, ready for anything that will pierce the bubble of numbness encasing them.

My costume broadcasts what I'm seeking, but it's obvious I won't find it here. As I sit at the bar, sipping plain tonic and wishing it were something stronger, I eye the burly guy flogging a girl on the cross. Sweat beads on his hairy chest, which is crisscrossed by an expensive studded harness. Framed by matching chaps, his bare buttocks flex with each ferocious stroke. His boots glitter with steel chain. He looks like the perfect top, but look again. Drunk on his own power, he's hitting her much too hard. She's way beyond what she can take, but she's too dazed or too embarrassed to safeword. He doesn't know, can't read the signs. Of course, how could you expect him to know? They just met half an hour ago.

They come to play, when the reality is deadly serious. They don't understand that it's not about force but about acceptance. Closed in their private fantasies, they miss the point. Nothing works if you're not open – the dom and the sub both.

Chris knew. Ah, Christopher. My dark poet. My master. The bitter tonic fizzes on my tongue. Will the empty ache under my sternum ever go away?

Chris knew how to coax me open, from the very first time he hung me from the ceiling in his dingy basement apartment. He was born to master me, or so we both liked to pretend, though we both knew that was romantic hogwash. My beloved, cruel, deviant Chris.

I would have done anything for him. I ate his shit once, because he asked me to, to prove my total devotion. It was disgusting – I still gag, recalling the stench, the slimy texture – and yet thrilling at the same time, to realize how completely I belonged to him. A flogging? That's nothing. I wear Chris' brand on the inside of my right thigh.

It took us three years to get to that point, though, three years of building trust and pushing limits. Every morning during those years I woke in a fever, trembling in anticipation of the tests he might set me that day. Never did he disappoint me. Although he was a true sadist – my suffering brought him the most profound pleasure – he still cherished and nurtured me, recognizing and honoring the depths of my surrender.

I suppose he was a bit crazy, extreme in his wild quest for more profound experience, more intense sensation. I loved that insanity, though, that uncertainty, the sense of threat that edged even his most affectionate caress. I wanted to be everything for him – his acolyte, his slave, his muse, his nurse, his whore. Because he was open, I sensed his emptiness. I yearned to fill it.

Someone else would see black humor in the manner of his death. Chris perished with a rope around his neck, splattered with his own cum. Auto-erotic asphyxiation - such a BDSM cliché! How embarrassing, especially considering his expertise in the art of bondage.

Don't go there. Don't think about Chris now, here. But how can I not, when that's what I so desperately need, a master who is willing to take everything from me, and give me everything in return?

His passing ripped a jagged hole in my existence. Nearly a decade later, after the pills, the therapy, the electroshock, after two years in a vanilla marriage where I tried to pretend I was normal, the chasm still yawns. I haven't recovered. I've just gotten more skilled at hiding my wounds.

Meanwhile, I can't deny the twisted need at my core. I've tried all the avenues. Clubs. Chat rooms. Munches. Personal ads. I've been beaten and buggered and pissed on, but really, since Chris, no one has touched me.

“Miss?” The pierced and tattooed bartender places a tumbler full of golden liquid in front of me. “This is for you.”

“What?” The honey-and-smoke scent of premium single malt tickles my nose. “I-I'm not indulging in any alcohol tonight.” I've learned the hard way that when I drink in a kink club, I tend to make bad decisions.

“He insists.”

“He? Who?” I scan the crowded room. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to me.

“The man who ordered the Scotch for you.”

“Who's that?”

“He's not here right now. But he expects to be obeyed.”

The barkeep hands me a folded sheet of cream-colored linen paper then backs away. I run a fingertip over the slightly nubby surface, curious about this unexpected missive despite my jaded attitude. The dim, red-tinged light in the club made it a bit difficult to see, but I think I detect traces of a monogram embossed in the paper. I flip the note open and try to read its contents. The graceful script is regular and fairly easy to decipher; despite its flowing lines, I suspect it's a printer font, not hand written.

I know what you need, Zoë.

A chill crawls up my spine. How can he know my name? I always use a pseudonym when I sign in at a club.

I've been watching you.

Oh great. A stalker. My heart beats faster, with fear, but something else, too. Excitement. Chris would play games like this sometimes.

You need a real master, not one of these counterfeits around you.

Everything about you cries out to be taken. Used. Known. Owned.

Yearning surges through me. Tears prick the corner of my eyes. I dash them away and read on.

Drink the scotch. Savor it. It is my gift to you.

Then, if you want what I have to offer, go home. Remove your clothing and lie down on your bed, completely still. Don't move a muscle until you get my message on your mobile phone. That's very important. If you move at all, you'll disappoint me.

And I will know. I'm watching you, my lovely Zoë. Remember that as you hold yourself immobile, fighting the urge to twitch, to scratch, to reach between your legs and rub that juicy clit that begs for your attention.

Give me your stillness. And in return, I will give you everything you crave.

M.

I shake my head. I can't believe this, I just can't. It's another trick, a lie, someone having a laugh at my expense.

But what if I'm wrong?

The single malt is ambrosial, liquid heat coursing down my throat and lighting up my body. I sip it deliberately, knowing somehow that M would want me to take my time.

Then I visit my locker, grab my things, and leave, my heart slamming against my ribs and my pussy soaked.

****

This is the first chapter of a novel I've been contemplating for some time. I don't have a title. I don't even really have a plot, just a concept, a theme – really, a message.

The message: the essence of dominance and submission is psychological, spiritual, emotional - not physical.

I've toyed with this theme before. In my short story “Just a Spanking”, the psychological effects of a spanking bring a sub to orgasm even though the dom never touches her in any sexual way. In “Stroke”, a partially paralyzed Dom nevertheless manages to dominate his secretly submissive nurse. In “Higher Power”, a magician proves that that the power of mental connection between dominant and submissive can counteract the effects of swords and a guillotine. When the sub momentarily loses faith in her master, though, when she doubts his power, her spine is severed.

Not the most light-hearted tale, I admit, though I suggest that with her renewed dedication and trust, her master may heal her. Needless to say, Cleis didn't want that story!

This novel, though, will go far further. M does indeed turn out to be the master Zoë so desperately craves. Chapter by chapter, he sets her new tests and draws her closer to him. His intuition is unfailing. He metes out both pleasures and punishments, fulfilling Zoë's kinkiest fantasies. The pain of her loss begins to ebb. Her devotion to her mysterious Dom grows.

However, he dominates her by proxy. They do not meet until well past the middle of the book. And then Zoë learns that M is a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down in an auto accident.

Yes, you read that right. I'm contemplating an erotic novel in which the hero is an almost completely disabled cripple.

He's physically attractive, intelligent, wealthy, with the power to control others, but he can't control his own body. He can't whip her or bind her. He can't come on her tits or force his way into her ass. He can't feel her touch on his cock.

Could this possibly work? Could I make this erotic?

Maybe.

Could I every sell it to a publisher?

Highly unlikely. And if I did, I'd undoubtedly be beset by angry hordes who'd castigate me for fetishizing disability (which is not at all my intention) or inaccurately portraying the life and capabilities of a quadriplegic (which might be a relevant criticism). I'm sure I'd also get plenty of criticism for writing a book that was a “downer” in a world and a genre where happy endings are prized.

And yet, when I imagine this novel, I do see the ending as happy. M could very well be the exactly the master to heal and nurture my damaged heroine. Zoë could serve him in concrete as well as symbolic ways, with the satisfaction that she's truly meeting his needs, needs that would make most subs run away screaming.

Still – I'm sure I'd be accused of deep political incorrectness if I ever brought this into the world, possibly even by practitioners of BDSM.

So I'll probably never write this novel. But I'm so, so tempted.

I've been thinking about this book for a long time, without writing a word. Then, I sat down to consider the Grip topic for this cycle and wrote the chapter above in about an hour. Clearly the book is waiting there, growing inside me.

Maybe it's time to let it out.

The Swiss Disease

by Jean Roberta

Nostalgia, like masturbation, was once thought to drain “vital energy” from the afflicted patient. Both of these conditions, according to doctors, could lead to death.

Other similarities between masturbation and nostalgia would be worth exploring, but that is a different post.

A Swiss medical student named Johannes Hofer invented the term “nostalgia” (parallel to “neuralgia” and the rest of the “algia” family) in 1688. He also called it “mal du pays” and “mal du Suisse” as well as “Schweizerheimweh” because it was often seen in Swiss mercenaries in France and Italy who missed their native mountain landscape. (Think of the songs from The Sound of Music: “The Hills Are Alive” and “Edelweiss”.)

Symptoms of nostalgia, according to Hofer and later medical authorities, included weakness, fainting, fevers, indigestion, and stomach pains. Could any of these have been caused by bad food, unsanitary conditions, contagious diseases, or (in the case of mercenaries) the stress of war? Nah.

Being “grounded” in your native land was considered essential to good mental and physical health in those days. Travel—not to mention emigration--was unusual and dangerous. Does anyone still remember that Count Dracula, in the late Victorian Age, always keeps a small sample of his native earth with him in his coffin? In some sense, this keeps him “alive,” or at least undead.

Of course, Count Dracula is a traditionalist who comes from a past century. By the 1890s, when Bram Stoker wrote about him, “nostalgia” was a symptom of emotional sensitivity, not a life-threatening disease. Between Johannes Hofer’s medical treatise and Dracula, hordes of English Romantics had travelled to Switzerland to admire the Alps and find out why this small country had such a pull on its native inhabitants. (Note that Victor Frankenstein, in Mary Shelley’s novel of 1818, is a happy Swiss until he messes up his life by experimenting with body parts in the lab.)

I can understand why anyone who grew up surrounded by mountains would miss them while living on the plains. Sometimes I still dream about views like this:



Nostalgia for the mountains of one’s youth makes sense to me. I grew up (from ages 4-15) in Idaho, a state which is completely on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. (The eastern border of Idaho is the Great Divide, the highest point of the mountains. Rivers on the western side flow into the Pacific Ocean. Rivers on the eastern side flow to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic.)

My nostalgia for the earliest home I can remember clearly is bittersweet. The mountains were spectacular, and the sound of the train whistle echoing off the lava walls at the base of the mountains closest to my home (on an acreage outside the small town of Pocatello) was poignant. At the time, I felt “nostalgic” (if that’s the right word) for places I couldn’t remember well: the cities of New York and Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where my parents had lived when I was a baby. All those places seemed much more cosmopolitan than southern Idaho, where conservative Mormon values dominated the culture.

By the time I reached puberty, the tension between the local culture and my parents’ expectations for me was becoming unbearable. All my classmates, including the girls I hung out with and the boys I dated, thought I was ready for marriage by age fourteen, since they thought it was the fate of all womankind to start having babies as soon as possible, and to keep house until death. My parents were academics, and they thought my mind would be wasted if I didn’t graduate from high school and go on to university. Either my parents were insane (and vaguely Communist-inspired), as all my “friends” believed, or I was surrounded by shallow-minded rednecks, but they couldn’t all be equally grounded in reality.

Clashing belief-systems dominated my life, but the mountains rose above human culture, eternally serene. Just looking at them every morning helped keep me as sane as possible.

Ironically, by the time my father was hired by a university in Canada, and we moved north, I had already decided to find a way out of Idaho after high school. In the summer of my sixteenth birthday, I told myself that I had two years left, at most. I still had relatives in New York, and my parents had academic friends in Chicago and California. My plan was to keep my grades as high as possible so I could get into a university in one of those places, and never return to the Rockies, the sagebrush, or the Snake River of southern Idaho.

I can identify with Swiss mercenaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Much as they might have loved the Alps and the mountain meadows where their sheep and goats grazed, no one can live on clean mountain air and a picturesque view alone. Leaving one’s childhood home to become a paid soldier in someone else’s war looks to me like a sign of desperation. A need for money will drive people out of many a beautiful landscape, where affluent travellers from other places like to go to get away from the “ratrace” of their urban lives.

Many immigrants to cities in the U.S., Canada, Britain, and western Europe miss their homes in what is now called the “Third World.” When they can afford it, they go home to visit. In some cases, a visit to the Old Country is like a brief return to childhood, but no one can live in that state forever.

As some others have said on this topic, feeling “nostalgic” for a place often means missing a particular time in one’s life, or an era in history. We can live there in dreams, and in fiction.