The Spanking Writers

Next up, in our annual trawl through other blog posts we’ve enjoyed… a lovely piece from “Olivia’s Secrets” discussing how the author got into “the scene”. (Note that a couple of the illustrations are NSFW):

I sat in the dark with so many other people that I couldn’t see. I felt like a kid on the playground. I sat by the wall in the shadows, all alone and looked at all the other kids, playing and laughing and having fun. They had the courage to say what they wanted to say. They had blogs, they had Twitter. I saw them as the popular kids and I so badly wanted to get to know them…

I guess I needed someone to say: “It’s okay, Olivia. You don’t have to be ashamed. What you’re feeling is perfectly normal.” And then I could go back to the wall and look at them but feel better, because even though I wasn’t “on the scene”, they knew I was there and they’d told me that if I wanted to, I could be part of them.

And then I stepped out of the shadows.

The conclusion’s great, too:

I have to say this; by coming out of the shadows, I became more confident. It helped me in my relationship and it helped me to be happier with myself. So if you’re out there and you’re lurking and you’re scared…you’re welcome here, and you’re welcome on all the other blogs too. It’s okay. You don’t have to be ashamed. Whoever you are, whatever you look like, no matter what you like or what your thoughts are about the world…you are welcome. We may all be different. But we have one thing in common, and that is kink. You don’t have to start a blog or a Twitter account and you don’t even have to comment…but you don’t have to be ashamed either. You’re never alone. Isn’t that amazing?

It’s the sort of post that really might give confidence to others who are toying with embracing their kinky side – and, as such, we loved it.

Trawling press archives sometimes brings up a wealth of fantasy fodder. Take this article in the “Time” magazine from 1967, which considers the corporal punishment situation in British schools.

At least one quaint custom of British education has not changed since Tom Brown’s Schooldays: the tradition of “six of the best” for misbehaving pupils. Although the cane and the strap are still essential equipment for every self-respecting headmaster, public indignation against corporal punishment is on the rise, and the Labor government would like to abolish it for good.

It took a good few years for corporal punishment to go away, and in the meantime “Time” supplies us with incidents that I for one wouldn’t mind mining for future stories or role-play:

Two Southampton schoolboys were given 21 strokes because they incorrectly spelled “meringue.” … Three girls were caned because they forgot to bring semolina to a cooking class.

Excessive in real life, of course, but as good an excuse for a scene as I’d like to find.

As long as I can be spared actually cooking any semolina.

Today’s entry in our “Best of the kinky rest” pantheon comes from the desk of Clarisse Thorn, who is considering the issue of whether BDSM can be referred to as a sexual orientation in the same breath as being LGBT, and whether this classification can be useful at all.

She recalls writing about BDSM as an orientation for the first time:

Would the world believe that my BDSM desires could be as “real”, as “deep-rooted”, as “unavoidable” as the sexual orientation of a gay/lesbian/bi/transgender person? Would I offend GLBT people by implying that my sexual needs are as “real”, “deep-rooted” and “unavoidable” as theirs … by implying that my sexual needs are anything like theirs?

Some of you are even now saying “of course!” as others are shaking their heads, and I believe that Clarisse addresses both points of view in her article, which is well worth a read. (And while you’re there, read some of her other stuff: we were spoiled for choice as to which of her excellent articles to include in our selection.)

The ever-wonderful Emma Jane and Catherine threw the most wonderful housewarming party on Saturday – a “Famous Five” themed event, described in more detail in a lovely post on EJ’s blog.

Late-ish in the evening, after much fun play during the day, EJ (aka George, or Georgina) found herself led upstairs by HH (Uncle Quentin) and yours truly (her tutor) to play a short scene. As she describes it on her blog:

I had the upper hand of knowing the back story. Of Mr Rowland spying on Uncle Quentin’s work and George finding him snooping where he shouldn’t. In essence she was being punished for her rudeness to her tutor but refused to apologise. It was a lovely scene with all the righteousness in the world on my side, Uncle Quentin being strict but fair and Mr Rowland being very mean.

There’s always a wonderful dynamic when the three of us play together, and this was no exception. Such scenes always seem to make me extra-mean, too – albeit on this occasion, even a fairly light whacking was enough to be cruel given the state of EJ’s backside from her play early in the afternoon. And having suggested to HH beforehand that a hand-strapping with my new light(ish) tawse might be in order as the main part of the punishment, I was happy to take a back seat and let him do the honours, knowing how much that works for the two of them and enjoying watching EJ’s face as she took the six painful strokes.

What was strange, though, was that my character was clearly something of a villain. George may have been rude – but her allegations that I was spying on her father were (as I understood the back story) actually true. It was hugely disorientating in the scene. I’m used to my characters  having having clearly-defined authority, being in the right about the girl’s misconduct, and being justified in administering the punishment – or, very occasionally, simply being utterly and callously mean and cruel (say, as an evil prison guard, pimp or kidnapper).

The latter option really wasn’t appropriate with these characters. Yet I couldn’t slot completely comfortably into the former either – the tutor’s spying on Quentin meaning that my character’s hold on the moral high ground was tenuous, to say the least. Spanking a girl, when you know she’s in the right – and you’re not actually playing a dark, abusive scene? It was perhaps the first time I’d come across that in a  roleplay; I wonder whether it’s actually really possible to do convincingly and well?

So that we can develop a new spanking stories site later in the year – with a long-overdue upgrade to “Abel’s Spanking Stories”, new material from me and  the addition of some of  Haron’s writing – we need to move The Spanking Writers to a new host. You shouldn’t see any interruption to the site, as it should all happen seamlessly. But, being slightly paranoid, we thought we’d mention it – just in case at any point in the next two weeks you sign onto the blog and find that it’s down for a little while!

Welcome, welcome, to the fifth year of our annual “Best of the kinky rest” selection. For a week or so every August, we post not only own own daily contribution to The Spanking Writers, but also an extract from another blog entry that we’ve especially enjoyed in the past twelve months. Hopefully it might point you to a few pieces of interesting writing that you’ll not otherwise have seen, and remind you of some favourites that you’ve also read elsewhere on the blogosphere.

This year’s entries include a few from people discussing how they’ve embraced their kinky sides; a couple of thought-provoking articles on scene identify / politics; and a couple, well, just about porn!

Here goes with the first entry, a truly lovely post at Defer and Submit:

This is a story about a vanilla boy and a kinky girl. I’m not good with fiction so you can assume this is not fiction. It’s a bedtime story not because it should be read at bedtime but because the boy and the girl eventually wind up in bed. It is most likely a true story derived from the chat records of aforementioned boy and girl.

Some have asked how a girl goes about explaining to a vanilla boy that she is kinky.

This is how one girl did it.

I won’t spoil the post by quoting the dialogue here, through to the final line (“And he went on to  tie her up and spank the heck out of her they lived happily ever after”),  but it’s lovely and heart-warming if you have a few minutes spare!

This entry may come across as somewhat surreal, but these are politically surreal times. Yesterday our Prime Minister has delivered an odd speech in which he appeared to blame last week’s riots on an an excess of human rights. (Really, Mr Cameron? Really?)

As a lapsed human rights lawyer, I found this to be both terrifying and darkly hilarious. I imagine the future in which human rights lawyers are under strict supervision, so that they don’t provide their clients with too much helpful advice.

I can see it now: a whipping post erected on the College of Law’s Bloomsbury campus, in a convenient central location for any onlookers to attend. Crowds would gather to be reassured that these dubious human rights apologists are getting the treatment they deserve. The lawyers and law students would each be tied to the post for at least a dozen strokes of the whip, though for those with a particularly dangerous human rights track record the sentence will be more severe.

Yes, I can see it all now. We mustn’t allow human rights to undermine our society, oh no.

Following on from the success of Abel’s book, “The Punishment List”, we started at the end of last year to think about future publications.

Pretty soon, we hit on an idea that really appealed – to invite our favourite spanking authors to contribute to a volume of short stories. The golden rule? Each piece must be original, never previously published. Moreover, we’d give all of the proceeds to charity – cancer research, in particular.

And so “The Spanking Collection” was born. Now (drum roll) we’re delighted to announce its formal launch date: 31 August, from when you’ll be able to buy either a paperback copy or to download it for Kindle (and other eReaders).

Our artist-in-residence (!) Catherine Thomas has produced a wonderful cover, of Abel slippering Emma Jane – and here it is, unveiled for the first time:

So, watch this space! We’ll share full details here on the 31st as to where you can get your copies, and we hope as many of you as possible will support the initiative!

Abel mentioned our spanking dice in his post yesterday, and I thought I’d show them off. I think they’re pretty cool. We designed them a few years ago, and had about 50 sets made, and have been giving them away to friends ever since. Look, look:

The “What do you like?” site to which I linked in a post other day gives one access to Google’s library of patents, including a fair selection of spanking machines. Yet the one which caught my imagination was Patent 4834657, from 1989, for a “Punishment wheel”:

As you’ll see from the picture, it’s a fairly simple concept: the offender spins the wheel, and the device selects the punishment that is to be meted out from the choices installed on the base of the machine – “”Grounded”, “No dessert”, “Swats” and suchlike.

It reminds me rather of Haron’s post a few years back about  “Spanking Roulette” – and, indeed, of the spanking dice we had made up by a toy manufacturer a few years back – which we know have been put to good use by a fair few friends. (The first dice contains a list of implements, the second determines the number of whacks!). What’s weird, though, is to see someone patenting something like this so recently…