The Spanking Writers

In my very early days as contributor to the old soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup, I posted an item in which I described a girl’s caning from her housemaster as a ‘beating’.

Cue anguished objections from a prominent, esteemed member of the group: “How dare you use that objectionable word?” Duly and firmly put in my place, yet surprised at the hostile reaction to a term I feel comfortable with in a kinky context, I very nearly disappeared back into lurkdom – but decided not to be, ahem, beaten by their wrath.

I then duly avoided the word for years. Girls could be punished, chastised, disciplined, thrashed, flogged, whipped, caned, strapped, tawsed – or could meet a fair few other fates that I’ve doubles conjured up for them in the interests of linguistic variety. But they were never, ever beaten.

I reclaimed the word a couple of years ago. I suspect it was Emma Jane’s comfortable use of the word gave me confidence that it was acceptable to use – that I wasn’t committing some heinous sin against sensitive spanko souls. And no-one’s objected since.

But it struck me recently to wonder: is it a word that significant numbers of others out there find strongly disagreeable? Or was it just one member of the newsgroup trying to force their own personal kinky likes and dislikes ahead of others’ preferences?

By far my favourite blog lately has been Not an Odalisque‘s. She writes beautifully – and has recently been exploring issues in a way that has repeatedly struck perceptively at the heart of many of my own scene debates and dilemmas. One such a few weeks back was about “Jealousy”, where she wrote:

Non-poly people, on learning I’m polyamorous, always want to know if I’m jealous. I say that I’m not, and receive a puzzled look, then usually a statement that they would get jealous, that they just couldn’t do it, which is strange because I’ve never invited them to. It’s a lie, of course… I do get jealous. I get horribly, irrationally jealous. I get jealous of people I hardly know. I’m jealous of friends of friends for being diverting and funny. I’m jealous of kinksters on Twitter who have more play and have better pain tolerances than I do…

Now, jealousy for me is an emotion that sits very uncomfortably with being poly. How can I be jealous, when I’m in / have been in multiple relationships? I really don’t have the right. But it can be a hard fight. Here’s what I wrote as a comment:

I’ve never been jealous of my partners. Love, trust and honesty go hand in hand – and a slightly voyeuristic streak means I’ve found the thought of them doing hot and interesting things with others to be rather exciting. And, not least, I’ve been happy for them; glad that others love them as I do; glad they’re being taken care of and enjoying themselves.

But when partners do deep things with others that they no longer do with me, even in ways that are entirely understandable (and where we’ve mutually agreed that they’re not right)? When they’re no longer partners, per se? When I fear, more than anything else, losing what share of their love and emotion I have left? Then… OMG, then, the insecurity – and hence the (shameful) jealousy – is hard to stave off.

I think I’m coming to terms with the fact that the Jealousy Demon does lurk within, driven by deep-seated fears of rejection and loneliness. In good times, it’s easy to keep at bay – hence my previous avowed denials. But when emotions are more confused and in tougher times, the battle’s more difficult to win. Perhaps, it’s easier for me to genuinely not be jealous by acknowledging that deep-down I sometimes can’t actually help it.

So this week, it seems, marked “Love our Lurkers” day – the annual event that Bonnie kindly organises to encourage people to step from the shadows and say hello on the spanking blogs that they follow. Having participated in the scheme every year since the first LoL Day back in 2006, I feel a bit sorry to have missed out this time around.

But, in writing a belated thought, I was struck that whilst I do like my lurkers here – those of you who read but don’t comment (which is quite fine by me!) – the people I love are those of you who add their own thoughts and kind contributions to my posts.  Seeing readers’ input on what I write makes blogging worthwhile; posting into a vacuum would be depressing in the extreme.

So, if you do lurk – please say hi! It’d be truly lovely to hear from you and to welcome you into the fold. And if you’ve never commented anywhere else either, I hope you can pluck up the courage to do so here: life feels better if you’re not bottling up your interests and proclivities.

And if you are someone who comments here from time-to-time – take a moment to say hi too to your fellow readers! Particularly, perhaps, if you’re someone who used to comment but doesn’t do so as often now (for lack of blog-reading time, or perhaps having migrated more to Twitter), it’d be really special to hear from you too.

An interesting thread on Twitter the other evening debated the extent to which one should link to kinky friends using social media. My rules are pretty clear…

Twitter is for kink. I won’t use my real name there, or disclose certain details about my real life – in the same way that I’m protective of certain aspects of my life here on the blog. I’ll write stuff there that I wouldn’t want vanilla acquaintances to read. Although my account’s locked, I’ll accept follower requests from anyone whose account shows that they post about interesting (aka kinky) stuff from time-to-time, aren’t promoting commercial offerings too blatantly, and/or follow or are followed by a fair number of others in the scene.

Tweeting, for me, is a little like blogging. With SW, the more folks who read my random jottings, the better. Ditto Twitter. Aside from providing a forum for lovely, open discussion with spanko friends, I enjoy sharing my kinky thoughts with anyone who’ll read them – and if they bring an occasional smile to people’s faces, so much the better. I’m just a tad cautious – editing some details to preserve my anonymity, and declining some follower requests – given the risk of folks out there whose intentions towards the scene might not be entirely supportive (aka journalists in disguise) or of people wanting to link to me to help them make money.

I only joined Facebook a few weeks back. For me, that’s entirely vanilla, and I use my real name. I link to kinky folks – given I don’t actually have a wide friendship group outside the scene – but I’ll only make friends even with folks I’ve met through our shared interest in spanking if their accounts make no reference to kink, either in their choice of name or in what they post. To be honest, I even hesitated to link to Haron, given she doesn’t use her real name there – the saving grace being that she doesn’t use a scene identity. And on FB, I only befriend people I know in real-life, or (in one or two rare cases) online where I’ve chatted to them enough to trust them absolutely.

I wonder how others reconcile the desire to chat openly, and to engage fully with both scene and vanilla friends, on scene and vanilla topics. I’d be interested in any views. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, you can find me here (and feel free to email too if it’s not obvious from your own Twitter account that you’re “one of us”); on Facebook, an email or DM would be great from any friends to whom I’m not yet linked.

Whilst I was updating the blogroll over the weekend, I also found time to play a little…

As you’ll doubtless appreciate, this blog’s always adamantly insisted on being ‘literary’ – that is, we don’t ever post naughty photographs. And, frankly, when I take shots of girls I’ve just spanked, privacy is all-important: unless they want to post copies on their own blogs, the images will only ever be for private consumption.

That said, I enjoy looking at online photos of the naughtier variety as much as the next man or woman. So I’ve had a little experiment, and come up with the Spanking Writers “Tumblr” site.

There’s a somewhat eclectic selection there, of images reblogged from other Tumblr pages. It’s definitely NSFW, and not all directly spanking-related. I’ve got no intention of updating it on anything like a regular basis, but I will add to the five or so pages of images already there whenever something new on Tumblr catches my eye. Feel free to pop over and have a look. I’m curious to know if my tastes and yours align.

It struck me that, having written about my new canes from Prysm a little while back, it might be fun to see which makers / companies people really rate when it comes to c.p. implements.

Here are a few of my favourites, all of whom I’ve bought from personally and am happy to endorse – and who now appear on our newly-updated blogroll:

• For tawses and straps: I particularly rate two makers – first, our friend The London Tanner: Ian makes fabulous implements. Then there’s the always-excellent MC Customs. And for authentic school tawses, eBay’s the place to be – especially, the selection offered from time-to-time by the Church Antique Centre in Crieff.
• For canes: Prysm, Maui Kink, Can-iac and Quality Control. Jack’s Floggers are also recommended (although try finding them at places such as the LAM; I never managed to get a reply to my requests to buy their canes online).
• For paddles: you know, I could do with a recommendation! I have a fair few of them (OK, a dozen or so, of slightly differing shapes and weights, with holes and without), but I’m not sure I do have what I’d describe as a good, solid, American high school paddle in my collection!
• For hairbrushes: it just has to be Mason Pearson – although, bizarrely, I found the most gorgeous cheap brush in Claire’s Accessories when Emma Jane and I were on holiday in Belgium last month, which was very robust but not too severe, and worked rather beautifully

Any other recommendations? And for any other items (I don’t have favourites for whips, crops or the like, for example). And if you happen to make nice implements yourself and want to plug them, feel free!

Morning. Hope everyone’s having a good weekend!

Thanks to all of you who commented and emailed with suggestions last week when I canvassed input to help me update the Spanking Writers blogroll. The new, improved list can be found in the left-hand column of the blog on its home page – hope you like it! I’ve taken most of the suggestions I received on board (although not quite all), and have added a few other sites I’ve been meaning to link to for a while.

Happy browsing… let me know if you discover anything new that you especially like! (And if you think there are still any great sites out there that I’m missing – bearing in mind the links are to sites that are primary literary, non-commercial and /F in nature – I’d welcome any further suggestions).

A couple of years ago, a rather lovely new blog was born – a spanking serial set in Winterbrook Hall, a fictitious country house, with each episode written by a different character. I confess that I rather divided in and out of it at the time, being somewhat short of time to do it justice, but greatly admired the team’s ingenuity in creating and sustaining such consistent, well-developed plotlines.

Winterbrook then (rather sadly) went into hibernation for a year or so, and I’ve been dipping in and out of it occasionally ever since, catching up on some wonderfully-evocative writing. And, to my delight, the blog’s now back up and running, with new chapters appearing on a regular basis. Maria’s post yesterday (written by Emma Jane, who also writes as Charlotte – with the other characters now written by Jon Thorn) was particularly lovely. Here’s a taste:

Turning to me, Jake slowly removed his belt. The sound of it rasping though the loops of his trousers made me shiver involuntarily. When he removed his belt I usually experienced great pleasure or great pain. I knew this was to be the former.

I glared at him angrily, frustrated by how neatly he had arranged things. He loved to beat me and to do so in front of Jenks was an added thrill for him: the more embarrassed I was, the more he enjoyed it. I resolved to give him no satisfaction at all and turned to lean against the wall, bending over so my bottom was out in readiness. I prayed he would just begin but despite my furious hissing he pulled my skirt up above my waist and parted my drawers. My face burned deep red at the thought of both of them seeing me so exposed.

If you’ve not discovered Winterbrook yet, it really is quite unique – and comes hugely recommended. And if you’re a long-standing reader who hadn’t noticed that it was back, it’s time to go and make your re-acquaintance with its inhabitants.

On the topic of other sites, why don’t I take the opportunity to mention a couple of lovely write-ups of scenes I’ve played recently – by Emma Jane (“Intern in trouble”) and Kami Robertson (“How a girl learnt not to flick other people’s noses”), on their respective blogs. I do so enjoy reading what the other participant thought of play encounters, and adore having such excellent write-ups to remember them by!

You know, it really is damned annoying to have such a busy month of travel ahead – I’ve been playing much more lately than I had done, most recently a great evening on Friday involving some very hard play that put each of my set of six new canes to good use. I’ve been loving every minute of it, and am craving more (whether non-consensual roleplay or non-non-consensual fun)!

Now I’ve taken over the reins for the content of ‘The Spanking Writers’, I’d like to update the blog roll – something that’s not been reviewed thoroughly for rather a long time.

I have various ideas for blogs I’d like to add – and a few (mainly now defunct) that I’m going to delete. I want to make sure I’m linking to the very best spanking blogs out there – the ones that are written by genuine people who are passionate about our kink; sites with original, heartfelt content; blogs written as a labour of love rather than by those trying to make money; erotica rather than porn.

So I’d really appreciate your input. Have a look at the current list – a little way down the left-hand column of this page – and, if you wouldn’t mind, let me have your suggestions for any sites you think I should add. (And if you have your own blog, please don’t be at all shy about suggesting it!). Thanks in advance for your ideas!

PS having landed back from Morocco on Wednesday, I’m off to North Africa again this morning on another business trip, spending ten nights in Egypt. I honestly can’t remember whether I can access the blog from there, or whether it’s one of the places that dislike ‘naughty’ sites. And, of course, things have changed somewhat there since my last visit a year or so back. I’ve loaded up various posts to appear in my absence, but if I can’t get online to approve or reply to comments, you know why!

It’s here at last: the most-anticipated book of the year for spanking enthusiasts! We’re very proud to announce the launch of “The Spanking Collection”, an anthology of new and exclusive short stories from a hand-picked selection of twenty of our favourite kinky writers.

As importantly as getting to read some truly great writing, by buying your copy you’ll be supporting an excellent cause, since all profits from the book will be donated to cancer research charities.

You can buy copies online as follows:

• Printed copy, in paperback
• Kindle, via Amazon in the US, UK and Germany
• Several other ebook formats, such as Epub, PDF, RTF, HTML or plain text, working on many ebook reading devices – Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo or whatever you’ve got that reads these formats.

(The paperback version will also be available from Amazon later in the year).

We’re hugely grateful to the authors who’ve contributed their pieces free to this charity collection. The stories are listed below, in the order in which they appear in the book:

The Scholarship Girl – Abel Jenkins

Slipping Up – Emma Jane

Keelin and Shayla – Faye Glass

Watching Xanadu – Paul Bailey

Staff Handbook: Chapter 5 – Discipline and Punishments – Henry Higgins

Penitence and Mercy – Graham Grey

The Punishment Room – Martha Linton

Suite Two – Bonnie

Finished – Rebecca Williams

The Library – Casey Morgan

What the Butler Saw – Jessica Davies

Knock-knock-knockin’ on Mr Batts’ Door – Zille Defeu

That Charming, Disarming Man – William & Catherine

The Royal Wedding – Pandora Blake

Trouble in Telesales – Domino

Heatstroke – Penny Docherty

Arlington Girls’ Reformatory – Rayne

Watching – Discerning Dom

Wifehouse – Serenity Everton

Honour Among Fools – Haron

 

The book also features an introduction by Eliane, as well as a specially-painted front cover by Catherine Thomas showing Abel slippering Emma Jane:

We hope you’ll buy the book and love it; we’re really proud of it, and hope that it’ll raise a good sum for an important charity too.