The Spanking Writers

Four years I’ve been in this house, almost to the day. And now it’s time to leave. Packing boxes surround me, filled (carefully, I hope) with all I possess. The removal folks are due here later to bundle them up and drive them to London. And at the other end? A new stage of my life, as my beloved Emma Jane and I move into the gorgeous place we’re renting together. I couldn’t be happier.

Banbury – I don’t think I’ve mentioned the town in which I live, up to now, but why does it matter any more? – has been good to me. A nice town, unassuming, quiet, welcoming. A good place to come home to.

And as for this wonderful house? I wandered from room to room last night, remembering times in each that made me happy. Times of friendship; of parties and dinners; of remarkable scenes; of silly and fun play; of naughtiness that made me blush at the memory. I hope those of you who know me in real-life might smile too (and even, perchance, in some cases blush) at your own recollections of good times here.

And yes, some sorrow too: the house was home to events that could rightly make me feel sadness, regret, disappointment, hurt, anger. But why dwell on those? There’s no value in bitterness. After all, things have worked out for the best.

Wish me luck for the next chapter of my life. The best of times lie ahead, I think. I count myself so very lucky.

A quick hello from Budapest, where I find myself for work for the next few days – with a decent amount of time for sightseeing in between!

I just wanted to say how much I’m loving this blog at the moment. The number of comments in the past few weeks has been wonderful: it’s great to see so many of you enjoying what I write and contributing your own thoughts and ideas. So: thank you. (I actually feel a bit bad that, with a new phone and struggling to get used to a touchscreen keypad for the first time, I haven’t been able to respond as regularly or fully as I’d have liked to).

And if you’re too shy to comment in public, you can always email me. (Actually, you can always email me even if you do comment regularly: I love to chat!). As we close in on my 1,500th post, and the 2,500th post in total on the site, it’s great to see that there’s life in the old blog yet!

(In other news: it’s fascinating how, if one sits typing in an aisle seat to the rear of a plane, any passing fellow-travellers en route to the loo feel entitled to look at what one’s writing. Yes, that was an account of a maid being raped that you just saw. No, I don’t feel in the least guilty: I’m not the one looking at someone else’s laptop without permission…)

Wishing all readers here a happy new year, and hoping that a good 2013 lies in store for us all. (2011 and 2012 were pretty horrible for me; much as I’m dreading it, this year has to be better, right?)

I’m certainly hoping that, kink-wise, the year ahead will bring more regular play. And, who knows, maybe I’ll even get to meet a few readers here for the first time as the year progresses – especially, with some of you, if we come to ShadowLane in September (which we do hope to do).

So, go on: time for you to join in! Why not comment and pass on your new year wishes to your fellow Spanking Writers aficionados. It’s great when we say hello to one another – especially if you’ve not commented before or only do so occasionally. And it’s always re-assuring to know that there are people out there still reading!

It’s only fair that I should give my loyal readers a festive present, right?

So if you click across to Abel’s Spanking Stories this morning, you’ll find three never-previously-published pieces of writing. There’s one set in a school; there’s one very dark tale; there’s one about a well-disciplined girl. I hope you enjoy them.

Wishing all here who celebrate it a very merry Christmas.

Much as I don’t feel like 2012′s been much of a year to celebrate, it’d be a shame to break with tradition – so, ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to present the seventh annual Spanking Writers awards. As ever, there are no particular published categories or criteria: decisions are taken purely at my own personal whim. But here goes:

Best book: a very easy one: Sophie Morgan’s bestseller-list-topping “Diary of a Submissive”. If you’ve not read it, I’d recommend it extremely highly. Sophie’s newspaper piece in the summer also clearly merits an award, for best article about kink.

Best implements: my wonderful set of tawses, purchased from a famous Scottish source in the summer. (Email me if you want to know the maker’s details: they’re shy about having them published publicly, for understandable reasons).

Best scene: oh, but two stick in my mind as being truly memorable, so different as to be impossible to compare. There’s ‘Alice’ (described in a series of posts by each of the three participants) and “Training the new girl” (so rude, and so much fun!).

Best punishment position: HH and I, one in front of Emma Jane and one behind her, counting down so we could simultaneously cane the front and back of her thighs, during our kinky weekend away in an isolated sixteenth-century house.

Biggest contribution to the kinky world: I know some of you will hate me for this, but “50 Shades” (for all its flaws) has moved public understanding and acceptance of kink onto a new level.

Best blog post: “On Private Kink & Public Lives” by Insatiabear. (As there seem to be fewer blogs, less frequently updated, the quality of writing on those that are left seems to actually have improved!)

Best Tumbr site: for kink, White Slavery Is Real (most definitely NSFW) never ceases to provide inspiration  Of the vanilla Tumblrs I read, It’s Snusk has probably been my favourite during the year – again, NSFW.

And reflecting some of my passions from my vanilla life:

Best event, ever. I was only watching on TV, but the Olympic Opening Ceremony was simply incredible: it couldn’t have made me more proud to be British. (Oh, what a bittersweet couple of weeks London 2012 turned out to be. And how hard that particularly tearful evening was to bear).

Best novel: HHhH by Laurent Binet. It would have waltzed away with the Booker had it been written in English, rather than (superbly) translated from French, having won the Prix Goncourt for best first novel. Read it!

Best album: Keane’s “Strangeland” touched me very very deeply, in entirely different ways at different times of a troubled year. (A creditable mention too to Iceland band Of Monster’s And Men’s very quirky “My Head is an Animal”).

Best theatre. A three-way dead-heat between our two (IMHO) greatest stage actors – Mark Rylance in “Twelfth Night” at The Globe, and Simon Russell Beale as Stalin in “Collaborators” at the National – and a brilliantly-staged “Chariots of Fire” in Hampstead. (Huge thanks btw to my friend Nic for her companionship at so many excellent theatrical evenings). All would probably now make it into my “Top Ten”.

Best movie:  ”The Artist” – a true work of genius. Even if “Skyfall” was absolutely, surprisingly superb: hasn’t it been a good year for things British?!

And, finally, what to me is always the most prestigious honour I can award:

Best blog: goes to Leia-Ann Woods, for some fabulous scene accounts throughout the year. (NSFW by the way!)

I’d also like to give an award to the handful of people who’ve supported me way beyond the call of duty over the past year or eighteen months. But I won’t embarrass you by naming you: you know who you are. You really have been amazing. And to the most special person of all: well, you don’t really read SW any more, but there’s no harm in others knowing how much you’ve meant to me this past year and how lucky I feel.

So – thanks to all who’ve contributed to moments of enjoyment in the past twelve months. Congratulations to the award-winners. But, 2012, I really won’t be sad to see you gone.

I’m spoiling you… Aren’t I kind? See, I posted three new pieces on Abel’s Spanking Stories earlier in the month – and there’s another up there today.

Actually, I’d had the ones from a couple of weeks back sitting on my PC for a while now: I’d just not got round to sharing them. This new one – “The Riverbank” – really is absolutely brand-new: the first full-length story that I’ve written from scratch this year. And I rather like it. It’s tells the tale of a girl shamed and punished by her guardian at the end of the summer holiday. But beware: it is rather dark… abusive, even. (So steer clear if that’s not your thing: you have been warned!)

It came from a scene idea I dreamt up on a trip up north a couple of weeks back – and I would actually very much like to play it (perhaps with slightly less severity) as a scene sometime. (Volunteers?!) And with a long train journey home to fill, starting writing it seemed preferable to the work I should have been doing. Not easy, mind, to type 2000 words or so of a story into a BlackBerry; a fair amount of subsequent editing was called for!

Click across to my stories site if you’d like to read it. And do let me know if you enjoy it, by commenting either here or there.

Purely by chance, I happened to notice just now that Sunday marked the first anniversary of the launch of my decidedly-NSFW Tumblr site. Over 4,000 photos reblogged; nigh on half-a-million hits; much fun for me in the process – and, I hope, for those viewing the site. So I’m going to wish myself an ever-so-slightly-belated happy birthday!

In passing, I’m somewhat curious to know how many readers here also look at the Tumblr site – and (perhaps more interestingly) whether any of you actually found your way to my main site here from Tumblr…

“Well”, I hear you complain: ““Abel’s Spanking Stories” was relaunched at the start of the year, and he promised us new stories on a regular basis…”

OK, OK. I did put a couple of new ones up just before Easter. And there are three more on the site today – all brand-new: never previously published, although I wrote them a while ago. There’s “After The Summer” (a short school tale); there’s “The Casino Girl” (a rather more abusive scenario), and “Tonight” (a naughty, consensual tale about a couple meeting for the first time).

That takes the total number of stories on the site up to 52 (although one could say that, having launched originally in 1999, four stories a year is a bit meagre!). But that’s still a few hours interesting reading, if you’ve not browsed the site before.

PS the comments feature on the stories site appears not to have been working for a little while, but is now fixed, so comment away!

I don’t often look at my site stats, but happened to take a glance yesterday morning when I got back from holiday – and noticed that the number of hits here on the Spanking Writers blog had just passed the 4,000,000 mark a couple of hours before.

Whilst that’s tiny compared to the traffic that sites with photos tend to draw (as the visual is invariably more popular than the literary in terms of hits), that’s a lot of people – especially when a fair number of readers look at the blog via its RSS feed, and when added to my stories site (which has attracted even more viewers, albeit over a longer timespan).

Am I permitted a rare moment of self-congratulation?!

Seeing someone you love so very dearly experiencing the deepest grief makes blogging seem so irrelevant. (Kink? What’s that?)

Yesterday morning, in the far east, EJ received the most awful news of a family tragedy back home. There was nothing I could do to help, save sort logistics and get us on the first plane home – and to hold hands and hug, to listen and to be there. No meagre crumbs of comfort, in the most truly awful and shocking of circumstances.

Whilst I often write blog posts a fair way in advance, posting at such a time seems entirely wrong. You’ll excuse a few days of radio silence, therefore, until I get back to work next week and normality (whatever that is) has to resume.