An Erotic Q&A

I actually had a friend ask me recently why I don’t write posts about erotica or bdsm on this blog.  I guess I just never thought to really blog about it. ::shrug:: So today it’s time for a little bdsm and erotica Q&A! If you are square or have no interest in erotica please skip this post. You may learn more about me than you care to.

On to the questions… these are questions I’ve gotten from readers. Feel free to add your own questions or comments to this post. 🙂

SINcerely Megan isn’t really BDSM, is it? Megan is very willing!

Every bdsm relationship is different.  A sub is not an unwilling participant in the relationship, nor does she need to pretend to be for it to be a legitimate bdsm relationship. Megan is very willing and submits to Father Michaels because she wants to. She needs to. It’s in her nature to allow him to use her as he sees fit.  For those of you who identify with the label submissive, I’m sure you’ll understand this quite well. There’s a certain freedom in submission. That isn’t to say submission is always easy. It isn’t. Not only that, but a lot of the couples in my stories aren’t 24/7 bdsm relationships. Some are bedroom relationships, others (like in Training Amy) are working toward a 24/7 thing but clearly aren’t anywhere near that. In most instances the subs in my stories are exploring bdsm from the point of initially realizing they were subs to begin with.

Your Doms and subs have too equal a relationship. Your subs are mouthy and sometimes downright Domme-like. What’s up with that?

I think that some people think submissive means someone who is spineless, weak and likes to be knocked around.  Or someone who is eager to please to the complete exclusion of self. On the contrary a lot of subs I know (myself included) are very successful women in their day-to-day lives and are often mistaken for Dommes because they have self-confidence. While each submissive’s reason for being a sub is her own  I think a lot of people fantasize about giving up control (in a controlled atmosphere) to their trusted partner. Sometimes it’s just a bedroom thing. For others they crave it in their home life and not in the rest of their life. Others still choose to hand over their entire life to a partner and live a 24/7 lifestyle.  I think the problem comes up when someone practicing bdsm thinks the relationships they have or have had are the only way to have such a relationship. So when they see a story like one of mine and it doesn’t match their viewpoint of bdsm relationships, they want to immediately dismiss it as invalid. Besides, mouthy subs make for interesting punishments. Don’t you agree?

I also think a lot of vanilla folks think bdsm is about abusive relationships.  My sub characters have a voice because in my viewpoint of a bdsm relationship they do. My characters have relationships based on mutual respect and consent (the exception there being Weekend Captive which was kind of my experimental take on a “rape fantasy” and clearly it didn’t go over well with all readers).

How come I always feel like there’s more to the story that you’re not telling us?

Because there is. Here’s the truth of it, folks. I fully admit that the first O’Connell story was meant to be a short and the two after that were meant to be novellas.  Had I given the entire story – they all could have easily become novels. Megan and Father Michaels, for example,  moved on, eventually got married and opened their own store. Perhaps it’s a story for another time.  Training Amy was around 5K short of a novel and to be honest – I should have just allowed the story to become a full fledged novel. But I was so hell bent on keeping within the word count limit I’d imposed on it that some things, admittedly, got cut.

Things that perhaps some readers would have liked. I have resolved to fix this issue in Switched where you’ll find out what happened between Amy and her parents (a lot of people were upset that was left unresolved and I deeply apologize for that). I do care what my readers think and I do read reviews (bad and good) and try to take away things to improve. Of course sometimes the story is merely about a woman’s discovery of her submissive side which she shares with a loving Dom. I absolutely LOVE those kinds of stories, which is why I write them.

Okay – so it was only three questions, but it’s a start! 🙂  Thanks for reading!