Reighn Chatterly’s Blog and Books

I don’t often recommend other authors but I would be disingenuous to say that this author is a personal friend of mine and writes with a raw sexuality that is disarming when coming from a female voice.  Reighn Chatterly may sound like the moniker of every other romance writer around.  Yet her blog and fiction is full of steaming erotic power that lends itself to the ground breaking writing of Harold Robbins and Xavier Hollander.  I was taken aback by the sexual ferocity of her most recent blog entry here on WordPress.  I highly recommend it for late night reading.  I don’t write in that genre but the idea of such depraved thoughts coming from such a pristine source is as shocking as it is thrilling.  Truly the Madonna/Whore complex.

Ms. Chatterly’s latest works are a series about a reality show where the contestants are asked to release their own significant other into the sexual arms of what the show’s producers consider their “Perfect Match”.  Reighn spares no expense at stretching every sexual convention she can think of and she is going through an entire series on the show.  She has just published book three in the series which is available on Amazon Kindle Direct.

This author humbly recommends her as does his wife Margie.

https://reighnchatterlyauthor.wordpress.com/

Thank You for Reading….

It didn’t go unnoticed that I had my busiest weekend on record for this blog.  A week after Valentine’s Day and it looks like many of you needed a good spanking.  I appreciate all of you looking in on me.  Please take the time to comment and follow me.  I will reciprocate and communicate with everyone who does take the time to comment.  I also spend time writing on Scribophile.com so check me out.

Motus Nocturnus

—-This story was written for Scribophile and was one that was well received.  I hope you enjoy it as we start out the new year.

I don’t know how we came to be together.  I was skinny, but only because I was really too tall for my young age.  Not strong enough to play sports and too ungainly because of my awkward dimensions, I was an invisible, unknown person.  Except to her.

 

We’ve driven down past Lee Hall Rd.  At the end, it becomes a dirt road that past  winds past rolling Virginia cornfields.  The humidity of the Tidewater summer, has  driven us out.  It’s  the perfect opportunity to drive fast with the ragtop roof of my beat up 1960 Impala pulled down.  It was as unlovely as me, with just primer on the hood, the fin-tailed beast was the only car I could afford.  As we pass through the corn field road, dust blows up behind us into the dulled light of dusk, I look next to me and see her long straight black hair billowing back.  She released it from the conventional hair band that she had on while spending the day with her grandmother.  Though her features were serious, she had the look of one just freed from prison.  I suddenly realize that while my car was no longer renown, it had a purpose and she joined me in the emancipation it provides.

 

Her brown eyes were so dark that it was difficult to discern the pupils especially when she gazed with the sleepy look she gave me.  We moved from the corn fields to the forest roads of Gloucester where the woods were so thick as to provide a wealth of privacy. From the moment  she climbed into the front seat, she  morphed from the sweet Virginia southern belle that her Grandparents loved bringing to their beautiful York River shore home in Clay Bank, into the audacious and uninhibited 18 year old she wanted to be.Like Grace Slick on my recent record purchase, she exuded provocation and non conformity.

 

I was just bored: bored with my life, bored with being an outcast, bored with the eyes that wondered why I wasn’t enlisted, bored with the casualty counts that Walter Cronkite reticently reported every night.  She was bored with her own life and the expectations that were apparently saddled onto a Virginia debutante.  By the time we were into the woods, she had gotten her brassiere off, hair loosed, and shed her jeans and deck shoes, so that she could recline and hang her bare feet outside the car.   I tried to focus on the road, though my attention was turned to her nearly perfect breasts that, freed from the bra’s confines, nonetheless still jutted firm and upward.  Her bikini underwear seemed to disappear into the curvy folds of her thighs, which looked more voluptuous in that position.

Clay Bank was no more than a scattering of houses that pressed up against the north bank of the York River with a grand total of 40 or 50 people in residence there, swelling to 60 or 70 in the summer as the riverside rentals filled.  I had seen her past summers and when we finally struck up conversation, there seemed to be gravity in every word we spoke though we never really knew each other.  It was a mystery as to what even brought us together. We became friendly out of necessity.

 

When she prompted me to take her for the drive to our destination,  I should have been surprised to be in her sensual company. The casual ease that she asked never made me feel like she was out of my league.  I didn’t have to come up with a campaign for wooing her. There were no awkward moments mounting her in the spacious back seat, the request she made before we left, still sweetly resonating on my memory.

 

“Will you take me some place and fuck me?”

~~~

Our lives that summer were reduced to the lowest common denominator: our orgasms and our quest to achieve them.  It was like we were convinced that if we could come better than the previous time, we could ascend a summit of pleasure so rarefied that we might die from falling off that last precipice.

At the drive in, she would straddle me, wearing the polyester mini skirt she had shopped with her grandmother in, filling the car with her repeated exclamation that fogged the window. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!”

 

She reciprocated with her mouth often and with impromptu; driving around, ducking behind a tree next to the road, public restrooms.  I was never sure when the delight of the next lightning strike of pleasure would come.

 

It became our nightly ritual.  Her grandparents were convinced that I was a good, harmless boy. They had known of me for a while so I seemed safe to them.  The woods and the drive-in were frequent destinations.  However, as our urgency increased, we would resort to much more high risk locations to fuck.  A couple of times we found an alley in Gloucester that was fairly reliable for its infrequency of traffic, though a barfly from the building we were fucking behind, stumbled out and paused for a moment to watch.  Occasionally, we stole away into a backroom at the local library but only on the nights that it was open late.  Every night, was a new pursuit of the lightning.

 

What we had was not love.  It was more immediate and demanding, and we used each other’s body as implements to achieve our single-minded goal. Because of our insatiable sexual heat, neither of us was put off by the obvious selfish motives we both came to our couplings with.  Paradoxically, what we did seemed a supreme act of selfless generosity since both of us knew that only in fully giving ourselves over were we going to find the thunder that followed the lightning.

~~~

My wife only shifted slightly but the distant sound of a storm brewing woke me, the rumbling arching through the house as if we lived under a bowling alley.  There was a distant flash of lightning.  One one thousand; two one thousand; three one thousand.  There was another cacophony of thunder, sounding distant and then seeming to move closer.  Three miles away.  I only woke when the thunder caused the storm windows to shudder.  I got up and went into the kitchen, never completely over my childhood fear of lightning strikes and the sudden claps of thunder it produced.  I hummed the song that I always did every time a storm comes on.  In my head, the Four Seasons’ Sherry was in perfect pitch.

She had told me one night in the back seat as we were watching a summer squall build up, that it was her favorite song because it had her name in it.  She couldn’t tell everyone that she liked it though because it wasn’t hip or cool that summer.  That was an uncommon, dark summer and the music was angry, psychedelic, and dystopian.  Sherry was  a chaste song in comparison.  It was an irony that we smiled at between bouts of fucking.

 

Like me, she was married now.  Ironically, she wound up marrying a Naval officer, a hero of the Vietnam War, and a pastor. Before moving back to my bed, I stood at the bedroom’s threshold and stared at my wife sleeping.

I was working two jobs and our kids needed orthodontics.  My wife and I were well intentioned but quarreled often.  That part of life, the struggle to provide, to love, to lead, seemed never ending.  Everything could be lost if I didn’t fulfill the role I’d assumed to have drawn.

 

It was funny; those nights in the woods, naked in the backseat with Sherry, seemed to be over before they began.  I came out of that summer irrevocably changed.  However, if asked to elaborate, the elements of that transition would escape me.  I lay back down and, with bittersweet fondness, wish that I could feel the lightning again.  But the lightning comes in the heat of the summer.  Now Autumn was upon me and my sweet wife.  It was a dry season with more temperate weather, not conducive to the violent nature of lightning.  The lightning is gone from my life and from Sherry’s.  The only thing left was the echo of the thunder long since resounded.

My New Novel

While it may not cater to the specific tastes of those who value this blog, I did want to make known and share the prologue of my latest project called The Lamentable Life of Jonathan Curse.  The prologue shows the people who have been affected by the protagonist as they gather after his funeral.  What follows is the story of a boy with an amazing talent that he misuses for years until he has a redemption of the heart.  He only learns that his gift is no less a burden even when purposed for good. Below is the prologue:

The Lamentable Life of Jonathan Curse

Prologue

There were five of us in the room.  I wished that I didn’t know why we were there but I saw it in their eyes; the guilt, the self loathing, the lack of control, the secrets.  I didn’t admit it just as they weren’t willing to come forward with their own complicity.  Complicity with what?  Even sequestered together, we all knew that Jonathan Warren Curse was the focal point of our being brought together.  That unspoken acknowledgement caused my heart to speed up and my breath to shallow.  I was sure that their tongues tasted like tin as well.

 

We were all at the funeral.  We could have watched it on television but we were inexorably drawn to the viewing and the procession.  While the masses saw his funeral as an earmark in history, we just wanted… needed… to be near him one last time.  Even as I was clenched inside with ambivalence, having been summoned to the room with four other victims.  I couldn’t call myself anything else.  Even though I felt my own will make all the choices I made in regards to Jonny, I grew to understand that it wasn’t my responsibility anymore.  He told me so.  It didn’t change anything.  I thought about him everyday, especially in those last years, his visage regaling the television so thoroughly.  I obsessed about him because he asked me to.  People would say I was in love with him.  I knew it was more than that.  My husband knew it too, every time that we made love that my distant eyes were remembering him; that every time I was climaxing, I was reenacting the times that Jonny was inside me.

 

I couldn’t imagine that was what brought the odd group together.  There were two men and two women.  We were all similarly aged, one a tired black woman, poorly dressed and clearly the oldest in the room.  She was once a full bodied woman but her frame had lost both its musculature and vitality.  Her face was sad and drawn as I imagined mine looked.  In that thought, I felt a kindredness.  I tried to catch her eye to see how common our experience was, but she seemed almost lost in thought as one might find a resident of a convalescent home littering its halls.

 

The second woman was my age.  Her countenance was clear to me even in its conflict.  Dark haired and obviously wealthy, with her Louis Vuitton bag and Jimmy Choo heels.  Her guise was well considered and controlled.  Still, I could sense a malevolence that resonated from her.  I also felt like she was relieved in no small measure that Jonny was dead.  There was a smugness in her side of the eye glimpses, measuring us with superiority.

 

There were two men there.  One was bulky and somber-eyed, though his face wasn’t fallen from grief.  He was dressed like a bodyguard and everything about him suggested that he was a serious man, not to be trifled with.  He was thick and working on being overweight yet still intimidating.  He instinctively measured each person in the room.  Was he trying decide who was a threat and who was an ally?

 

The other man was more obviously showing our common emotion.  Nearly as recognizable as Jonny was, I knew that he was a New York City celebrity from his youth.  Even in his fifties, he was still diabolically handsome.  He could easily pass for someone in his late thirties, only a little grey flecks that filtered from his temples and his goatee.  Steely grey eyes were bathed in worry and shame.  I wondered why he was here.

 

Our meeting room was as inhospitable as one would expect for an interrogation room, causing my anxiety to to grow exponentially.

Still there was one person missing.  I knew she would come, but there was a certain amount of naivete in some of my compatriots in the room.  Of all the people in the world, she knew Jonathan Warren Curse perhaps better than any soul on earth; even me.  So when she entered the room with her escorts, it shouldn’t have shook me as it did.  We all rose in uncomfortable unison to give her the respect her position demanded.  We all knew that she was every bit as popular as her husband, even as a widow.  She was Marguarite Phillips-Curse, the First Lady of the United States.

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,700 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 45 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Excerpt: The Conscription of Elisha Vandermey

I have long considered the life where a submissive girl enters into a preexisting Domestic Discipline relationship which becomes a love relationship for the three persons involved.  I have had some experience in this area and know that it is full of emotional landmines. Having said this, I am not saying that such a relationship couldn’t be both valid and fruitful.  That is what I am trying to capture in this novella.  Below find an excerpt of how the relationship began and stay tuned for publication news to see how it turns out.

~~~~

Chapter One:  The Job Posting

 

It was still warm in the Hudson Valley and there were a few weeks left before the cavalcade of colors began on the trees of Autumn.  My second year at Bard was going to be arduous because I had little desire to study.  I wanted to write and that was it.  I didn’t want to go to class.  I knew that I was a good writer and that I could accomplish what I wanted in life without getting an MFA at a prestigious Eastern school.

I didn’t want to go home to my Aunt, who was now living off of the disaster my life had become over the last four years.  It wasn’t that she was a bad lady.  I liked her well enough.  It was just that she didn’t belong in the role of my guardian.  I appreciated her stepping up to it, even if she had ulterior motives that I didn’t begrudge her for.

Besides, I really liked college life.  I liked the area.  I liked visiting Manhattan on the weekends, attending local artistic events, being involved in the pretentious writers community in Dutchess and Westchester Counties, being guilty of blatant voyeurism with my roommate and her many lovers she would sneak into our dorm.  These were the things that made college fun.  Leisure was my goal for my time at Bard.

Gillian and I had finally gotten relatively settled into our dorm.  I was glad that we could continue to be roommates.  Both of us came from more modest backgrounds than our classmates at America’s most expensive college.  So it was true to form that our dorm room was totally bohemian in nature.  I rebelled most against the trappings of affluence.  Gillian still had some nice clothes for our trips into the city and she spent a lot of money at Sach’s.  My wardrobe was composed from flea markets and the Goodwill outlets.  I was more comfortable being non-descript than Gillian..

Our room was accordingly piecemeal.  I built a loft bunk over my desk made of the simplest wood, totally unfinished.  Gillian’s side of the room was dominated by the a queen-size mattress and box spring laying on the floor.  She had made a nightstand out of a milk crate, and created a desk out of 4 more and a plank that she found at a garage sale in Red Hook.  We covered our walls with whatever excited us at the moment, never taking anything down.  After a full year, our walls began to look like the placard covered telephone poles near the campus.  There was always a pile of laundry that was overflowing out of an insufficiently small basket.

It was Saturday and the windows on our third floor room were open.  I was sitting up in my bed in my underwear in response to the lingering humidity of the late summer.  A squirrel, large, grey and fluffy made his way down the electricity wire to the ledge of our windows, moving in staccato quick motions.  It looked in the opening considering the safety of passage and then seemed to notice me sitting still with my laptop in the corner of my bed.  I cocked my head at the animal and we shared a moment before it moved off to nut gather.

I was bored.  Gillian was having a beach escapade without me.  I was a little tired because I feigned sleep the night before to watch Gillian and her latest trick miserably fail at being quiet during an extended session of sex.  Living vicariously through her sex life has been more than sufficient to fuel my need for release.  Masturbation was mode of sexual expression and we always kept bananas in our room, so my lover was always available.

This afternoon, I was scrolling through craigslist.  I needed to work because last year there were several weeks where all I was eating was corn flakes and ramen.  Besides,  I enjoyed picking up little freelance writing jobs listed in the gigs section.  That afternoon, I was scrolling idly,  moving into the other gig categories when I saw the ad.

Margie and Blair’s Fall Boot Camp (Warning Explicit Content)

As many of our friends know, as well as many of our readers, Margie and I have been practicing Domestic Discipline Boot Camps for the last three and half years.  This was mostly from reading about them from Chelsea and Clint at LearningDD.com.  Using their experience as a loose template we have been doing them twice a year, faithfully; one in the late Spring and this one that occurs in late Fall.  Both of us are going to give our input about how we feel about them, because we believe that this boot camp was particularly epic and has moved us to another, much needed, level in our Domestic Discipline experience.

One of the things any DD couple struggles with is consistency.  Ironically, despite the fact that boot camps are supposed to help that (which they do and have done), we discovered that our boot camps themselves were becoming less consistent.  We have loved so much the connecting and the love and the joy of the bootcamps that they have become retreats.  Yes we get some good work done, but we felt like we were getting into a rut after our 6th one in May.

We are an experienced couple in DD, so much so that we run a spanking therapy ministry and give talks about our experience with others.  Having said that, we looked at our most recent experience and realized that both of us were afraid to move forward.  While we love Clint and Chelsea and what they do and suggest, we had become too dependent on their advice and our boot camps lacked the intensity they had the first year that we did them.

So in the weeks leading up to this one, we both agreed that we needed to make some radical changes in how we did our Boot Camps.

Hi, this is Margie.  Sir wanted me to comment on what was far and away the toughest, most intense Boot Camp that we have ever done.   Our Boot Camps center around four themes.  All of them are distinct and yet all of them are interwoven.  They are Our Relationship with God, our family life (including a reexamining of the house rules for me and the kids), Sir and I’s sex life, and our DD lifestyle.  Without question, these are the four most important facets of our life and we don’t shrink from them.

I am 33 years old and Sir is 40.  Our beliefs, while fairly cemented in our faith in God, have been colored by the ministries we have been involved in and the expectations churches, pastors and denominations have put on us.  Ironically, one of the most Christian things we do, spank as a loving form of family life, is completely shunned by the majority of the Evangelical community.  We aren’t bitter about it, but there were truths that came out at our Boot Camp that were as much shocking as they were liberating to us.  We don’t expect other Christians to even believe what our theology is.  God knows our hearts and He loves us even if we are wrong.  He knows that we are pursuing Him in what we do.

It is important because on this boot camp we prayed and felt released to explore things that wouldn’t necessarily be embraced by the greater Christian community.  These were things that were directly affect the other three facets of our life… sex, family rules, and spanking.

 

Chanel Blake and I chat about Writing…

With her permission, I am reposting the interview I gave with Chanel Blake from Scribophile.com.

Author Interview –Blair Farinholt

OCTOBER 27, 2014 / LEAVE A COMMENT

Welcome back to my weekly author interview series. Today I sat down with Blair Farinholt author of domestic discipline erotica, present in many aspects of his writing (and parts of his life). I got to learn more about Blair’s choices as an author and what drove him to such an interesting writing topic.

Chanel: Good Morning Blair! First I’d like to jump right in and learn a bit more about your writing style. What length of story do you typically write? Genre?

Blair: Thanks for talking with me Chanel. I can and have written flash fiction and short stories but I am really long-winded and almost always have at least a novella in hand, if not a novel.  My current piece would be a lovely 150K word Victorian erotic novel, but will probably be a series.  I am looking at a serious publisher for this particular genre. I write exclusively spanking fetish and domestic discipline romance novels as Blair and under my real name I have just completed a thriller of 115K words.  I also blog on MSN and have been a sports writer.

C: Ahh the mysterious pen name. I love it. Are you currently published? 

B:  All of my previous publications have been in journalism

C: Why did you decide to write? 

B: I became a writer when as a youth I was labeled a “gifted creative writer”, after I wrote a story about the Civil War.  I was chosen as one of the top 50 student authors in Washington State and attended the Centrum Writers Workshops.  There I got to meet Peter S. Beagle who wrote the screenplay for the original animated Hobbit.  Our conversations over those three days were instrumental in my passion for writing

C: What inspired your latest story idea? 

B: Latest idea…hmmm… I don’t know what idea is latest because I have about 8 open projects that I am working on when I am not busy making a living.  I suppose the one that I just sampled on WordPress would do.

I am writing a Victorian erotic spanking novel about a girls’ school in 1921.  I was inspired by three high school yearbooks that I found from 1917 to 1921 that belonged to an Italian girl who had migrated to the US in 1907.  I was fascinated by the tension that was already present as the Victorian social mores were at odds with the radical sexual revolution that was about to happen with the advent of Suffrage in 1921.

C: Wow, 8 projects? Is this accurate to describe your current writing position? Do you find working on various projects at once difficult or do you prefer it? When you focus on a variety of projects do they all cover similar topics/genres or does it span over several different ones?

B:  I suppose the fact that I have so many open projects could be considered a blessing or a curse. Originally, I was compiling ideas for the Sex Sells Dirty Thirty group on Scribophile.  I had many ideas written down and when I joined the group, I started a little on each one. Now, during my writing time I pick one project a day to work on and then work on a different one the next.  It probably won’t be the most effective way to come up with a collection of work, but it seems to work for me.  The stories don’t get stale for me when I take some time away from them.  I think this is particularly important when you are working on a larger piece.

C: You mentioned that you write under a pen name as well as your real name. Why did you decide to explore different author names? What draws you to using a pen name?

B: In the age of instant information and because so much writing is now occurring on the internet, I made the decision to write one predominant genre under the pen name Blair Farinholt.  I have experienced real consequences for having written something controversial, to the point of losing a job prospect. From that point forward my wife and I are extremely careful about our internet presence.  Blair is responsible for writing all of my fetish erotica; specifically spanking and Domestic Discipline.  There is a hardcore, faithful readership in that genre (see BlushingBooks.com among others) and publishing is much more likely than just self epub.  Writing under this persona gives me the freedom to write and not worry about what folks at church think. The name is the homogenization of one of my favorite actresses (Blair Brown) and one of my little league coaches that I respected.

In the age of instant information and because so much writing is now occurring on the internet, I made the decision to write one predominant genre under the pen name Blair Farinholt.  I have experienced real consequences for having written something controversial, to the point of losing a job prospect.

C: I find the reasons behind your use of a pen name very logical. I think this is something all us erotica authors consider at one point. Plus it’s fun to have an unknown persona. Do you find yourself acting different as Blair Farinholt? Are there any people in your real life that know about Blair? 

B: I wish I had taken more care early on.  My personal haughtiness demanded that my name be out there on every provocative or controversial thing that I wrote.  I lost a valuable job position because the employer read something that I had written.  I wouldn’t say that being Blair allows me to act differently, but maybe with less restraint.  I still have to watch my verbiage to make sure that I don’t tip off my real name. One author here on Scribophile knows my real identity.  At my work, my coworkers, who know I write, also know that I have a psuedonym on Scribophile, but I don’t tell them the moniker that I am using.  Worlds are no longer colliding to paraphrase Jason Alexander on Seinfeld.

C: That’s a good way to look at the use of a pen name. Good to know that you don’t act completely different! Do you ever worry about your book becoming popular enough that your true identity would be revealed whether through necessity or through nosy reporters? (Like me? Tell me your name! Do it! Do it!)

B: It’s really a double edged sword. The primary reason I keep up the pseudonym is to protect my non-writing career.  If I became popular enough with either of my personas, I would be giving up that career to move into full time writing, at which point it wouldn’t matter to me that much.

C: Now, I must ask that since you write in several different genres (under different names), what has been your favourite genre to explore?

B: I have to confess, that I didn’t realize how much I would enjoy writing Submission and Domestic Discipline erotica.  I was unprepared for the ease with which it came.  Perhaps I was titillated by the subject matter or by the fact that it is a significant part of my own marriage.  But I really enjoyed it.  I also would like to delve into Literary fiction (as amorphous as that genre definition is) and I would like to write a series of police procedural thrillers.  Aspects of both of those have appeared in my non-Blair novel.

C: Since this theme is a part of your own marriage does your wife read the stories that Blair writes? What has her reaction been to them?

B: I don’t believe there is a writer alive who doesn’t allow some sort of autobiographical part into their work. I don’t think if we had not already had our own Domestic Discipline experience, she would have been as open to me writing this form of erotica.  50 Shades of Grey has really opened the door to Dom/sub, BD/SM, and DD erotica though.  This was a natural extension for me.  I can address my personal fetish, write about something I really believe in beyond the bedroom, and not do anything that I find terribly offensive to my personal ideologies.

C:  You mentioned you were long winded, does this mean you prefer to write novellas or novels over shorter pieces?

B: I have experimented more since I have joined Scribophile then beforehand.  TL Taylor, who is a critique partner and collaborator with me sometimes, convinced me to try things like prose poetry, and flash fiction.  Still, I find that when I am crafting a story that I find the most satisfaction when I peel it like an onion.  That inevitably builds the length.  I have a piece under my real name that went almost 120K words and is on its third edit.

I think that most authors of fiction envision themselves as novelists.  I certainly do aspire to that and its probably due to simple haughtiness because I like the idea of being a novelist. It is a rare opportunity in this age compared to when I met Beagle in 1978.  Then, if you were called a novelist it meant something different than what it does now.  In 2014, anyone can be a novelist online.  It doesn’t even have to be good.  Let’s be honest, we have all critiqued stuff that we shuddered through reading. I have read work online that I cringed at reading.  One of the most successful ebooks that got published later (50 Shades of Grey) was particularly well written.  I suppose the biggest crippling thought to the freedom we have to write now is wondering if the work that we are peddling on line now would have ever seen the light of day in 1978.

C: I’ve interacted with TL a few times (on Scribophile) She’s a great girl! What sort of work have you done together? 

B: TL and I had a critique/editing relationship before Scribophile.  We have such radically divergent styles and viewpoints that it was hard for us to come together.  She had written a lengthy, extraordinary erotic story called, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”.  As we would review it, she would become increasingly frustrated because she had two diametric ways of resolving it.  I finally challenged her that whichever she chose, I would take the other ending and write my own version of the story with that ending.

Mine was called the “Season of Giving” and was fairly well received here on Scribophile.  The result of that playful collaboration was the idea of a series of erotic short stories told from the viewpoint of a hotel suite in Reno Nevada.  The series, called “Room 1475″ is nearly ready for its first book to be published.  Unfortunately, TL’s contribution wound up morphing into a chapter of her novel Power Play, and my collaboration with her became literary masturbation with all the stories being my own.  [sigh]

C: You mentioned the Dirty Thirty group on Scribophile. How many of your ideas did you get written and completed with this group? Do you still have a list of themes or plot lines that you wish to pursue?

B: As I mentioned the fun part of the Dirty Thirty group is that it launches a lot of ideas and, of course, that is also the problem.  The goal to publish thirty ‘books’ in a year is ambitious, especially for anyone with a family with kids and a career to keep up.  Still, I am thankful to the inspiration.  I have, by necessity, conceived 27 book ideas.  Some are parts of series, which do well at publishing houses like Blushing Books.  I keep that book list and title ideas on my computer to keep working on them.  Right now, I am working on the fourth story in the Room 1475 series called “Spanking T.L. Taylor”.  Yes, I got permission from both of our spouses.

Much of my work can be seen in excerpts at my website which can be found at https://blairfarinholt.wordpress.com/.  I also blog and write about Domestic Discipline here.

C: Well it’s a good thing you got permission! [Laughs] Can you tell me a bit about the first book in the “Room 1475” series? How does it read without TL’s contribution?

B: Well, I would think that they are fairly cohesive in the voice of the room.  One of the things that we struggled with was the attitude of the room…the way it considered what it was seeing, etc.  Mine was much more aloof and non-judgmental, truly an non-omniscient third person which allows the reader to make their own judgments about the characters and the sex that they are involved in.

Before TL decided to change Power Play from a 1475 story to a chapter of a novel, we had lengthy discussions on the phone about the difference in the voice she was emoting from the room as opposed to mine.  It wasn’t that it was wrong…it was different… and I was concerned about the reader’s reaction to that.  There are four stories in the first installment of 1475 and I am finishing the last one in the next few weeks.  It is called, “Spanking TL Taylor”.  Written with her permission, of course.

C: So you guys have done serious collaboration rather than just over Scrib and via email. That’s awesome to hear. Have you enjoyed collaborating on a story? Are there any challenges you’ve faced working with another creative mind? 

B: It is actually not unlike the relationship with my wife.  Both of them are powerful, strong-minded women.  Both of them are more than willing to bring painfully hard criticism to my work.  And both of them have diametric points of view.  For example, my wife felt that Domestic Discipline is kindred to spousal abuse (a position that she has since moderated on) which, of course, TL absolutely agrees with.  I am a cup half full person and both of them are cups half empty.  They don’t trust easily and I am far too trusting.  It is both difficult and helpfully necessary to get well considered critiques from people with opposite viewpoints so to that end it works well.  TL doesn’t take critiques from me any better.  For her, she will defend (sometimes angrily) why she has written something that I think needs improvement.  I will walk away from the discussion and then find out three days later that she took my advice.

C: I am very much the same way with critiques. I find it sometimes takes a day or two to process some of the suggestions from my fellow writers before putting them to good use. That being said, I found that my writing really grew and formed into something real after joining Scribophile. Do you feel that this website has helped you improve your writing as well as give you an opportunity to experiment? 

B: Hmm…I loathe to make a confession that writing wasn’t something real for me despite the fact that I was busy making a living.  I spent two years writing a novel under my real name and trying to find an agent or publisher.  For me, although, I didn’t make a living at it, I still always considered myself a writer first.  Frankly, the Internet, in general, not just Scribophile has created new avenues for publication. However, as we talked about earlier, that is fraught with its own landmines.  Just as the bulk of the writing on Scribophile is amateur, so too are the critiques.  That is not to say that the writing and critiques aren’t capable of being good.  However, it isn’t professional editing and that is one of the things that can take you from self or e-publication to major publication.

C: About the level of amateur on Scribophile, do you intend to seek out professional edits before looking to agents/publishers with your novels? 

B: Well, that may have been a mistake I have already made.  I sent queries out to 35 different agents and only got a couple of comments.  I am having a tough time deciding if the issue is the small niche that I am writing to, or simply that the writing isn’t polished enough.  So, I would say, at least in the case of main stream publishing, that I would consider bringing on an editor or working with a publisher’s editor.  However, from what I have seen from self-pub so far, I feel that my work stands pretty well on its own…especially my erotica.

C: Earlier you mention your position on being a novelist and the meaning behind that. I agree with your thoughts on some of the work out there that has been published or presented as worthwhile material and have no doubt it would never have seen the light of day if not for the internet. So I wonder how you feel about the changes in the publishing world. Is self-publishing something you would be interested in pursuing with your novels or are you hoping to query agents and enter with the traditional market? 

B: I think that I have enough of a resume that I can find publication for my erotica, especially since it is a niche that has a very ardent, faithful following.  Like writing romance novels there will always be a demand for spanking erotica.  As I said, my novel written under my real name, has been offered out to over 35 agents without a nibble yet.  The market is so glutted with authors of talent.  Just go to a library sale and see some of the novels out there getting published by major publishers.  Many of them are obscure and never see the light of day, despite publication.  Look at what happened to “The Stones of Summer”.  Many people consider it literary genius, but not until a documentary director found the author living in broken squalor did the book ever become a best seller.

I suppose that I, like many of the idealist writers of my generation, are saddened by the course of publishing in general while at the same time titillated by the opportunities that Epub and self-pub present.  50 Shades certainly has stoked the fires for self-publication with the hopes that it will lead to more.  Even here on Scribophile there are authors that are grinding out a modest living with their creative writing.  I still have a family to care for so I still keep my career, though nothing would please me more than knowing that going to work would entail simply walking to my keypad.

C: Your inspiration to become a writer is very interesting. How long ago was this meeting with Peter S. Beagle? Do you still feel that you apply what you learned then to your current work?

B: I met Peter S. Beagle in 1978 at a writer’s workshop in Washington State.  I also met Frank Herbert there.  I was struck by Beagle though because, although he was a fantasy author, a genre I don’t necessarily embrace, he had a tone of grittiness that I appreciated especially when we talked about writing.  He never talked down to us and I felt that he genuinely enjoyed the writer’s life.  Young authors go to workshops with their work but there really isn’t really the time to gnash through jots and tittles.  For me, the biggest come away that I got from my time with Beagle was that I really wanted to be a writer, which was huge for me.

I was struck by Beagle though because, although he was a fantasy author, a genre I don’t necessarily embrace, he had a tone of grittiness that I appreciated especially when we talked about writing.  He never talked down to us and I felt that he genuinely enjoyed the writer’s life.

C: Before joining Scribophile where did you put your writing focus? Did you write erotica before that or is this something that developed more as you met other erotica writers? 

B: My first significant work was actually a Civil War story.  I have written a variety of things over the years.  I spent two years writing for a local newspaper which was so much fun for me, before I started writing my novel.  Rewriting has been the focus now.  TL Taylor actually talked me into joining.  I think that joining Scribophile made it okay for me to indulge my particular fetish in erotica, which now has such a strong niche.  I think that just like everyone self pleasures and the ones who don’t are lying; all writers probably dip their proverbial toe into the stream of some form of erotic writing, even if it never sees the light of day.  Mine filled spiral notebooks and then were abandoned.

C: We’re running out of time but before I let you go let’s give everyone a taste of Blair. Aside from writing what are three words you would use to describe yourself? 

B: Hopeful, Foolish, Romantic

C: Great answer! If you can’t sit down to read or write, what would you rather be doing? Do you find time to do this along with writing and the rest of your busy life?

B: This will sound odd but I love to collect sports cards.  I have about 30,000.  One of the most relaxing things I enjoy is sorting and collating them.  However, I seldom get the time to do it anymore in the last few years since I have been writing more.  Also work often intrudes.

C: And the age old question, if you had to suggest one published book to readers what would you choose and why?

B: I am going to cheat, giving you one contemporary novel and one classic.  Both are mentioned in my profile.  I don’t read contemporary fiction as a rule.  I picked up a copy of the Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Neffeneger.  While she isn’t a wordsmith by any means, the meticulous care she took to weave this incredible time travel story was breathtaking.  It was a terrific romance novel for women while at the same time being a brain tickling Sci-fi thriller for guys.  Practically perfect book for the modern contemporary novel.

My #1 I would have to say is East of Eden.  I was always passionate about Steinbeck’s gripping realism.  When I was a boy in Jr. High school, I was already fancying myself as smarter than everyone else already.  When an English teacher told us that we would be reading a novella called “The Red Pony”, I felt my stomach turn.  Another equine girl’s book like “My Friend Flicka”.  Instead, I was exposed to Steinbeck’s cerebral and unflinching style and I was hooked.  While most people will point to the Grapes of Wrath as his pinnacle, East of Eden was a tour d’force for Steinbeck.  It has the breadth of a multi-generational epic, the intimacy of tragic failed love story, a cold female villain that makes Madam Bovary seem like an eccentric aunt, and a final sweet wrap up sentence that ties a bow on the grand novel.  “Timshel!”

C: That’s all the time we have for today! Thank you for joining me, Blair. It was a pleasure!

Outspoken and mercurial, Blair Farinholt lives in the Hudson Valley of New York but originally hails from the Pacific Northwest. He has a BA from William and Mary and an MA from Marist College in Poughkeepsie. He loves fall drives with his wife and children, visiting the “City” on the train, and going to church where he is an elder. He has an extensive profile of published work under his vanilla name.

Excerpt from a new story….

I have, with her permission, written a story about one of my dearest friends, the author TL Taylor, who was the other half of the creative process to conceive the idea of writing erotica from the viewpoint of a hotel suite.  We both started work on our stories but is soon became clear that her story was evolving into a novel and t the literary mechanism of using the room to tell the story wasn’t going to work for her.  Still, she deserves a great deal of the credit for the upcoming anthology I will be publishing: Room 1475.  You can look up TL Taylor on Scribophile.com and enjoy her literary, flash and erotic fiction.

TL and I have dramatically different viewpoints on Domestic Discipline, properly given submission, and spanking.  The following excerpt is the prologue to my final Room 1475 story; Spanking TL Taylor.  I spoke at length with her about the content and I have her permission to use her “likeness” in the story.  The prologue is actually true but leads into the fantasy that I wrote (with the permission of both of our spouses).

 

***A Note from Blair Farinholt

The author, TL Taylor was one of the strongest, alpha personality women I had ever met.  She lived in the wine country of California while I lived in the Hudson Valley of New York.  There couldn’t be two more divergent backgrounds.  We had collaborated on a theme concept which we were going to co-author and publish; Room 1475.  These were erotic stories told from the viewpoint of a hotel suite in Reno, Nevada.  I went on to write three stories for publication while her stories went on the shelf while she worked on other pieces.    

There was latent feminism in her strong demeanor as well as in the characters of her erotic writings.  Her female characters, sometimes victims of their own weaknesses, were rich and complex.

The male characters were far more one dimensional, motivated by their gender and their genitals. One character was so despicable that no one who read him, liked him.  I didn’t.  I could sense in our frequent conversations as we traded critiques that she liked Dominick, the arrogant, self-absorbed ass who is the antagonist of Taylor’s magnum opus called Power Play.  This seemed like a paradox to me.

These kinds of conversation came up when we compared notes, even before she coaxed me into joining Scribophile.com.  Often we would compare the similarities and the stark contrasts between the themes of her stories; power exchange in relationships-and those that I aspire to writing about; consensual spanking and Domestic Discipline.  Both types of relationships turn the typical lovers paradigm upside down.

In Power Play, Rebecca, the protagonist, wants to have a virtual online relationship without any strings when she is unwittingly drawn into Dominick’s web.  At first, seeming aloof and disinterested, he finally concedes to chatting and emailing her until they agree to have a sex only relationship.  However, she finds him to be a narcotic to her and soon finds herself being manipulated and used by the married man from across the country.  The entire time the two engage in an ongoing virtual War of the Roses on who has control of the relationship with the potential for tragic consequences; especially when Rebecca realizes that she has lost all of the power.

In my own work, that power is willingly and consensually abdicated by one partner, who then trusts the other to wield it for the betterment of the relationship.  This is the crux of Domestic Discipline ideology, Christian or otherwise.  For example, I was writing a Christmas fantasy about a broken woman who has a fetish about Santa.  When he comes and meets her, telling her that he can lead her back into both his good graces as well as emotional wholeness, she finds that she must surrender her will to the one figure in her life that she has ever trusted…even if that trust finds her on the receiving end of his ongoing corporal discipline.  My stories are always trying to have a happy ending.  TL’s aren’t necessarily obligated to such an end.

“What happens when you spank your wife?” she asked me one day after sharing critiques.

A Posting from Blair’s Submissive Wife, Margie: September Maintenance Spanking

Margie and I were just noting that I posted in a bunch again and felt like it was a perfect opportunity to post what was on her mind in regards to our CDD relationship.  After talking about the content, I agreed with the stipulation that we had probably reached the edge of our transparency about our marriage.

Blair is my Sir.  I don’t want readers to think that I am a doormat submissive.  If only that were true!  I would probably find myself bent over the bed or a chair less often.  I call him Sir when he is directing me or asks me things.  It is an incredible example to our children.  Most important to me though is that it keeps me in constant reminder of our roles in the marriage.  I am the submissive helpmate.  He is my Leader, my Priest, my Knight in shining armor… and my disciplinarian.

I actually have been doing well in the last couple of months.  I have only received five, relatively minor spankings in that time period.  I am focused and attentive.  It is a joy loving and serving my Head of Household.

Some time ago we both agreed that Maintenance spankings should be part of our marriage, especially as I become better and better at my obedience and behavior.  When I turned thirty, we negotiated Maintenance into our rules.  On the last day of the month, if I have received less than four spankings in that month, I receive a Maintenance spanking.  Maintenance is a spanking without offense, but unlike “good girl” swats or a role affirmation spanking which are both just simple and relatively quick bare hand spankings, it is a full, spanking ritual that usually is at least hard and sometimes severe in intensity.

As you know, it is the last day of September and I have been a very good wife (only one spanking for a parking ticket).  So tonight, I received my regular maintenance spanking.

As a woman, I have to share how intensely intimate this time together for us is.  It brings all of the best fruit of our marriage and our decision to practice CDD to the fore.  Practically, I just need the spanking because I haven’t been spanked in a while.  It is an extreme role affirmation for us because it bears the intensity of a punishment while engendering the trust that a role affirmation needs.  I feel his appreciation when I submit to Maintenance.  I hate the pain that I have to endure but I can feel his spirit being fed when I trust him with my discomfort and discipline.  It’s not that I am not submissive when I’m punished, but this is different, because I am submitting without offense.  He is tender even when he brings me to wailing tears.

Some of my most intimate memories of our marriage are the times where I am in position, either over his lap or bent over something and his hand is gently holding me and talking encouragement to me before he disciplines me.  When we pray together before hand, it is like we are about to do something holy.

Tonight, was both bitter and sweet.  It was simply the worst spankings I have received in nearly three years. I received a bare hand warm up that lasted five minutes; then I was given the hairbrush; then the belt; then I was paddled.  Between each set, I got five minutes of corner time and then three minutes of gentle rubbing.  We decided last week that it would be appropriate to have a severe spanking this month because I literally hadn’t received one in a couple of years.  It was mutually agreed to but while I was being spanked, I questioned my willingness.  We focused on my staying in position, role affirmation, and the reminder of how painful punishment can be.

As horrible an experience as it was (so bad that I was screaming in pain during the paddling and still can’t sit comfortably), it was also one of the most lovely evenings with Sir that I can remember.  He was patient with me.  When we prayed, I felt so close to him.  He prayed for strength to spank me as hard as I needed to receive and then prayed for my response to the spanking.  My spirit was so open to him.  It was also sensual for us.  We send the kids out on maintenance night, especially when it is hard or severe, mostly so I can cry or yell as loud as I need to.  It also allows me a little marital immodesty which makes the whole thing easier. Tonight, after we prayed he undressed me to my tank top and I didn’t dress again until the maintenance was over.  He knows that I enjoy being naked, especially in the freedom of our marriage.  He encouraged me through the entire process.  I could feel his hand holding my hip as I was over his lap being spanked with his hand and the hairbrush.  When I received the belt, he laid me on my back and whipped my bottom diaper style, his eyes always on mine which I loved.  When he is angry or disappointed with me, he will often withdraw relationship by bending me over or away from him while I am being spanked.  He touched me throughout the discipline and even though it was horrifyingly painful at times, I was completely at peace with the process.

Afterwards, I needed to cry it out and he just held me on the bed as I heaved.  Then as I just melted into Sir, as often happens on maintenance night, we wound up making love.  I absolutely love sex after maintenance because we are so tuned to each other that it is like we started even before he got inside me.

Sir tells me that maintenance are both his favorite and most difficult spanking to give me.  He loves it because it is the time where I seem to trust him the most which really encourages him.  It is difficult because he has to spank me so hard for no offense and his normal thought process is that I need that.  I love my husband so much.  I trust him even when he makes me cry.  I trust his leadership and he trusts my submission.

I couldn’t have told this story better actually.  Margie was amazing tonight.  After her spankings today, she posted all of the stories and articles that we got together to post here.  I was particularly struck by the intimacy of the diaper style spanking I gave her with the belt.  I really felt close to her as I held her legs and watched her face as I gave her the belt.  She was crying loudly and I had to make sure that I didn’t wane in the severity of the spanking.  Sometimes, when she cried out in a particularly fearful way, she would quickly augment it with an sobbing ‘it’s okay…it’s okay…’.  I am married to an impressive, powerfully loving, submissive Bride.  I am far luckier than you.  I love you, Wife.