Apnea shows us what to expect from the retooled "V"

Sorry, I just found this on her blog and had to share. ;-) But for those of you going "Huh?," yes, the classic '80's-era series about guinea-pig-gulping evil lizard people is coming back. Beware.

Oh, and I did get off to a very nice start on "Ethna Redux" yesterday. Toward the end of the process, I'm going to be looking for someone with a good knowledge of Irish fairy tales and Celtic mythology to check what I've written for any glaring errors. If you'd like to volunteer (or volunteer someone else), feel free to drop me a line.

And finally, please vote!

Voicelessness

Behold the lovely Ancilla Tilia, nude, muzzled, and loving every second of it. I discovered in an interview I read that "ancilla" is Latin for "slave," and she really is a lifestyle sub.

Anyway, I chose this picture to share with you today because it represents a subset of my general mind control/enclosure/bondage fetish: enforced muteness. After all, isn't our ability to speak, to express our wants and feelings and opinions, an essential part of what makes us human? Taking away someone's voice, literally or figuratively, is extremely depersonalizing. In real life, it's horrible; but in MC fantasy, it's delicious. A slave has no voice at all in what happens to her or him.

Voicelessness is a theme I explored first in private fantasies; then later in several of my stories, including Spellbound, Solitaire and Willing Subject. Funny how those three just happen to be my personal favorites.

I've also explored the theme in some early photomanips I created for my own private pleasure. I'm sorry to say none of them are good enough to share online; however, I will give you this little tease: Callidus is interviewing me for his blog and has convinced me to share another pic I did which came out rather better than the mouthless ones. I'm not sure when he'll post the interview, but I'll let you know once it's up.

Oh, and one other tease: I hope to start writing "Ethna Redux" today or tomorrow.

Your input, please

Monday night I had another one of my lucid dreams that turned into a very pleasant MC fantasy. This time I was playing around with a very old (but, IMO, pretty clever) idea that I'm surprised to realize I haven't actually used in an EMCSA story yet. So naturally, I started plotting. First I imagined myself as a superspy captured by her archenemy and turned into a willing sex slave. Then suddenly it occurred to me: why did it have to be a female superspy? After all, Aerosol Kid has already mapped that territory quite satisfactorily with his Akiko series. Wouldn't it be fun to turn some macho, arrogant ladykiller like James Bond or Tom Cruise in action hero mode into a cock-worshiping supersub?

Well, one way or another, I'm sure I'll write the story - though "Ethna Redux" is up next, and I've just received an offer I can't refuse via e-mail. It'll be awhile. But I thought I'd give those of you who actually read and enjoy my stuff a chance to weigh in on the subject. And you don't even have to e-mail me to do it; just cast your vote here:

EDIT: Okay, it looks like the poll isn't working, so I've taken it out and tried a different brand. Just look to your right. :-)

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape with Guest Star Tabico

All right, folks, it's time for the less mysterious of my co-conspirators to weigh on our two collaborations. Take it away, Tabico!

I have the memory of a balsa wood elephant, but there are a few moments from my lengthy engagement in this genre that still stand out. One of them was that first week when Spellbound appeared. It was short, sharp, and awesome, and I knew immediately that a new top-shelf talent had appeared in our midst. I didn't know if she would continue to write - Alphax, another best-of-breed storyteller, has only two short pieces to his credit - but I saw right then at that moment that something had dawned.

So later when thrall suggested a collaboration, I was fully on board. I don't recall now (remember the elephant) what sequence of events led to the suggestion, or even for certain that she brought it up, but I'm fairly sure she did. At that point I had already worked with Iago once, and been ecstatic at what we had produced despite an almost complete lack of any subsequent fanmail. The process as well as the product had been really good, so despite the fact that In Darkness Bound totally bombed at the MC Box office, I was ready to give a collaborative work another go.

I don't recall how spiders came up. I do recall, quite distinctly, that thrall had a mental image she wanted to go with, of a mummified figure with cobwebs over her mouth, the cobwebs moving in and out with her breath. I'm into transformations and monster-women, so the half-human half-spider figures are probably from my imagination.

Arachnae turned out well; not genre-defining, but a good yarn with some punch. Moreover, the process of creating it worked well and was fun. In short, we batted the plot back and forth, each picked different sections to write - and free-edited, meaning that we rewrote each other's work as though it were our own.

It's a tricky recipe, that last part, but as I had with Iago, thrall and I hit just the right balance of respect for one another's work and lack of ego when our own stuff was polished. So it was a good experience.

Later on we did Salvation. I recall even less about that effort, but it was also a fun activity. Somehow we missed the mark a bit there - I secretly (well, not so secretly now, eh?) think that "Salvation" although both good and fun could have been really earth-shaking, and wonder what I or we could have done to make it so. The elements are there - the brilliant concept of the slave being rescued who turns the tables on her rescuers. The hot element of the freed slave, now rescuer, who is lured back into slavery. Somehow, though, we missed some element, some tone, that would have made it more molten.

But I regret nothing.

I've prompted thrall a few times (twice, I think) since then about maybe doing something else together, but the time wasn't right or maybe my suggestions just failed to light a fire. In any case, my genre writing has slowed down a bunch. More recently thought hers has increased, (particularly if you take the blog into account), so perhaps there's hope. I still think that, if we could just get exactly the right ingredients, we could write something that people would be talking about years from now.

Heads up!

First, my Reader's Picks page on the EMCSA is now updated.

Second, remember that horrible David Lynch adaptation of Dune? Well, things could have been a whole lot worse.

And lastly, just in case you've been living in a cave for the last week or two, there's a new Watchmen trailer available with 100% less Lower Manhattan and 100% more drama. I understand some folks are complaining about the use of the name "Watchmen" for the second-generation vigilante team; but my only real gripe is that the silhouette of the Comedian's killer looks a bit too well-defined to properly preserve the mystery.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: My Collaborations with Tabico and trilby else

To date, I've written three collaborative pieces for the EMCSA: two with Tabico and one with trilby else (I don't count the Quick and Dirty Anthology as a collaboration, since each chapter was written separately by a different author; and anyway, I'm not allowed to say much about that ;-P), and each collaboration was lots of fun. Of course, it helps that Tabico and trilby are my two favorite authors on the EMCSA; and our styles and kinks mesh well enough that we were able to create stories that, IMO, come across as seamless wholes rather than pieces of Frankensteinian patchwork.

Each story came about under very different circumstances. I'll tell you a bit about all three now, and Tabico plans to stop by later with her own thoughts, perhaps as early as tomorrow. Stay tuned.

My first collaboration was on Arachnae, or the Icky-Squicky Spider (Tabico and I couldn't agree on a title, so we used both of our ideas. Guess which one was mine. ;-P). It began with my reading Tabico's Adaptation, at the end of which she expressed an interest in squick and wondered if anyone else out there felt the same. She and I had already exchanged a number of e-mails, and as a matter of fact, I was privately toying with the idea of MC by spider bite; so I suggested a collaboration. I didn't have anything like a coherent plot in mind when I wrote her; I was just fascinated by the idea of being so deeply enthralled by something abhorrent that you end up reveling in what should send you screaming. Well, Tabico took that idea and ran with it, quickly coming up with the alien spider queen concept, which allowed for all the variations on freaky bondage and body modifications that we both enjoy so much. We worked up the overall plot together and divided the sections pretty evenly, with one of us taking all but one of the above-ground scenes and one of us taking all but one of the below-ground scenes. I won't spell it out for you, but if you've read much of our writing or know anything about our backgrounds, that's probably enough to tell you who wrote which bits. ;-)

I can't remember which of us was the first to suggest a second collaboration, but I do remember that I'd recently had a dream that gave us an excellent starting point. I dreamed I was a brainwashed slave trying to prevent intruders from taking over my Mistress' compound. There wasn't much more to it than that, but on waking, I was intrigued by the notion of a slave molded for helplessness and passivity being all that stood between her Mistress and victory for her Mistress' enemies - which would have been victory for the slave, as well, if only she'd been in a position to appreciate it. As before, the division of work on Salvation was pretty equal; but this time we swapped off in the middle of scenes as well as between scenes. As a result, when I went back to reread the story a few months ago, even I couldn't remember which of us had written certain sections (though I do recall that Tabico wrote the opening and I wrote the close). I guess that's a testament to how well our styles meshed.

The situation with trilby else was a bit different. As I've said before, he likes to stay in the shadows (a great place from which to snark, I might add) and had never collaborated with anyone else. As a matter of fact, I'd broached the idea to him at least a couple of times before, but he'd always responded with a polite "Thanks, but no thanks." Then I hit a rough patch in a number of different ways; and suddenly there was trilby, offering me a collaboration as, I guess, a way of cheering me up. Unfortunately, that rough patch extended to my creativity, and I'm afraid most of the best bits of Goldilocks are his. I did come up with the basic idea of a woman stumbling onto long-abandoned alien technology and MC'ing herself with no one to rescue her, but trilby was the one who really fleshed it out. I hadn't even thought of setting it in the future, on another planet; I just had a sort of vague, Tommyknockers-ish idea of a unearthed spaceship or secret silo or something, somewhere on earth.

Then there was the matter of names. Idris' ship took its name from a way-beyond-cool William Gibson heroine (trilby's idea, but I recommended the book to him ;-)). When it came time for a story title, of course we had to use just a single word, since that's a trilby else signature. Our first idea was "Bauble," but then he happened to mention Goldilocks in passing, and a little light bulb went off in my head. He liked the idea, too, so there you go. Much easier to name than the spider story. ;-)

Looking back on my three collaborations, I can't help noticing that though the actual work was either evenly divided (with the first two) or more heavily shouldered by the other person (with the last), all three ideas began in my head. I don't know if that's coincidence or if there's more to it than that. Certainly, I'm not the kind of author who can be handed someone else's suggestion and dash off a story just like that - not most of the time, anyway. So don't hold your breath waiting for me to contribute to any other anthologies. But if someone whose work I respected and whose style meshed with my own offered up the right idea, it could conceivably strike a spark in my head. Who knows? I wouldn't rule anything out.

Anyway, collaborating - with the right partner - can be terrific fun. I highly recommend it.

This is what happens when you don't have cable

I don't watch TV at all anymore; the only time I even turn the thing on is to play DVD's. Now, this does have its advantages, like saving the money I'd spend on cable and not getting addicted to some show I'll be stuck coming back to week after week to make sure I don't miss anything. Plus, I'd honestly just rather use my weekday evenings playing online.

Unfortunately, the downside of not having cable or watching TV is that I don't get to see music videos unless I make an effort to hunt them down, which I usually don't. But today, for some reason, I did. One of my current favorite songs on the radio is Shiny Toy Guns' "Ricochet." Just for kicks, I hunted down the official video on YouTube; and lo and behold, it's chock full of fetishy goodness: zentai, total enclosure, depersonalization, and a hint of mind control (not to mention a few random hairless, stuffed dogs). And all that's on top of what was already a kick-ass song to begin with. Here, have a look: