A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: A Hazy Shade of Winter

The origins of The White Album are shrouded in mystery...by which I mean there's no way I could go back at this late date and find the picture that sparked the whole idea. I'll just have to settle for the next best thing: giving you the image that took me to the next level of the project.

Anyway, I can at least tell you how it all began. As I mentioned before, a longtime e-mail friend shared a picture that started me thinking about a different kind of vampire. The model in this picture was nude and tanned, but her eyes were so pale they were nearly white. It made such a strange contrast that I couldn't help but think about it; and since you already know about my MC-eyes fetish, you can guess what I was thinking! I fantasized that a vampire had drained this woman's will rather than her blood, and that her eyes were the visible symbol of the loss.

Not much later, I ran across the website of a photographer named Calvato and discovered the image above. Now, I know that's just grease on the model's skin; but putting this image together with the one my friend had shared, I came up with a new idea for my vampire. I decided she'd drain her victims by touch rather than bite, and that she wouldn't just leach color from their eyes; she'd take it from their entire bodies. Everywhere she caressed and drained, she'd leave a streak of white that would fill in oh so slowly - and leave the skin just a little paler than it had been before.

The third step in the process was meeting Jukebox last fall at Lady Ru'etha place, offering my still-vestigial idea as a possibility for collaboration, and encountering happy agreement. You can learn more about our general collaborative efforts by clicking the "White Album" tag at the bottom of this post, but I'm assuming you read A Hazy Shade of Winter before you got here, so let's move on to some of the thoughts and questions you might have.

First, yes, I used to be a rabid X-Files fan; however, I never saw the Teliko episode. I'd heard a little about it because I was such a rabid fan, but I really don't think it influenced The White Album. All I knew before starting the collaboration was that the episode involved a color-stealing bad guy, and Jukebox hadn't followed the show closely enough to know about the episode at all. I imagine that's because he was too busy watching Dr. Who at the time (Just try having a conversation with Jukebox that doesn't eventually wind up in Time Lord-land! Just try! ;-P).

Anyway, Jukebox brought all kinds of new ideas to the collaboration - and all kinds of color and humor. Flora is primarily his work (And be sure to ask him where her name comes from; I hadn't read that series, but maybe you have). However, she's not the character I had in mind when I said someone has a great big "Jukebox" stamp across their forehead. You'll have to wait a little longer to meet that individual!

I think Carly's a bit more mine than J's, but she and all the other characters are split pretty evenly between us as far as personality, behavior, and dialogue go. The most interesting thing, to me, is that we didn't plan Carly and Abby's personalities ahead of time.* We just started writing, and it was almost as though they wrote themselves. That's what happens when you're in the zone, authorially speaking. ;-) And when you're in the zone with another person, bouncing ideas off each other in realtime, it can be a pretty heady experience. It's hard work, but also damn fun!...And when you're writing an explicit sex scene with another person in realtime, it can be damn embarrassing, too. ;-/ Fortunately (for me and for you), I had plenty of opportunity to get used to that before The White Album was finished.

So..where do we go from here? In a storyverse where vampires drain will instead of blood, how many of the other classic vamp tropes can you rely on? Is Dalila allergic to sunlight? Stakes? Garlic? What happens to Carly and Abby now? Who (or what) are the harajuku gang? And how does Renata figure into it all? Obviously, I'm not going to answer these questions yet, but I'd love to hear your speculations! Yes, I know most people online prefer to lurk rather than post; but this is a loud, clear call for you to make your voices heard. Authors love feedback, and Jukebox and I would be tickled to know where you think everything is headed. So please, drop a comment. We'd love to hear from you!


*Yes, I know Abby's personality isn't as well developed as Carly's...yet. But it will be! She's just naturally more demure. ;-)

We have liftoff! I repeat: we have liftoff!

Save a little space in your weekend for "A Hazy Shade of Winter," the first installment in Jukebox's and my collaboration. Each of the three stories/chapters will have its own title, and though you can probably guess the name of the third one already, I'll keep the second title to myself for the moment. ;-) I will, however, tell you that we're calling the series as a whole The White Album - and that I've made a tag of the title so you can trace the progression of our collaboration more easily, if you're into that sort of thing. I am. ;-) Of course, I'll also have a "Peek Beneath the Duct Tape" for each chapter/story; and I'm sure Jukebox will have a "Behind the Music" or two...or three.

In the meantime, you can consider this post to be your final tease before the big event. I've blogged before about "casting" my stories with real people on occasion, and The White Album was no exception. In fact, Jukebox and I actually wrote one character with a certain person in mind right from the start. After awhile, I had so many players running around in my head that I decided to make a special post about it, all by itself. And here it is.

Three notes before you meet the players: 1) This is not everyone I've cast, just the ones who show up in "A Hazy Shade of Winter." 2) Not all the characters below are equally important, and you can't assume anything from the order in which the pictures are arranged. I just put them in what I thought was the most attractive layout. 3) You should not take these images as canon. I have no idea how Jukebox imagines any of our characters except for the one we agreed would be "played by" _____ _____. This is just how these people look in my imagination.

A few days ago, I was browsing through the Hedony Design website when I ran across the picture at right and said to myself, "Holy crap, that's Carly!" Not that I think Carly would be into latex, but I do think she'd wear a halter top like this if it was made of some other material. I've always pictured her as a Coyote Ugly kind of gal, though not as traditionally gorgeous as the actresses in the movie. And to be honest, this model (Elyther) is a bit too pretty, but she has the right body type, the right hair, and the right attitude.

On the right in this picture is Naomi Watts, whom I cast in A Tenpack of Trixies. Today, however, she's Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Story. But Ann Miller somehow became my Flora very early on. That probably gives Jukebox fits, since he wrote the description of Flora as looking like she's just stepped out of a Tom Wolfe novel. As for me, I've never read Tom Wolfe, but somehow I get the impression his characters don't dress much like this. Unfortunately, I can't control my subconscious. It gave me Ann Miller in Mulholland Drive mode, and I'm stuck with her. ;-)

This is Parminder Nagra as Abby. I browsed through a lot of pictures of this actress before finding just the right one to convey Abby-ness, and this is definitely it. Plus, she's wearing a winter coat here, which fits the setting of the story...but that's just gravy. It's Parminder's overall look that I like in this shot.

Dalila was almost impossible to cast, but once I decided to write this blog post, I hunted through my collection until I came up with a shot of Mela von Winter (great coincidence with the name, eh?) by Silent View. I have a lot of pictures of Mela looking Dalila-ish, but I chose this one because of the whole scene.

Last but not least, here's Tilda Swinton as Renata. She's another character I cast very early on, so it was just a matter of finding the right picture for this post. The photographer is Craig McDean, and yes, this is the way he wanted the pic to be viewed: greenish and sideways. Works for me! ;-)

These Are a Few of my Favorite Things: When Animals Attack

For this this post in the "My Favorite Things" series, I've tried to pull together some pictures of animal-themed MC - or, at least, pictures that could be construed as animal-themed MC by the right sort of fetishist. Oddly enough, though, I didn't find as many pics in my collection as I thought I would. I suppose that's probably because most models don't like to work with animals. ;-) But there's always artwork, right? So enjoy these images and take comfort in the fact that, in the process of browsing for animal-MC shots, I came up with a boatload of images to use for my "Supernatural Seduction" post somewhere down the line!

Above is an illustration by the delightfully warped stuntkid - an illustration large enough for you to use as desktop wallpaper, if you're that delightfully warped. Now here are a few more by stuntkid:

Next, here are some tentacular delights from (left to right) DVS, Hajime Sorayama, and Ashley Stuart. Oh, and if you think I've posted some of these images before, you're right...but you can't tell me you really mind, can you? ;-p

Lastly, we have two shots by Draconian Artworks flanking a shot of Angela Ryan - the one bigshot fetish model who isn't afraid to pose with scary-looking animals! And yep, you might have seen this pic here, too. It's by photographer WDR.

EDIT: Oh, and how could I possibly have forgotten this mind-blowing shot of Nastassja Kinski and the luckiest snake on the planet? Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

I couldn't have teased any better, myself

Jukebox has just formally announced, in his own inimitable style, the completion of our collaboration...which is pretty funny, considering that he says he didn't blog much about it during the process because he didn't want to disappoint anyone if it fell through; while I had no worries about blogging until now...when I suddenly got cold feet.

But speaking of inimitable styles, there's one character in our trilogy who bears a very obvious "Jukebox" stamp across the forehead. Then again, there's one scene in the trilogy that bears a very obvious "thrall" stamp across the, er....okay, never mind. The point is that otherwise, I think we've managed to blend our styles pretty thoroughly, which is amazing when you consider how far apart they were to begin with. And I'm very, very happy with the result. I can't wait to share it with all of you.

Ironically, I am not being completely ironic when I say

"Hot lesbian robot action"

Thanks to an anonymous commenter in the Here's One for the Robophiles post for pointing me toward this incredible jewel. And if, like me, you take one slavering look at this and decide you have to have a copy for yourself, I can vouch for the freeware version of Any Video Converter. It's a great way to download videos from YouTube. :-)

EDIT: Thanks to another anonymous commenter for letting me know the version of this video that I'd linked to wasn't viewable by everyone. Here's another version that is:

Silver and Cold

Since Jukebox and I are probably just a couple of sessions away from finishing the (rough draft) final installment of our collaboration, I thought now would the perfect time for this particular themed post. You'll understand at least one of the reasons already, if you've been following my blog for any length of time and/or if you know about Jukebox's story-naming convention (Speaking of which, AFI was my idea, and I've always wondered what J thought about that choice; he's definitely not a goth fan). You'll figure out more of the riddle as our trilogy makes its way online....and you'll also figure out a few hints I've dropped in previous posts, whether you knew they were hints or not!

Until then, here are some lovely images of ladies in various stages of iciness, beginning with Ancilla Tilia above (photographed by Iconogenic). Next we have three shots of Meluxine by her favorite collaborator, Mastertouch.

Now here are Sara X photographed by Robot Art Fashion, Hexabelle by I-don't-know-but-don't-miss-the-not-so-subliminal-image, and Kumi Monster by Allan Amato.

And of course, no post about silvery beauty would be complete without at least a couple of rows devoted entirely to Mosh. So here you go. Credits, from left to right on the top row, are Ama Lea, Kencredible, and Jason Simon. On the bottom row, the photogs are Sideshowsito, Harmony Nicholas, and Michael Helms.

You're welcome. ;-P

These are a few of my favorite things: Silent View a.k.a. Silent Order

This is not a picture of a puppet; it's a real woman...or maybe you can tell yourself it once was a real woman. After all, that is true in one sense; and imagination can make it true in a second, hotter sense.

I don't know who the model is, but the photographer is Silent View - or Silent Order, depending on where you look (He has an official website, as well as galleries on Deviant Art and Model Mayhem). I love the "depraved Dickens" quality of his work...in addition, of course, to the obvious fetish elements. ;-)

Unfortunately, this is one case where I can't identify most of the models in the pictures. For some reason, my favorite German photographers tend not to give the names of their subjects. But the redhead in the first shot is Fraeulein v Rosenfelde, the other half of the Silent View team; and the two women in white are Ashleigh Chase and Nina Kate in a shoot for Jane Doe Latex (I featured Nina and Jane Doe in a previous blog entry). As for the rest of the pics, I'm pretty much at a loss. Fortunately, that won't prevent you from enjoying them. ;-)

This is that is really just an excuse

When I wrote my first "This Is That" post last weekend, I told you it might be the first in a series; but even I didn't expect to be writing another entry in the series quite this soon. Then I stumbled across the pic at left, of Molly Sims modeling the world's most expensive bikini (made mostly of diamonds); and almost immediately afterwards restumbled across the illustration at right, by the multi-talented Zoetica Ebb.

And that gave me the opportunity to do something I've been meaning to do for quite some time but kept forgetting: showcase Zo's artwork. I love the combination of baroque design and kinky subject matter, and I think you will too.



At left and right are the companion pieces to the image above. Together they represent the three aspects of the Coilhouse magazine motto: Inform, Inspire, Infect. Zoetica Ebb is, of course, a cofounder of Coilhouse; and she created these images for use as section headers in one issue of the magazine.




Now here are three of my favorite paintings by her. If you like these, you can find lots more of her work on her blog and on her MySpace page.Take a wild guess why I chose these three to share here. ;-)

Here's one for the robophiles

This is the little post that grew. I'd planned on a very short Wednesday entry, just pointing you toward some cool new robot-themed art by Kassandra Vizerskaya, but then I got e-mails from a couple of blog readers who had pictures and videos to share with me; and wouldn't you know it, those were robot-themed, too. So now I have to go and make a big production of it all. ;-P

That being the case, I'll start with a piece from Model Mayhem digital artist Ka Xiong, whose port has lots of other interesting stuff once you get past the really, really bad Avatar art leading it off. :-/

Now here are those Vizerskaya pics I mentioned, and once again, there's plenty more where those came from. The link just above goes to Vizerskaya's blog, but she has several other galleries around the web, and you can reach them all from this previous entry I wrote about her work.

Now let's get to those e-mails. The Dark Sorcerer pointed me toward the first of the three pics below, which is of Blossom Blois...and Blossom Blois...photographed by Benedict Campbell. I'd actually noticed this one before (and saved it to my hard drive, of course!), but I certainly didn't mind seeing it again. ;-) Then, once I decided to expand this entry, I realized I'd better pull in a couple more Benedict Campbell robot pics. The middle one below is Blossom again; I'm not sure who that is on the right. Anyway, BB and BC both have ports on Model Mayhem; and I featured Benedict Campbell in an earlier blog entry with links to more of his work. His official website, which I didn't know about at the time, is here.

Last but definitely not least, I've been corresponding with sylvrgirl about a web series on Hulu called LXD (League of Extraordinary Dancers). Yeah, I know that's not necessarily a promising title for fetishists, but bear with me a moment. I've only watched the two episodes sylvrgirl pointed me toward, but one featured hot-as-fuck puppet/robot-MC, complete with altered eyes and floor humping. In fact, this particular ep was so hot that I hardly even noticed the MC was M/f!

The other episode apparently tells the story of a guy who's been brainwashed into believing he's a robot. It's hard to be sure without having seen the whole series from the beginning; but honestly, who cares? If you're reading this blog, you're mainly interested in the robot kink anyway, right? ;-) And if you also appreciate a finely-sculpted, bare male torso, well, that'll just add to your enjoyment. ;-P

I'm giving you all this setup before the links because it's only fair to let you know what you're in for if you click on through. The dancing is phenomenal, and robo-boy can sort of act...the rest of them, not so much. Oh, and the "Dark Doctor's" costume is to cringe for. But once again: you're here for the kink, right? And boy, have you come to the right place for that!

puppet girl
robot boy

If you like what you see today, be sure to thank sylvergirl and Dark Sorcerer for bringing it to you. :-)