A is for Author

A popular topic among authors, and particularly among authors who write spanking tales, is what is it that motivates us?

Nearly all beginners at the trade claim that they are writing for themselves - they just like putting their thoughts on paper for their own self amusement.

And that might be true - I know I once posted that as my personal opinion to a forum of spanko authors.

But if it ever was, it changes over time. 

The prime aim becomes to entertain the reader.   For those of us who publish for profit, the reward is in sales figures:  there is little in life to equal the joy of seeing a new work attracting a good volume of sales.  Nor the morose kick-the-cat down when a masterpiece to equal all masterpieces dawdles in the doldrums of reader rejection.

Those of us who do not seek commercial success, the venues for showing our works to the general spanking public range from subscribing to sites that accept works from all quarters, or setting up a dedicated site to share your tales, for free, for all who wish to come and read them.

Then there are two measures of rating your success:  how many times a work is read, and how many comments a work attracts from the readership.

Wanting praise from the readers is understandable:  but can sometimes cloud the issue.   A colleague once pulled his entire site off the web on the grounds that some 20,000 people had visited the site to read his stuff, and not one had left a comment.   The desire to be loved sometimes makes us forget that love not freely given is totally without merit.

Meanwhile, over at adaline's blog, she is also dealing with the first letter of the spanking alphabet...

The A - Z starts tomorrow

Starting tomorrow, I shall be posting daily blogs going through the letters A - Z as part of a blog challenge for spanking bloggers.   Since June has more than 26 days, Saturdays are rest days.

Each day, I shall also give you a link, or two, to fellow bloggers who are also taking part in this amusing endeavor.

I hope the results are as much fun to read as they are to write.   :)

Count down deal - Beloved Infidel

Amazon offers all sorts of deals to get new books into the eye of the general public.  And one of my works is now on a promotional deal.

For the next 5 days Beloved Infidel is on sale at 99c a copy (in the USA) - other Amazon markets are offering the same substantial discount.   The book contains three novellas, each about 15,000 words in length.

"Beloved Infidel" tells the tale of a young American lass living in a modern day Harem, where corporal punishment is sometimes used to keep order in the household.   

"Noblese Oblige" is set in an ancient mythical princedom, where living one's life according to one's station is the prime rule:  a rebellious princess finds herself in the galley more than once for forgetting that rule.  

And finally, "Megan" is a modern-day tale about an undergraduate on an "Agnostics Studies" course who seems to take a perverse delight in driving her Comparative Religions professor beyond the limits of his self control.

The Polish Connection

My very good colleague Bożena Podstawska has taken time out to translate "Just Wilhelmina" into a Polish version called Tylko Wilhelmina.   We launched it yesterday through Smashwords, and it will make its way into various e-book retailers over the next couple of weeks or so.

I am not a native Polish speaker, so cannot vouch for the accuracy of the statement that this is the first novel for spankos ever published in that language.   Wow - an assumed spanko population in the order of 6,000,000 Polish speakers - and no literature of any sort to titillate their curiosity,    Who would have guessed?

Well, if you have work that you think would be suitable for translation, drop me a line and I will do what I can to alleviate this dearth of Polish spanking literature.   And it might prove to be a useful additional revenue stream for you.

(Should you know of existing spanking material available in the Polish language, do drop me a line so that I can set the record straight).

A seventh deadly sin.

In the world of spanking videos, there are the six deadly sins:  Alcohol, Bad grades, Credit card abuse, Driving tickets, Shop lifting and Tobacco.    At least - one would think so if one's only entertainment came from watching English spanking videos.

A correspondent has alerted me to the possibility of a seventh spanking sin.   You may recall from one my last post that Arya in the book of Game of Thrones was routinely beaten by Weese for disobedience and for looking at him!   Wow!   The crime of "looking at".   (I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that, for I have not yet reach A Clash of Kings in my reading.   I may one day have to recant this post...)

Anyway, I offer the following dialogue aids for future spanking videos coming from our favorite English video producers.   You will recall that their standard style is for long tirades from the spanker, usually concocted on the fly out of the director's suggestion of how a spanking should unfold.   These "ad-libs" are offered to get the creative juices flowing in the cast and crew:

     "I am deeply disappointed in you Samantha - your parents did not spend a fortune sending you to a private finishing school of this stature in order that you would go around looking at people."

     "I didn't get to become Head of School by looking at people, I can tell you.   And you will lose your prefect's badge if you don't stop looking."

     "I am sorry, Samantha, but you did look at people, and now your naughty bottom is going to have to pay the price."

     "I once played Rugby at Twickenham - so I think we shall try something different today - this broom handle across your naughty little bottom should correct your habit of looking."  "Oh no, sir, not the broom handle.   I won't look any more, honest.   Ow!"

      "No - I am not finished!   You looked at several people!   Naughty girl!  It's the strap for you now!"  "Ow!"

     (Strokes her bottom with firmness).   "I think that you have almost learned your lesson.   Let me see.   Another... another six from this cane should cure you of looking, yes, I think another ... another six should do it.   And you need to count these out loud.  And after each stroke, you are to say 'I shall not look anymore."   "Yes sir, I am learning my lesson, I shall not look at anyone again from now on, sir."   "I should hope not - next time you are sent to me for looking, you can expect twice as many."   "Yes sir, Thank you sir ... Ow!   One.   I shall not look any more."

(For half my normal fee, I could crack out an entire shooting script - I am so excited by all of this ...)

From book to screen - Game of Thrones

The HBO adaption of Game of Thrones into a magnificent bodice-ripper reveals - at least to this spanko - an odd frame of mind when mainstream media deals with smacked bottoms.

In the TV series, Prince Joffrey is "given" two prostitutes as a namesday present.    Instead of bedding them, he gets one to beat the others backside with increasing ferocity until she screams.   Very dark, very sadistic,

In the book, Ayra Stark gets spanked by Yoren (for inflicing harm on another) that makes it difficult for her to sit down for a couple of days, and by Weese so routinely that when given the chance, she had him assassinated.

The prostitute spanking never happened in the books, and the Ayra spankings never happen in the TV series - to such an extent that some other character gets assassinated in place of Weese.

And that shows that mainstream media is still not quite at home with The Thing That We Do.

Why introduce the prostitute beating?   It was to show just how sadistic Prince Joffrey is, and how we should really like to see him end up with his head on the sharp end of a pikestaff.

On the other hand, Ayra (in the book) is a 9 year old tom boy who takes adversity in her stride.

Therefore, it is OK to see adult women being subjected to non-consensual beatings, but not a young girl being subjected to corporal punishment.   In the case of Ayra, not even mentioning such corporal punishment in a piece of dialog - so that the screen version could have remained true to the text without unseemly child violence of a spanking nature.

This seems to suggest that some script writers still look on spankings as prurient activities, to titillate the more base instincts in those who read, say, 50 shades.   Therefore spanking prostitutes fills the bill nicely, and spanking a 9 year old girl is clearly an incitement to pedophilia, or something equally abhorrent.

I think it would do most scripting teams the world of good for them to add a genuine spanko to the crew when deciding what spanking scenes are appropriate for the public at large. A win-win option, I'm pretty sure you will agree,

I have updated the survey numbers.   The number of responses climb, but the percentages hold pretty much constant.

Although the survey does not meet the requirements of being "scientific", we should take some confidence in the figures in that they have remained consistent with each other ever since the very first results were announced.

Free short story - Beloved Infidel

The latest addition to the free short stories eventually turned into a novella.   The first episode in the  Beloved Infidel saga relates how a young American girl, living in a modern day harem, was severely punished through the manipulations of Malak - the number one wife.   It is something of bodice ripper - but an enjoyable one.

June challenge

For fun and to participate in web wide spanker blog activities, I have signed up for a challenge sponsored by Spanking Romance Reviews - which requires me to make a post every day this coming June, with each article based on the consecutive letters of the alphabet.   Except Saturdays.   There are 30 days in June, and only 26 letters in the alphabet, so we get to pass on Saturdays to leave 26 other June days to match with A thru Z.

Strictly speaking, each article can be on any old topic the blogger wishes - and need not be about spanking at all.   But I promise, you will not find A = Apple Pie Recipes on this blog.

Getting 26 topics that are about writing spanking fiction might be a stretch on my ability and your patience, so we might digress into topics of spanking in general.

And each day I have promised to point you in the general direction of a fellow spanking blogger.

Should be fun.    (If not, both you and I can bale out if we decide that is the best course of action.   ;-)   ).

Spanking books best seller list

Wouldn't tickle your interest to know with spanko novels out there are selling the most copies?   If a lot of people are buying ithe same book, it must be worthy of your further investigation, don't you think?  Yeah - me too.

Well, the Amazon KDP lists aren't going to be a great help.   When you look at any title in the Amazon store, you get its ranking in the best seller list.   Useful?  Not really.   The figures are based on sales in the last two hours.   Which is useful, but not really useful since the average book sells one copy every two days.

Is there anywhere else you could get the figures?.

Not before today.

But in the interests of public interest, I am quite willing to construct such a list for all our edification and entertainment.  If you have a spanking ebook or more for sale to the public, simply let me know your last mont sales, an d I shall put you on my best seller list.   Caveat?  Yes - if you claim incredible figures, you may be invited to show your Kindle figures to an independent auditor.   Otherwise we are on the trust system
.

This is what the list will look like:
Pos Title Author Publisher Orient Erotica? Price 1 Willing Victims David S. Holly David S. Holly M/F Minor $2.99 2 Just Wilhelmina David S. Holly David S. Holly M/f, F/f None $2.99 3 The Gleam in Her Eye David S. Holly David S. Holly */F  Major $3.99 4 Beloved Infidel & 2 others David S. Holly David S. Holly M/F F/F Some $2.99
The acrtual list will have links to the books, authors, and publishers. If you want to take part, just send me an email And for the title that gets first place for a whole year, a $1,000 prize is up for grabs.   $500 for second and $250 for third.   Let the list commence ...

Never judge a book by ...

To get "The Gleam in Her Eye" onto the market, I used KDP's cover generating program to com up wit:

Having earned a fair profit from it, I invested some with a very talented graphic artist who came up with:

So - while you should not judge a book by its cover, it sure helps to have a cover that gives a fair clue as to what the reader is about to embark on.

Should you have $5 0r $10 to invest on a cover, I strongly recommend you drop Witkee a line at this facebook page

The curious history of the carpet beater

In England, America and many other countries, using a carpet beater as a spanking implement is a fairly modern innovation.

The first time (as far as I can tell) that the very idea of using one to spank an errant female came about when Brit Ekland wrote that she had been spanked by her father, with a carpet beater, when she was 15 years old.

Now, this should be no surprise -Brit was born in Sweden.    In 1957 (when she was 15) Swedish carpet beaters were totally unlike British or American ones.  They were long, thin, flat, pliable pieces of wood - hard and solid enough to beat dust out of rugs - and thus made suburb instruments of correction.

Now, Brit being very sexy in the late 60's, and the tale making the rounds of those who share our interest, some photo-shoots started including carpet beaters in their scenes.   Not Swedish ones, but British and American ones made of bamboo curved and plaited in the tradition known to as all as the Victorian style.

It is not impossible that it might have been the custom in Victorian households for the master to chastise servants and daughters with such a carpet beater.   Not very likely - for the old fashioned Victorian carpet beater was somewhat inept for delivering punishment, and the instant standby of a freshly cut birch rod was always to hand as a far more effective corrective mechanism.

By the time Janus and other modern spanking magazines picked up the thread, it was generally accepted that a carpet beater was a useful tool in the spanker's arsenal, and those magazines managed to add an erotic element that had not been there before.   So implement makers started making "carpet beaters" that were not totally unlike the Victorian model, but reshaped to concentrate the impact area to the size of an average pair of buttocks.

I think it might be time for a video producer or photographer to reenact Ms. Ekland's original ordeal, but this time using the implement that had actually made her bottom so sore, and not one that others have substituted in its place.