Once Upon A Read online

  Unfortunately, no matter my near nausea at the thought, she’s probably right. She normally is. It’s the same thing I’ve been playing with for some time on and off. To try, or not? I was hoping that simply conversing with a submissive would give me the range of sensations needed for written verse. However, on talking with two of them so far, all I’ve got is breathy moans and something that is apparently indescribable. It’s lacking to say the least.

  “Let’s just get lunch, shall we?” is my quick manoeuvre out of said conversation that I absolutely do not want to have.

  “Or you could just go back and ask him to do his thing on you.”

  “No.”

  “Well, your shout, I suppose. Just remember that when the reviews start rolling in,” she says, tucking her head back down so she can respond to something on her phone.

  Bitch. Correct, but a bitch nonetheless.

  ~

  Lunch goes according to plan, as does everything in my life. Pinpoint precision is key to strategic timelines. Do you know the amount of hours that go into preparing books? I think my readers assume stories magically pop into my head and then appear suddenly on paper. They don’t. The first few did in some manner. I thought of a story, wrote some words quite effortlessly, ones full of vigour and youthful exuberance, and before I knew it I’d written a book. But the ones after that? Well, they take planning and preparation. Most books are well written before the reader even hears about them. I currently have six works open and four completed books that aren’t even published yet. I’ve actually just released one that I finished writing fifteen months ago. That’s how it works. Forward planning. There are calendars and spreadsheets, release dates planned years in advance. Word-counts to keep up with. Three rounds of editors to go through, sometimes four, even five on occasion for my crime thrillers. Publication dates to meet. Covers and teasers to release at the optimal times for marketing purposes. Paperbacks to produce with different graphics for different countries, although I never did really understand why. And don’t get me started on events. I did twelve last year. One a month. Nine here in the states, one in Oz, and two back home in the UK, which gave me a chance to see Mum and Dad. I only do events as Valerie, obviously, but I’ve been toying with the idea of hiring a model to play Peter. I make a lot of money out of them, and believe it or not, it’s nice to actually meet my readers, talk to them and get direct feedback rather than the constancy of social media. It makes me feel human in some way, I suppose. Alive. Not the robot I seem to have become to meet criteria and provide the reader with the ultimate story. It’s like I’ve changed into something I never was before. Maybe it’s because of the workload, or maybe it’s because of circumstance, or maybe it’s just natural evolution. I don’t know, but something feels out of sync lately. It just all feels a bit messy and distant, like this current version of me is not comfortable with itself.

  “So, when are you seeing him next?” Bree asks, still attached to her phone and not really listening to my answer.

  “Thought I’d try a gang bang next Tuesday.”

  “Right, well that should work,” she replies, totally engrossed in whatever she’s looking at as I grab her shoulder to stop her from walking directly into traffic. “What?”

  “The road, Bree,” I reply, hovering my pointed finger at the onslaught of mid-day traffic.

  “Oh right, thanks.”

  “Do you ever just look forward and take the world in? At all? See what’s around you rather than focus entirely on what your next set of words are?”

  “What the fuck, Lana?” she says, looking at me like I’m the biggest moron on the planet. “You know we’ve got no time for that. I’m six chapters behind on my current. Four more open that should be ready for Christmas. One novella going live now, and another two going live next week under pens. What the fuck time do I have to look up into the sky? My life is right here in this phone.”

  I let go of her arm and snicker at her distressed looking face, totally understanding where’s she’s at and remembering the fact that that’s exactly where I am, too. Rightly or wrongly. It’s probably the reason why I spend so much time stuffing amphetamines in my mouth, hoping that by not snorting it and rolling up bills like others do, I’m not actually addicted to the damn stuff. I mean, she’s the same. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just our way of coping. It helps contain the noise, or at least channel it more effectively so we don’t have to admit the issues behind whatever’s going on in our heads.

  “Yeah, I know, but when’s enough enough? I mean you weren’t even listening to me, not that you ever do. What about everything out there, life, you know?” Her face shoots up to mine, probably astounded at my audacity to question our life.

  “I was so listening to you,” she replies, still secretly tapping at her phone even though she thinks I can’t see it. “I multitask.” You bet your arse she does. We all do. At speed. I sigh and shake my head, knowing I’ve lost the discussion before it’s begun. “What did you say exactly?”

  “Gang bang.”

  “Really, when?”

  “Next Tuesday.” She scowls, lifts her phone again and swipes about a bit.

  “Can’t, got a deadline for book two in the Assessor Series.”

  “You think I want to gang bang with you?”

  “The fuck’s wrong with me?” she spits, ruffling her blonde mass of dreds about and shaking her booty like a hooker. I smile in reply and start us walking again. Nothing’s wrong with her, nothing that being male wouldn’t fix, anyway.

  “Nothing. You’re perfectly wonderful. Just not a man.”

  “You’re gang banging with only men? Fucking go you. How many?”

  The snort that comes out of my nose as we meander over to 57th can only be described as snot worthy. How many? As if I’ve ever done anything other than straight one on one. I’m the straightest straight person she’s ever met. I can’t even comprehend bent. Even the sight of those people in that club earlier was making me feel on edge, let alone one actually touching me, or, heaven forbid, asking me to indulge in their strange alternate reality.

  “I’ve done two before. You need pointers?” she says, still attached to her phone and discussing this as if it’s perfectly normal. No. I absolutely do not need pointers of any kind. Although...

  “Have you?”

  “Yeah. Long time ago. Off my head. Can’t remember most of it, really.”

  “Well, that’s about as useful as bugger all then.”

  We walk silently for a while, doing our best to avoid the rush of people trying to get back to work after lunch, all desperate not to be late for that next meeting. It makes me smile as I keep weaving in and out of them, hand on Bree’s shoulder guiding her because she’s still not looking at anything but her phone. One of the very fine things about being a writer is the ability to not have to conform to society’s rules or work hours. We do what we do whenever we want to—restaurant, coffee shop, late nights, early mornings. I have a particular penchant for waking up at 1am with an idea and just opening up the laptop. It’s not like I have to get to an office for 9am, so why not? I’m not convinced it was helpful when I first started writing, trying to do college at the same time, but now it works for me well enough. I just catch up on sleep at another time. Not that I get all that much of that. There never seems to be any time. It’s like I never have any me time, no space for my mind to rest anymore. There are so many stories. So many characters. And it’s become constant. It’s a hive of other people’s feelings, other people’s emotions inside me. Murder and mayhem. Sex, love and romance. Beaches and holidays, wishes and dreams. I can’t even remember my own dreams anymore. Maybe I never had any, or maybe they’ve been realized and I missed them while I was writing everyone else’s happily ever afters. I don’t know, but they’re not here anymore giving me a purpose to all this. It’s just a constant drive of forward momentum, barely giving me a chance to smell my own roses.

  “Lana?”

  “What?”


  “I was asking about your Sexy Pants Dom.”

  “What about him?”

  “Name?”

  “I’m not allowed to tell you that. You know the ethics behind research,” I reply incredulously, finally breaking through the throng of other people out into the small square where we afternoon sprint write sometimes. “And he is most definitely not mine.”

  In fact, I doubt men like Blaine Jacobs belong to anyone. He’s the type who gives little compassion to anything but action. I can tell that by the way he peruses women as if they’re pieces of meat to be tasted. I wouldn’t say he’s cold because he has quite a warm aura about him, welcoming even, but he’s dispassionate, callous maybe. As if nothing is to be looked at with any other intent than study and interrogation. Everything he’s shown me so far has been logical, as if it’s methodically sentenced into its new position. There’s no passion about his preferred entertainment. He touches skin as if it’s not worth anything more than the chance to find its density or its durability. Maybe he’s a scientist or a clinician of some kind in real life. He certainly doesn’t come across as a man who’s ever thought the idea of connection intriguing. Although, that love question threw him right off center.

  Bree’s already set out on the table by the time I’ve wandered towards it, notepad, tablet and laptop in the exact same spot she always has them. She sits to the right, accoutrements laid out to the left like an array of necessities to do her job correctly. And funnily enough, as I start unpacking my things, too, I end up putting them out just as precisely opposite her, never questioning my positioning either.

  It makes me giggle beneath my breath, imaging Blaine and his craft. It’s the same really, isn’t it? We have little warmth for our craft now either. We write; that’s it. There’s no sense of confusion or mess anymore. We don’t live our characters in the same way we used to, scrawling them onto paper and enjoying their passion as if it’s our own. I can’t remember the last time I cried when something happened to one of them, not like when I killed—figuratively speaking—my first one off. I might be immersed in my characters’ stories, might even be feeling them to a degree, but I just don’t bleed when I cut them like I used to. It’s something I’ve been questioning lately. It makes no sense to just see it all as a workload without any connection to their feelings. I’m lacking in empathy, not something the old me used to be.

  “What’s another word for ‘delineate’?” Bree asks, her hazel eyes peeping up at me above her screen.

  “Present, outline, depict. Depends on context. Draw, sketch? Characterize, detail—”

  “And there she is, the fucking synonym queen of New York,” she very kindly cuts in, breaking me from the thesaurus that opens up in my head every time anyone asks questions like that. It’s like a freight train rips through my head, granting me each and every connection to any word that has anything to do with the particular phrase mentioned. Sometimes I wish I could shut the bloody thing off. I hardly missed a beat out of writing my own story as I answered her either. I just kept writing, not even looking at what my fingers were describing. You’d think it would be useful for a writer. Actually it is, I suppose, but it’s the damn noise that drives me mad sometimes. It’s never quiet in there. Never. There are no breaks from being a storyteller, not for me anyway. People talk of writer’s block; well, I’ve never experienced it. Never. If I didn’t work so hard on putting barriers around the stories, I’d be quite insane. I think it’s why I don’t feel the hunger in the substance anymore, maybe because I can’t afford the emotional turmoil. At some point I put those barriers in place purposefully, making the characters stay in their boxes where they’re contained and malleable for when I need them next.

  “Pitch?”

  “Slope, slant, incline. Modulation, frequency, tonality.” Tone.

  Mr. Jacobs certainly has a lovely tone. Its texture is like satin, with a sense of down covering the final endnote. I’d write it as lulling you maybe, or tempting. It has a calming quality, as if he’s the master of his little universe and there isn’t a thing anyone wants to do to leave it. In fact, it makes me question the sanity of the women under his hands in that place, or any other pair of hands, I suppose. Do they know what they’re doing when they start off, or are they mesmerized into doing something simply because of the attractive men and their strange needs?

  “I still don’t understand why would anyone want to be whipped? Don’t you find that odd?”

  Bree’s head pops up again, this time, actually for the first time today, her face appearing totally focused on my question.

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve been thinking the same. I read that book by K D Ling the other month—The Enchantress—you know the one?” I nod, chastising myself for not getting round to studying the latest bestseller yet. “Her character explains it as a ‘necessary requirement for expulsion’.” I think I’m frowning, although my sense of intrigue at the statement makes me twitch in my seat a little. I’m not sure why my backside’s so interested in the thought. “Now, you know me, it’s not my thing, but when you read the context of the story, she seems to have it spot on. Makes me wonder if there really is something to it, ya know?”

  “Do we know if she’s in the scene? K D, I mean?”

  “Well, Zachary Creed seems friendly with her, and we know he is, or at least he was when I saw him at the Book Bonanza Memphis Signing last year.”

  Zachary Creed is this last year’s newbie on the block, bringing with him an instant bestseller, which launched him to stratospheric heights in the indie world. I know him, vaguely. I even thought about interviewing him for this next book, but we try not to pick each other’s brains about context until we’re closely linked friendship wise, like Bree and I. His book is damn good, though. Gives me an idea he does know what he’s talking about, or he’s done what I’m currently doing and researched hard. Although, in this world, one never really knows. It’s not like any of us have ever seen each other in action. Most of us only know what the others portray, and the social media world is full of people pretending to be into BDSM. Apparent Doms creep out of the woodwork daily. Dick pics, dirty messenger conversations, and of course, the ever loving arseholes who like to skulk around in group conversations, dropping their pearls of wisdom. It’s become a sad state of affairs on most days for me, making me feel incredibly uncomfortable with the whole scene in general and its ability to cajole. It’s difficult enough having a penname of my own as a man. That in itself makes me feel like a fraud. It’s something that tugs heartstrings I’d almost forgotten about, on occasion, making me question the whole set up, but at least I don’t pretend to be a Dom and manipulate women.

  However, regardless of my feelings associated, I am, have become, nothing more than a business lately, and readers flock to this new sense of adventure. It proves the fact that marketing wise it’s a relevant strategy. And who am I to blame anyone who wants a little excitement in their lives? I don’t have that right at all. That is, at the end of the day, what us writers should be writing for, to create passion and engagement, to give someone a new world to play in and enjoy. Something I appear to have lost lately. But what does infuriate me is the fact that this could all be so wrong. It annoys me that these pretend people could be getting the context and situation incorrect, inadvertently misleading readers into believing the scene is something that it’s not. That’s why I’m researching properly. I want to know the reality of what it gives these people. Why they do what they do. Why they need it, or apparently find comfort in it. I mean, why would anyone?

  Chapter 2

  Alana

  F or whatever reason, our conversation on the matter seems to stop as we both drift back off into our stories. I’m not sure what Bree’s currently working on, but I’m in the middle of a passionate but sweet love-making scene. Melany is about to lose her virginity to Gerald, who has been wooing her into the sack for the last few weeks. It’s worked, and she’s about to drop her drawers with little thought to the fact that she
’s not on contraception, but then Gerald is desperate for a family because his own first wife couldn’t have children before she was sadly taken from the planet by way of a car accident. If I’m honest, it’s the same story I’ve written for the last few years with Valerie. Different characters, different circumstances, but basically the same. Everyone wants a happily ever after in romance. It’s the description of the atypical story. Man and woman meet, they fall in love through difficult circumstances, something happens that threatens their wellbeing, and then there’s a happy ending. You can’t write romance without a happy ending. Everyone has to be happy. If they’re not, it’s suspense. Or you can now be deemed dark romance if you want, which allows a little leeway with complete happiness. Valerie’s more Mills and Boon, ready to fly the kite for anyone who wants to feel gooey by the end of the story.

  I’m just finishing up my last line in chapter twenty-two as Blaine Jacobs arrives back in my head again, confusing me with his oh so calm demeanour. He seems so far removed from every other Dom I’ve read to research the genre. Apart from a few, anyway.