2008-11-06
I'm rebuilding my websites, as some of you may or may not know and care. It's tedious and boring and caters to my obsessive-compulsive disorder like you wouldn't believe. It also affords me the opportunity to revisit older stories and groan at my mistakes.
Family Enslaved is a reasonably popular story, not so much on SOL where BDSM and incest are just to the left of mainstream appeal, but in general, Family Enslaved has proven itself enduring to sites catering to those particular interests…Makes sense, right?
Originally, it started as a single chapter posted to BDSM.yada-yada, I forget what it's called. The popular BDSM story site, anyway, it was called "Slave Daddy" and basically encompassed what is now chapter one and the first few hundred words of the twisty restaurant scene in chapter two. After a dozen emails and repeated requests for a continuation, rache sat down and cranked out fifteen more chapters over a rather pleasant week in Australia, if we remember correctly. That was not easy, I assure you, because Australia is a lot like Disneyworld. Except more funner. A LOT more funner and finding time to write was exceptionally difficult. Mostly I did it between 5am and 8am with a lot of coffee and aspirins.
Anyway, having just reread and edited the story in its entirety, we're reposting it to SOL and I thought I'd point out some things here. Trivial stuff that nobody cares about. You know.
One thing that I should explain, perhaps needlessly for real scholars of Rachael's work, is that the "Susan" and "Katrina" are the first versions of the "Keri" and "Eve" characters from the story "Secret Way of It" which is part of RBVS. We like to recycle characters a lot, looking for ways to make them better or just different and often times writing one story will lead directly to writing something seemingly unrelated, as it did in this case. Susan is the direct forebear of Keri and it's pretty obvious looking back at them side-by-side. Same thing with Katrina and Eve.
It's more interesting from a writing perspective, I suppose, but some readers could probably appreciate the connection. My own opinion has always been that most of my stories, and characters, are part of a larger, all encompassing storyline. They all inhabit the same universe and so I've never had problems referencing other characters and stories in our writing. Most often such things go unnoticed, but sometimes they're more evident.
Ummmm…We don't write a lot of "serious" BDSM for online publication, although at times it seems like I do. In reality there are only a few rache stories giving the subject a serious treatment. "Of Sand and Pipers" is the obvious one, of course, "Beautiful Purpose" as well and those are largely a true story anyway. I like drawing from my own experiences for such stories. "Family Enslaved" is another, although obviously it's complete fantasy, but we used it as a vehicle for philosophy, as much as anything else. Susan, the narrator, does an awful lot of explaining in the story. There's a ton of exposition about how and why she's doing something.
Much of what she says is subjective, meaning she's expressing opinions and rationale unique to her perspective, but nonetheless, she gives us a lot of information as to motive. Most of what she explains comes from me, which isn't always the case in our fiction, but that's why the writing is much more deliberate and precise in the story. Susan's "thing" is clarity and I have to confess that it's my thing as well. BDSM offers that for me and it was the main theme I wanted to explain through the story.
I'm not a Domme by any stretch, although I do Top for CBT. I'm usually meek and submissive and I like being the bottom. The nice thing is that being a Top or bottom really doesn't change anything, so far as understanding is concerned. I have to know and understand what my Top is doing and why before I can trust him and so I do feel confident taking that perspective for the narration. It also gives me a chance to create my idealized Top, which is fun. The perfect partner.
So that's what I was doing and where the story is coming from. It's over-the-top a little, plot-wise certainly, and the characters are all minor gods living among mortals, but that's the nature of fantasy. The writing is pretty good, very crisp and clean. For whatever reason I seem to slip into a different style when I do BDSM. It's almost clinical and detached emotionally and I struggle to overcome that. It's my need for clarity getting in the way of my intentions to entertain. I find myself worrying more over content and exposition than the story, unfortunately. But even so, it is a good read for people into incestuous BDSM and FemDom especially.
That's all I have to say about it. Look for version 1.1 when it reposts, I just added it to the queue a minute ago, so it should be up in a few hours or by the end of the day, when Lazeez finds time.
Anything else?
No.
Thanks.
