With Keyboard Fandango I aim to show the side of me that is behind the curtain and only my crit partners have seen. The naked me who constantly wrestles with why I write, how I write and dang it all, with the way my brain often explodes with a nasty splatter of blood and flesh against the walls of my room because I have no idea what I’m doing ninety percent of the time.
I crack my whip.
On Prancer, on Rudolph! On to my bloggerating…
Capture Fantasies -- the slippery spiky edge of erotic fiction. How many of you read them? I’ve read enough myself to know that I like them. Some of them have even gravitated into actual rape stories like a recent one by Remittance Girl, called Gaijin, that I was quite stunned by. A brave author tackles rape in a way that turns it into an almost HEA.
This one, and Comfort Food by Kitty Thomas, made me decide to write my own capture fantasy. Thus far I’ve written HEA stories with men who are dominant yet always they are nice guys at heart.
As soon as I set fingers to keyboard the struggle began. In capture fantasies the woman gets dragged off (in some way) by the man. Since I wanted this to be acceptable by the more mainstream ebook publishers, there needed to be a reason for this happening. Why does the man do this? And why does the woman ultimately fall for him?
If the writer doesn’t sort this out we have a big humungous pitfall. So I tapped my foot and put the question to my hero, Sten (this name may be changed to protect the guilty).
Why sir, have you kidnapped and ravished this woman? Need an excuse, sir. Pronto.
The alien/ sex pollen excuse was presented to me. Strange name? Check the wiki entry. http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sex_Pollen
With a weird-ass contortion of the steampunk world of my story, a fragment of a god from another universe has invaded. A god of fantasies, who delights in matching up people’s deepest darkest fantasies. A bit like Puck, only with a dash of evil, for in this world all his restraints have fallen away and he discovers he can do anything he likes. Now all he has to do, to take over the world, is rip open the flaw between the worlds and get the rest of himself to come through.
So, right, I thought, there it is. Brilliant excuse. Kaysana is overcome by a desire to do all sorts of naughty things, including exploring a kink for exuberant exhibitionism and having sex in places like on a rooftop while at the same time her and Sten race to save the world.
The words built up, the story surged along…and pitter patted to a weak little halt. I went back to Sten.
She has an excuse, sure, but what’s yours? Just because she’s temporarily had her inhibitions removed, you take advantage? Not good enough. I tapped my foot again -- I think I have Domme potential somewhere.
Sten decided to contemplate his navel for a while, to sort out his inner demons. I have learned my lesson though. I need my hero to still be nice at heart. I cannot write my main man if he’s got too much evilness hidden somewhere. Remittance Girl has my admiration. Nasty is not my scene right now. My Sten has morphed into a down-to-earth guy who really has reasons of his own for what he does, and boy does he get up to some mischief. I still haven't got him quite right but I at least I got him to fess up a little.
Which leaves me to wonder at how nasty the man can be in a capture fantasy yet still leave the reader happily turning the pages.
Any offers of name alternatives for Sten happily received by this author, as long as they're free of germs, and well, just plain free.