Bertram Fox

"Chloe would say I couldn't solve anything by playing at being a Dark Age warrior, but I just did."

The blurb

Hildy Ragnarsdottir, American PhD student, reckons historical re-enactment can go too far. The English Warband has invaded Melchester Castle with swords and spears, and occupied it in protest at its treasures being sold abroad: and their leader Lord Magnus Hereward just forced her into an iron collar and told her she's his slave. She is not going to submit to a man who spanked her into obeying, even if he is smoking hot, courageous and sophisticated. Absolutely not.

The thoughts:

There really is a lot of overlap between re-enactment and BDSM, though alas, I don't know of a real group like the English Warband. But it's a wonderful way to write Gor-style sword-and-slavery adventures in the modern world: so that a hero can take a castle with a band of warriors and brag of it online, make a sortie by helicopter, win a sword battle and save the day by making international phone calls, and have his slavegirls dance at his victory feast, all without magic or science fiction. I will be writing about the English warband again.

"When a horny boy's got a naked girl grovelling at his feet begging to be fucked, and he'd rather say No and watch her suffer, he's a Master."

The blurb:
If you want to know how a short, ugly teenage nerd like me ended up the owner of a gorgeous blonde old enough to be my teacher, who served me devotedly dressed in a steel collar and chains, the first answer is, don't do it the way I did. Kidnapping Cara while my parents were away seemed like a good idea at the time, but it should have got me nowhere but jail. But with help from my online mentor and the Gorean community at TrainHer.Net, Cara and I were able to find our way to love as Master and slave, and to a happy ending... sort of.

The thoughts:
In my first draft the hero was 15, the age I was when I first enjoyed this fantasy. When a publisher pointed out that underage sex doesn't become acceptable by making the child the aggressor, I preserved the massive power imbalance which was important to the mood of the story by making him a victim of achondroplasia (dwarfism,) who's treated as a child even though he's 18, because of his size and because a childhood of illness and medical treatments have left his parents still thinking of him as fragile and immature. I think it made him a deeper character.

The story grew in other ways. I originally wrote it as a present to my teenage self as more or less pure porn, but I couldn't help wanting to get into the characters' heads and make them something more than just a psychopath and his feeble victim, till I ended up writing a romance that begins with the heroine's rape and torture and ends in love. Retroactive consent is politically incorrect, but I'll defend it in terms of literary realism: the mentor character references Patty Hearst and Colleen Stan, and there are plenty of other examples. But if you want your BDSM consensual throughout, this one isn't for you.

"I've had it with boyfriends, I want a slave, and I've picked you."

The blurb:
Marcia Strake, business tycoon, decides that if she wants her perfect man - one who'll obey her in every way, be a conscientious housekeeper and a devoted lover, and incidentally, one she can hurt for fun all she likes - she'll have to train him herself. She takes a homeless young man off the street and sets out to mould him to her needs with the combined skills of a personel expert and an imaginative sadist. But the journey to a caring Mistress and her devoted slave is more complicated and takes her down stranger ways than she ever imagined, and Marcia has to learn as much as the man she names "Toy." Making him utterly devoted to his Mistress was part of the plan, but she can't possibly be falling in love with him.

The thoughts:
In many ways this story is a femdom mirror of "Princess and the Goblin," but the whole dynamic changed with the change of genders. Again, this went through several drafts, and the main thing that was added was changing the characters from porn cartoons to real people with understandable motives and feelings.

"Due to work commitments I am forced to dispose of the slave I have owned and trained for the last four years. 'Toy' is 25 years old, five-seven, white, well developed body, vasectomised and disease-free. Thanks to my training he is an excellent cook, a conscientious housekeeper, a competent secretary, a skilled and patient lover and an enjoyable pain-plaything, and above all totally obedient. He needs a strict owner who will control his life and ensure that he need never think beyond the next order. I am selling him, not giving him away, in recognition of the work I have put into perfecting his slavery, but more importantly so that whoever takes him on will know they have something valuable and worth taking care of."

The blurb:
Four years ago business tycoon Marcia Strake took a homeless layabout off the street, called him "Toy" and set about training him with love and pain into her devoted servant and sex-slave. Now she has to find a new owner for him.

The titled cuckold-fan, the man-hating professional dominatrix, the lesbian fashionista, the rock star, the Russian gangster who won't take No for an answer - everyone wants Toy, but who is the right Mistress for him? And when it comes to the point, can she bear to let him go?