Yesterday marked the end of the Spanked virtual book tour. But! You can now check out all the posts, with video interviews, excerpts, audio, and more with the links below. Thanks to all the bloggers who participated!
Editrix extraordinaire Rachel Kramer Bussell has rounded up twenty brisk and stinging tales that reveal the many sides of spanking, from playful erotic accent to punishing payback for a long ago wrong. Smoothly blended technique tips and how-to hints are a bonus for those looking to enhance their spanking life. Rick Roberts’ lead-off “Spanking You” boldly wanders from the buttocks to belabor the thighs, breasts, and pussy of his eager subject. Alison Tyler’s “Betty Crocker Gone Bad” begins with one of the sexiest garments of all: an apron worn by a woman wearing nothing else, and proceeds through creatively perverse applications of common cooking tools. (Do you know anyone whose kitchen walls display multiple wooden breadboards with hefty handles and whose utensil bins contain an excess number of large wooden spoons? Do they color uncontrollably at the word “spatula”? Ah hah! You’ve found a spanko.) There’s an old-time spanking game in Donna George Storey’s “A Rare Find,” in which coin flips determine who gets it, whether bare, with what, and how hard…
Aforesaid by-the-book chastisement occurs in the volume’s most elegantly literary offering, Shanna Germain’s “Perfect Bound.” A model of Victorian propriety, her erotic bookstore owner dresses like Harriet Marwood and offers a work-for-spanks program to trembling young men who dream of her firm hand raining down upon their virgin nether cheeks: “I can tell by the way they move their eyes toward me, then away, like I’m just another book on the shelf. I’ve seen boys look at porn with the same denial of fervor.” Germain’s droll, witty style harmonizes perfectly with her heroine, who has an unusual fetish for typewriter ribbon (please Google it if this is an unfamiliar term).
“Through a Glass, Sharply” by Elizabeth Coldwell employs equally elegant terse British understatement to an account of a spanking husband and wife who confound stereotypes: she’s a petite femme disciplinarian and he’s her macho testosterone-loaded bad boy. “I know it won’t be too long before he gives me another excuse to have him like this, his bottom rosy and tender from the impact of my slaps.”
I think my discomfort stems from the language on the site – the idea that a woman’s body is made to be spanked, and by “a woman,” it can easily imply “all women.” I don’t believe in or agree with that. I think some of us are predisposed to want to spank and/or be spanked, and in those cases, it makes sense. It’s sexy, arousing. But not because you are doing it because you feel that you “should.” Like this language:
“The only Tool Husbans Have To Keep Wives Undercontrol!”
Ashley Lister: Denise is an archetypical Rachel Kramer Bussel heroine in that she is self-aware and relates the story to the reader with layers of complex introspection that juxtapose cleverly against the physical aspect of the narrative. (I’m thinking archetypical here in the same mould as your unnamed heroine from Doing the Dishes, Best Women’s Erotica 04and Mammoth Best New Erotica 4, and Marianne from Tight Squeeze in Rubber Sex). Why do you place such a strong emphasis on the psychological element of your characters?
Rachel: That’s an interesting question, one I’ve never really pondered before. Well, I think for one thing, dialogue is not my strong suit, so most of my stories are in the first person because that’s the easiest way for me to get inside the characters’ heads, and to tell the story.
But beyond that, I think at a very primal level, it’s the psychology of both my lovers and characters in stories that turns me on. The fastest way to rope me in is to share something truly intimate, and when you do it in a story, I think it creates this bond with the reader. It shows them where the character is coming from and why whatever action is happening turns them on so much. To me one of the greatest things about spanking, as a topic and activity, is there there’s such a vast range of motivations. You could watch, say, two men get spanked by two women. Both have their hands above their head, standing against a wall. Both women use the same black paddle. To an outsider, the scenes look the same, but maybe one is being “punished” by his mistress, and maybe the other has never been spanked before, and is curious. Or maybe he’s usually the top and they’ve decided to switch. You never know, and by telling the story in an engaging way, we can find out.
Over at Daily Bedpost, Em & Lo interviewed me all about spanking, everything from my favorite toys for spanking to punishment and roleplaying and more – check it out:
What would you say is the emotional appeal of spanking?
Gosh…to me, spanking strips away so many of the outer layers of protection I have around my emotional core, in a way that even sex doesn’t always do. When I’m being spanked, I’m so in the moment; all I care about is when the next smack is coming and how it feels and whether I’m doing a “good job” of being a spankee. It’s such a rush and it brings out all my needs to be wanted and praised. And when I’m spanking someone, I’m always just in awe that they’ll let me do that, let me go there; it often gets very heated (in both senses of the word), very fast. For a lot of people, getting spanked is a way to be vulnerable and let go. In my story in Spanked, the protagonist wants to cry during her spanking; I think people cry from being spanked not so much because it hurts per se, but for the same reason people cry sometimes after sex–it’s so powerful their body just needs an outlet.
Over at Matt’s Spanking Blog, he has a post up about wood vs. leather. I honestly don’t get spanked often enough to have made a true comparison, but I like what he has to say:
Both have their purpose. We fantasize about wood, we imagine control, inarguable orders that must be followed. And then we discover that what we want is the idea of control, the image in our mind that never fails us, combined with the caress of our body in slower, persuasive, tailored strokes – the slowly building fire that coaxes our physical responses, that gives us time to react and absorb.
And sometimes we need more – early and after. Sometimes our bodies have to be pushed rudely into matching our mental state, sometimes they have to be controlled and directed. Sometimes we want the lasting undeniable physical memory of deep soreness, of sharp renewed pain. And sometimes we’re too sensitive for that.
Wood reminds us when we move, when we act, when we try to do something. Leather reminds us when we stop, when we relax, when we try to do nothing.
saw someone on youtube spanking themselves using a wooden spoon it looked kinda “fun”-thought I’d try it with a paddle.*Those “smacks” are harder than they sound-my butt was RED –
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