Gay Writers and Readers: Dipping My Toes into the Electronic Pool

Ebooks are a bit of a new phenomenon for me. I haven't quite been won over to reading them yet, but I have dabbled in writing them. See, with eBooks I have a little more freedom than with print books, which need to be approximately 60,000 to 70,000 words to make a print run feasible. Ebooks, being electronic, don't have that limitation. Writing an eBook allows me the freedom to bring to the world those stories that may be a little long for a print antho or magazine, but too short to be printed as a book you hold in your hands.

Case in point: my new release from Amber Allure (the GLBT division of Amber Quill Press). It's called FUGUE and it weighs in at a breathless 11,000 words, which means you can read it in one sitting quite easily, provided you don't get distracted. If books were subject to the movie's rating system, it would probably be given an NC-17 or maybe even a triple XXX. It covers bondage, torture, dungeons, whips, chains, hot wax, masks, and a whole lot more. You know, your standard wholesome Disney-type fare.

But is it art?

I like to think that even though the whole story is about sex, it's about a lot more. It's about the places people go in their minds to endure physical pain. It's about why some people are willing to become submissive to the point of letting themselves experience hurt and immobility...and what rewards such an experience can hold.

But mostly, it's about love between two men, and the not always sharply defined lines between master and slave.

I hope you'll give it a read. You can order it here.

To give you a little taste, here's a short excerpt:

...Shackles embrace my ankles, keeping me anchored to the cool, damp floor. This sense of immobility ratchets up the tension and anticipation, and these feelings war within me, causing tingles throughout my body in much the same way as the restraints holding me in place do. I ache for something to happen, yet know I am powerless to bring anything about. Patience is a virtue I have learned, honed in its tutelage now for several years.

Ever since I met my master. That man of mine. The one I love. The seer and deliverer of pain, of pleasure, of love…and discipline.

Waiting. Anticipation pulses like a drug, pounding and surging through my body, binding me more thoroughly than these cuffs, chains and shackles. The air against my naked body is especially cool, its dampness almost like a second presence, like an icy caress. Part of the chill comes from the fact that I am bereft of hair; earlier, he shaved me clean, right down to the hair that sprouts between the cheeks of my ass. He has clamped my nipples, and the bite of the steel hurts and, at the same time, keeps me in a constant state of arousal. My balls hurt as well; he has pulled them low with metal cuffs that twist around the top of the sac, gripping and tugging….a constant, dull ache.

This is true love.

Yet all this dull sensation of pain is but a prelude to the full symphony of hurt that's on its way. I keep my eyes shut tightly; a lazy smile moves across my lips, disappears.

Waiting. Anticipating. Almost overriding the pedestrian ache of my constraints is the roaring of my blood in my ears, the pounding of my heart, the quickening of my breath, all of these racing with each little noise I hear. My mouth is dry with want, with need. I almost ache to shout out into the murky light: "Hurry! Hurry! I almost can't bear you making me wait like this. The anticipation is too much. It's torture even I don't want. Hurry!"

But I don't dare. I keep my own counsel and stay mute. A good slave knows his place, knows when to groan, when to scream, when to whimper, and when to sigh. And now, in this waiting, is not the time.

Behind me, my master busies himself, arranging lashes on a table: cat o' nine tails, bullwhip, riding crop, and even a wooden paddle with holes drilled in its smooth oak surface that transports me back to junior high school. I remember being in seventh grade detention, the paddle whistling through the air, singing through those holes as the gym teacher, Mr. Wright, brought it down hard on my adolescent ass, not knowing that the pain he was delivering was also filling me with the most delicious pleasure, or that my dick was hard and dripping in my jeans. Had he known, would he have continued?

Would it have been a kind of pleasure for him, too? Thinking about such a prospect makes my dick hard even now.

My master comes up to stand behind me, firm touch of his hand on my chest, then moving away. His hands are warm and strong. I am his.

I smell the leather: deep, musky, manscent.

Leather aroma deepens as he pulls my head back and I close my eyes. Leather fills my senses until it's all that exists. My master slides the hood over my face, obliterating this dusky space where we will be together, making me his and his alone.

Darkness...

Order Fugue here.