Badge of Shame and an Institutional Cane

Hi folks! just a quicky to let you know where I'm at. As you may know; as well as writing the storyline for the new book I am also collaborating with a computer-graphic artist on the production of a suitable series of graphics with which to illustrate said work. Actually, going beyond the scope of the graphic work, our correspondence has been fruitful in other ways; for example in the inspiration I have derived from the interchange of ideas which has actually led to new dimensions opening up in terms of the story-arc. I can't say too much at this stage for fear of giving too much away, but suffice it to say that recently we have been discussing the intriguing subject of non-corporal punishments, inspired largely by a work I have featured before on this blog, namely 'The Female Disciplinary Manual” by one Regina Snow (I hope I have got that right – I am in a pub with out access to my usual sources of reference). Right at this moment I am hard at work on the design for a badge to grace the baggy institutional pyjamas that I have previously described my heroine having been put . Although I have in the past mocked up a sort of faux school uniform badge thing featuring the clasic crossed crook-handled canes and open textbook, both for the uniforms of the girls in the schoolroom unit and for the uniform that Lavinia's aunt used to make her wear before coming to the unit, (you should be able to find this in the blog archive with a little poking about – I can't quite recall the date right at this moment)' I don't have a design suitable for this particular use. It's important to the storyline that any design featurs the hospital's crest (which I have yet to give much thought to – any ideas, folks?) the girl's patient number, the word 'patient', the name of the hospital and the all-important words “secure psychiatric unit”. I downloaded a series of suitable images I can utilise to knock something up before coming out, and having stashed them on a data stick I will be working away on it while downing a couple of pints (who am I kidding? A load of pints). The pics are a couple I came across this morning in my collection while rummaging for inspiration and originated, I think, from Janus magazine...Enjoy.

News, Views and Prison-Bar Blues

Do you remember the exciting news I said I was going to share with you? Well, last week I signed an agreement with an online electronic publisher which should result in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 becoming available in the various ebook formats, including Kindle, iphone, ipad and the rest! In addition it is likely to become more widely distributed and therefore more visible to search engines and thus to potential readers. Regular readers of this blog will be all too familiar with my bemoaning my poor choice of title which has led to the book's existence being well nigh impervious to disclosure by way of the usual array of spanking / discipline / uniform fetish / clinical-institutional bondage and restraint - type keywords. It's far too soon to say any more, but I'll keep you posted. If all goes well, both INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 and the new volume, when I finally get the thing finished, may well follow suite - of course depending on their suitability as judged by the publisher. As for the new volume: it's been gradually evolving from a quick, short piece - designed both to utilise previously written material that wasn't finished in time for inclusion in the first two volumes and to fill in the gaps in the story arc so as to pave the way for volume 3 – to masterwork of near epic proportions. As for the latest on volume 2: Thanks to a little help from Lulu (at last) it has now been assigned one of my block of ten ISBNs and so later today I shall be submitting it for inclusion in Google's Book Search scheme, including all the modifications I have made to it with the aim of so called ‘search engine optimisation. One proviso is that I’ll am apparently going to have to modify the back cover to include the ISBN. If I am going to do that I may take the opportunity to change the background colour to match that of the front cover and spine . I'll see how much work it is going to entail offset against what is a minor cosmetic advantage at best – it all depends on whether I still have the background available as a separate layer.

Now for some other news: I have just added a link to a guy called Doug Adams’ home page in the ‘Useful Resources’ list (see right hand side bar or click on ‘Doug Adams’ home page’, above highlighted in blue – I hope ). Look in the left hand side bar in his index page for a list of content, including articles on all sorts of fetish-related subjects, many of which have relevance - either directly or indirectly – to my present project or at least are potentially inspirational. Scroll to the bottom and you will also find a free image gallery, which again I have found inspirational.

I have also added two new blogs I came across just now while searching for more inspiration for the new volume to the blog list (situated in the right hand side bar, if you're new here). Schoolgirl Spanking Stories does exactly what it says on the tin – click on blog name to visit or check side bar.

The second, Pandora Blake's blog, is written by, and deals with, the star of many short films revolving around our favourite genre – which is my excuse to present a little promo film (moving content no less!) from those master's of the Institutional / prison punishment scene – Bars and Stripes! (See window immediately above, click on arrow to play) I have mentioned their work previously - well before my recent signing to their affiliate program – as they are one of only a few purveyors of such material that regularly feature my all time favourite scenario: The smartly uniformed nurse, ward sister or matron – all tight-belted blue polyester, cambric or cotton and starched white apron - wielding a cane or strap across the defenceless chubby backside of some young female incorrigible miscreant against the backdrop of a secure institution. Enough already – it's getting all too exciting…Bye for now – I have to go close the curtains!

Enforced Weight-Gain / Enforced Price-Hike: Avarice in Publishing and Other Chubby Subjects

Dieting and exercise had been her life - but her stepmother never approved of a career in fashion cat-walk modeling in any case!

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A straight-jacket and a box of chocs! An intriguing little pic I stumbled upon recently that reminded me of a certain section of the new volume that I have part-written - albeit in a fragmented form – and that I have neglected of late. Note to self: Get it finished!!!

The point is; the whole thing - the above text and pic – makes for a nice, if a little diffuse, allegory for the behavior of Lulu (the self-publishing bunch through whom my books are currently distributed). For a long while Lulu charged a flat per download for electronic PDF versions of books. The difference between that fee and the price charged to readers – which the author gets to choose – is the amount the writer receives as a royalty or payment. Fine! It was fine as far as I was concerned even when they upped that fee by around ninety – odd percent a while back. All seemed to have been stable in terms of charges for quite some time; i was happy with my share and did not want to charge my readers any more than absolutely necessary to make it worth my while (which strictly speaking, from a purely economic standpoint it isn't) – which is why I always encourage folk to purchase electronic downloads. As you may or may not know, I have been tweaking volume 2 for some time in preparation for assigning it an ISBN so as to distribute it via Amazon, Waterstones and the like and also to make it available to the Google Book-Search engine. To these ends, to make it more visible to the various search engines (volume 1 is near-on invisible to Amazon's search engine, which by default searches book titles for entered key-words) I have gone in for a little bit of 'search engine optimization' by way of including a rich mix of key words in sentence form (so Google doesn't recognize it as what it is – a list of key words) at the top of each chapter heading page. Having completed that task I had then to replace the existing file on Lulu's site – and all went well on that front. But lo and behold! It now turns out the whole pricing structure has changed (if I had known beforehand I wouldn't have bothered). Not content with collecting their flat fee (which is still levied), the folk at Lulu now want to take a proportion of the 'profit' on top of that fee (a proportion, mind you i.e a percentage!). The long-shot of all this is; in order to receive the same amount per download as before (not a fortune - and neither is there the volume of sales through that channel to offset that fact) I have been forced to increase the price. Not merely by the shortfall though – because Lulu takes a percentage of the profit, their chunk goes up along with any increase one instigates. The long and short of this latter point is that the price-hike is substantial – I now have to price INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 at £4.95 per download or £9.95 per print copy. This goes against all my principles and further more compromises the original intentions I had when I set out writing (largely for my own amusement but also to fill a hole in the genre). INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 remains the same price (and hopefully always will) and in addition I hope to have some exciting news regarding volume 1 next time (I'd hoped to have space to tell you this time, but I got side-tracked).

Two New Blogs, a Couple of Changes and Some News and Views

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Institutional and Domestic Discipline: An Illustrative Collaboration

Hands up who would like to see an illustrated version of the new volume when it appears. Over the last couple weeks or so I have been developing a collaborative project with a guy from across the pond who works with 3-D rendering - and who is on a similar wavelength, to boot - with an eye to doing just that. Actually you have met him and his work before in the blog entry dated the 17th April 2010 entitled Another Day, Another Barred Window (click to view) under the name of ‘Snoozz’. It's still early days in the creative process yet, but it's an exciting concept I'm sure you will agree - even so I thought it would be interesting to garner opinion; so let me know what you think! It is ‘Snoozz’ we have to thank for today's pictorial offering (above left). Although representing just one scene, in what is a fairly complex storyline, I feel that it really embodies that all-important sense of oppression and the feeling that here is a buried, private and secluded little world outside the reach of conventional society and beyond the control of meddling ethics committees, busybody social workers and the rest. Quite wonderful! To see more of this guy's work click here.

While on the subject of illustration: the pic on the bottom right is something I pinched from a site I am affiliated to (see bottom of page) and that I think illustrates beautifully a scene I've been working on for the new volume which harks back to an earlier period when one of our characters, prior to being brought to the clinic, had first gone to live with her aunt - a strict, overbearing ex psychiatric nurse who begins to dominate her from day one.

Actually, now that I come to think about it; an opinion poll is something I have yet to do. I've never really been that excited about the idea, simply because there have been so many others carried out in the past on the various other websites, blogs and forums etc that populate the spanking world. Nevertheless it would be interesting to know, for example, which implements my readership prefer to imagine used, what types of scenario are favoured or which fetishes people think might work within the story arc of the series or would like to see included in some manner. At the end of the day this blog has never been entirely about spanking nor is it purely about BDSM in the conventional sense. With that in mind, perhaps a poll or questionnaire could work, if it were presented in a new non-stereotypical way and the questions were structured in such a way as to reflect both the spirit of the books and gain inspiration while stimulating the imagination of the participants.

Towards the end of last week I managed to acquire a chest infection - well to make matters worse while away this past weekend it developed into some sort of full-blown chest complaint, making it difficult to breathe. I have asthma and to be honest it is quite common for a simple cold to develop into a breathing problem - sometimes a sneeze will set off on asthma attack; which is fine if I have an inhaler to hand, which quickly sorts it out. On other occasions - and this looks to be one of them - a secondary infection sets in a whole thing becomes problematic until I can get my hands on some antibiotics. Those of you who regularly followed my ramblings will already know that I rely to a great extent on voice recognition software to dictate my work into the computer as I am as dyslexic as hell, easily distracted and incredibly slow at typing (not in any particular order of importance). Well, in addition to making me nauseous, I'm sure you can imagine how fits of uncontrollable coughing not to mention a blocked nose and wheezing can play havoc with voice dictation software - all sorts of gobbledygook results unless I quickly turn off microphone. To make matters worse the wheezing and blocked nose, together, seem to have affected the character of my voice so that more than ever this perverse little software package seems to be deliberately working against me - and I've often thought that it deliberately misunderstands me in any case… this computer hates me, I am sure of it! Bye for now!

How Might She Punish Herself: A Random Thought for the Day

A random thought brought about by working on the new book and through an email correspondence: The idea of the victim having to train their tormentor is potentially interesting in the extreme. In a way this could be a secondary matter - for example; if through some weakness of will our young heroine might allow her tormentor some sort of insight into her subconscious that might then in turn be used against her to extract yet more information. Then again, consider this: How about a trainee nurse been placed in charge of our suffering young woman, who in turn has been instructed by her nemesis - the young woman psychiatrist under who’s strict disciplinary ‘care’ she bristles – that she must lead the nurse, step-by-step, through some humiliating procedure being carried out on her person. The trainee nurse will then be tested and any failure in her knowledge paid for by several strokes of the cane – but not laid across the nurse’s backside, but rather across our hapless patient’s bottom.

Then again, perhaps the caning might even be carried out by the trainee nurse herself - the patient having to explain exactly how she should be caned, the number of strokes the doctor would expect to see awarded under those particular circumstances - that sort of thing – and all under threat of yet more punishment to come should the trainee nurse then not carry out the caning to the doctor's satisfaction.

Actually this point is quite interesting in itself as it might well be used as a lever by the doctor to overcome any reluctance on the trainee nurse's part to inflict a sufficiently severe caning. After all is said and done; should the trainee feel any sympathy for the patient - and alter in any way the procedure dictated for the punishment - then ironically all she will have succeeded in doing is to earn the subject of her sympathy an even more severe, repeated punishment. What do you folks think? Hmmm?

A Little Reiterated Reassurance

What with all the discussion recently about padded cells, baggy institutional pyjamas, nappies, plastic pants and psychological punishment in various forms, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to reiterate something that I wrote a few moments ago as a comment on an earlier post. I'm quite keen to avoid the impression that the new book - and even the previous two volumes - is purely focused on various forms of institutional incarceration; there is plenty dealing with domestic discipline also. This is particularly the case in the new volume I am working on, wherein we gain insight into one of the character's previous life under the domination of her aunt - a woman who believed in strict discipline, petty rules and restrictions…and in the imposition of a strict and restrictive uniform for her charge as an aid to her achieving those aims. We learn more too of the subtle forms of psychological manipulation the woman - along with her psychotherapist acquaintance - employed in bringing the girl under her control. But then again, perhaps that is obvious from what I wrote a couple of postings ago.

What I'm really keen to avoid - when it comes down to it - is giving the impression that we're talking about hardcore BDSM here. In many ways nothing could be further from the truth. One thing I set out to avoid at the outset is an over-emphasis on ever escalating, ever more sadistic, corporal punishment - you know, the type of thing one sometimes reads in other novels of the genre, notably - but not restricted to - Victor Bruno et al: 100 strokes of the cane followed by smelling salts and the continuation of the vicious beating, copiously bleeding buttocks, that type of thing. By now: I have to nip off and do a couple of chores - all the way out in darkest Epping - and I have an important e-mail to deal with first.