Beyond The Barred Window Website Gets a New Look

Hi folks!  Just a quicky to say that thanks to Madmonkey - who kindly provided me with an example of some HTML / CSS code - my 'Beyond The Barred Window' website (click to visit) now has a smoother running new look sporting stationary title and navigation menu bars.  Basicaly, while you scroll down the page over the content the navigation bar stays in view at all times, simplifying the jump to the next page or where ever.  Take a look and let me know what you think. Also; it's been a while since I've added any new content to the website, but hopefuly I'll be adding to the content over the next couple of days as well.

Victorian Hand Cranked Hard Labour Devices and Industrial School Spanking Machines

Well, well, well!  You would hardly credit it!  This one definitely comes under the heading of 'you couldn't make it up'.  As those of you who know me and who are familiar with the stuff I write about  will already know, nothing quite gets me going like stumbling across evidence of some factual scenario, device or practise, whether historical or contemporaneous, which mirrors or even surpasses the kind of fictional goings-ons that pepper the pages of the books I write (usually from the historical annals of experimental psychology - a particularly rich vein!).  Plausibility in story plotting has been a watchword with me from the outset, when back in 2008 I published INSTITUTIONALISED 1:  BEYOND THE STANDFORD EXPERIMENT and so on the basis of anything which has happened can potentially occur again in some form or other... Well, you get the idea, I'm sure!  Anyway, for the sake of plausibility and research generally - and based on an idea supplied by my graphic artist collaborator and friend, Angela Fox (with whom, as you know, I am planning a comic book / graphic novel type thing - something of a departure for me) - I found myself Googling Victorian hand-cranked hard labour devices (or machines; I can't remember exactly right now)... And guess what i came across?  Yep! That newspaper cutting right there on the left!  As I said; you couldn't make it up (and I just hope somebody else hasn't)- and I just love that sblog archive, and on my website where they are easier to find, including reader's letters scanned from various spanking magazines) I had to share this with you, my loyal followers!   

ort of thing!  So of course, as with all sources of inspiration (and there are loads back in the

But imagine for a moment that industrial school!  In my mind I see not just the ‘bad girls’ but a whole row of young women, all working away bare bottomed at some mindlessly tedious task - and with a spanking always just a press of a button  away!  Or the basis of some unethical aversion therapy experiment or other?  You tell me!  

Meanwhile in the background, and away from the graphic art stuff, I have also started writing a bit more.  Whether this will develop and evolve into a new book or stay as a short piece for 'The Erotic Mind Control Story Archive' (which inspired the piece and towards whose audience it is largely targeted) I don't yet know; I'll keep you posted, as I will the website as and when I next update it (soon, honestly) and my tumblr blog (Google Toynatan Tumblr - because it doesn't really have a title yet).

A Private Asylum Detainee - A View Into a Different Detainee's Life (Or The Dirty Room 1)

My good friend Angela Fox (link over in the right-hand sidebar) and I have embarked on an entirely new set of comic book style images. Once again she has created the 3D artwork within which I have then added the cane, the wall lights, speech bubbles and the main text. And once again the basic framework is loosely inspired by my third book, Institutionalised 3: A Continuum of Discipline (out on LULU and just about everywhere else), or at least the series that volume forms part of and the spirit of that series; even though this set is not so closely aligned to the original story arc as the previous set was.  But that is part of the point of the exercise.  Angela Fox becomes inspired by some part of the tale and creates an image, which in turn (on a good day) triggers a whole fresh set of ideas within your truly’s devious imagination.  It is not my intention to publish the entire set here, as that would give the game away, but you will get to see one or two works in progress and perhaps one or two failed ideas along the way, and all of it, God willing, leading up to some sort of comic book / graphic novel style thing… I do hope so!

A Private Asylum Detainee: The Cane is Raised and Her Bottom Awaits its Tender Mercies

Another of those pics based around original artwork created long ago by Angela Fox (her link can be found over in the right hand sidebar), inspired by certain events depicted in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 3.  As you know (if you follow this blog or have read any of my first three books) the basic story is that of a girl in her late teens who finds herself detained having been fooled and manipulated  by her scheming stepmother and legal guardian - with the aid of a certain less than ethical female clinical psychologist - into volunteering to take part  in a residential psychology experiment as a clinical study candidate - an experiment gone awry to put it mildly!  Just click to enlarge.  By the way; the last picture I posted was all my own - the nurse's dress came from a catalogue scan with its colour shifted to more closely match the uniform dress of the cane-wielding nurse created by Angela Fox.  Talking of whom:  Angela has now created another version of that caning scene featuring our heroine in her straitjacket!  It's just waiting for me to add some final touches and put in the speech bubbles.  Right, that's me down here for now! Now I'm off to The Tollgate for another few pints!  See Ya!

The Private Asylum Detainee: A Girl Awaiting the Caning of a Lifetime

By rights I should be working my way around the Wetherspoons beer festival - and I will be soon.  But I couldn't resist doing a bit more on extending this comic book-style series thingy (click to enlarge) I have been working on of late, this time inspired by the latest image Angela Fox has just kindly sent me.  To set eyes on the latter image, though, you'll probably have to wait to see if Angela and I go through with our threat to create a full-blown graphic novel, and of course whether or not it adheres to the story arc of the INSTITUTIONALISED trilogy or goes somewhere else completely - a decision which is to some extent in your own hands, as I'm always open to fresh story ideas.  I also should be dealing with my extensive backlog of emails and the comments which have been left on that Well Red Weekly ezine article I wrote on nuns in fictional spanking literature, but these are tasks I can tackle from my smartphone while in the various pubs I intend to visit.  As to the latter - I am supposed to be in the West End later , so I'm off out now; first a couple in The Tollgate in Turnpike Lane, then The Coronet (a converted cinama no less, with many original features still in situ) in the Holloway Road and thence to the West End, The Metropole sometime after 5:30 and then the Wetherspoons in Paddington Station and then....   Who knows?  I don't bite, so if you see me, buy me a pint... Oh, and I'd quite like a chat too!  And I'll be in the first of those pubs - The Tollgate - in thirty minutes time (3:15 PM).  Cheers!

The Private Asylum Detainee Arrives - And Wishes She Hadn't! And Your Chance to Meet me For a Beer in Camden

Hi folks!  Not often you hear from me on a Saturday, but I have a few minutes spare - and I am dying to share with you my latest comic book frame.  I'm rather proud of this one.  There is another picture which fits between this image and the one I posted last time, but it is this one I am really pleased with.  And as I said before; it is not my intention to publish every frame from this series here.  Once again it is based on one of those 3D computer art images Angela Fox created for me inspired by INSTITUTIONALISED Volume 3.  This one actually only uses the centre portion of one of those images, perhaps 25 - 30% of the whole.  The idea is that it is the view through a sort of bulkhead-style (think bulkhead lamps or wall lights) porthole set in a steel door and guarded behind an out-curving cage of rusting steel bars. To the basic Angela Fox image I have added the bars of course (actually three sets superimposed), a hexagonal mosaic patterning effect to represent wire-reinforced glass, a lighting effect to help reinforce that 'glassy impression', an orangy colouring to the bars to give the impression of rust and age and no less than three layers of a fish-eye lens effect; all using the photo manipulation programme 'The Gimp'.  As always; click on the pic to enlarge it.  I hope you like it - let me know!  

By the way:  I shall be in Camden Town this coming Wednesday if anyone fancies a pint or ten - I'll be in the 'Hawely Arms' in Hawley Crescent lunchtime around 1 PM and in the Camden Wetherspoons (strictly speaking a LLoyds No 1 Bar) 'The Ice Wharf' on the canal side before that... Cheers!

To set the scene:  Long, rambling and rarely-trod corridors, twisting and turning - gaunt, forbidding and uninviting – have been negotiated.  All have been of the same severe institutional flaking cream and green paint and lime wash, the same inky stencilled slogans repeated over and over on stark stone ceiling beams extolling the virtues of obedience, discipline and compliance; patients warned against talking, staff against laxity and complacency.  The place is like a tangled interwoven tissue of locked and barred security grilles, blind, blocked-off passages and doors leading nowhere yet kept jealously locked anyway.  On arrival the girl had been delivered to the very centre of this maze secured in a wheelchair with her eyes and ears covered - a self-contained spider web demiworld with no apparent way in or out.  She is none the wiser now.

The Victorians built establishments such as this - ‘places of wholesome restraint’ as someone once said - incorporating these deliberately convoluted passageways to bamboozle would be absconders.  She has just been informed there is such a multiplicity of possibilities that it is doubtful she has ever been taken by the same route twice.  She has also just been informed how the place has been made even more cosy and snug since those Victorians abandoned  ship so to speak, how the original stairwell had been discovered bricked up and filled in and how the establishment’s research foundation trust paid to install an elevator in a newly-dug service shaft in the 1960s to provide access – an elevator now sporting one of those numerically encoded keypads; very, VERY secure!  As they arrive at their destination the nurse's last words are still ringing in her ears:  “And talking of 'trusts' and trust funds...  I seem to remember the doctor saying something about having received a document of some kind  from your guardian.  I believe it requires a signature – perhaps we can deal with that once we've ascertained the whereabouts of this 'diary' of yours.”

The Private Asylum Detainee Moves On

Click to View

The comic strip project based on the images created by my friend and collaborator, Angela Fox, inspired by certain scenes within my third novel trundles on. Over Easter, what with the crap weather and all we have been having here in the UK, and with little else to do, I put to use the time in updating all the frames I have created thus far to include the new style speech bubbles I have been playing with.  I have also been playing around with various other ideas and techniques to wrest the most story-telling potential as possible out of the images I have.  The latest result you can view here; but if you look down to my previous posting you'll see I have taken the opportunity to update the image posted there too (spot the difference - you'll need a good memory or access to an archived / downloaded copy).  I plan this particular set to lead up to a certain culmination point and I plan to then put out the entire short series up to that point on the website and / or Deviant Art, possibly along with the various intermediate stages and the little odds and sods I have created to augment the original images for the sake of added interest.  

The main purpose of all this - besides generating interest in the blog, website and the written work produced by Angela Fox and myself, of course - is to garner opinion, suggestions, criticism and feedback generally to help gauge the viability of continuing the project on to a published venture.  I have spoken with Angela Fox herself who has expressed an interest in creating fresh images.  But there is no particular need for the resulting work to be based around any one book of the three books encompassing the INSTITUTIONALISED series.  One possibility is a simplified rearrangement of the entire story arc into the graphic novel or comic strip idiom.  Another possibility might be to illustrate an entirely different tale, although the basic subject matter would need to inhabit a similar whirl if we are not to waste the effort Angela has already put in to various scene depictions.

With all this in mind, while I don't intend publishing a substantial amount of the resulting comic strip-style stuff here (from the present series onwards) I do intend to paste up the occasional intermediate image as a 'taster', and one possibility (suggested by Angela) is that you, the potential readers, should from time to time suggest where the story should go next at various points (and contribute some fresh ideas of your own - I know there are a lot of fertile imaginations out there!  So let's use 'em!).