There's a draft in here...

Except this is a short story, not a big book

This is exciting.  I have a draft, and it's now a revised draft that I'm happy to spread about.

I'm also happy to spread it about freely, because I'm fairly sure I'll be giving it away for free when I come to properly publish it via the proper publishing thing I'm looking at.  First one's always free, and if I can get more than 2 people to download it, I'll count that as a win.

Clicky link here for the revised draft.

It's just shy of 5k in terms of words.  I think that's not too shabby.  You can read it and leave it at that, and I'd really welcome some feedback, mostly on the whole 'doctor' 'Dr' issue that presented itself.

Of course, there's a back-story and a trail of inspiration which might give you a window on how my mind works these things out.  Read on below, with spoilers...

Updates and writing

Excerpt, excerpt, read all about it!

Chapter 10 is well underway, and my genius idea for this chapter is that it's all dialogue.  It's mostly a world-building exercise, with a few hints at a couple of things that are coming.  It's the Supervisor character talking on the phone to various young ladies and various submissives, arranging a month's worth of home visits between the two.  If you're new to the premise of my current work in progress, a good place to start is here.

So yes, the Supervisor's job is to arrange these home visits between young ladies and submissives, which involves a lot of telephone calls, which means I can write the whole thing as dialogue.  By this point in the chapter, the Supervisor character has already spoken to 3 young ladies (one of them twice) and one of her submissives, weaving a complicated web of offers, dates, and callbacks.  This particular excerpt is between her and a female submissive called Melissa who likes to serve as a maid.

Make Good Art

Does this picture really need a caption?

It's been a bad year...

Let me fess up:  I'm in a bad place, and I'm not handling it well.  2016 can officially get to fuck, for so many reasons, and while therapy is going well, it's a regular slot at the start of the week during which my anxieties are poked and prodded.  Current massive crisis detailed below.

This post is pretty much a list of what's going on at the moment for me, and how much of a mess I'm getting myself into.  Also, some vague and misapplied wisdom from Neil Gaiman.  Ready?

New character

Impossibly lovely though she is,
my new character doesn't really
look like this young lady

Chapter 5 is written, but it needs a lot of work.  It's over twice the length of any of the other chapters so far, and while I realize that that shouldn't really be an issue and that chapters length is pretty much anything you want it to be, it is an issue for me, because of the way I do things.  I'm also loath to split it into two chapters, because of the way I'm doing things in this book.  I don't have to do things that way, but that's the way I'm doing it, because of the way I do things.

I won't rework Chapter 5 now, because that way lies madness, so it's time to get excited about introducing a new character in Chapter 6.  I (probably) won't post an in-depth fanfare for all new characters, but this one in particular will hopefully show a bit more about what sort of book I'm writing.

She's also interesting because I know exactly what she looks like.  Read on?  Read on.

Me and my Shadow

My therapist is really good.  I think I've found my problem.  It's brought back a memory of an excellent short story that I read years and years ago by Jeff Noon.  It resonated with me back then, which seems to suggest that the problem that has now been identified has been my problem for a good many years:  I have a shadow.

Full disclosure:  I've had a bad week, and wrote most of this post while at work, for reasons which will become clear.

Writing updates

Not too dissimilar to
the intended cover
picture for my meisterwork

I'm writing, and it's good.

Chapter 3 was hard-going because of the subject matter, then Chapter 4 turned out slightly differently than I had imagined.  Instead of a quick talky bit and the introduction of a new character, it turned out to be rather emotional and romantic.  There was even a fire, and something happened that I didn't plan to happen until halfway through book two.  It just made sense at the time.

This then bumped the new character into Chapter 5, which is well underway, and actually makes my book pass the gender-swapped Bechdel test.  I have more than one male character and they talk to each other about something other than the main female character.

Of course, I still need to pass the actual Bechdel test, but in a book about a society that arranges weekend visits for young, dominant women in the homes of submissives, I'm obviously going to be including a lot of female characters.  Chapter 6 is when we start to meet them, so there's that.  More details on that when I have them, but the writing is certainly going well as of today.

Stay tuned, because after the jump we have a woman wearing leather boots and excerpt from Chapter 5.  Oooo.

I have a page now

I now have an author page on Smashwords.  You should go and have a look at it.

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/lmwilliams

Sadly no books yet, but there's some bumpf about what sort of stories I intend to write.  Also some teasers about a different sort of content, which I remember writing about here.  Time to start a Sissy Party tag for the blog.  I've already got one for the HGS, so...

Interested parties should explore the Smashwords site.  It looks like a good platform.

LMW