I’m planning to write about a quiet dom. Someone human and even ordinary, whose dominant depths only emerge when the time is right. A man who doesn’t rule a kingdom or a corporation, or make every women puddle with a glance. No arresting appearance to make him stand out in a crowd. A nice guy who picks up milk and bread at the corner, likes kids, and has exactly one tie in his closet for weddings and funerals.
In other words, a character who might be the partner some of us sleep with every night. Could you love the guy in fiction, too? I will paraphrase Jane Austen and say that this may be a new kind of character in bdsm erotica, and dreadfully derogatory to a hero’s dignity, but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own.
No, but seriously; I’m by no means the first. Claire Thomson wrote one in Dream Master. Philip is a nice man who happens to be into d/s play. Our Annabel Joseph has at least one sweet, caretaking dom hero, Brand in Deep in the Woods. Novelists have rung all sorts of changes on the characters and confluences of sub and dom. I took a step in this direction with Anders in As She’s Told, who is not rich and who works with his hands. (Though I did succumb to my thing for tall men by making him six foot six; he stands out in a crowd. And I admit he’s kind of alpha.) Also, I think there’s a whole genre of cowboy lit, with hard-bodied males smelling of sweat and stables. I’m not pretending to be unique here.
In part I’m looking for that moment of discovery. I’d like to make the reader feel the way I did the day I looked past a boy’s nerdy glasses to the wonderful face beneath. I’m looking for reality, too – love amidst bills and hurried vet visits. Love with texture and fibre, salted by daily chores and sudden hands in the night. Who is this familiar stranger in my bed?
How do ordinary people deal with their kinky souls? Can fiction find the joy in that? How do strange sexual urges rise and emerge onto the surface of the murky pond of a relationship?
What do you think?
If you figure it out and write a book with this I'll be the first one to buy it. ^.^
ReplyDeleteI have wondered that myself. And yet, we all know that we have neighbors, family members or friends who are "normal" to the world but way kinky in bed. I am interested to find out how you work that out in a book. I can only think of one example but it doesn't fit all of your qualifications. Lauren Dane's Laid Bare is about Todd and Erin finanlly accepting their kink. It's a great read.
ReplyDeleteThanks you two. Jen, I'll have to look that one up.
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