H.B. Pattskyn's Blog, page 7

BDSM and Role Play (BDSM Blog Hop)

The B in BDSM stands for Bondage and, in this context at least, B is my favorite letter, because for as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by the idea of getting tied up.

No, really, I mean for as far back as I can honestly remember, because it started with this:

Although I was entirely too young to understand why scenarios like these captivated me so much (pun intended!), they always gave me a strange sort of vicarious thrill.  (And yes, I'm dating myself by showing these particular images, but this is honestly where it started.)


There was just something about seeing someone tied up and helpless that appealed to me. I didn't know why or even that it wasn't a mainstream idea--at least not until I was playing superheroes with my friends and they didn't want to tie me up as part of the game.  (Truthfully, I think they were just worried about what their mother would say if she walked in on us.)


So I transferred my bondage fantasies to when I was alone playing with my dolls. Poor Barbie always ended up trussed up with yarn--but funny enough, never at Ken's skillful hands. No, it was always another female doll who tied up poor Barbie. Yeah. Without knowing it, I discovered my bisexuality at an early age, too.   ;-)

The story lines I played out with my dolls weren't terribly complex, but they were pretty consistent: allegedly villainous (but really merely misunderstood) female kidnaps Barbie, holds her hostage, and of course, ties her up (my poor aunt lost more skeins of yarn to my childhood fantasies.)

But here's where the story got interesting. It was only natural for Ken to (eventually) ride to the rescue--but by the time he got there, Barbie didn't want to leave. She'd grown to love (in a non-romantic sort of way--I was only 6 or 8 and didn't have much of a concept of romance) her captor. Barbie had seen the "villain" for someone who was lonely or shunned by the village and only wished for companionship--companionship Barbie was happy to give her. So she invariably sent a dejected Ken packing and stayed with her "mistress."

It doubtless comes as little surprise that one of my all-time favorite fairy tales was (and still is) Beauty and the Beast (and I do not mean the one with singing teacups!) in which a beautiful young girl is given to a hideous beast by her father--because if Dad doesn't hand her over, the beast is going to eat him alive. Of course, Beauty eventually falls in love with her Beast who isn't really a monster after all (in either spirit or appearance). 
In fiction, scenarios where someone is coerced into sex dub con, or dubious consent and for a long time, I thought I was the only person who found those situations (in fiction) to be very, very sexy (in reality, there is nothing sexy about it). Truth is, it's a common fantasy and it doesn't make me a bad person or a weak woman. It actually takes a very strong person to recognize and become comfortable with their submissive side (although that submissive side will manifest differently in different people; dub con fantasies are common but not universal. Some people react very strongly negatively so you should never assume anything.)

Whether you're a woman who enjoys giving up her power or a man who doesn't fit somebody's idea of masculine--or "worse" a man who looks that part of the macho guy but still enjoys giving up your power--it is very difficult to fly in the face of convention. Society tells us men should act a certain way and want certain things. It tells women...well, it tells women a whole mess of contradictory things, but one of them is that we have to be strong and independent, and that being obedient to a man (or another woman for that matter) is a sign of weakness.

And I think that's the appeal of dub con in fiction and in role play. When your partner "forces" you to submit and ties you up, the responsibility for your submission is taken out of your hands. It's liberating. And one of the reasons BDSM provides such a good place to explore our kinkier fantasies is because the guiding principle of BDSM is Safe, Sane and Consensual Play.

Okay, maybe you're scratching your head. Didn't I just say that dub con was all about dubious consent, the kind of thing that would get you arrested in real life? That's the difference between reality and fantasy--and between real life and a BDSM scene. In BDSM, nothing happens without all parties involved consenting to it before hand. For my husband and I, the exchange is short and simple (we've been together for 10 years and known each other for twice as long.) It goes something along the lines of  Him: "are you going to be good tonight, or are you going to fight me?"  Me (mischievous smile), "I don't know, what are you in the mood for?" Since we've spent years discussing and discovering our hard and soft boundaries (which are pretty much identical to one another's) not much else is needed. Obviously, when you first start playing with someone, a whole lot more conversation is going to be necessary to establish the ground rules for your consensual non-consent.

But whether you enjoy role playing (rape-fantasy, naughty school boy/girl, kinky cops and robbers) or a total lifestyle commitment to a D/s (Dominant/submissive) or M/s (Master/slave) relationship, BDSM provides a safe, healthy outlet for some of our "darker" fantasies. (I don't really think they're all that dark, I just think some people are uncomfortable shining a light on them.)

So. In that vein, I have a story called Tentacles and Chain that I'm giving away. It's dub con and it is fantasy--and not just because the main characters are a merman and an octopoid merman (think Ursula from Disney's The Little Mermaid only male, hot, and dominant.)

Tentacles and Chain is a grown-up version of the story I used to tell with my Barbie dolls as a little girl (but with guys because m/m is what I do). There's a dash of BDSM, a little pain play, a sprinkle of romance, and a very happy ending. And just let me say it again, it's fantasy. In real life, stalking is creepy.

So here's the deal:
Starting today, I'll post a chapter a week here on my blog as well as backing it up on Tentacles and Chain. (That way, anyone who misses a chapter can catch up.) I'm also giving away a print copy of Tentacles and Chain at the end of this blog hop (with that awesome cover from Gus Li!)All you have to do for a chance to win is leave a comment below--and make sure I have a way of getting in touch with you. You can DOUBLE your chances of winning by subscribing to my newsletter ; in it (I should have it out this week) you'll find a news-letter-subscriber only contest to win another copy of Tentacles and Chain . What's in my newsletter? About once a month, I send out a brief update on what I've been doing, a book review or two, and a fun recipe (I love to cook!)  Now...I've been slacking, but starting in July, I promise to be regular and on time again. (I also send out occasional special announcements and run news-letter-subscriber-only contests). I'll pick a winner the day after the hop--your book will be in the mail just as soon as I get it back from the printer. (I'll email the winner with details).
Now, don't forget to check out the rest of the authors participating in the hop!

http://www.grace-duncan.com/bdsmbloghop/





Tentacles and Chain Chapter One


Consciousness returned slowly, like haze lifting from the shore. The first thing Trellen became aware of was deep, throbbing pain. The second thing was bone-numbing cold. He opened his eyes—but saw only darkness. Fear tightened in his chest. Either he’d been blinded or sucked into the world Below, a black place where no sunlight penetrated. The place where the Unspeakable Ones lived. Trellen’s pulse hammered harder in his ears. He’d never quite believed the stories about the Unspeakable ones before now. How could such monsters exist when no one had seen them? But no one who had ventured too far below the sunlit waters of the Blu had ever come back, either. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, pulling cold water in through his nose and pushing it out through his gill-slits in an effort to calm his thundering pulse and gather his wits. How had he gotten here?Where is here? He had no idea.  Slowly, fearful of what he might encounter in the dark, Trellen opened his eyes and stretched out his arms. He was lying on something hard and rough, but it wasn’t rock. It was…strange. Like the leviathans from Above. Sometimes he would explore the hulking wrecks, bizarre vessels brought down to the bottom of the Blue by storms that sometimes raged in the Above. The Elders didn’t approve of such explorations. But they don’t approve of much at all.At last his breathing calmed some, though the knot in the pit of his gut remained, and Trellen began to feel his way over the surface of whatever it was he was lying on. He moved carefully, praying his eyes would adjust to the darkness. Please let it only be darkness. If he was blind…. Dearest, Kaia, please….The only thing worse than becoming blind would be becoming so injured or infirmed that he could never swim through sweet blue waters again. Trellen gulped back the lump in his throat and continued creeping forward. He quickly found a wall made of the same material as the floor, jutting up at a forty-five degree angle, and followed along its rough-hewn surface. In short order, he came to another wall and then another, each the same as the last.Definitely like the leviathans. Their innards were made up of sharp-angled rooms, most so small he could barely turn around. Yet Men, to judge by their skeletons (for Trellen had never seen a living man) were only a little smaller than Cetaceans, and only because instead of long beautiful tails, they had two strange appendages that they used for walking upright on land.  Legs.That was it. Rani, one of his teachers, had called them “legs.” She had seen a man once, and described him as a great hairy beast.  “Men are without souls,” she said, “for souls come from Kaia, the Sea, and Men have no love for the Sea. Men would only conquer and tame, taking what is beautiful and making it into something weak by yoking it to their will.”Men were selfish, arrogant brutes. But they were still less frightening than the Dark Things, the Unspeakable Ones who lived Below. When he came to the fourth wall, Trellen stopped short. It wasn’t made of the same strange material, but rather, something else: rough, cold, bars. Trellen had seen such bars, black and corroded by the waters of the Blue, in many of the leviathans he’d explored—but these bars held fast, no matter how hard he pulled on them. Again and again he yanked—then pushed—then pulled again.Finally, Trellen slumped down to the floor of the tiny chamber, defeated. Then he swam up—but didn’t get far. The roof of the chamber wasn’t but a hand-span higher than he was tall. He slumped back to the floor and wrapped his long slender arms around his body, trying to warm it up. Trying to remember. What was the last thing he’d seen before the darkness….?The rocks. He’d been exploring past the reef wall, a massive expanse of jewel-colored coral that separated his colony from the great expanse of the Blue—and therefore the Below, which lay beyond the reach of the Blue’s filtered sunlight. Technically, Trellen was still too young to leave the colony alone, but that hadn’t stopped him yet. Today’s exploration had taken him to the far side of the little island the colony called home, where the seafloor fell at a steep angle into the darkness. There, just at the furtest edge of the shafts of sunlight, he’d spotted a strange rock formation, and curiosity took over.“Curiosity will be the death of you.” Rani’s warning. If she wasn’t scolding him for his insatiable thirst for knowledge, she was chastising him for daydreaming. But Trellen was seventeen turns of age—nearly eighteen. He was tired of sitting hearing about the Blue; he was ready to explore it. He looked around the darkness again—or rather, he turned his head from side to side, trying to imagine what his tiny prison might look like if he could actually see it. Maybe I wasn’t so ready to explore the Blue after all. He remembered swimming toward the rocks, heedless of the growing darkness, and the thrill of discovering that they weren’t rocks at all, but carved statues of strange, hairy Men. Not that Cetaceans didn’t have hair on their heads, but Men had hair everywhere and it fell—if the images Trellen had found on the leviathans were accurate—in long, tight ringlets. Rani said that not only did they have hair on their heads and chins, but also had hair on their arms and chests and legs and everywhere in between. At that moment, Trellen wouldn’t mind a body full of disgusting hair, if it would keep him warm. He pulled his tail up between his arms and leaned his head down on them. He closed his eyes. He’d been so delighted in his discovery of the huge statues that he never saw the danger hiding in the shadows—or at least that’s where it must have been. Something had wrapped around his tail and yanked him down into the darkness. He’d thrashed and pulled and cried out, but it was fast and strong and if anyone heard him, they didn’t arrive soon enough. But chances are no one heard.There were only a few narrow pathways through the reef wall and little reason to guard them or patrol the waters outside the protective barrier. Men rarely ventured close to their island and there hadn’t been a dispute with another colony for as long as anyone could remember. And it wasn’t like anyone knew I was leaving. He’d snuck out like he always did, without telling anyone because after Lucien left, there was no one in the colony who understood him. Luce…. Thoughts of his best friend made his heart ache.  I must have blacked out after that thing grabbed me. Or maybe poisoned. Certain fishes carried poisonous barbs. Maybe Unspeakable Ones had poisonous barbs, too. It was an unsettling thought. Trellen fought back the wave of despair, but it wasn’t long before it overwhelmed him. He wasn’t sure if he should pray for death to come by way of cold and hunger or if he wished for his captor to come and tell him why he’d been brought here. The only thing he knew for sure was that it was no use praying for rescue; even if they had known where to look, no one would come.









Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Under the Sea...

painting by Edmund Dulac for The Little Mermaid, 1911Sorry, no singing mermaids.   :)    (I actually really hate that movie. I'm a huge fan of the original story, the one by Hans Christian Andersen--it's a darker tale with an odd, ill fitting Christian twist at the end that only bugs me because it seems to come a bit out of left field, but maybe that's just me. Or "adult" me, because as a kid, I don't recall ever making the connection or feeling like there was a disconnect between the ending and the rest of the story.) 
By and large, I generally like Disney, but they have had a bad habit of tinkering with stories to make them more palatable to young children. I don't necessarily mind them taking the self-mutilation out of Cinderella (because "ewww!") but The Little Mermaid  is a part of my childhood that I didn't care to see tinkered with. ( Beauty and the Beast  is another one that I didn't care for, even though they didn't actually tweak the story line all that much.) 
But as usual, I digress.
What I wanted to talk about, while gearing up for Grace Duncan's BDSM blog hop (which I'm using as sort of a re-launch for my website, although I've been doing much better at updating, I still haven't gotten out a news letter in ages--that's changing on July 5th, too) is my own under the sea world building.
As I said to both of my (awesome!) beta readers: all of my world building was done on the fly.  Originally, Tentacles and Chain was an exercise in fun, to get me out of the dark places I have to go for Bond: Damaged Goods. I wanted something BDSM-y that was lighter (so naturally I went for dub con, go figure!) But dub con aside, Tentacles and Chain is a fairly light story. Character goals are straight forward and the story focuses only around the two MCs. There's no real antagonist and no major angst in the first draft. (I added in a little to the final draft, but that was because I was finally getting around to world building!)
The_little_Mermaid_by_IljaShapovalov bottle nosed dolphinTraditionally, mermaids are drawn with fish-like tails that have mammalian characteristics. 

That is, mermaid tails are typically scaly (fish-like) with long flowing fins (also fish-like), but that tail fin is  flat or horizontal, like a marine mammal's.  (Compare the mermaid's tail to the dolphin's and the beta fish's).

That's something you probably knew, but may never have thought about.  fish (beta) -- see, scales and pretty finsNow, in today's world of fantasy art, there are all kinds of mer-folk. Some with traditional tails, some with fish tails (one of my favorites is a beautiful koi-mermaid; there are also wonderfully fierce shark-mermaids and mermaids with eel-like tails), and some with octopus...well, not tails so much as tentacles where those tails would be. 
Which gets us back to world building on the fly. 
While some artists render a more dolphin-like tail for their mer-folk (take my friend Shira's Mermen of Ea series with awesome cover art by Anne Cain, for example), I've always preferred scaly tails with long flowing fins.  So when I discussed cover art for Tentacles and Chain with Gus Li, that's exactly what I asked for (and I've seen the rough sketch--Gus has delivered an awesome drawing that is spot on to what I had dancing around in my head!)
However--and this is where the whole world building thing comes into play--I'd already decided to follow Shira's lead when it came to mer-kin sex and model their anatomy after dolphins. (And just let me say, that when you Google "dolphin sex" you learn a whole lot more than you ever wanted to about Flipper!) Because I decided to use dolphins as my guide for mer-kin anatomy, I decided to call my mer-kin  Cetaceans. (Cetacean is the scientific name or classification for dolphins, whales, and their kin.) The fact that my Cetaceans have scales and long flowing fins would just be a case of "artistic license".  I'm not writing a scientific textbook, I'm writing a fantasy, I can take a little liberty, right?
Then I discovered another glitch in my world building. In order for the story to work, my poor kidnapped merman would be underwater for a very, very long time. I'd better give him gills if I didn't want him to drown.
Dolphins and whales are mammals. They do not have gills. They breathe air and while they can hold their breath for a very long time, there's still a limit.
Fortunately, Mother Nature did provide me with an animal that has both gills and lungs, so perhaps I'm not totally out in left field in giving my mer-kin a set of gills to go along with those lungs. (And mostly I wanted them to have lungs because I don't like mermaids without noses. It just looks wrong.)
So: Meet the African Lungfish.  They have primitive lungs and can survive--and even move about--out of water.  
(And there are plenty of artistic images out there of mermen with perfectly normal looking human noses as well as obvious gill slits in either their necks or sides, so again, I'm not totally out in left field here. Or at least, I'm not out in left field by myself, there are lots of other artists to hang with!)
All of this probably means that I should change Cetacean to Icthyian (icthy-being "fish" or some such--I'm not really a scientist or a linguist, but growing up, one of my childhood heroes was ichthyologist Eugene Clark. Yes. I was a bookish child.)  
But...there's always a but. I think I'd rather reserve Icthyian for truly fishy mer-kin, like shark tailed and eel tailed mer. They don't come into play in Tentacles and Chain but that doesn't mean there aren't other stories simmering in the back of my brain that take place under the sea...
Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Transformers: Age of Extinction

Yes. The movie.

And no, this isn't going to be about some slash-fic. I want to actually talk about the fourth installment of the Transformers...WAIT. Don't bail on me just yet. If you give me a moment, I'll explain. 
First, let me say that I wholeheartedly believe that there's no excuse to bash other people's writing or dreams or projects; I would much rather spend time rising up the things that I love than attacking things that I don't. And from an average viewer's perspective, the latest installment of the Transformers movie was pretty good. A little darker than its predecessors, but there were explosions and conflict and lots of darned good acting.
But.
There were a lot of things that bugged me as a writer. And when the critical brain gets going, I think there's something to be learned. Fair warning, the following dissection is nothing but spoilers. If you haven't seen it yet and want to (and if you're a sci-fi junkie like me, you should!) you might want to come back and read this later. 

Let's start at the beginning, with Darcy Tirrel (played by Sophia Myles) wearing a white parka, arriving at an unspecified place in the arctic to discover a dead Dinobot. She goes off on a tangent about how history as we know it about to be re-written.......and then we don't see her again for at least half an hour (I wasn't timing, but it was a rather long time.) And when we do see her again, she's wearing a white suit and shoes (in stark contrast to villain Joshua Joyce--Stanley Tucci, who was brilliant--and his harem four assistants who are all in black, with strangely matching shoes.) Joyce has been working with the CIA and the U.S. Military to hunt down and kill Autobots so that he can learn how they tick. Of course he's telling everyone that they're Decepticons and strangely, no one questions this. 
So back to Tirrel. She rants for a few mintutes about history and evolution and everything as we know it not being what we thought, which gives Joyce the perfect opportunity to let the audience know tell her all about his evil plot plan to save humanity from further alien invasion.  
Tirrel is quickly won over to the cause. Afterwards, she vanishes almost completely (we see her having a brief discussion with Cade Yeager--Mark Wallberg's character--in which Yeager tells her that the head they're watching be cut apart is an Autobot, not a Decipticon, as Tirrel--and the rest of the American population--had been led to believe by Joyce.)
I'll come back to Tirrel in a moment. For now, let's talk about Joshua Joyce. He is a villain. He may not be directly responsible for some of the horrible things his minions are doing, but well, they are his minions. (And man, can Kesley Grammer play a good bad guy! And yeah, technically, Grammer's character is Joyce's partner, but that doesn't absolve Joyce of what he's doing.) But. Let's stick with Joyce, the money and power hungry scientist all-American guy who just wants to protect the human race and will stoop to any means necessary to do so--even slaughtering Autobots (you know, our allies and the good guys) so he can dissect them and make more. (Kind of a commentary on cloning, there were numerous discussions about whether or not we should do something, just because we could. The part about the man-made Transformers not having souls felt a little heavy handed, but whatever. It gives the audience something to chew on along with their popcorn.)
The audience is set up to hate Joshua Joyce from the start. And that is awesome. Tucci is a great actor who played a convincing villain. 
Except that three quarters through the film, he jumps the shark has a total change of heart because he's a scientist, just like Cade Yeager. We know it because Yeager--who has no reason to love the guy, who he doesn't honestly know from Eve's house cat--says so! And now, Joyce is the good guy. He's going to save the city. The planet. He's even going to get the girl.
And Darcy Tirrel finally re-appears to tell him she's proud of him (even though she isn't the girl he's going to get.) 


Okay, folks, that's some bad writing. 
I won't get into the plot holes in Yeager's character, they're just too glaring to deal with. 
I won't even get into Lucas Flannery (played by T.J. Miller) who gets senselessly incinerated for no discernible reason than the writers wanted us to believe that any character could be killed off at any moment. (It didn't work.)
Every character should have a purpose. (And not just as a means to prove what the writers will and won't do.) 
Which reminds me: I almost forgot about the President's laughable Chief of Staff (who's only been on the job for a week and has even less political savvy than I do). He'd got less than ten minutes of screen time, during which he provides no forward motion to the plot or character development for the other characters he's on screen with. He's simply a buffoon. Blessedly, we don't have to watch him bumble around for long. 
Since this was an over-the-top science fiction/action flick, I was okay with cardboard villains. The acting was good, a couple of them had some and hazy vague back story ("I lost people in Chicago"). I can live with that from Hollywood (and seriously, it wasn't like I was going in expecting some sweeping, epic space-opera with Joseph Campbell inspired heroes or anything.)
What I wasn't okay with me (as a writer) is why we got the set up of a potentially great character (Darcy Tirrel) but there was absolutely no follow through (seriously, you could cut her character right out of the film and not loose anything ). Yes, I enjoyed Sophia Myles on screen, but if a character can be cut, cut them . Or develop their plot. Don't just leave them hanging around as eye candy and people for the villain to reveal their plans to (and later tell him she's proud of him--I don't why he should care, and therefore I don't care. See how that works?)
I also don't understand how with just a few words, and in just a few minutes of screen time (and with absolutely no clues, backstory, or foreshadowing ) how anyone is supposed to embrace the prick guy behind the whole "let's kill all the Autobots and steal their technology" as a hero. 
Stuff like that doesn't make sense.  
And that's what I learned at the movies yesterday. 
Feel free to discuss in the comments below! Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Why do I write gay romance?

I think pretty much everyone who writes anything gets asked "why?", but sometimes I feel like women who write gay romance (whether we're straight, bi like me, or lesbian) get asked that more often than anyone else in any other genre. Maybe that's because our genre is so...not exactly new, but it's a brave new world and a lot of people have never met a real life author, let alone who writes gay romance. (News flash: my job isn't all that glamorous!)
I don't mind an honest inquiry about my occupation (because it really isn't something people hear about every day) and I will either give the long version of the story or the sort one, depending on the person, my mood, and the situation. (Short version of the long version: blame Torchwood ! I started penning Torchwood fanfiction and...well...it just sort of spiraled from there.)
But there's a big difference between honest curiosity ("huh, that's interesting, what got you started writing that?") and the nasty hairy eyeball that I blogged about a couple of weeks ago. You know the one. Where someone starts in on the evils of women writing about two men in love. Yeah, that big ball of nasty. 
No. I'm not going to revisit that here.
But.
For anyone who cares, this is why I write gay romance (besides the whole Torchwood thing *G*).
I'm a romantic at heart. I love stories about love. (Okay, lust is good too and can be a great springboard into love.) I love stories about first love and rekindling old flames. I love stories with a deeper meaning (although I also thoroughly enjoy a good "beach read", it's just not the sort of thing I'm typically very good at writing. No matter how hard I try, I almost always end up going into deeper territory).
I love interesting and complex characters with interesting and complex lives because I believe we are all interesting and complex people with interesting and complex lives. I want to write as true to real life as I can. 
I love--no, I require --a happy ending. 
Okay, so happy endings don't always happen in real life, but being a romantic, I absolutely require them in my books. However, my happy endings may not end up with everything neatly tied up in a bow; life is messy. Not everybody is going to come around and embrace the protagonists; family members will walk away. Believe me, just like in real life, my characters are better off without those family members, anyway. Yes, it will hurt sometimes, but there it is: messy. Life. Real. (Even when one of them is a werewolf). 
Above all, I write the characters and situations that speak to my heart and soul. Characters and situations that come from my heart and soul. 
At the moment, those characters are men (some gay, some bi, some just figuring it out) and the situations are...well, they're situations anyone could find themselves in, because my inspiration comes from everywhere, all around me. Something I see when I'm walking the dog or running errands. A story someone relates (yes, there are hazards to being friends with a writer). A news clip. A painting in an art show. Writers are constantly playing "what if...?" in their heads. 
Personally, I consider it either an odd coincidence or just a fluke of the way my Muse speaks to me that my main characters are gay/bi/questioning men and not some conspiracy to fetisize anybody, least of all people I call my friends and colleagues. Because seriously, who thinks like that? 
Your thoughts?Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Being an Introvert

If you're a regular visitor, you probably know that I'm an introvert. It's a good thing for a writer to be; my profession demands that I spend a lot of time in my own head. But it can still be difficult to be an introvert in an extroverted world. Take the image to the left, for example. According to the illustrator, I'm closed off, like a fist clutching something. I'm "less accessible" and "sheltered." The very image of the closed fist leaves most people with a negative impression as the introvert is inherently closed off from contact/friendship. The extrovert on the other hand is an open hand waiting to be grasped; the image is decidedly positive. The extrovert is out going, "more accessible," inherently open to new contact and new friendships. 
Now, I will admit that I do have a hard time making new friends, but it's not because I'm closed off or more interested in my own feelings and thoughts than I am in other people, it's that, like most introverts, I suck at small talk, so starting conversations with strangers is difficult. (For most introverts, small is tedious; I have to think about what to say and quickly run out of ways to discuss the weather. It's much easier for me to talk about things that matter to me, even if the other guy is on the opposite side of the fence. Religion, philosophy, Life...it's all good. But living in an extroverted world, I'm well aware that it is not always socially acceptable to dive right into the deep end of the pool.)
There's this awful idea floating around that introverts are selfish, self-centered, and/or stuck up. (I got called stuck up once in middle school. I was dumbstruck. I have suffered from low self esteem my entire life, and never so badly as when I was a young teen ager. And, if you take into account that introverts are quite often told to stop being so shy or that we'll never succeed if we're not more outgoing, I would wager that a lot of us grow up feeling a certain lack of self worth.)

Introverts are just as likely as the next guy to be selfless to the point of going to a restaurant we hate because it's our companion's favorite place in the whole world--and because we're typically less vocal than our extroverted counterparts, chances are our companion will never know. (Perhaps that's how this idea that we're more interested in our own feelings and thoughts than in other people got started. But take it from an "insider," introverts can be just as nosy, just as interested in gossip, and just as catty as the next guy--you'll just never know it unless you're a close and trusted friend.)
Probably the biggest misconception about introverts is that we're shy (and that we need to be pulled out of our shells or we'll end up miserable and alone--quick fact: trying to pull an introvert out of their shell when they need down time is one of the worst things a well-meaning friend can do!).
When I was little, I got told that I was shy (and that "shy" was Bad) so often that I internalized it. I spent a lot of very miserable years trying to emulate extroverted behavior--and the funniest part of all is that in reality, I am not a shy person. It is absolutely possible to be an introvert without being shy--but because I got told I was shy by the adults in my world, I assumed it was true until I was in my late-thirties.

I'm very comfortable in the spot light (although I dislike being put on the spot, I can usually adapt quickly). I enjoy sitting at a dealer table at a convention and talking to people all day (although at the end of the weekend, I need a lot of downtime where I'm not talking to anyone.) I can stand up in front of a room and give a presentation without breaking out in a cold sweat. And yes, I can even make small talk, though I find it tedious and would much rather talk about "meatier" subjects. And contrary to that first meme, I'm a very open, accessible person. So are a lot of other introverts.

Being an introvert means that I recharge my batteries by being alone. It's probably why my hobbies are solitary activities.

Being an introvert also means that chances are that by the time I make an announcement, I have thought about it for days and researched it to death. It means that I won't talk about my new book or my new story idea until I'm good and ready to. I don't mind if people ask, but don't pressure me into talking about it because I only bounce ideas off of a very few people (and they already know who they are). Unlike my extroverted friends, I don't need to go out and socialize; I enjoy it (usually in small doses), but quiet time is necessary for my mental health. That doesn't make me anti-social, rude, or mean that I'm depressed. Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Tentacle Sex!

Bet that got your attention *smirk*

But no, if you were expecting kinky manga style tentacle sex, I'm sorry to say, I have to disappoint you. I'm talking about aquatic sex. You know, icthyosapien. Merman sex.

Or, more accurately c ephaloman sex.
I guess I should start out by explaining what I mean by cephaloman, because it's my own creation. Or...well, I'm hardly the first person to have dreamed up the idea, it's just the name I came up with to describe the cryptoid in question. 

A cephalopod is anything in the squid/octopus/nautilus family. A cephaloperson (or in the case of my writing, a cephaloman) is basically an octopus-merman (think Ursula from Disney's Little Mermaid, but you know, male and sexy). There are some great illustrations on Deviant Art. I've done some drawings, too--unfortunately, all of my work is boxed up at the moment because we're still trying to get settled into the new house. 

So why am I thinking about tentacle sex? Because I'm a little over 13,000 words into what was supposed to be a short, fun free-read for my website. It's still fun and it's still going to be a free-read, but I think I left "short" in the dust about 8000 words ago!  Tentacles and Chain is essentially PWP (Porn with Plot) and I'll be the first one to admit that it's a little thin on the plot. I probably could fluff it out with some plot if I wanted to (or more accurately, if I wanted to put more plot on the page), but then it wouldn't be quite as much fun. (I needed a break from Palo and Derrik, which is a very plot/angst heavy hurt/comfort BDSM story.) Tentacles and Chain has some BDSM/Kink elements (mostly D/s), a lot of dub-con (in a strictly fantasy setting). There's kind of a fairy tale aspect to it, because we can get away with things in fairy tales that are just plain creepy (and would get you arrested) in real life. 


The plan for Tentacles and Chain is that starting on July 5th, I'll put up a chapter a week here, collect the whole thing on it's own blogger site (accessible from here)--and give away a hard (paperback) copy of it at the end of Grace Duncan's BDSM Blog Hop. So one (or maybe two) lucky readers will get to read the whole thing long before everyone else!

Technically, Tentacles and Chain is BDSM done wrong (that whole dub-con thing), but it's still a fun, kinky romp (a guy with tentacles just has to be kinky as hell and into bondage), so I'm hoping readers will forgive me (or if dub-con isn't your thing, just not read it, because I totally get that dub-con has some nasty connotations for some folks.) 

During the Blog Hop, I'll be talking about BDSM done right, and my own experiences in it (which I touched on couple of weeks ago right here, when I was talking a little bit about Bound: Damaged Goods.)  

So, back to tentacle sex. If you want to learn more about real octopus sex, I recommend this video (brought to us by the same man who does the sad cat diary). 



But fantasy octopus sex--or cephaloman sex--is a different matter, because for it to be even remotely sexy, he really has to have fairly recognizable boy-bits and they had to be more or less where we expect boy bits to be. So instead of a scary beak between his legs...erm tentacles, Mr. Octopus-man has a lovely cock and it functions just like a human male's does--and right behind it, there's an opening...well. You get the idea. (I did bow to Mother Nature and put my merman's anal opening up front, under his cock-slit--basically just like real cetaceans, Mr. Merman has two slits/flaps one for his penis and one for his anal channel. See. I can be tasteful and clinical when I want to be *G*.)

Seriously though, how many people have a job that requires them to think, in detail, about tentacle sex?

I love my job.

I hope you'll stop back by on July 5th for the first chapter of Tentacles and Chain as well as a few words about BDSM, particularly the D/s aspect of it (which is really my favorite part of BDSM) and a chance to win a hard copy of Tentacles and Chain, which by the way, will have a cover drawn by the talented Augusta Li. (I could not possibly be more thrilled that Gus agreed to do the cover for me.)


Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Father's Day musings

I know it's a little late in the day, but I honestly hadn't thought much about Father's Day (except to make sure my husband got his dad a card) much until I saw the cascade of Facebook posts. 
I never met my father. He and my mother divorced when I was less than a year old, although they'd been separated since before I was even born. That's it's own long story. 
When I was little, I had people ask me if I missed my father. Even then I thought it was an odd question. How can you miss someone you've never even met? 
I went through periods when I was angry at him for up and leaving us. As I grew older, I understood why he would want to leave my mother, but why me? What did I do?
Then as I got old enough to hear enough stories and add 2 plus 2, I came to question (as I suspect he did, too) whether or not the man named on my birth certificate was actually my father at all. (Like I said, I understood why he'd leave my mother.) I'm not sure that made what he did right, but I at least stopped being angry at the man whose name appears above the line for "father" on my birth certificate. A few years ago when I divorced my daughter's father, I gave myself a present: a new name. I didn't want his last name, but I didn't want my maiden name (my father's name), either. He may not even be m father, and in any case, I couldn't pick him out of a crowded room, so why should I be stuck with his name?
I chose my great grandmother's maiden (creatively spelled, of course *G*) for my last name, and my grandmother's name for my first name. (She made me promise never to name a daughter after her; she never said I couldn't take her name for myself!)
If you read my Mother's Day Musings, from a few months back, you know already that it was my grandmother who raised me. Sh was mother and father, grandmother and grandfather--but she wasn't alone. She had her sisters, especially her sister Mary and Mary's husband Jesse, my godparents in the Russian Orthodoxy. Her other sister June's husband, Jack, was also a huge influence. He taught me to ride a bike without training wheels and how to roller skate. My Uncle Jesse shared his love of gardening and where other kids might have to sit through grandpa's "fish story", I sat through Jesse's zucchini story, because I swear, that zucchini his father grew when he was a boy got bigger every telling, until by the last time I heard it, it was nearly six feet long!
(I thought of him a couple of years ago when I harvested a monster of a zuke out of my garden; usually I get them when they're small, but this one somehow went unnoticed until it was almost three feet long.) 
I'm grateful to my grandmother and miss every single day, but I'm also grateful to the other  adults who had an impact on my youth, especially my Aunt Mary and Uncle Jesse (who are both gone now, as well). I miss their big garden and their warm house. I miss having coffee with my aunt and sitting with my uncle out in the garden (conversation was nearly impossible, he was deaf as a post but refused to get a hearing aid. My aunt used to tell him to go clean out his ears; he'd snap back without missing a beat that it wasn't his hearing, it was that everyone else talked like they had a mouth full of shit. Yes. He was a rather colorful old man.)  I even miss the insane bickering, her yelling at him in Russian and him yelling back in Spanish, because despite the yelling, they loved each other and it showed in the little things they did. My uncle liked boxing and baseball, and when my daughter was little he called her "chicken". He was from Mexico but had lived here for decades; he introduced my grandmother to her second husband (the only one she didn't divorce). 
I miss my uncle; I would love him to see my daughter all grown up and I wonder what he'd think of our dog (also from Mexico--or at least his breed is). I wish he was around to help with the new house (he was a whiz at electrical work and fixing things); I wish he could have met my husband and my in laws (him and Dad would have gotten along famously--assuming they turned their hearing aids up long enough to talk!) 
Jesse was gruff and some of my friends thought he was a terribly mean old man, but the truth is that he wasn't. He was kind and generous, and  I am very, very lucky to have had him in my life. 
So wherever you are, Happy Father's Day, Uncle Jesse! I'm sure you wouldn't love everything I've done with my life, but I hope I've done a few things that would make you proud. And a few years ago, I pulled this zucchini out of the garden and it was this long.... 

Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Why do we read?

My critique group has recently begun a conversation about YA (Young Adult) Literature--or more specifically, about the adults who read it. This article (Against YA, or how adults who read books "for children" should be embarrassed--and we're not talking Daisy Meadows Rainbow Fairies here, we're talking books marketed for the 13-18 year old set) came up as did this one (How Young Adult Fiction Came of Age).

Now, way back when, when I was in school for library work, I was taught that books like Twilight  and Harry Potter , were considered crossover novels, that is, they appeal to more than one audience. You know, like how some songs end up on the Top Ten for multiple genres, because people just plain like them, regardless of what kind of music they usually listen to. Songs (or books) that have a wide range of appeal. (I was pretty surprised when I discovered that Lady Antebellum was actually a country band. I really don't like country music, but I love everything I've heard from them.) 
The short version of the discussion about YA Lit is that it's essentially "brain candy" and not the sort of serious reading adults should be engaged in. Adults, some people argue, should read literature. What is literature? It's hard to define. Classics like Dickens, Miller, and Melville certainly qualify. In some circles, I'm pretty sure Margaret Atwood would. In other circles, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Anne McCaffrey are definitely classic authors. (I merrily devoured quite a few Pern novels in my youth!) Maybe Douglas Adams counts too. But mostly it's the guys like Miller and Steinbeck and Huxley that most people are referring to when they refer to classic literature. After all, Adams, Bradley, and McCaffrey are/were genre writers and in some circles, genre is a dirty word. 
Harper Master Robinton by Robin Wood
(from McCaffrey's Pern books)
To be honest, I do feel a little shortchanged at times at not having read very many of the great classics when I was in school. (In middle school, my mandatory 7th Grade English Class read To Kill a Mockingbird, and in high school, my elective English Literature Class read A Tale of Two Cities. If I never have to read Dickens again, it won't be too soon.) In college, I read Bridge to Terabithia  in the elective Children's Lit Class (from hell); there were several other classics we were supposed to read, but I dropped out. The prof was a loon. Seriously. A friend who stuck it out said that by mid-terms about half the other students had also abandoned ship for pretty much the same reasons I did. 
But I digress. (You're probably used to that by now *G*)
So. YA Literature: it's not just for kids anymore and is that good or bad? Or, the real question: why do people read in the first place? Or maybe more accurately, why should people read--and what should they read? Is it okay to read only (or at least mostly) "garbage" (defined as "throw-away" fiction, brain candy for a day at the beach), or should we push ourselves harder, expect more of ourselves, and delve into the moldy oldies? Erm. I mean golden oldies. 
Is there something valuable to be gained from the likes Steinbeck and Huxley that cannot be fond anywhere else? Well. Maybe. 
I do think it's good to occasionally read outside your comfort zone (I actually enjoy Flannary O'Connor's short stories quite a lot), and every author is well-advised to read in their own genre (although there's lots to love in m/m!) I still have favorite authors in other genres I'm trying to keep up with--and all of that leaves me very little time to read the books other people insist are "good for me." 
I have made a point to read a couple of classics in my genre because I want to be more aware of where LGBT literature has come from, but when discussing "classics," The Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley (yes, that MZB) rarely comes up. 
In my old age (I'm 45), I feel as if there are only so many hours in the day and there are a lot of books on my to-read list, books I actually want to read. And I don't actually want to read Huxley and Steinbeck.

Should I apologize? 
As always, I'd love to hear what you have to say! 


Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Damaged Goods and Abuse (a continuation)

I was lucky in a lot of ways, in that my last relationship never (quite) escalated to physical abuse (the man I'm married to now has left darker, deeper, and more wonderful bruises! All of course, because I've wanted him to  ;-)  )  But with my ex, there were no bruises. All outsiders saw was a couple who bickered; isn't that normal?
Maybe. Maybe not. I think each person needs to decide for themselves what's healthy bickering and what's an unhealthy dynamic. (Me, I don't care for bickering. Sure my husband and I disagree, occasionally even loudly, but it's rare. Even remodeling an old house together, we haven't had very many fights.) 
However, the kind of abuse I was suffering under my ex did leave scars on my heart. On my soul. Emotional and psychological abuse are very real and are often just as painful as physical abuse. Because of my basic psychological make up, I'm still fairly open and able to trust, but there have been time when my husband has said something that triggered a knee-jerk reaction (because it was similar to something my ex said) that has caused the walls to go up. He's never done it on purpose, but it has had an effect on our marriage. A lesser man might not have had the patience to deal with it. 
One of the things that outsiders (myself included) ask when we see or hear of abusive relationships is "why?" Why would anyone stay with someone who treats them so badly? There is no easy answer, but there are a few that can be summed up in short answer.
Abusive relationships rarely start out that way. Abusers are smart. Or, if not smart, at least manipulative. Even they know that if they want to obtain power over someone (which is what abuse typically boils down to), they need to start out with little things. "I don't like that dress, why not wear this one?" Or "I like your hair down..." and he pulls out the ponytail holder, ever so gently. Then it escalates. Harsh words, harsh tones, implications of helplessness or stupidity. Then tears. And then the make up period, flowers and sweet words to make it all better.
And then the cycle starts all over again.
The cycle of physical abuse works the same way. In the beginning it's perfect. He or she is "the one." Then there's a fight. A slap. Promises. Kisses. Flowers. A period of calm. And then there's another fight, a harder slap. A shove. Tears. Promises. Kisses. Flowers. Pretty soon it starts to feel normal, even safe, because for many of us, it's easier to stay with the devil we know than risk being on our own in a great big world filled with unknown devils. Depending on how we've been raised, we may find being with someone who hits and/or belittles us safer than being unmarried or unattached. 
Thankfully, I wasn't raised to think like that. 
Abusers often go through great lengths to separate us from our friends and family. My ex once told me that I didn't need friends, I had a husband. (This was after a huge fight because I'd spent an afternoon with a friend while he was at work--i.e., it didn't impact my time with him in the least. He was simply angry because I'd been out with a friend. A female friend. MALE friends were out of the question and I lost touch with a lot of good people in the years that we were together). 
All of this is stuff I've had to weave into Palo's background and back story for Bound: Damaged Goods. Stan, Palo's abuser and Dom has it easy; he travels the Renaissance Festival circuit. All he had to do was get Palo to agree to come with him and presto, Palo is hundreds if not thousands of miles away from his friends and family. Isolating him from other rennies (people who work and travel the circuit) wouldn't be too difficult, either. Palo has a stutter (it's pretty bad) and doesn't like to talk to people because of the way they look at him when he does. That makes it easy to follow Stan's rule about not talking to people (which is a classic red flag when it comes to abuse. If your partner doesn't like you talking to people, it's never a good sign.) 
Stan tells Palo about his ex, who left him for another man; he tells Palo how much he loves him and how afraid he is that Palo will leave him too, so Palo forgives his jealousy. And for his part, Palo started out the relationship telling Stan he wanted a strong man to help him define his place in the relationship, so he asked for this right? (Wrong, but when you're in the middle of it, it can be hard to see that.) In some was, I think that makes abuse even more insidious in a BDSM D/s or M/s relationship. Just look at what I went through with my ex. I wanted it. I encouraged it. According to at least a few people in the circle of kinksters he wound up in, I was wrong for denying him his "right" as my Dom to treat me however he wanted. 
Before I close out and head over to the new house to work on the garden, I'd like to share a few links:
Ten Principals for Healthy 24/7  D/s and M/sDomestic Violence and Abuse Signs of Emotional Abuse Abuser TricksPandora's Project (abuse and BDSM)
If you're in an abusive relationship or think someone you know might be, there is help available to you, both locally and nationally. But remember, leaving isn't an event. It's a process. Be patient with yourself (or your friend). You can learn more about getting help HERE .






Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Bound: Damaged Goods, Character Creation, and Abuse in BDSM

I seem to be incapable of writing fluffy, happy romance. Okay, I love (demand of myself) happily ever after, after putting my tortured characters trough hell and back (though I'm still not as viscous as some...*cough* J.P. Barnaby *cough* but you know love her for it!). I also seem incapable of not writing about something other than what I'm writing about. 
It's not really a conscious decision. I don't sit down and thing "what do I want to tackle this time??" I fought Daniel on his HIV status tooth and nail when I was working on Hanging by the Moment. In the end, he won. They always do. (For imaginary people living in a writer's head, characters have an awful lot of power over us!)
So, no, it's not a decision I make. It's an organic part of character creation. I can't speak for other writers, but for me, characters don't spring fully formed from my head, like Zeus giving birth to Athena. It's more of a gradual evolution. A seed gets planted, half of an idea, a hint.
The seed for Damaged Goods was planted years ago, while I was at a drum circle watching some of the dancers, listening to the drums, and generally minding my own damned business. Then up it comes, this viscous plot bunny, and bites me right on the ass. The spark was an image in my head of an outdoor festival (I happened to be at an indoor one), with a big drum circle and a fire pit and drummers and dances. There was a dancer (in my brain) who was in a BDSM relationship with a guy who hadn't gotten the message that BDSM at its core was about safe, sane, consensual fun. This guy gets peeved that his boy keeps dancing near another drummer--who also happens to be into BDSM and who gets what it's all about. Eventually the prick kicks the boy out of his tent and he ends up with the other guy. 
I hadn't written Bound: Forget Me Knot yet, so I had NO idea this second Dom was Derrik Hino. Even after I wrote it, I didn't think it was Derrik. I mean, c'mon, the guy's a prick. (Hey, that's his word, not mine.) 
I shelved the story and moved on--then this last Feb. there was that drum circle and that plot bunny, standing there, tapping its foot waiting for me to get writing. Since I'd come to a point in Andy and Dillon's story where I needed some space (mostly because I'd come to a point in my life where I needed some space), I decided to start pecking away at it. 
Palo came to me closer to fully formed: a younger man (20/21, maybe), sweet, good-hearted, in experienced, who got himself tangled up with the wrong kind of Dom--because as much as I would like to believe that there are no creeps in the BDSM community, I know for a fact that there are. And almost as soon as I'd given birth to Palo, he told me that he wanted Derrik to fix him.
At which point Derrik said there was no way he could do that, what made me think he was in any shape? Did I have any idea ow fucked up he was?
As a matter of fact, I didn't. All I knew about him was that he was Henry's ex and that he was the one who'd thrown the collar at Henry's feet over some kind of argument that brewed too long without being brought out for discussion. I honestly didn't even know what he argument was about. (You can blame Henry for that. He's very closed-mouthed when it comes to stuff that involves other people, stoically taking the blame for things that aren't his fault). 
So Derrik and I sat down and had a little chat (in my head, honest, I'm not that crazy!) and he told me about his past. The title Damaged Goods refers to both Derrik and Palo, because it isn't a story of Derrik fixing Palo, it's a story about the two of them fixing each other, because they're both pretty broken (although if you ask me, Derrik's in far worse shape. Actually, if you ask him, he'll agree.)
But it's Palo who's in the abusive BDSM relationship, which is something I know a little bit about. 
Once upon a time, about 20 years ago, I was involved with a man. We'll call him "the ex". I'd dabbled in a little light bondage before, but I was finally to a point where I wanted to do more than dabble and so the ex. I wanted to go out and meet people, read books, and learn about doing it right. He didn't like to read, and he didn't want anyone telling him what to do. At the time, it didn't occur to me to look online (although this was during the days of the dinosaurs, dial-up, and AOL chatboards.) 
At any rate, he was my Dom--and it was my idea, I'm the one who suggested it--so I did what he said.No books. No munches. Just me and him exploring the things that turned us on.

Romantic, right?
Well. No. Not really. That should have been my first clue that things were going to go south. 
I wanted to try roll playing. He didn't. So we didn't. I did NOT like certain things because they scared me. He did like them--besides, wasn't it fun to be scared? I was perfectly safe, honest. There weren't any bullets in the gun. We were just playing. 
Yes, red flag number two came and went and I barely looked at it. And you know, some people might find guns sexy. I honestly just find them terrifying. Those were some of the hardest scenes to get through--but there were good scenes too, right? (Yes, there were. They were hot and sexy and so what if he liked things I didn't. Being a sub is about doing what your Dom wants.)
Now, my ex and I didn't have a 24/7 arrangement. I'm headstrong and don't want to surrender total authority to someone else in my home. And at the time, I was in a position of leadership in the coven he and were in together. I'll admit, it was weird. In the bedroom I was his sub, in the home I was (supposed to be) his partner, and in the Circle, I was his High Priestess. The problems started when we would be getting ready for ritual and he'd get all Dom-y on me and grab my neck. 
Not hard. 
He wasn't trying to hurt me. He didn't even leave a (physical) mark. 
He was simply reminding me of my place, reminding me that no matter where I went or what I did, I was still his property. I'd said so. I was his sub. It didn't matter that I was about to go and try to be a leader to the eight or so of our friends who had chosen me as their High Priestess (a job that's a combination of mother, psychologist, nurse, best friend, sister, and of course spiritual guide). I was his. I would do what he said, when he said. He would allow me to be a priestess, but only as long as I remembered that I was his sub and treated him accordingly. 
And yes, that should have been yet another red flag, but again, I ignored it. I said to myself that he was as new to this as I was, so it was just an honest mistake. He'd forgotten that I only agreed--only wanted--to be his sub in the bedroom. 
It finally took a very scary moment of what at least comes close to physical abuse for me to wake up and smell the divorce papers. 
He had me tied down (I love being tied down!) and we were fooling around. So far, so good, right? Doing something I enjoy doing, having fun, this is awesome. Until there is a very big, very heavy pillow over my face and it's being pressed down very hard. 
No. He wasn't trying to hurt me. He just liked it rough and violent and well... yeah. When the muffled screams failed to get him to stop, a good swift kick to the kidney did the trick. He tried to explain that it was just a new game, something he wanted to try. I explained that I had NOT consented to this game. 
But he's my Dom. He can do what he wants and this is the game he wants to play.
That was the last time he ever touched me. Within months the marriage had dissolved (and of course it was my fault for not fulfilling my wifely duties in the bedroom.)
Unfortunately, the story has a sad (though not as sad as it could have been) epilogue. 
During the tumultuous months that passed, my ex did go out and get involved with a local BDSM group. So did I, although we were with different groups. (Basically, he told me he'd gotten involved with a group, so when I went looking to meet other people, I picked a different group to be in). 
Because we have a child together (a child I'm glad will never read this!) my ex and I were still in touch with one another. Some conversations were civil, some were awful. But it was one of the better talks that he brought something up to me. He felt it was only right to tell me how wrong I'd been in our relationship and what a rotten sub I was, always trying to Top him from below.  See, he'd talked to a couple of other Doms in his group and they agreed that as his sub, I should have submitted to whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it. That's what being a sub meant. Clearly, this lifestlye was not for me. (Yes, he was a manipulative bastard, but that's beside the point.)
At the time, I was still new enough to come a little unglued. I'd started seeing someone (actually someone I've known for years) and we started exploring the idea of BDSM together (in fact, he was the one who suggested that we join a BDSM group together so I could meet other kinksters). I knew I trusted him, but what if my ex was right? I'd only cracked open a couple of books, I still didn't know much. Maybe...what if...panic....
The guy I'd been dating was at work when the conversation with my ex took place, but but luckily, one of the other Doms in the group we'd been going to had exchanged numbers with us (just the night before, if memory serves) and I called him in a near-blind panic. My heart was pounding, my palms were damp, and I don't know that I was making a whole lot of sense when his sub and partner answered the phone and I asked to please talk to him. 
He talked me down. He told me a few stories about the other group, who as a whole tended (at least at the time) to attract the kinds of people who aren't responsible--not that they're all bad or anything. It's just that they'd created a place where people who don't want to follow the rules (safe, sane, consensual) can go and not have rules to follow. He said in no uncertain terms that I had been completely within my rights as a sub to call an end to a scene that made me uncomfortable. We talked for a long while and he made sure I was okay and that my beau would be home soon and that yes, I would call him as soon as he was.
All of this from a guy who had only met me twice, but understood that my partner was unavailable at the moment and was determined to talk a scared sub off the proverbial ledge. 
Because *that* is what makes a good Dom. That, in fact, is the kind of Dom my characters David, Henry, Lilianna, and to a lesser extent Derrik (once he gets his poop together) are based on. 
My husband (who was my partner at the time) and I ended up dropping out of the group we were in because there are only 24 hours in a day and we had a lot going on, but I still think about that phone call and that Dom in particular from time to time. I also think about that other guy, the one who told my ex that it was okay to do whatever he wanted because he was my Dom and in a D/s relationship, the sub always does what he or she is told, no questions asked. To do anything else is Topping from below and means he/she isn't worthy to be a sub.
And that's what I've based Palo's story on. He's a sweet kid who only wants to make his Dom happy, he just had the bad luck of meeting the wrong guy, the type of guy who exists in real life, because in real life no one group has a monopoly on assholes and abusers--and no one group can weed them out, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. 

Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author