By:
In: Mrs Lion Comments

The past few days have been sort of strange. Lion has been snoozing a lot. I didn’t spank him Friday night because he asked me to put it off another day. Yesterday, we watched TV and snoozed a lot. We ate late and that cut into the evening. I thought about spanking him Saturday since it was punishment day again, but our timing was off. I sank back into my iPad while he snoozed and even after he wasn’t snoozing anymore. I didn’t write a post yesterday. It was just a weird day.

I know Lion is feeling down about his writing. Even if you know it’s incredibly hard to get published, it can be depressing when those offers don’t come rolling in. I don’t know what to do. I’m not an editor. I’m not a creative writing teacher. In my youth, I wanted to be a writer. I doubt I would have ever been as good as Lion is. Maybe what I need to do is go back to “school”, as Lion has in taking courses to learn how to perfect his writing, and learn how to become an editor. Obviously, I’m not changing careers, but it might help him if I can learn to critique him effectively. Right now all I do is tell him I like it or ask dumb questions. It can’t hurt to try.

I don’t know what else is on the agenda for today, but I think we need to spend some time snuggling today. Even if it doesn’t lead to anything else, it will give us some much-needed touching. Maybe it will help Lion feel a little better. I know it won’t magically make him un-depressed. But there’s something about being close to the person who loves you no matter what that feels good even if only for a few minutes.

By:
In: Lion's Journal

April is winding down. We have a slightly different version of April showers here in the Northwest. The song goes, “April showers bring the flowers that bloom in May.” Here, it goes, “April Showers bring the May showers.” We don’t get a lot more rain than other places. It rains about the same here as it does in New York City. The difference is that it comes down harder and faster in New York. Our rain is usually drizzle and mist. It comes down nine months of the year.

Since Mrs. Lion and I are inside kitties, the rain rarely inconveniences us. The dark days sometimes affect our mood—we both like sunshine. My mood has been pretty dark. I’m having a crisis about my ability to write good fiction. I don’t think I’ve found my voice. I’m very close to giving up my attempt to be a novelist. I’m not sure what to do with my time if I do. I like to write, but I can’t see spending the rest of my life writing crap.

This latest crisis of confidence was brought on by faint praise from an editor I consulted to help me shape up my submission package for agents. Her first pass included a lot of helpful comments on how to sharpen my style and corrected some focus errors. After rewriting the book based on the feedback, I resubmitted my work. There were no editorial changes to the sample pages I submitted. I wrote and asked why she was silent. Her reply was, “I think you’ve gotten your opening pages as good as you can.”

There you go. She didn’t say that the pages were good, just good as I can make them. From an objective point of view, I think that means it isn’t good at all. I could write porn. I know that I can write hot sex scenes. There’s a very limited market for that. Also, it isn’t much fun to write. To make matters worse, there is enough free porn on the Internet to make selling anything nearly impossible.

My father used to tell me that I could do anything I set my mind to. My mother used to say that childless couples are the happiest. Dad was wrong. Mom was partially right. Anyway, I can probably learn to write more marketable fiction. It isn’t an art, after all. Writing is a craft. I did my undergrad work in business and, later, computer software. My master’s is in computer science. I haven’t had an English class since high school. It shows.

Maybe writing over a million words on this blog has helped me express myself. It hasn’t taught me how to build characters. I can tell a story, but I don’t seem able to make people love my characters. I think that failing shows up here. People like our reporting but don’t identify with us enough to start a two-way conversation in our comments. Visit Julie’s blog, for example. She almost always gets thirty or forty comments to each post. We usually get none, or on a good day, one.

I think it’s because I’m not a compelling character. If I can’t draw readers to myself, I have no chance of inventing characters they will love. I’m lucky that Mrs. Lion loves me. She must see something that the rest of the world doesn’t.

By:
In: Sex, BDSM

The problem I have with writing a sex blog is that there are times I don’t want to talk about sex. Well, you might say, don’t write a post. You have a point. Lots of bloggers go weeks, even months between posts. Why do I feel compelled to write if I miss just one day? I’ve been asking myself that question for some time. I’m pretty sure that I won’t spoil your day if you don’t wake up to my latest adventure. Let’s face it, there is only so much one can write about male chastity and spanking.

One big topic that Mrs. Lion and I are well qualified to discuss is how to do those things over many years. We are in our ninth year of orgasm control. Mrs. Lion has been spanking me for the better part of two decades. Obviously, we have figured out how to integrate these kinks into our happy marriage. That’s something.

When I started this blog, I hoped that we could give and get advice from other couples. It didn’t take long to learn that our blog isn’t particularly interactive. Some other blogs attract lots of comments and conversations. We don’t. Is it our style? Are we unapproachable? Are the topics we discuss more like magazine articles than interactive forum discussions? I know from our web analysis data that lots of people actually read what we write. They just don’t talk back.

Writing a blog with a large audience is an ego boost. It also puts a lot of pressure on us to keep writing interesting posts. Since we get little feedback, we have to come up with things in a vacuum. Some bloggers use “prompts” to find things to write. A few blogs are actually dedicated to generating these prompts. Nope. I don’t like that at all. I don’t even read blogs written to these prompts. I watch our stats and try to use them to help guide our direction. Mostly, we write about what we are doing and thinking at the moment.

Mrs. Lion and I lead pretty isolated lives. We aren’t very social and we both work from home. Even when we went to our offices, we didn’t make many work friends. I wonder if we would enjoy knowing other couples who share our interests. Before I was with her, I did hang out with people in the local BDSM community. Mrs. Lion didn’t feel comfortable with that crowd. Then we moved west where we don’t know anyone.

If you read our blog regularly, you know that we make our own fun. We are content in our isolation. I suppose there is an area we might welcome prompts: sex and kink. We often run into trouble trying to come up with things to do. We also have trouble deciding what to have for dinner. For a while, we tried Mrs. Lion’s Box O’Fun. It’s a wood box with a collection of slips of paper containing BDSM activities. It worked well while we used it. Mrs. Lion stopped for some reason and never started again. When it comes to sex and play, if we don’t answer the question of what we are going to do, we do nothing.

The Box O’fun was far from perfect. Often, the slip of paper called for an activity one or both of us didn’t want to do. The game didn’t allow for that possibility. I guess we needed an IF NOT, THEN {something else] clause in our program. Usually I was the one who didn’t want to do something from the box. Mrs. Lion refuses to force me to do sexual things. Maybe the IF NOT should be to pick another slip of paper and return the rejected one to the box. Sooner or later, I have to do everything she chose to put into it. I would be postponing the inevitable. That has an interesting flavor.

See? I managed to come up with something after all.

By:
In: Spanking

This morning, Lion thought it was Thursday. He couldn’t figure out how he lost a day. I may have just figured it out. I was supposed to spank him last night. It was punishment day and I waited specifically for that day to do a “just because”/maintenance spanking and I blew it. It’s not like I can’t do it today, but the purpose of doing it yesterday is lost.

I spent much of yesterday with a headache. Tylenol helped. Snoozing a bit after work also helped. Lion was snoozing too. He woke up long enough to ask what to do about dinner and then he was out again. I made the executive decision to make stir fry. I took a shower after dinner and it never even crossed my mind to spank him. We just watched TV like we usually do.

I didn’t have a headache today until my boss’s boss decided to micromanage things. I hate that. And everything has to be done now. Right now. Are you done yet? Yet? Yet? Why not? What’s taking so long? Argh! Keep your nose out of my business. Too bad I can’t swat her like I swat Lion. If I set a timer at all it would be for far longer than ten minutes. I just have to make it another hour or so and I can be done with the week.

Lion is busy working on his book. I’d interrupt him if I wanted to spank him now. I’ll wait until he’s done for the day around 4:30 or so. I can either get him on the way in the shower or out. I think his butt would be more tender afterwards, but he’ll be cold and want to climb in bed. I’ll be nice and whomp him before his shower. At least he can wash off any blood I draw.