One concern for a writer is writer’s block – that agonizing feeling that you can get starting at the blank screen/page and not being able to think of ideas. All of a sudden you don’t have anything to say. But I knew that really wasn’t what was happening to me this time. I have plenty of things to say and plenty of ideas for stories. But for some reason unknown to me, they wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t bring myself to type or write any of it. It just wouldn’t come out.

Now one thing that occurred to me, which wasn’t the “big” thing, was that I do sometimes fall into a bad habit of not releasing anything I don’t think is special in some way or in worst cases “brilliant”. I’ll get an idea, start to work on it, realize that everyone’s done a similar topic or story, “realize” I don’t have anything special to bring to it, and give up. But then I don’t get the opportunity of expressing myself… my Self. And that, I believe, is the purpose of our lives, to express our own uniqueness out into the world with loving intention. I’m ashamed to say that, when this happens to me, I’m wrongly comparing my expression to others’ expressions and not keeping the channel open.

This time though, there was an additional dimension to my “stuck-ness”, my ambiguous and conflicted feelings about collaboration. I began writing this blog on my own, inspired by Pandora Blake’s blog and other’s that I came across when I first began exploring the Internet for examples of personal experience related to spanking/kink that were also intellectual, creative, and had a humanist, egalitarian point of view. I assumed at the time I began writing this that I would have a small audience of readers who had similar tastes and I never really expected it to grow. It is still “small” but the readership has grown at times, particularly when I’ve posted a “hot” story or personal experience. This happened because the “hot” stories garnered mentions on other higher-readership blogs and the experiences I’ve had were with my Ren. So the increases were both due to working with others.

I know that’s not much of an “aha”, and I really knew all along that working in cooperation, especially in a teamwork framework is a way to effectively magnify everyone’s voices who are involved. And being part of a team or network is very personally satisfying to me. Then came the audio posts like Friday Quai-day, which came from interaction with friends on Twitter, and even evoked a response from Pandora Blake. All this really really raised my cooperation spirit and put me on the path of creating “Quai Franklin Radio”, which is now in the process of being set up.

But then, subconsciously the struggle within me began. It’s a simple conflict between my desire for control and to avoid feelings of rejection, versus my strong desire to work with others in collaboration and within teams. Clearly teamwork is going to be necessary to do what I want to do with “Quai Franklin Radio”. At the basic level, I simply don’t have the time to create enough content – original music, discussions and interviews, topic posts, spanking stories, etc. Not to mention that interviews and discussions obviously require input from others. So basically I’ve made the career and artistic path decision that requires me to go outside of my comfort zone and work with others. It’s exciting and scary. Add to that the fact that Ren and I have decided to merge our various worlds and this is a very heady adventure we’re on. But, dammit, we’re on that adventure now and it makes no sense to turn back.

Life is not a dress rehearsal and my job is to be and express who I am. Success is an arbitrary concept. I’d love to make my living doing these things, but who knows if that’s possible. We’ll see… In any case, that doesn’t matter ultimately to whether I pursue this or not. It is simply who I am.

Now, to work on a proposed story that a couple of my wonderful blogging friends have offered to collaborate with me on…

“Play On“!

Melanie found it surprisingly easy to get her first job as a whipping girl. Tom Hanagan answered her ad on CreativeServices.com, a well-known go-to spot for the super-rich to get their super services and special needs met.

He had been talking with his friend, Buddy, on the golf course about his decision to hire a whipping girl for his daughters. Tom talked about how they had become more and more rebellious lately and he thought he ought to get more strict with them. He really just wanted them to learn a lesson and not actually have to feel the punishment. After all, they were rich, and why have all that money and still have to deal with the consequences of your behavior?

Buddy had agreed with his friend about this approach, but being a “man of the world” he had a word of caution to give about the situation.

“You’ve just got to be sure she’s not one of those masochists,” Buddy had said. “If you really want your daughters to see her suffering, they won’t really see that if your whipping girl is getting her jollies from the pain.”

Tom thought about this for a moment and asked, “Well what am I supposed to do? Just ask her if she’s a masochist?”

“No no no,” Buddy continued. “You can’t do that. She’ll just lie. They know most customers don’t want masochists, so they lie.”

“Okay, then what…” Tom asked.

“Masochism test,” Buddy answered.

Tom considered the idea for 3 more holes before he finally asked Buddy what a masochism test consisted of. He wasn’t sure he liked the answers, but it all seemed plausible, so he made up his mind to act on the information he was given.

A couple of days later, Melanie now found herself tied down to a soft leather padded spanking bench in Tom’s home study. Tom looked on as the professional dominant he hired as a tester, paced slowly back and forth, observing alternately Melanie’s face and once again her bottom. Her bottom already had a rosy blush as a result of some carefully placed spanks.

The brown-skinned, dreadlocked dominant ran a hand across Melanie’s bare back and down to her bikini-clad bottom. When his hand reached her bottom, he began spanking her again, each spank strong enough to cause her to arch her head back and draw deep breaths, which she then blew out in little puffs as if she were blowing out candles. The spanks were just hard enough to make her eyes watery and she began to pout. After about 40 medium, rhythmic strokes, he stopped and rubbed her bottom for a brief moment. It was now a dusky red and Melanie was unconsciously swaying her hips from side to side, as much as the bonds would allow.

The man traced a path with two fingers up one of her inner thighs, to the thin fabric covering the mound of her pussy. He pressed the area and waited a moment. Melanie’s eyes widened and she blinked rapidly as her mouth opened slightly. Shaking his head, he then begin unbuckling his belt and pulled it out through it’s loops.

As he folded the belt he said, “So far I don’t think she’s a masochist. I’m getting know signs of arousal, despite my use of classic spanking techniques. I’m going to try the belt now, because it seems to be such a hot button to press among spankos. If she doesn’t get aroused from this, she’s not in it to get off.”

He drew back the folded belt and whipped it squarely against Melanie’s bottom. She moaned and wiggled her hips with more energy now. The little pout she made formed into a full frown as she felt another stroke of the belt whip into her. “No fair,” she thought. He hadn’t waited til she had fully absorbed the pain of the previous stroke. He was whipping her like it was a punishment. This spanko dominant was giving her a “good old fashioned” style butt whipping. She would be spanked like a delinquent or a workhouse urchin from a previous era.

As typically happened when a woman is whipped with a belt at this certain rate, it’s not enough to get her screaming, but too much for her to resist crying. So she just cries and sometimes begs and sometimes curses. As visible belt-stroke lines appeared on either side of her bikini bottoms, it became clear that she was taking a real belting. Tom thought for a moment about his daughters seeing this, knowing this is what he would do to them if he hadn’t been as soft-hearted as he was. They would have to know he was serious.

Upstairs in Tom’s younger daughter’s room, Becky and Maggie sat looking at their laptops and the feed from the tiny cameras they had planted in their father’s study. These units fit inside the erasers of pencils and they transmitted sound as well. The two realized they were in trouble when they accidentally overheard their father’s phone conversation with this person whom he later referred to as a “whipping girl”. They simply had to “look in” on this first meeting between her and their father. How angry was he at them? As they watched the belting of Melanie and counted past 80 strokes, their mouths began to fall further and further agape. It was quite a frightening and heady experience realizing that this is what their father would have done to them if he had the heart.

“That would hurt so much,” Becky said, not taking her eyes off her screen.

Maggie nodded, watching this severe belt-spanking, and found herself in rare agreement with her sister. “Yeah, it would.”

“Would he really spank us that severely if he could,” Becky asked.

Maggie continued nodding, eyes glued, and said, “Yeah… he would.” She winced, remembering the only spanking her father had given her. He apparently had never thought about when to stop a spanking, and so continued for six or seven minutes. When he had finished with her, she barely had the strength to stand up. And when she did finally stand, all she could do was rub her bottom and look at him in disbelief through wet eyes.

In the study, the dominant put his belt back on while Melanie sobbed and pulled against her bonds. She wanted so much just to rub her bottom, just for a while, but she couldn’t just yet.

He performed the same test as earlier, checking for wetness between her legs. Finding none, he looked suitably impressed.

“She’s not a spanko or a masochist. I gave her more than 120 strokes with the belt. After that many, if she were inclined to be aroused from spanking, she would be by now.”

Tom smiled, “Very well then. Thank you for your help.” He handed the dominant a check and showed him out.

He then turned back to the crying, wiggling girl in the bikini, tied up in his study. “I suppose I have to untie her now,” he thought. He wasn’t sure why he would doubt that it was time to untie her, but he recognized a primal feeling growing within him as he watched her red, striped, scantily clad bottom moving around and trying to work out the pain it was helpless to do anything about.

It’s not that I’m not excited. But maybe I’m a little too excited. I keep thinking “I will be podcasting and webcasting soon” and it feels like home and it feels like embarking on a long voyage at the same time. ‘Home’ because it is my path. I really feel that in my heart. And ‘long voyage’ because I am a fairly shy person and the idea of just being myself and being “on the air” is really a stretch for me, to say the least. I am definitely challenging myself. The few “Friday Quai-day”s that I’ve done have both confirmed the fact that it’s a challenge as well as the fact that this is the kind of thing that I should be doing.

Things I love to do – singing, writing songs, writing fiction (especially spanking fiction), discussing intellectual and creative subjects… things like that. And I used to wonder how could I ever … or even could I ever… combine these things into a career. Running a broadcast ‘network’ with programming variety seems like the very thing, custom-designed for me. Besides, I will need help. And this feeds my need to work as part of a team.

I’ll want/need contributors, correspondents, discussion and interview participants, musicians/composers as well as other podcasters/webcasters. I can’t imagine a more (potentially) fun “team” to work with.

And the more I think about it, the more certain I am that this thing should be mostly listener supported. I don’t like the idea of loading up my site with noisy, indiscriminate ads. I do like the idea of being underwritten or in an affiliate program with ethical content producers (ethical, by my standard – it will be a benevolent dictatorship…). I do like the idea of listeners knowing my honest need for money to support this network and its… ahem… crew. And I like the idea that they can freely give or not give and still get the content. I will sell things for profit, but for those items, that will be clear up front.

I also have come to realize that I don’t want to restrict myself to the spanking/kink world. My recent visit with Ren to the Second Life Florida Sunshine Jam confirmed to me that I do need to be involved with the world of music in general. So I’ve decided that there will be general original music programming as well as music shows by and for kinksters.

Throw some philosophical and political commentary and you basically have more content than I have time to produce. So, again, I do want help.

Pandora, as any good friend would, asked some smart questions that prompted me to look into music licensing. So I did some preliminary research and found out some potentially good news. The licensing schemes that (I believe) I would qualify for with the big three music licensing agencies (ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC), would cost around $300 each or probably under $1000 altogether per year. So this means I am not restricted for the most part in whose music I can feature. This is really good to know. Thanks again, Pandora.

Now I need to focus on contacting other audio content producers and artists like maymay (who produces “Kink Radio” I believe) and others who I’ll try to work out sharing agreements with. But absent that, or until that happens, it’s just me and the occasional Ren most likely.

Anyone want to collaborate?

Aside from the great music I participated in with this group of incredibly talented musicians, I also solidified for myself, my vision of my artistic and career path. I am now more certain than ever, that I  want media, audio in particular, to be my mode of expression going forward. I want to focus more on podcasts and webcasts. For lack of a better way to describe it, I want to be the “NPR or the spanking/kink world” and bring you interviews, discussions, news, commentary, original music, and audio content from other providers/producers. I will still continue to write and post spanking fiction as well. (In fact, I’m considering creating audio versions of the stories.) In any case, I plan to post text versions of many of the main podcasts. I realize there are times when text is more convenient as well as times when audio would be more convenient.

In preparation for moving my artistic career down this path, I’m working on setting up a Skype account under the name “Quai Franklin”. And that leads me into still more deep territory. Adding the name “Franklin” is my way of incorporating my vanilla-world self. ‘Franklin’ is my actual first name. The reason I decided on this new name is because I am merging my vanilla world and my kink world to a great degree. I realized that I also want to provide “interviews, discussions, news, commentary, and original music” in the vanilla world as well. (Striking news, of course. I don’t have that kind of time or that many resources and the scope is way too wide). I do already have two vanilla-world musicians who have agreed to interviews.

So my question becomes, do I need to introduce them to the blog I write or their possible kinky audience? Why would it matter? We’d be there to talk about them and their music and their plans. The common denominator is simply Quai. The people I interview, the discussions I host, the commentary, etc… It’s all just my taste – the things I happen to be interested in.  So the obvious answer, to me, is to establish other blogs that focus on my other areas of interest and to eventually link to them all from a “Quai Franklin” portal website. And I do want them to be under the same umbrella, because, frankly, I want to live my life as honestly as possible. As odd a person as I am, there are bound to be others who appreciate (more or less) my aesthetic and what it is I’m trying to do here. And as Martha Graham would say, “It is not [my] business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions.” And also true, “It is [my] business to keep it [mine] clearly and directly, to keep the channel open“.

This time I’m going to take this wise advice and just do that which interests and excites me – from my ‘channel’. I’m going to produce just the kind of content I like and see what happens.

Now, onto the business of how to make it “work”…

I want to work with you as much (as it can be mutually arranged and be mutually beneficial) in terms of doing interviews, participating in discussions, being a correspondents for news stories, co-authoring, c0-producing, etc. I really want this to be collaborative and fun as much as the hard work it surely will be.

As far as revenue, I’ve decided to take the public radio approach and depend on donations and advertising and possible underwriting by those whom I consider to be “ethical producers” (by my own standard). “Dreams of Spanking” is an excellent example of just such an ethical producer. Pandora Blake and her partners are producing “Fairtrade Spanking” with an emphasis on consent, and gender equality.

In practical terms, this week I’m testing the ways Skype can be utilized and recorded for interviews and discussions, as well as correspondent input. I’m establishing a new account with the name “Quai Franklin” and it will have an “online number” to allow call ins from regular phones. I want to test it out so I’m looking for volunteers to call in and discuss things and help me test the process and get the bugs worked out.

Please send me “show” ideas and topics you’d like to see discussed and people you’d like to see interviewed. What would you like a music program to be like? I get so excited just thinking about the possibilities. How about you?

So tonight as my achy body recovers and I take the last few days of my vacation, I’m in a happy place and feeling like I’m finally doing what I love and just need to work out the small detail of how to make a living from it.

Stay tuned…

Chorus
whipping girl, how do you take so much punishment?
Whipping girl, is this really what you want?
whipping girl, such beautiful suffering
whipping girl, my dreams you will haunt

Verse 1
The seed of a dream came from your punishment
Reflecting on compassionate act
It occurred to you on maybe the twelfth lash
Others might pay you for skin off your back

But how to proceed… what is the next step?
Take out an ad in the Masochist times
Show up at mansions where the screams emerge
Think up a jingle and make sure it rhymes

Chorus

Verse 2
You’d work for a year or three, then retire right
A million point five should work out just fine
Your skeptics back home will see how you turn out
Able to buy all their families combined

Through tears you could see your future unfolding
But many a night unable to sit
As lash follows lash making your cry out
Before you get started will you just quit?

Chorus

Break
Never seen a girl take to the lash like you
Never seen ‘em shed tears the way you do
Chorus

Questions responded to:

“@Freestar_Tammas @QuaiDisciplines OK, topic request for Friday Quai-day (corny!). :9 Pls summarize your growth as a dom in 2011 and goals for growth in 201[2]

“

… and I was asked about an interesting conversation I had as a teenager.

But inevitably someone would use his or her ingenuity and imagination to come up with the idea of an automatic spanking machine. The grownups could strap you in there with your pants down (or dress up if you were a girl) and you could be spanked all day and there’d be nothing you could do about it. Plus we were “smart” enough to know that you couldn’t die from a spanking. As long as they were spanking you and didn’t start trying to “beat you up”, that pain could just go on and on and on and on…

Now I’m still fascinated by the spanking machine, and fascinated by others being fascinated with it as well.

Of course these days there are some videos being produced that feature spanking machines. My favorite producer is http://www.disenomedia1.net/thespankingmachine/index.html . One of my dreams gifts would be to have an all access pass to it. I’ve had some beautiful video adventures there…

I see too, there’s a band and essays and serious attempts at building a better spanking machine . All of this is great, but I’m thinking there’s got to be more to it than our ingenuity and laziness. What is it about spanking machines? What draws you to it? How about long punishments, long spankings, in general?

My Spanking Fever is running high now…

At 12:20 Melanie Bandford saw a clique of women from one of the rich and elitist sororities approaching with evil smiles on their faces. As they got closer, Melanie remembered the prank, she and her sorority sisters had played on them last month. Clearly their presence was no coincidence. They immediately formed a queue and the one who seemed to be leading them reminded them that they were to limit their turns to twenty lashes each.

Melanie tugged at her bonds again, involuntarily seeing a queue of ten women forming, a gleaming look of sadism in their eyes. The first young woman picked up the 2A cane from the group’s leader and immediately began swishing it through the air. She was blond and athletically pretty and seemed to know just what she was doing somehow. She even measured the distance from the tip of the cane to make sure it wouldn’t wrap. Taking a step back, she whipped the cane right across the center of Melanie’s bottom cheeks.

Enough time had passed for Melanie to no longer be accustomed to the pain of caning. This blow was calculated to inflict the most pain possible without breaking the cane or hitting an illegal spot. Melanie threw her head back, wide-eyed and let out a long whine. By the end of this whine a tear had begun to drop down her cheek and her mouth was drawn down again into a frown.

A larger crowd was gathering now that this group of pretty young women was involved in punishing one of her own. There were various reactions to seeing this whipping begin afresh. Several winced in sympathy to the obvious pain she was going through. Some looked evilly gleeful. Some appeared to be aroused, while others seemed to work very hard at disguising their arousal.

The current caner waited until Melanie had almost stopped wriggling her hips in a vain attempt to wriggle some relief from the pain. Melanie turned to face her caner, saying nothing but showing by her pained expression that she was really sorry and with her eyes begging for mercy. None was forthcoming as the young woman whipped in again. Another big tear rolled down Melanie’s blushing cheek.

Her shoulders began to shake with sobs as cane stroke followed cane stroke, deliberately aimed to hurt her as much as the law allowed. It took 8 of those strokes before Melanie was able to put herself back into the head space of accepting that she was being whipped, there was no way to stop it, and it must simply be accepted and lived with. At that point she closed her eyes and let the tears flow.

She cast her mind back to a spanking she had received across the knees of her uncle Tyler when she had told him she had no intention of going to school any more. She was fifteen and strong and stubborn. He had held her down and given her 200 spanks on her short skirt. He never pulled it up, but then again he didn’t have to. The material was thin and he was a strong man. After he’d gone past 100 spanks, Melanie had realized this wasn’t going to be a run of the mill spanking. She knew she was in big trouble. He let her up after 200 punishing spanks. She wiped tears from her face, rubbed her bottom, and again told him she still wasn’t going to school. He had shrugged and pulled her back over his lap for 200 more. Then when that 200 was done, he paused for a moment to shake out his hand. Then he gave her 50 more spanks. The second time she was let up from his lap, she couldn’t talk for a couple of minutes, clearly stunned and uncertain of her next steps. She had rubbed her bottom during those minutes, deciding on what she could take. Then, a third time, she swallowed hard and informed her uncle Tyler that she still wasn’t going to school. He had actually looked somewhat impressed, before pulling her back over his lap for another 300 spanks. This last time, she still cried, but it was mostly from the pain of really wanting relief from being spanked, but knowing that relief is not coming for quite a while. Also, she knew she didn’t have the personal fortitude to talk herself into a forth spanking. At that moment, she could only imagine that receiving more than 750 spanks was just not good for a growing girl. She knew she wouldn’t ‘ask’ for a fourth spanking. She just couldn’t take it.

At this moment, receiving this sadistic caning, Melanie would have gladly traded places with her fifteen-year-old self. But she was also aware that such a trade would not be fair to her younger self. Four years had made quite a difference in her level of self-awareness and self-confidence. Now she could take more, deal with more. She now knew she had a gift for taking whippings and would make the most of it.

The young woman eagerly enjoying caning Melanie, noticed the change in her attitude. Melanie was still crying, but the expression on her face had changed to almost a daring defiance. Melanie looked the woman straight in the eyes as if to say, ‘Yes, this hurts like hell, but you are not about to break me. I don’t break.’

Having reached twenty hard cane strokes, the young woman reluctantly, almost sheepishly stopped caning Melanie and handed the cane to the next woman in line.

Referenced:   http://pandorablake.com/blog/2012/01/audio-qa-fantasies-crying-and-polyamory/

Questions responded to:

Alias982:

“ Your favorite whisky”

“Do you speak another language?”

“ Do you like your spankee to be totally naked, half clothed, just bottom bared…?”

“Do you have a dog?”

“Do you play video games? Which ones”

I gush some about http://dreamsofspanking.com/ and http://dreamsofspanking.com/shop/item/caning-merit-badge :-)