Category Archives: Switch

Olivia Finds Her Hot Button

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[This is the fourth excerpt from my work-in-progress novel, tentatively titled Switch. Before continuing, you may want to go back and see the earlier excerpts at In Which We Meet Olivia and Say Goodbye to Paul, Second Chances, and Second Chances (continued). After a disastrous attempt at figuring out if she’s into kinkier things with an ex-boyfriend, Olivia visits a local club that offers lessons. There she meets one of the instructors and is more than intrigued by the contrast he offers to her ex, but his calm detachment and polite refusal of her advances confuses her. In this scene, she has returned to the club for a second visit and decided to join, only to find a class has just finished (always a day late, that’s our Olivia).]

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Nicholas noticed me looking around and leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Would you like to see some of what we were doing in class?”

Again, my heart caught in my throat. What had they been doing in class? Something about rope-work. Well, my imagination could run wild with that. Obviously somebody was getting tied up, or tied down, or something.

“Yes, please.”

He waited. I just looked at him quizzically. Finally, he said, “Yes, please,…?”

I was thoroughly confused, and that must have shown on my face. He relented and said “Yes, please, Sir.”

Oh.

Right. That. I had so much to learn.

He was still looking at me expectantly.

“Yes, please, Sir,” I said.

He grinned. “I think that’s another five swats added to your punishment, wouldn’t you agree?”

Ok, now we were talking! He could take me from aggravated to confused to relieved to absolutely drop-dead hot in a matter of moments.

“My my, little Olivia, I do think we’ve found a hot button for you. Do you even realize how much your whole demeanor changed when I mentioned swatting you and punishment?”

Was my heart ever going to slow down to a normal pace again? He leaned down close and whispered in my ear, “I’m going to spank you.”

I’m fairly sure I squeaked.

Switch: Second Chances (continued)

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[This is the third excerpt from Switch. If you haven’t been following along, I recommend reading the earlier segments: In Which We Meet Olivia and Say Goodbye to Paul and Second Chances.]

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Paul still looked a little uncertain, but he didn’t think about it too long. He started pulling off his shirt, perhaps a little too eagerly, as he got himself stuck with his arms bound up in it behind his back. For a moment I thought of keeping him there, like that, and I had a brief frisson of excitement race through me, from a point between my breasts right down between my legs. The moment passed, however, and I just giggled a bit, turning away and climbing up onto the bed. I reached over to the nightstand and pulled out the handcuffs.

Paul’s eyes fairly goggled when he saw them, and he stopped in his tracks.

“Um, what’s up with those?”

I grinned over my shoulder at him as I threaded them through the slats in the headboard.

“An idea I had. Come on.”

He seemed really uncertain about it all, as I put first one wrist in a cuff, snapping it closed, and then my other. When that second one clicked into place, it passed quickly through my mind, What the hell am I doing? I didn’t let that stop me, however. Facing him again over my shoulder, my upturned ass in the air as I kneeled on the bed, resting my elbows on the pillows, I smiled, not at all as sure of myself as I tried to sound.

“I want you to spank me.”

Poor Paul. Now he really had that deer in headlights look, his shirt hanging from one wrist, his fly unzipped, standing there in shock.

“Spank you?”

“Yes, that’s right, I want you to spank me. I told you I wanted to try something different. Come on, it’ll be fun. Anyway, it’s an experiment.”

“I don’t know, Olivia. I mean, what if I hurt you? Are you sure about this?”

I heaved an exasperated sigh.

“Paul, get your ass up here on this bed, and spank me!”

His eyes grew even wider, if that were possible, but he finally got himself fully untangled from his shirt, kicked off his shoes and, still wearing his half-unzipped pants, climbed up onto the bed behind me. I wiggled my bare derriere at him and giggled again, although inside my heart was pounding something fierce and I could feel the heat of a blush spreading across my face and chest. I tugged on the cuffs experimentally, and yes, they held, very securely.

He put a hand on one of my butt-cheeks, and I liked that, so I wiggled again to encourage him.

“What are the handcuffs for? And when did you get those? Did you have those before?”

“I just got them, and I don’t know, it’s just an idea I had. I thought it’d be fun. Now come on, get busy!”

He lifted his hand, hovered over me with it for a moment, then sort of softly whacked me.

“Harder!”

He smacked me again, very slightly harder this time, but still very tentative.

“Did that hurt? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Paul, I’m not a baby, and you barely tapped me. It’s supposed to sting a little, isn’t it? It’s a spanking. Come on, spank me harder.”

“Can’t we just make love like normal?”

I sighed. So far, this experiment was a bust.

“Paul, please, can we just try it?”

He hit me one more time, no harder than before. Nothing. I was not aroused. I wasn’t turned on. This wasn’t working for me.

“I’m sorry, Olivia, I just don’t know. I don’t think this is right.”

He climbed off the bed and stood there, looking at me. Obviously it wasn’t working for him, either. He zipped up his fly, stepped into his shoes, and picked up his shirt.

“I don’t think I can do this, Olivia. I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go.”

I stared open-mouthed at him in shock.

“Go? Now?”

“Yeah. Maybe you were right the other night at dinner. I mean about us not being right for each other. Anyway, see you around, perhaps, ok?”

And with that, he walked out of the room.

“Paul!”

I heard the front door shut behind him as he left the apartment.

“Paul, dammit!”

I rattled the cuffs. I looked over at the nightstand, at the closed top drawer. The drawer I’d gotten them from. The drawer where the key sat.

Now what the hell was I going to do?

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Second Chances

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That evening, Paul arrived, flowers in hand, scrubbed and clean. Clearly he was going the extra mile. I told you he was a nice guy.

I met him at the door to my apartment, and as we stood there in the doorway awkwardly, I had a serious moment of doubt. What was he going to think of me? Oh well, he was here now, so I had better at least let him in. Maybe I could just pour some wine and drop the whole idea, just spend a relaxing evening, watching a movie or something.

No, that wasn’t going to work. The basic problem still existed, still needed to be solved, and besides, I had dumped this guy once already. Either we tried something different or the whole exercise was pointless. Going on as we did before was not an option for me.

Well, the wine was still a good idea. I was pretty nervous.

“Hi.”

He smiled broadly. “Hi. I, um, brought you these.” He handed me the flowers. I smiled and opened the door wider, ushering him into the living room of my tiny Queen Anne apartment. I nodded over at the bottle on the dining table.

“Pour us each a glass while I get these into some water.”

I pulled a vase out of a kitchen cabinet, filled it with water, cut the ends of the stems, and put the flowers into the vase. When I turned around, Paul had gotten the cork out of the pinot noir and was just pouring the second glass.

“We should let these breathe a little first,” he said.

I picked up one of the glasses and took a healthy swig. Paul just looked at me.

“What? The rest of it will breathe. I needed that now.”

“Are you ok, Olivia?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, you just seem a little edgy.”

I took a second drink from my glass and looked him in the eye. How the hell was I supposed to do this? Well, only one way to find out if it was going to work.

“Come with me,” I said, then pointed at the bottle. “And bring that.”

Paul picked up the bottle and followed me into the bedroom. Now he was drinking from his glass, too.

“Um, Olivia? Are we even going to talk about, you know, the other night?”

I couldn’t quite meet his eye, so I just started unbuttoning my blouse. His eyes went wide and he opened his mouth but no further words came out. Having sort of thought this through earlier, although whatever plan I’d had was already shot to hell, I wasn’t wearing a bra. When I got the last button undone, I hesitated a moment, though why was beyond me. I mean, it wasn’t like we hadn’t already done it. He had definitely seen me naked before. Why was I so nervous now?

Before I could back out of it, I pulled the blouse open wide and slipped it off my shoulders. Paul’s gaze was firmly on my breasts now, the wine bottle in one hand and glass in the other all but forgotten. I blushed again, the heat spreading across the tops of my breasts, up my neck and onto my face, but I don’t think he even noticed. Moving quickly, nothing especially seductive about it, I shimmied out of my skirt and tugged my panties down. I stepped out of my heels, which frankly I had only put on for greeting him — I don’t usually bother wearing shoes inside the apartment — and stood there before him, naked as the day I was born, blushing even brighter red.

He didn’t say anything. His mouth was still open, and I wasn’t sure if he was shocked or excited. He was definitely surprised. I reached for my glass again and finished it off, then took the bottle from him, refilled my glass, and set the bottle on the nightstand.

“Well?” I said. “Are you just going to stand there?”

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And So It Begins

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Thus is our heroine launched into her journey of self-discovery, unsure of what she is looking for, only knowing that she hasn’t been finding it. Yesterday’s post shows the opening lines of the first draft, a novel with a working title of Switch. That title is certain to change at this point, so we may just as well call it Olivia’s Story. Olivia burst onto the scene, nearly fully formed like Athena springing from the head of Zeus, at the start of NaNoWriMo last year.

You do know what NaNoWriMo is, don’t you? Ok, I suspect most of those interested in reading a blog like this have some idea, perhaps even have tried their hand at it, but for those who have not yet suffered the agony… er, I mean enjoyed the pleasure, NaNoWriMo is an annual month-long writing marathon which attracts participants from all over the world. The name is short-hand for National Novel Writing Month, and the idea is to write 50,000 words — or more — of original fiction in 30 days. It’s a contest of sorts, occurring every November, except you aren’t competing against anyone else, as everyone who achieves the goal is a winner. The intent is to encourage not just creativity but also persistence. It is hard work to churn out 50,000 words in a month while also balancing the needs of a day job, a family, and perhaps some pretense at a social life. It’s much harder to do this and turn out anything that isn’t utter muck, but that’s not quite the point of the exercise.

The point of the exercise is to develop the habit of writing every day, no matter what else happens. NaNoWriMo encourages traits such as sticktoitiveness and getitdoneiveness (can I trademark that one?) more than actually writing well. After all, writing well is the point of second drafts, isn’t it?

Ah, except my inner editor always gets in the way and wants to compose, edit, and refine as we go. This tends to make better first drafts, such that come revision time wholesale chopping of the text is less necessary, but it also tends to make it easier to get bogged down, miss deadlines (deadlines? What deadlines? It’s not as if I have a publisher or editor breathing down my neck, after all. That would be a nice problem to have), or even lose steam in the project.

So this is where NaNoWriMo (gosh, I get tired of that odd capitalization) comes in for me. I find that balance between revising as I go and getting it done — hopefully — and thus actually complete projects.

The first time I tried my hand at Nano (let’s just agree to the short form, shall we?), I did not win. At the end of thirty days I had a beautifully crafted beginning and beginning of a middle of a story, lyrical prose that leapt off the page to paint sunsets at sea in the mind’s eye, complete with the cries of seagulls and the briny aroma of the surf crashing against rocks. I had two amazing lead characters, a precocious twelve-year-old immigrant who refused to be bound by the customs of her day and the gruff and grizzled bo’sun of the 19th-century clipper ship she sailed on, whose heart she charmed with her innocent curiosity about all things nautical. There were storms and drunken captains and getting lost at sea. It was beautiful.

What it wasn’t was 50,000 words. At the end of the month I had about 25,000, but if I may say so, they were 25,000 beautifully crafted no-revision-required words. Over the next few months I added about 10,000 words more, then the story just… petered out. I realized I didn’t know how to navigate a path to an ending. The ship may have just sailed on forever.

So the next year I tried again. I had a concept for a character, though not much in the way of a plot, but this character was ready to burst onto the page, any page, and thus Olivia was born. At the start of November Olivia was a fare-paying passenger on… an airship. Yes, I was going to write a steampunk romance! Dastardly air pirates and dashing heroes, and in the midst of it all one plucky heroine who finally finds her way in the struggle against adversity. It was a great concept. Some day I may even take it up again, although not with Olivia.

You see, about five days into the month Olivia let me know that this really wasn’t her story. She didn’t really want to be kidnapped by pirates and rescued by swashbuckling heroes. She preferred a different role. She’s really quite bossy at times, and that’s because Olivia likes to get her way, even if she doesn’t always quite yet know what her way is.

So we started a new story, Olivia and I, and twenty-five days later (because we were already five days into the month, after all) we had 50,101 words.

Alas, however, not all the prose was as lyrical as that of Maria’s story (on the clipper). Don’t get me wrong, my inner editor didn’t completely go on vacation, and I believe I wrote some fine passages. However, as this time the story was completely pantsed (as in, not plotted), not all the scenes necessarily hung together very well. Olivia’s story had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and even a fairly logical plot progression to get from one to the other, but there were definite holes. A few among the supporting cast turned out brilliantly, while a few others needed a little work.

I put the story down for several months and worked on a different project for Olivia, having told myself that the earlier draft was just a practice run. I thought I would use one or two scenes from it in the new storyline, but otherwise it was a completely different plot. This time there would be no pantsing, every detail would be carefully planned in advance, making a story so well-crafted and tight that all would be forced to admit its brilliance. Except, however, it was so tight that Olivia began to complain she couldn’t breathe. She rather likes breathing, as it turns out. Then some of her friends from the earlier story (you haven’t met them yet, but their names are Ashley and Melody, and I think they’ll grow on you just as they did on me) knocked on the door and wanted to know what their part in all of this would be.

Ashley in particular was a little sad that she wouldn’t get to do the original story with Olivia, which kicked in Olivia’s protective instincts. She gave me that look, and with a sigh I agreed, oh, all right, we’ll finish the original story.

So Olivia invites you to come along and meet her good friends Ashley and Melody, and her new friends Nicholas, Walter, and of course Catherine. It wouldn’t do to forget Catherine. As you will discover, Catherine is not to be denied. Paul will have another appearance or two as well. Poor Paul. Things just don’t seem to be going his way at the moment.

But that could change. All you need do is just…

…turn the page.

In Which We Meet Olivia and Say Goodbye to Paul

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“I’m sorry.  Really, it’s not you, it’s me.”

And with those classic words, I saw his face crumple into disappointment.  I hated to do it to him, but what choice did I have?

We were sitting in Pasta Bella, talking over linguine and Montepulciano, and I had decided, somewhat impulsively, that now was the time to end it.  Paul was a genuinely nice guy, in fact I rather liked him, which is why we had been dating for two months now.  But the oomph just wasn’t there for me.

“What…  but why?  I thought everything was going so well?”

My heart sank, as I saw him sink into sadness.

“Paul,” I started, marshaling my words, “I don’t mean to hurt you.  Really, I like you quite a lot, and in other circumstances…”

He wasn’t buying it, I could tell.  He sat there, crushed, looking down into his pasta, taking a gulp of his wine.

“I wish it was working better, really I do, but I just need something… different.”

“Different.  I can be different.  Different how?”

Ok, now he was getting desperate, and I don’t know about you, but desperation doesn’t do it for me.  I mean, he wasn’t doing it for me before, but it was only getting worse.

The trouble was, I really couldn’t say exactly what was wrong.  Paul really was a great guy, he was nice, he was romantic, he was attractive and intelligent, really he was everything a girl should want.  Except when we were together, I wanted… more.  Well, maybe not more, but not what he was offering.

Before Paul, it was the same with Steve, and before Steve, there was Mike.  All of them great guys — I don’t date losers, after all — but in the end something was always missing.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but even I could see the common element here.

Me.

So, I meant it when I said it wasn’t him, though clearly he didn’t believe me.  I mean, who would?  It’s such a trite line.  But really, I needed to discover what the hell was wrong with me, that I couldn’t find what I’m looking for in not just one, or two, but any man I dated.  What was I looking for?  Hell if I knew.

A dozen different thoughts flitted through my brain in the brief moment from Paul’s question as I thought of an answer I could give him, an answer I could give myself.  Was I a lesbian and just didn’t know it?  Hmm… well, no, I didn’t think so.  I mean, I find men attractive enough, no question there.  Paul, for instance…  ah, but I’m distracting myself.  Maybe my libido is just suppressed?  I’ve heard there are treatments for that, but really, if my dreams at night are anything to go by, I don’t think it’s a problem with my libido.  I mean, I can get hot.

So, what was it?  What could I tell this man, who so earnestly tried to make me feel good?

That he’s a lousy lover?  I wasn’t even sure that was true.  Yes, it’s true that our lovemaking didn’t satisfy me, but empirically I couldn’t put a finger on anything that Paul did wrong.  He was attentive, he seemed to really be into it, he tried his best to satisfy me, but somehow it just… didn’t.

It kept coming back to me.  I was the problem.