Background
A lot of people who write back ask me where I got the ideas for certain stories, or why they developed in the way they did. Just for grins, I figured I'd include some of that on the redesigned website.
WARNING: The text below here may contain spoilers; you might want to read the actual stories before checking here. Each story has a link to the appropriate section under here.
This story, my first, was born out of frustration and perhaps a touch of ego. I'd been reading MC stories for a couple of months at that point and was finding very little that really appealed to me. If you share my preferences in MC fiction, you've probably felt the same yourself periodically because there are very few authors consistently writing romantic, positive material of quality. Writing is something I've always enjoyed doing; I figured if I wanted to see more good stories, maybe I'd better do my share to increase the supply.
The basic kernel of the story came from a couple of random influences. One particularly bad story I'd skimmed through had a kid coming back from a trip having acquired the power to force others to do his will. I lost interest in the piece quickly because it went straight down the stereotypical MC path (psychotic teen gets supernatural power and uses it to screw every female in sight), but it jogged something in the back of my head. I remembered watching a junk sports show called 'The SuperStars' as a teen -- maybe you remember, teams of celebrities would compete in simple athletic events ranging from the obstacle course to tug of war. One of the events, which always ended up being very entertaining to watch, was 'Simon Sez'. They used a professional caller who was very tricky, and the games tended to play out very much like the fictional game that ended up in the story. It occurred to me that someone might use hypnosis to give himself an edge in the game by turning off the conscious tendency to overanalyze instructions. That led quickly to what might happen if someone else did the conditioning.
The relationships between Marlene, Michael and Linda developed as I was writing. I realized partway through that the more I let that relationship run the story line, the more I liked the story. The only problem was, I couldn't see Michael rationalizing away his liaison with Marlene -- the guilt would drag him down, and he would eventually have to confess to Linda and the whole relationship could get royally screwed up. To avoid going down that path, I devised the deception and had Marlene use the 'Simon Sez' trigger to enforce it and provide a happy end.
The feedback from Simon Sez was very positive, enough so that I soon decided to write another story. Most of the people who wrote praised the strength of the relationships between the characters and the sense of honor that Marlene showed. I've had a sequel on the drawing board for a while in which Michael and Linda help Marlene land a suitable guy of her own, but haven't done much of anything with it. Still looking for that spark of inspiration, I guess.
Since the feedback from Simon Sez showed that there was an audience for what I was already thinking of as my kind of MC, I wanted to base my next story even more strongly on the relationship and characters. The result ended up being primarily a romantic story with MC elements.
The central idea of a model seducing the photographer came from a late-night cable movie whose title I've forgotten. There was no hypnosis or MC in the movie, but I could easily imagine it that way. It didn't feel right with a professional model, though, so I decided the model should be an amateur who does the session for the purpose of getting the photographer's attention. I thought about Glamour Shots, and developed the fictional business plan. (Confession: I have zero real experience in the photography business; everything in there about how the business works is made up. If there are any real studios doing the kind of work Jen and David do, I've never heard of them.) From there the partnership and the relationship came quickly and the story almost wrote itself.
The scene in which Jen uses self-hypnosis to question herself came from a section of a book I'd been reading which discusses ideomotor questioning. It's usually done with a pendulum (read artie's Contest Weekend for an excellent example), but it occurred to me that an imaginary Magic 8 Ball could work just as well and I liked the offbeat flavor of it. Other than "Relax", the responses Jen gets from her imaginary ball are all authentic phrases from the real thing, by the way.
Once I'd worked my way to the climactic scene, I realized I'd given myself a problem. David's professionalism wouldn't let him take advantage of Lauren; why would he be any less self controlled with his friend and business partner? I pondered a couple of solutions before settling on the "LPR" drug. That took care of David's scruples; having Jen take some too because she was nervous gave the whole thing a neat quality, making it a little fuzzy as to who was really in control. The drug, by the way, is a complete fabrication. I've seen references in a couple of places to actresses using inhibition-reducing drugs to prepare for nude scenes, but I've no idea how true any of that is and there is no actual LPR that I know of.
This is the story that proved to me the value of reader feedback. My first two stories had been written and edited in a vacuum -- I was the only one who saw them before I released them as finished. In the time since finishing Photogenic, though, I'd seen the EMCSA go down possibly forever and decided to set up my own site. Since I didn't have but two finished stories to put on it, I took an example from artie and decided to post the draft of IA as I worked on it.
One piece of feedback in particular shaped the story. I'd just finished what I thought would be the final editing pass on my longest story, when MC Writer emailed me with some comments that made so much sense that I ended up tearing the entire story apart, deleting some parts altogether, and adding a bunch more. The scenes where Bob and Helen talk about their experiences, the way the scenes alternate between Bob being dominant and Helen being dominant, the way the intensity grows as the week goes on ... all of that was inspired by remarks from MC Writer. He also counseled me not to worry about length as long as the plot keeps moving, and he was right there too. Others also contributed ideas and suggestions, particularly artie, Bram Ransey, Lituus Obol, Homer Vargas and others, but I really owe MC Writer a huge one for his help.
Other tidbits:
- Madeline is named for the mysterious and fascinating character in the TV series 'La Femme Nikita'. I also took her physical description from the character (played by Alberta Watson), but not the personality.
- After doing two stories set in generic Anytown, USA I wanted to do a piece with a strong sense of location. I picked the Washington, DC area because I live and work there. All of the places named in the story (including I-270) are real, although I did goof up slightly on Bob's office -- if you go to 15th and H NW you'll find the VA building, but its official address is Vermont Avenue, where the main entrance is. Oops!
- The pool scene is still my favorite scene of all the stories I've done. Several people have asked me whether Kym used Bob for her own pleasure while he was under hypnosis; I think she probably did, but Madeline would definitely not have approved so I left it a little vague.
- The opening scene of the fictitious porn movie, in which a highway patrolman offers leniency to a female speeder if she'll "talk to the judge", came from a running joke used by DC-area radio personality The Greaseman, who has just recently come back from 2 years of unemployment -- a punishment meted out because certain people in DC are too damned hypersensitive for their own good and preferred pursuing a personal vendetta against him to taking any positive, constructive action.
This was what artie calls an inspiration piece -- written mostly in one session based on a single strong idea, that idea being what might happen if a group of people were hypnotized into believing that the water they were drinking was actually beer. I'd played a few games of Quarters myself in my young, single days so I used that game to move the plot along. I needed a reason for the party, hence Susan, and given my romantic tendencies I had to provide someone to pair her off with, hence Tony. Rita and Marco were added in because four seemed like too small a group for a good game, but they ended up being as much fun to work with as the others. Rita, with her tendency to revert to Spanish gutter slang when she gets borracho, is based on someone I know in real life.
As I was writing this, I realized I'd created a cast of characters I could reuse in the future for similar short, hey-what-a-neat-trick type pieces. So far I've only drawn on them once (the Halloween story Seance), but I really like this group so I'm sure you'll see them again.
Boxing Day is an actual holiday observed in the UK, New Zealand, and other places around the world on the day after Christmas. The role reversal is one of several different traditions associated with the holiday, depending on where you are.
This story was originally conceived as a thank-you gesture to Homer Vargas, who had been very helpful with some previous stories but was gently urging me to do something with stronger mind control elements. I ended up pushing my personal envelope quite a bit on this one -- the bondage scene with Denise was very difficult to write, and I really had very little idea what a real D/S relationship would be like -- but in the end I think it came out well. The love between Lucy and Dan is very evident, and I came to like Dan as a reluctant, uncertain master. Ironically, the story didn't actually appeal much to Homer once it was finished. Such is life.
The most intriguing thing about this story for me is the number of people who wrote after it came out suggesting alternate ways it could have ended: Dan contriving to keep Lucy in her submissive state past the deadline, or planting a trigger that would let him regain control later whenever he wanted to, for instance. Others suggested that Lucy should punish Dan for his mistakes as Master, or even bring Denise back in for her comeuppance. Apparently I touched a nerve out there.
Another amusing thing: this past December 26, about 10 people emailed me to wish me a happy Boxing Day. Thanks, everyone!
I've gotten more feedback on this story than any other except maybe Crossroads , and at least 3/4 of the readers wanted to know how much of the story is real. A few assumed it was all real, and one even expressed a concern that with Susan in my life I'll have less time for writing.
The story starts out very closely aligned to reality. I really did get an email much like the first one from a reader named Susan from Fort Lauderdale. We really did have a correspondence similar to the one in the beginning of the story, until the point where she suggests we meet. The real Susan and I have never met, never considered meeting, and probably never will. The scene in the bar, where the fictional Wiseguy lets himself be seduced by Donna only to discover that she was really Susan all along, comes straight from the real Susan's email but in reversed roles -- that was the inspiration for the story in the first place.
So why did I use myself as a lead character in this story? Since I was working from a reality-based premise (Susan's experience with the ex-boyfriend), I thought using a fictionalized version of myself would give the story a very realistic feel. It also gave me license to make references to some of my own and others' real stories, which also added to the realism. As it turned out, that realism is the thing that really grabbed people.
The most direct impetus for this one was a comment from Lituus Obol on how in most MC stories there is a convenient lack of children underfoot. That got me thinking about various ways in which kids might figure into a story (other than the obvious pedophile/incest themes which I refuse to do). It occurred to me that a well-intentioned father who happens to be a hypnotist might be tempted to use that skill to help keep his children in line, and maybe to spice up his sex life with the wife.
From a real life experience I was reminded that sudden, unexpected laughter in the middle of an intimate moment can really kill the mood (don't ask!). It occurred to me shortly after that a good way to discourage a teen from having sex would be to have her react to becoming aroused by giggling or laughing. That gave me the nucleus of the story.
I posted a draft synopsis on the Mind Control Forum for comment, and the comments surprised me -- people were siding with Jason! Some wanted the kid to get laid, either by Lynn or by her mother, and saw Russ as the villain for trying to prevent it. A couple of people noted that if this were done on a regular basis, Lynn would get a nasty reputation as a tease and would have a very hard time getting dates before long. So I adapted; I made Jason a slimeball so that nobody would sympathize with him, and made it clear that this was a one-time trick on the doctor's part, not a standard practice.
For a while the story had no actual sex in it. The sex scene at home with Russ and Brenda was a late addition; by cutting back and forth between the dance and home, I was trying to create an interesting contrast. It worked for some people. With the benefit of hindsight, though, I consider this story a failure -- the main reason I keep it on the site is to keep myself from getting too cocky.
This one came at the end of a long dry spell. The nucleus of the plot was formed when I was looking through a community college catalog. There were a number of unusual classes in the adult education section including tai-chi, a romance writing workshop, and a class in "Massage for Couples". My imagination ran wild on that one, and the fictitious hypnosis class was the result. I've done a lot of reading (non-fiction) about hypnosis, and much of that is reflected in Carol's lectures. I borrowed the actual hypnosis scripts from Terence Watts, twisting them a little to suit my purposes.
The morning radio show I listen to on the way to work often features guests related to various kinds of sexual high jinks. One day in February, they had a guest on to promote his special Porno Cruise -- a one-week cruise on a ship with 40 or more porn stars as fellow passengers, mingling with the fans. The idea percolated in my subconscious for a few days and then came forward in the form of a short piece which eventually became Allen.
I sent it to artie on a whim, and he promptly came up with his own follow-on piece which became Dessert. From that point we both got caught up in the fun and started throwing ideas back and forth. In a matter of a few weeks we came up with no less than 12 complete stories of varying lengths to place under the umbrella of the cruise. The pace has slowed since then, but the saga has continued to inspire us and others.
One of the things that I love about this series is the way the stories intersect. Dessert, as you saw, is primarily a continuation of events on the first night of the cruise. Things in that piece gave me the idea for Hostess; other parts of it inspired artie to come up with Believers, Dueling Dommes, and Toy. After reading some feedback on the early parts asking if there were any male hypnotists on board, I devised the character of Suzerain and shared him with artie; he incorporated him into the background of Predator, while I used him as the primary mover in Exchange and as a background figure in Hostess. A visit to Mike Rouselle's site inspired Chaperone, which also nods back to Predator and Dueling Dommes.
Artie deserves much of the credit for the evolution of Mistress Ursula throughout the series. He picked up on some of the altruistic qualities I tried to give her in Allen and Booking and took them further, giving us both a great character to play with. And yes, I completely agree with her coming in second to Toni in the contest; considering the depth of Rob and Toni's relationship, no other outcome would have made sense.
This one is a classic example of writing as therapy. I actually did attend Novell's Brainshare 2000 conference and stayed at the Wyndham; in real life I am a Master CNE (MCSE too), and in late 1999 I did go through a situation similar to Tom's and left a company I'd been with for many years. A lot of the emotional turmoil that Tom goes through came straight from my own life. Kate is totally fictitious, as is her company. As with Intimate Adventures, though, all of the places and streets named in the story really do exist.
The fact that there is no mind control in Crossroads doesn't mean I'm losing interest in erotic hypnosis, it just means that this particular story didn't develop that way. After a little over a year of writing hypnosis stories I decided to open up a little more, taking inspiration as it comes even if it doesn't seem to lead in the usual direction. So far it's been fun.
I'm not sure where this one came from. It was an inspiration piece, written over a weekend right after I finished Crossroads. Maybe on some level I was looking to balance that longer work by doing a short, sexually intense piece. If so, it seems to have worked.
If you peel away the outer layer, In the Moment is almost the same story as Crossroads -- it's about a guy in a good relationship gone bad, and how he breaks free from that and gets on with his life. I didn't realize that until after the draft was finished.
The other main influence on this one was artie's story Growing Up With Beth, which was still in progress while I worked on this. A lot of In the Moment's tone came from my reading of Beth and our discussions about it.
Another inspiration piece: a radio commercial for bottled water triggered a memory of a high school backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail and a fantasy took shape. My trip wasn't nearly as memorable as Leo and Bridget's, I'm sorry to say, but we did have a good time.
One night I was flipping channels and came across a low-budget "Love Connection" type show that sent contestants on a blind date. I was about to keep flipping when the couple walked into an occult shop of some sort and had a witch perform some kind of ritual with them, supposedly to ensure the success of the date. It worked -- they ended the date kissing and groping each other, then shut the door on the camera.
This started out as a quick, simple piece about the date itself: boy meets girl, boy and girl humor witch, boy and girl boink each other's brains out, reader gets to wonder whether it's love or mind control. But during the writing, I found myself getting more and more interested in what had been conceived as a minor prop: the candle. That candle took over my imagination (much like it did with Jake) and became the focal point of the story, taking things in a much more interesting direction than I had originally planned.
Sometimes while in the midst of a long piece, I'll have an idea come out of left field at me for no apparent reason. This one was conceived while I was deep in the development of Triad. In essence, it's a 3000-word brain fart based on the same thought that inspired An Ounce of Prevention -- what might happen if a couple playing hypnosis games has children?
Another piece conceived while working on Triad (something about that story really stoked my imagination). This one is heavily influenced by the dark, intense works of trilby else. The fictitious "fast-acting relaxant" is a device I stole blatantly from artie, who used it in an unfinished piece called Presentation. I considered using the crystal alone rather than resorting to a fake drug again, but it just didn't work for me -- I couldn't believe it enough to make the scenes work that way.
While commuting one day, I heard a radio spot for a syndicated series called, I think, "Hype". It's apparently about a pro wrestler. During the spot, a very sultry female voice said something like, "You may get pinned in the ring tonight, honey, but when you get home you're going to get pinned again -- stay oiled." I never did watch the show, but that line inspired this erotic short about a highly pleasurable boudoir wrestling match.
This story owes its existence to the author Hecate. In honor of the new server being added to ASSTR, she challenged the writers of alt.sex.stories.m, which is the newsgroup I post to in addition to the EMCSA, to come up with a new story. The only requirement was that the title be The Server. I was just about ready to write a straight MF romance involving a network server (well, the people maintaining it anyway) when I got this idea instead. I may still do the other one ... stranger things have happened.
What a long, strange trip this one took!
The original concept was so simple: a guy and a girl exchange hypnotic MP3's and fall in love. The Napster brouhaha was in full bloom at the time, which made it topical -- in fact, Tabico had recently posted a story of her own, New Tunez, which uses a similar concept but goes in a very different direction (character enslavement through subliminals embedded in the songs). Mine would take a romantic slant, of course.
Enter Dreamfire. I only knew her casually at the beginning of this, as an email correspondent and fellow writer. She pointed me to a pair of hypnotic MP3's she had actually made and posted for the general public. From that point, the character of Sara took on many of the attributes of Dreamfire herself. It's not a perfect match -- don't go knocking on doors in the Raleigh area looking for them, for instance -- but Dreamfire's influences run deep. We've become a lot closer since I started this story.
With all that inspiration, the tale took a sharp turn. Instead of doing the MP3 swap and living happily ever after, I found myself jumping into the deep end of a very unfamiliar pool for me. With Dreamfire's guidance, I got Nick through the woods and out the other side, engaged in a loving, satisfying, unconventional relationship. At that point (the end of part 2), I was ready to call it done and posted a notice to that effect on this site.
The response was surprising -- a number of people wrote in asking me to continue the story. They wanted to know how Nick would go about packing up his life and moving to Raleigh. They wanted to know what his friends and associates would think about this whole scheme. And they wanted to see Kristin get rescued from the evil clutches of Roz. They had a good point; it did seem a little too easy to just ignore all those issues. So I started part 3, mapping out Nick's plans for wrapping up his affairs in Baltimore. Part 4, I decided, would be the rescue of Kristin.
If you followed this story while it was under development, you know that it took a very long time just to finish part 3 -- about 4 months in total. No, I didn't exactly work on it continuously; there were long stretches in there during which I worked on other projects, most of which did not involve writing. When I did work on it, the going was very tough. Nick's indecisiveness, his tendency to pussyfoot around things, started to annoy me. The story was mired in deep emotional interactions, which are very difficult to write, and I wondered if people would sit through all that. By the time I got to the end of part 3, I was pretty well burned out on the whole affair. I sent Nick back to Raleigh for a loving reunion, figuring I'd get Kristin squared away and finally be finished.
After a couple of weeks of trying to determine the dynamics of the Roz/Kristin relationship, I found that I had absolutely zero desire to write about it. Rather than force myself to go there, I decided to exercise writer's perogative and end the story as it was; I can always go back and write a sequel about Roz and Kristin if I feel the desire.
An inspiration piece, for sure. The flint and the steel for this one came from an IRC chat session I had while at Novell BrainShare (the technical conference that figured so prominently in Crossroads). Among the topics that came up for comment were female basketball players (there were lots in my hotel thanks to an NCAA Women's regional tournament), teenagers, and birthdays (mine being a few days off at the time). The basic idea erupted out of my psyche the next morning and demanded to be written immediately.
The initial idea for this came from reading a newspaper article about a new attraction at one of the Virginia theme parks. The report suggested that people flock to these rides because of the rush of excitement they get from putting the body through situations that it knows instinctively should be dangerous. I imagined that the general state of arousal coming from a really good ride could easily lead to a more specific sort of arousal as people look to celebrate being alive in the most basic, natural way. In my theme park, the rides became an extended metaphor for foreplay and sex itself -- artie jokingly pointed out to me that many of them are birth analogues as well. I'll take that.
It should be said that XTreme World itself and the rides described in the story are all totally fictitious. Sorry, folks!
I was browsing through a Barnes & Noble bookstore in May 2001, looking for something to take with me to read on a trip, when I came across Peter Masters' book Look Into My Eyes: How to Use Hypnosis to Bring Out The Best In Your Sex Life. I didn't actually read the book on the train -- instead, I took advantage of the conference table to finish working on Thrill Ride -- but once I did read it, I was extremely impressed. Eric's fictional book is very similar to Masters' book, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants an introduction to what's truly possible in the realm of erotic hypnosis. For further recreational reading, Peter Masters has also written a few stories for the EMCSA under the pen name of The Master.
The final scene, where Eric and Patty finally get to make love in person, was written twice. I had an ending done in which Patty puts Eric under and, as a "fantasy", tells him that he is hypnotizing her and seducing her and gets his body to play along. It was pretty good. But then my friend and fellow author Lucky (aka Lucky Guy) wrote in with an even more interesting suggestion: the mutual hypnosis experiment. He sent me a couple of links to refresh my memory, and I loved the idea. It made a much stronger ending.
My second foray into organized writing challenges was again inspired by Hecate. For ASSTR's fifth anniversary, she called upon authors to write stories based on themes randomly assigned to them by her computer. My theme was archeological dig. Everything I know about archeology comes from having read Agatha Christie's Murder in Mesopotamia several times during my teenage years, so don't assume that all digs (or even any digs) are like the one in this story. I wouldn't use the central Mexican history information in here as the basis for any college term paper or cash wager, either, but it works for the backstory.
If you read Artifact, you'll notice that it leaves a lot open to speculation. Will I come back later and continue the story? I don't know.
Sitting at my computer, I realized that I had yet to write an actual Christmas story. Sure, there's Boxing Day, but I wanted to do something else. The concept of lovers separated, yet maintaining their connection to each other, was rattling around in my mental closet, and came together nicely with the 12 days of Christmas.
A couple of people noticed that Paula is my first female narrator since Pleasure Cruise -- Hostess. No special reason for that, it's just the way I conceived the story.
The main inspiration for this one came from real life: me realizing how little I'd actually written in the past year or so, and trying to place why. Lack of inspiration? Maybe, partly. Being busy as hell in real life? Definitely, but that doesn't make as good a story. I thought back to the fictional Wiseguy of Fan Mail and thought, what would snap him out of his creative ennui? Somewhere I'd seen references to a video in which one subject is hypnotized and then hypnotizes another, and that entered the mix. Realistically, it's feasible -- someone who'd been guided into trance by a particular person before could easily find himself slipping under a little while watching it done to someone else, and that would make him easy prey for hypnosis by proxy. It seemed like fun.
In a lot of ways, this one is a more severe rewrite of Empirical Research -- that is, it's about a guy who's lost interest in life and about the healing power of human sexuality and love. Yes, I was exorcising a few personal demons with this one; I've experienced the mental state that Doug starts the story with, and on some level I needed to go back there and make it come out all right.
The "finger ring" and the light and sound machine are also real-life elements added to the story. Marcia Proctor introduced me to both of them, and with them she taught me to fight the monster in my pool. (Thanks, Marcia!)
Meeting the Need ties back to some of the same influences that produced Empirical Research and Hole In My Soul, but addresses a different aspect of the situation: two people, each caught in a bad marriage, in love with each other and needing to express it with more than words on a computer screen.
This was my first story to appear on Ruthie's Club. A lot of people have asked why I entered into a relationship with a pay site. There were a couple of reasons, most of which are still valid. For one, Ruthie treats her authors extremely well. My stories get displayed in a highly professional way, with first-class artwork accompanying the text and Ruthie's editing skills brought to bear. This makes writing for Ruthie like a photographer having their work displayed in a high-class gallery (except nobody buys it). It's fun to see that. It's also great fun to contribute to a site that features such renowned and talented writers as Michael Dalton, Ezra Zane, Nick Scipio, Desdmona Dodd, and the rest of the gang there. Ruthie's Club is like an All Star team -- if you're selected, it's an honor and you want to play.
Another angle on the divorce theme, this time inspired by the ASSM Summer Solstice Romance Festival. There's no actual sex in this one -- a first for me -- but the emotions are really what this story is about. And isn't that the point of romance?
The ASSTR anniversary festival for 2002 was run by Dryad and called for stories inspired by a song. Control, of course, was inspired by the Puddle of Mudd hit that was current at the time. It's short and to the point, and totally imaginary.
The other song-related story was Centerfold.
The second song-inspired story turned out to be longer and a bit more involved than Control. It wasn't done in time for the ASSTR Festival deadline, so I submitted it to Ruthie's Club instead.
Centerfold is a romantic wish-fulfillment story. The impetus was the J. Giles Band's hit from the early 80's of the same name, in which a guy opens up a girlie magazine and sees the girl he had a crush on in high school in the centerfold spread. I wondered what might happen if they were to meet again as adults, and the story developed from there.
Christmas 2002 brought the desire to do another Christmas story. Busman's Holiday was turning into a saga and I had this idea for a short piece involving a guy in a Santa suit. The induction used is basic pacing and leading, similar to what Jack teaches his students in the early lessons of Busman.
I wasn't going to do a Christmas story in 2003 -- been there, done that, etc. -- but Souvie proposed a Secret Santa game and I thought it would be fun to play. Souvie assigned me to write a story for Christine "Leafy Green Dragon" Indigo, who listed her likes as " voy/exhib, loving/nonsexist Mdom (a rarity) ."
After thinking about those options for a bit, the scene in the restaurant took shape. The story pretty much wrote itself from there. Christine was happy with the result, and so was I.
In late 2002, Ruthie approached me about doing a Mark Wiseman Festival at Ruthie's Club. It's something they do often. For one week, Ruthie's Club spotlights one author by showcasing three new stories, fully illustrated and edited, and three of that author's most popular past works with new illustrations. It sounded like fun, so I went for it. The new stories were written in January and February of 2003, but they all bear the Festival opening date of 4/17/03.
When trolling in my mind for new story ideas, I recalled a hypnotist friend of mine telling me a story of a suggestion gone wrong. To help a male client stick with his exercise program, she had given him the suggestion that as he worked out he would tell himself, "Exercise is like making love to my body." A few days later the client called her back to say the suggestion was working, but it was really awkward to be in a gym full of men and getting a hard-on doing bench presses. I took that story, moved it to a more private locale and added an attractive personal trainer. The result is a sexy and amusing story.
The day after Christmas 2002, my sister Sharon went into the hospital for her first round of chemotherapy. After months of head-scratching by doctors, she had been diagnosed with lymphoma. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred who have that sort of chemo benefit from it. Sharon was the hundredth. She had the mother of all bad reactions to the chemo medication. Twenty-four hours later she was back in the hospital, this time in intensive care. For 42 days she fought to survive with her family at her side, but in the end she was too weak and tired from being ill for over 6 months.
This story is my parting tribute to my little sister.
A good friend of mine described this story as "Like Quarters, only everyone knows what they're doing." I'll take that. The real inspiration for it was my own hypnotherapy training, during which I practiced with Zebu cards to learn Ericksonian language patterns. When I was devising stories for the Festival, I remembered my Zebu solitaire sessions and thought about how interesting things could get in a foursome.
Trying to script random activity is always difficult, so to make the card game realistic I took my Zebu deck and actually dealt the hands and played the game. The patterns in the story are accurate and could serve as an introduction to indirect suggestions. Trust me, though, when I say there is more to successful indirect suggestion than simply reading out the words on the card.
It had been a long time since I'd done a Halloween story and I was in the mood. I was idly browsing through snopes.com when the randomizer presented me with the urban legend of a man who goes to a costume party, has sex with a masked woman he thinks is his wife, only to return home and discover she'd never gone to the party.
This story was inspired by a delightful lady that I know (but not in the Biblical sense) who emailed me a couple of photos of herself, nude, in the woods. The image stayed in my mind for a while and eventually inspired me to write this story and send it to Ruthie's Club.
This one is a classic example of writing as therapy. I had just been dumped through email by a woman I'd known as a friend for years and seriously fallen for, when Ruthie sent out the call to her writers seeking tales of "love gone wrong" for the upcoming Valentine's Day issue. It was a chance to work out some romantic frustration, though I couldn't resist putting a hopeful spin on it.
This one began as a post to the Mind Control Forum, part of a romantic writing event held by softi. The original was simply called TLC and needed a fair amount of editing. It took me a year to get around to it, but I finally posted the edited version here and to the EMCSA in May 2007.
Here Comes the Next Contestant
I started this one in 2006 and got interrupted, then found it again recently and figured it was worth finishing. The story is titled after a song on the Nickelback album All the Right Reasons. The song itself isn't remarkable, but it did get me speculating on what might happen if the guy in the song were to run afoul of an amoral domme.
Several years ago, I met the woman known online as Soforia the Enchantress at a convention of hypnotists. She asked me then, and I agreed, to write a story for her website. Time passed, I went into my dormant phase, and the story never did get written. Each time I saw her, though I promised that one day I'd get it done.
Then, in June 2007, Soforia passed away from cancer. It was too late to present her with a story, but before I could let her go I knew I had to fulfill my old promise. So this piece is my little tribute to a lost friend.
This one started out from a simple idea expressed in Claire's line ("Afraid? No. I want you to.") that ends part 1 and grew into a hypnoerotic novel -- some would say instruction manual -- of 92,000 words. For those who've been waiting five years to find out whether Jack would ever bed Monica, thanks you for sticking with me.
A lot of different people and circumstances influenced this one. Many of Jack's jokes and bits, especially in the first show, were inspired by watching comedian/hypnotist Flip Orley. As time went on a couple of other stage hypnotists also helped (without realizing it) to shape Jack's style.
It was an alert reader who first noted what he called "the Steven King theme" in the story. Jack Torrance was the name of the father in The Shining who slowly went mad and tried to butcher his family (the role famously played by Jack Nicholson in the movie). Stu Redman was a key figure in The Stand. I've never read The Stand and it had been decades since reading The Shining, so I never made the connection. I grabbed 'Torrance' as reasonably close to 'Trance' to make a stage name, and even I don't know where I got Stu Redman from. By the time I was alerted to the coincidence I was pretty committed to the names, so I figured why not have some fun with it? Hence comedienne Janey Matullo (inspired by Rita Rudner) joking about it.
Several people have said that the story serves as a thinly-disguised instruction manual for erotic hypnosis. I wouldn't go quite that far, but I was in training when I started the story and all of Jack's lessons are rooted in reality. The main difference is that in real life you have to work harder to get the kind of results Jack does -- most people don't just drop into trance like that unless they're highly motivated and have had some practice at doing it. And Jack's stage shows are probably way too racy to go over well in real life. Maybe at a hedonistic-style adult resort, but not at your local comedy club.
This story would still be unfinished today if not for the gentle but highly effective influence of Lady Ru'etha. She enticed me out of retirement and let my own conscience dictate that it had to be finished, then provided the positive reinforcement to get me to actually do it. So if you want to thank someone, it should be her.