In the book Jewel, by F.E. Campbell, our heroine has been kidnapped by a dissolute nobleman who has a very convenient dungeon under his mansion. She’s in love with him, but not at all on board with his sadistic schemes for her. And now he’s explaining his intention to give her a whipping:
“You’d actually whip me, your little Jewel?”
“Yes. I intend to.”
The chains on my ankles and wrists were suddenly heavy, their metal bands tight. They were there upon me for a purpose, not just whimsey. I looked at the man who had put them there. I made it as pathetic as I could. “But darling, why?”
Vivian dropped some of the insouciance. “Darling, I wish I could make you understand. The whip would do the job better than I can. But let me try.” He looked across the table at me, seriously and with love. The way you do when saying goodbye to someone going far, far away.
His grin was an apology for what he would say.
“Every man desires his own slave girl.” He said it as though thinking aloud. “I’m going to make you mine. I’ll probably have to whip you a great deal.”
“I don’t want to be a slave girl.”
“That’s where the whip comes in. There doesn’t seem to be any other way.” He sounded genuinely sorry.
“I’m jolly well not going to be whipped to satisfy some silly fantasy you’re carrying around in your mind!”
“Feel your chains,” Vivian said somberly.
I could feel them. It was almost as though they burnt my skin. I shrugged resignedly. After all, he was still my darling Viv. “I’ll obey you in anything, dearest. There’s no need to whip me.” I was still dealing in reason.
Pain flitted across his features. “I’m sorry, Jewel. It isn’t that simple.”
“Alright then,” I said crisply. “It will give you joy to whip the naked body of a girl who loves you. When do I get whipped?”
“After lunch.”
The two mundane words were more frightening than a threat. They left me no doubt. When our meal was done he would dispose me as it might please him and mark me with a whip.
Catgirls in rubber getting spanked? I’m not sure I’d want my entire fetish life to revolve around that, but it will certainly do for a Sunday afternoon!
This, to me, is a canonical exemplar of a well-caned bottom. There are only a few sharply-defined welts and overlaps, while at the same time it’s clear that our naughty antiheroine received a very great many strokes only slightly less severe. There’s no doubt she’ll remember this caning for quite some little time:
This utterly charming dedication and author’s note introduces Spanking Tails, Volume I by Maren Smith (2007). It sounds like her husband understood the assignment, as the kids say on TikTok these days:
Dedicated to my husband, who has no trouble whatsoever ignoring some “Honey Do” lists and yet paid surprisingly close attention to Saturday’s Itinerary.
Men. Go figure.
Author’s Note:
Every now and then I sit down at my computer to work on a story I can get paid for, and come up with something totally useless. Saturday’s Itinerary was one of them. It was going to be a story, but then after writing the itinerary, I realized anything else would have detracted. So, I left it alone. I also printed it out and stuck it to the fridge for my hubby’s weekend “Honey Do” list.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t totally useless after all.
Saturday’s Itinerary
9:00 am
Wake Up
Go to the Bathroom
Make Coffee
9:15 am
Drink Coffee
9:30 am
Spank Wife
Tell Her to Start Breakfast
Have Another Cup of Coffee
10:00 am
Eat Breakfast
Thank Wife With a Good Spanking
10:15 am
Have Another Cup of Coffee
10:30 am
Gather Tools/Start Installing Ice Maker
11:00 am
Take a Break to Spank Wife
11:15 am
Back to Work on the Ice Maker
11:30 am
Go to Jerry’s for Supplies
But First, Spank Wife
12:30 pm
Back from Jerry’s
Have Lunch
Wife’s Been Lippy This Week, Better Spank Some More
1:00 pm
Back to Work on the Ice Maker
2:00 pm
Break to Really Spank the Heck Out of Wife
Cuddle and Talk on the Couch
3:00 pm
Adjourn to Bedroom
4:00 pm
Mow the Yard
Better Spank Wife First
4:30 pm
Have a Beer
Work on Project of Choice
5:30 pm
Don’t Think Wife’s Had Enough Yet
Spank Soundly
5:45 pm
If Wife is Still Sitting, Pull Out Paddle
Bare Bottom and Blister
6:00 pm
Hold Wife
6:30 pm
Take Wife Out to Dinner
Watch Wife Squirming Gingerly
Enjoy Sight
7:30 pm
Rent Movie
Cuddle on Couch to Watch
9:30 pm
Get Ready for Bed
Last Chance to Spank Wife, Better Make it a Good One
Say what you will about the old-fashioned nature of split bloomers, but they were popular for a very good set of practical reasons. Admittedly, their convenience when delivering a good spanking was probably not the most important such reason, but it should not be overlooked:
Photo is from the cover of the first issue of Martinet magazine.
It’s not uncommon to see two women bent over for a simultaneous double spanking at a spanking party or similar social gathering, but this? With everybody fully nude? This would be a rare scenario in spanking porn:
Photo is from a 1978 issue of the British magazine Sex Games.
I don’t know how I missed it in 2021 when no lesser publication than the New York Times ran a lengthy exposé-style story about Anne Wills (or Bethany Burke, as she is known in the spanking community) and problems at her Blushing Books BDSM-erotica publishing empire.
I won’t try to summarize the article in detail; it’s long (more than 4,000 words) and contains a lot of factual reporting, which will be of interest to anybody who writes, buys, or enjoys BDSM erotica, especially spanking erotica. The headline is An Erotica Pioneer Goes From Hero To Villain For Dozens Of Authors and here’s a couple of paragraphs to give you the flavor:
In interviews with The New York Times, a dozen Blushing authors and seven former employees described a haphazardly run business that frequently failed to pay authors on time, and threatened them with lower royalties and defamation lawsuits if they defected. Some writers who spoke to The Times discovered they were not being paid for books that Blushing was selling through certain online vendors or in audio format. Others were locked into contracts that gave Blushing “permanent and exclusive” rights to their books and pen names, which publishing experts called onerous and outside of industry standards.
When asked by authors about the missing payments, Ms. Wills, 63, the chief executive, often called it an oversight or a glitch in the system. But several former employees said that delayed payments to authors were a result of Blushing’s routine mismanagement of finances.
The article dives deep into her turn-of-the-century criminal record (the reporting cites convictions for credit card fraud and embezzlement) and more recent allegations of shady-seeming business practices at her publishing house. Numerous grievances of erotica authors she has published are aired in the story, such as:
Maren Wilson, 48, who lives in Utah and often writes under the name Maren Smith, has published around 40 books with Blushing over the last 15 years, and developed a following for her “Masters of the Castle” series about an underground sex club catering to enthusiasts of bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism — B.D.S.M. She and Ms. Wills had been friendly, and she never worried about her royalties until a few years ago, when she started studying her payments more closely and saw that some titles were missing, including her book “Meeting Marshall,” for which she said she received no payments for five years.
In 2019, Ms. Wilson learned that Ms. Wills had registered a trademark for “Masters of the Castle” under the company’s name, with no mention of Ms. Wilson as the series creator. When Ms. Wilson confronted Ms. Wills, she said she was planning to transfer it to Ms. Wilson’s name, and later dropped the trademark.
Ms. Wilson is now trying to recover the rights to her remaining books with Blushing.
“I’m not stopping until I get my books back from her,” Ms. Wilson said. “This is my entire life. I support my family off of this.”
I can’t post this without disclosing my own limited history with Bethany and her websites. I was a sometimes visitor and forum user on a couple of her sites and story forums in the early aughts, and Bethany bought some paid advertising from me during Spanking Blog’s early years. I never had a business problem with her back then, but her pattern was to buy recurring advertising, and then (sometimes but not always) ghost me when it was time to renew (or decide not to renew) the advertising for another period. I didn’t lose any money, I just had the frustration and stress of trying to decide how long to let the unpaid banners run while waiting to hear if the banners would be renewed. Honestly, my conclusion at the time was that she was a bit of a flake, overwhelmed by too many business details and not enough administrative staffing help.
Fast forward a few years, and a slightly darker pattern seemed to develop. In those days link exchanges were a common practice, and from time to time Bethany or someone working for one of her many sites would contact me asking about a link exchange with Spanking Blog. We’d set up the links, and then later (weeks or months) I’d discover that my reciprocal/return link was not there. It was pretty common and not abnormal in those days for websites to lose links “honestly” when getting updated or facelifted, so I plugged this fact into my “I think the woman may be a flake” mental notes and didn’t think much of it. But it happened more times, and eventually I realized it had happened just about every time, and at that point I certainly did start to wonder if Bethany’s operation was actually shady rather than just operated by an overwhelmed flake. Lacking sufficient information to form a harsh opinion, I just stopped agreeing to new link exchanges, and that was the end of my association with the Bethany/HerWoodshed/Blushing business empire.
The only other thing I know is that Blushing Books now seems to have been partially rebranded as “Romance.Ink”, and the old Blushing Books domain now redirects to the Romance.Ink-branded site.
