Thursday 27 February 2014

With love to Bonnie

My online kinky-community activity has been very much reduced so far this year, which has meant I haven’t been able to post as much on my blog as I would like. But far more importantly I haven’t been able to visit other blogs and comment and interact with the lovely people who make up this community. And I’m very sorry to learn that one of the best people I have ever met through this medium – Bonnie of My Bottom Smarts – has hung up her blogging hat.

Bonnie was the first popular blogger to link to me and bring my scribblings to a wider audience, an act of kindness that I will always be grateful to her for. And more fundamentally I will always remember her as a wonderfully warm and giving person: truly the queen of this little community.

Thank you for everything, Bonnie. I hope your bottom smarts today and you have many happy years of love and fun to come. I’ll miss you.

As an aside, it’s my birthday tomorrow: I’ll be 26 whole years old. Might have to start counting backwards if this carries on...

(Older but no wiser! Might translate that into Latin and adopt it as a motto).

Monday 24 February 2014

A little light relief

Have I fallen off the world? No, not quite, but I am experiencing turbulence in my personal life so spanky stuff has been kinda beyond me lately. Sorry for the lack of fun – I’ve missed you all and I hope you’re doing okay.

A place I like to go when I’m feeling down is the land of silliness and humour, with a leaning toward the sorts of jokes that Little Penny enjoys. So I’d like to share a few puns and make you groan :)

And to do so I shall employ a neat (and geeky) little thing that I used in my Love Spanks post: a ‘peekaboo button’. This reveals text when you click on it, thanks to the magic of Science. I’m sure there are lots of interesting ways to use such a thing, but the one that occurred to me was the telling of (terrible) jokes... click at your own risk!







Oh my... those are some seriously bad jokes. As a reward for enduring them, and if you’re not all clicked out, I’d like to share a very neat picture that a dear friend drew for me.



Little Penny is hooting with laughter right now (or perhaps honking)... please imagine a teadressed poppet rolling about in a most undignified fashion, in imminent danger of wetting herself. And we all know what happens to little girls who do that, don’t we?

If you have any jokes (child-friendly or otherwise) that you’d like to share, please do so in the comments!

Sunday 16 February 2014

My beautiful princess

Here’s my flash fiction piece from this contest, in case you didn’t get to see it in its original home. It’s not naughty or sexy, but I hope you like it anyway.

*****

The starkness of the sunlight through the window. The coldness of that little white sink.

Day, night. High, low. None of it matters. Spiralling downward; losing myself piece by piece.

How strange those days seem now,
how distant, how empty,
now that you are in my life.

“I’m a dragon and I’m going to eat you all up!” I roar at the foot of your castle. “You better just come down the slide and into my big hungry mouth – there’s no other way out!”

You squeak your royal disdain, the sound so full of life and magic: no silly old dragon is going to eat Princess Becca!

Scurrying to and fro like a mouse, your pretty blonde head popping out of this hole then that, your little face glowing with such glee that my heart wants to burst. Oh! That silly old dragon! Racing round to meet you every time!

Round and round we dash, laughing in the sunshine, happy in our own little world.

And then I’m not a dragon any more, and you come into my arms, and I hold you to myself like the precious gift you are.

My beautiful princess.

Friday 14 February 2014

The hundred-dime question

Time to announce the winner of my Love Spanks prize!

(I’m not sure how to insert the kind of suspenseful but heavily-scripted pause that you get at things like the Oscars, so I’ll just waffle here for a bit and hope that serves). It rained pretty much all day Wednesday, but it’s been alright since. Still cold, but then it is February. Hm... better pop into the supermarket on the way home and get some rice. Making chilli for dinner! Hope it’s better than last time: that was a bit bland. My cooking’s quite hit and miss like that.

More? Erm... isn’t it strange when your fingers forget how to type? I was transpositioning left, right and centre for a while this morning. Mainly left and right. The really weird thing was swapping whole words round – think I holiday a need!

Enough? Okay. *fiddles with envelope*

And the winner is... OLIVIA STARKE!

Congrats, Olivia – your gift certificate will be with you just as quickly as the internet can carry it. (I’ve learned from last time... flying monkeys really aren’t the best way to get stuff to people. The bloody things can’t read maps, for a start. And Mrs Harper across the street didn’t speak to me for weeks after what happened to her lawn).

Thanks again to everyone who visited, read, and commented – I really appreciate it xx

Remember to pop over to Ana’s blog for the grand prize announcements!

Monday 10 February 2014

We came, we loved, we spanked

Wow, that was fun :D I hope you enjoyed Love Spanks as much as I did! A big thank you to everyone who commented on my story: I really appreciate you sharing your time and thoughts and will reply to every single one.

Look out for the prize announcements on Friday, here and on the other LS blogs!

Guess what else your glamorous hostess found time to do over the weekend? Only to be whisked over to Emily Tilton’s luxurious abode (by first class post, so A-list) for an exclusive and deeply searching interview! Oh, but that woman can make a canapĂ©.

Want to know what my desert island fantasy is? Pop over to Emily’s blog and see!

P.S. Bring jelly tots.

Friday 7 February 2014

Love Spanks 2014: You know you need this


Love Spanks 2014 is here! You’ve tasted us, and now you get to sample free stories from top F/F authors. Please visit Governing Ana for the prize list, sign-up sheet, and free books. You can win from a prize pool valued at over $1,000, including a Kindle Fire or Nook HD, just for commenting!

Many authors will also offer a contest on their individual blogs. Your comment on their blogs automatically enters you in both the main contest and the individual contests!

What’s the catch? Absolutely nothing! We love writing for you and want to thank you for your readership. Perhaps someone might get a spanking or two for reading such naughty blogs, but that’s a reward rather than a catch, right?



Like these events? Want to support your friendly F/F authors? Become a Love Spanks Ambassador! In exchange for promoting this event, you will receive one extra prize entry, AND you are still eligible to participate and win prizes! To find out the details, send an email to tarafinneganromance@gmail.com, with the subject line “Love Spanks Ambassador.”

Like Love Spanks on Facebook!
Tweet #lovespanks on Twitter!
Visit Saturday Spankings for more snippets!

*****

Hi! I am so proud to be part of this wonderful event, and I hope you’re having a great time reading so much F/F fiction :) My contribution is an extract from my WIP spanking romance, Meeting Venus. Emily is a talented artist, but she doubts herself and doesn’t make the most of her ability. Her lover Charlotte introduces her to spanking as an erotic pleasure and as a motivating tool. In this chapter Emily is at a party hosted by Charlotte, having promised (but failed) to enter an art contest.

*****

Charlotte was her usual dazzling self, gliding round the room with effortless grace, lighting the place up and lightening the hearts of everyone she spoke to. But I knew that things would be different once the party was over and she had me to herself.

Sure enough, as soon as the last guest was gone the atmosphere changed, as if a winter chill had swept through the room.

“So,” she said, her voice cool, “suppose you tell me exactly why you skipped that contest? I thought we had discussed that it was a great opportunity. I was under the impression that you were all set.”

I looked down at my feet, suddenly feeling childish, and resentful for being made to feel that way. I didn’t want to be having this conversation. I wanted to be wrapped in Charlotte’s arms, thrilling at her closeness. I wanted to bathe in her smile, that beautiful starburst that lit my senses. I wanted her to be proud of me. Anything but this. “I’ve been too busy...” I muttered into my chest.

“You’ve had plenty of time and opportunity. Try again.”

“I...”

A long, defeated sigh.

“It’s too hard. I’m... just not as good as you think I am.”

Charlotte strode towards me. As she approached I fiddled with a wine glass on the little table next to me, running my index finger to and fro on its rim, wishing foolishly that a guest would return and take her attention off me.

“That’s just another excuse, and one I’m getting sick of,” she said, taking my wrist and lifting my hand from the glass. “I’ll tell you what the problem is, Emily. You are lazy. You want reward without the effort. You are a lazy girl, just as surely as a girl who skips her chores around the house, and you use a lack of confidence as a cover.”

Stung by Charlotte’s slight, my eyes flashed up to meet hers. “It’s not like that!” I snapped. “I just... I can’t do it.”

“You can do it, Emily. You just need to discipline yourself to do it. Creative people still have to work hard like anyone else. If you were a writer you would have to draft things. Even Shakespeare’s stuff wouldn’t have come out perfect first time, would it?”

I gave a little shrug. “It might have.”

“No,” she said. “It wouldn’t have. And you shouldn’t expect your art to be perfect first time either. Is that what they taught you at art school? That you didn’t have to try? That inspiration would just hit like a bolt of lightning and move the brush around for you?”

“No...” I answered sullenly, sounding the part of a child for good measure. I had a very strong urge to kick my toe on the floor. Or at least kick off the strap heels I had worn all evening. Get out of that dress, take off my makeup. I didn’t feel like being glamorous. I lowered my gaze and spoke to Charlotte’s chest. “They taught us... that you have to struggle with a piece. That you have to work on it, through good and bad, until it’s resolved.”

Charlotte, I had learned, had a way of saying a great deal with a nod. She gave one of those nods, then strolled over to the sofa.

“I think you had better fetch me the hairbrush and get over my knee.”

My stomach did a swan dive to somewhere near my feet. The hairbrush… I had only been given it once before but that had been plenty enough to make me dread its return. That I didn’t want to fetch it – that everything inside of me demanded I didn’t – seemed, in the glare of Charlotte’s anger, as irrelevant as the temperature on Saturn. And so I brought it to her and clambered mutely into position across her lap. Before I had settled, and without a word, she yanked my dress up round my waist with a disarming roughness. Oh, this was too real and too awful. The feeling I had as a ten-year-old when I put a ball through the kitchen window and was bawled out by my parents as the stupidest girl in the world? I would have rather lived that moment a hundred times over than feel this.

“On the bare from the start this time,” and she slipped her thumbs under the waistband of my knickers and eased them down to my thighs. “This is going to be a very direct and, I imagine, a very unenjoyable reminder that the decisions we make have consequences.”

“Please...” I whined, knowing that it was too late to avert the inevitable but unable to help myself from trying. I didn’t want a spanking. Not one like this. I wanted to climb into bed and bury myself under the covers; to hide from everything and just be left alone.

The back of the hairbrush was smoothed over my bottom cheeks, its coldness like a threat. I closed my eyes in anticipation and clutched a cushion tightly to myself, wishing to the pit of my aching stomach that I had just worked on that stupid painting, entered that stupid contest.

Time, I learned in the first few seconds of the spanking, had dimmed the memory of my last taste of the hairbrush. The reality of the experience – the scorching, all-consuming physicality of it – was brought emphatically back to me as Charlotte pounded the brush against my bottom with a quickness and intensity that spoke of controlled fury. I gasped, my eyes thrown wide open in shock; I yelped, I bucked; and all the resentment and frustration that had built up inside came bursting out in screamed, half-insensible oaths.

“You’ve earned this, Emily,” she coolly scolded, her cut-glass accent impeccable even as she breathed heavy with effort. “And you’re damned well going to be sorry when I’m done giving it to you. You might not care about your career, but I do.”

Somehow Charlotte’s composure made it all worse. I wished she would shout at me, call me a naughty girl, lose her temper. But no matter how angrily she snapped the hairbrush down her voice remained infuriatingly measured, and the litany of chastisements she reeled off made me feel all the more ridiculous as I kicked and bawled like a child.

And then for the longest time there was nothing but the awful, repetitive clap of the hairbrush, the pain that coursed through me, the hot tears that ran down my face. And, most powerfully of all, the most bitter, heartfelt regret. Charlotte, I knew deep down, was right to be punishing me. She believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself. She wanted me to become what I was capable of becoming. And now she was giving of herself, just as she always did: she was giving me something I needed, as an act of love.

Afterward, when I lay cradled in her arms, I cried still, but these tears were different to the violent ones that came during the spanking. I wanted to speak, to express how I felt, but I didn’t trust myself to use the right words. As if she could read my mind, Charlotte stroked my hair and whispered sweet little things about her beautiful girl.


*****

Thanks for reading! I really hope you enjoyed it, and I’d love to hear what you think. If you’d like to answer a question, I have one: would you go to get the hairbrush, like Emily did, even though you really didn’t want a spanking?

Thursday 6 February 2014

Penny goes flashing

Here’s a cool thing! I’m taking part in a ‘flash fiction’ competition today as part of the build-up to the super-sexy Love Spanks (ONE day to go! Squeee!) :D

Should be interesting, as there’s a time limit and my usual pace of writing is akin to a sleepy dormouse turning over in his teeny mouse bed. Nervous already and it hasn’t even started yet!

The contest is hosted by Siobhan Muir: do drop by and see how I get on (and by all means join in yourself if you fancy the challenge) :)

P.S. Here’s another cool thing, just to make your day extra cool. Tiny knitted animals! (via Look at this Little Thing).

Tuesday 4 February 2014

Miss Hasler's English Class: 7

Settle down everyone! Timmy, that includes you. Back at your own desk now, there’s a good boy. You’ll have plenty of time to play doctors with Sophie later.

Today’s lesson, you’ll all be happy to hear, is another on poetry. Do you remember our last lesson? When we learned that lines in poems are made up of feet, and that the rhythm in a poem is called meter? Good. I do like it when you remember things.

Today we are going to look at a particular type of poem: a type called a limerick.

Limericks are very short. Yes, Natasha? Yes, dear, short like your skirt. Does anyone know how many lines a limerick contains? No, not ninety-three. Stop giggling back there, Ana! It’s quite a small number. You can count it on one hand.

That’s right, Andrea – the answer is five! Good girl. ANA! SIT STILL! I won’t tell you again.

Limericks have five lines, and they use rhyme at the end of each line. The rhyme scheme goes:

A
A
B
B
A

This means that lines one, two and five rhyme with each other, and lines three and four rhyme with each other.

So we know how many lines we have and the way they rhyme. But what about the length of the lines? How many syllables do they contain?

A traditional limerick has lines of nine and six syllables, with the pattern matching that of the rhyme scheme: nine, nine, six, six, nine. But we know that there is more to poetic meter than the number of syllables, don’t we? The rhythm of the lines – the places where the emphasis, or stress, is placed – is just as important.

Do you remember the funny word we learned in the last class, to describe a metrical foot that went da-dum? That type of foot is called an iamb. There are lots of other funny words for other types of feet, and limericks often use one called an anapest. Emily, stop smirking. The anapest has three syllables rather than two, and goes da-da-dum.

If we apply this to our traditional limerick, that has lines of nine and six syllables, we get:

da-da-dum da-da-dum da-da-dum
da-da-dum da-da-dum da-da-dum
da-da-dum da-da-dum
da-da-dum da-da-dum
da-da-dum da-da-dum da-da-dum

That’s a lot of da-da-dums, isn’t it! This pattern tells us exactly how a traditional limerick is structured, and gives us a basis for writing our own.

Now. I’ve used the word ‘traditional’ several times today, and that is because there is more than one way to write a limerick. I personally prefer to write them with shorter lines – containing eight and five syllables – and to use a meter that goes:

da-dum-da da-dum-da da-dum
da-dum-da da-dum

I call these poems Pennylicks, because my name is Penny, and because it’s a funny word to use. Yes, Daniel... even teachers have first names.

These lines use another type of foot, one with a very strange name: the amphibrach. Sounds like a dinosaur, doesn’t it? This foot goes da-dum-da. And we see that, long or short, the lines all end with an iamb: da-dum.

Emma, you look confused. It’s alright, dear. The names of feet don’t really matter, and lines can be broken down in a variety of ways. Think of a line in terms of a cake: the cake might be twelve inches across but you can cut it into however many slices you like. Look at the patterns on the board again and you’ll see what I did to make a limerick a Pennylick. I simply snipped the opening syllable off each line: the rest of the line is identical.

Shall we write a Pennylick? Let’s try.

There once was a beautiful girl
Who ran everywhere in a whirl.
She dashed home for tea
Bounded in with “yippee!”
And fell off her chair with a twirl.

What a silly girl! I’m glad I don’t have any silly girls in my class.

Do you see and hear how the rhythm works? It’s easiest to write lines that have short words, but if you’re careful and listen to the word in your head you can use longer words like ‘beautiful’. Just think about where the stress is placed in the word and you’ll put it into your line at the right place.

One more thing. Look at line four. Do you notice anything different about it? That’s right: it has six syllables instead of five. I added a syllable at the start of the line to demonstrate that it’s all right to vary things in poetry. I know that I’ve described the structure of limericks in quite a rigid way, but that is just to give you a general starting point. You are free to experiment and bend the rules. Unlike, of course, in school.

Now children, would you like to try writing a limerick (or a Pennylick)?

Saturday 1 February 2014

The wrong day to throw a chopstick

It’s the Lunar New Year and my good friend Anastasia Vitsky has been celebrating with a wonderful series of posts:

Day 1 has a fascinating piece on the celebrations in the Chinese Malaysian community...

Day 2 has the characters from Ana’s awesome story Mira’s Miracle celebrating in their own kinky little way...

And I am honoured to say that Day 3’s post – a sweet and perfectly petite tale of a naughty girl bratting her dear and beautiful friend one time too many – stars the ever-mischievous Pao and... Miss Penelope Hasler! Squeak! Excitement! :D

Go and read and see just how naughty little Pao earns herself a spanking! (Clue: it involves a chopstick).