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!

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 canapé.

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

P.S. Bring jelly tots.

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?

1. Visit each blog between Friday, February 7 and Sunday, February 9 to read the posted stories and excerpts.
2. Leave a comment answering the story question on each blog. You will receive one entry per blog for the grand prize drawing. You will also be automatically entered in that author’s individual contest, if she has one.
3. If you have visited all of the blogs, visit Ana’s blog to sign up for FIVE bonus entries to the grand prize.
4. Deadline is midnight EST (UTC -5) on February 9!!
5. If you successfully completed a previous challenge (Spank or Treat 2013, Spankee Doodle 2013, Love Spanks 2013, or Spank or Treat 2012), you may add “VIP” to your comments. You will earn THREE bonus entries toward the grand prize. (Yes, we will be doing this again. Yes, if you successfully complete the Love Spanks 2014 challenge you can become a VIP for our next activity!)
6. If you are a F/F author or thinking of becoming one, please add “FF” to your comments. That way, your name will be entered in the special F/F author prize drawings.
7. If you are Love Spanks 2014 Ambassador, please add “Amb” to your comments to receive your extra prize drawing.
8. Visit any of the participating blogs on Friday, February 14 to find out the lucky winners. Will it be you?

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?

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).

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)?

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).

Taste me, love me, taste me again

As part of the build-up to the forthcoming (and AWESOME) Love Spanks 2014, Ana Vitsky is showcasing the participating authors in a series of interviews. And today the showcased author is meee! :D

Please drop by and ask me a question – Ana has snacks and comfy sofas :)

(I didn’t realise at the time just how succinct my answers to Ana’s probing questions were... I know brevity is meant to be the soul of wit, but wow! All the more reason to pop over to Ana’s and quiz the dazzling enigma that is la Hasler. I’m particularly receptive to questions about jelly tots).

P.S. no laughing at my so-simple-it’s-hardly-a-recipe recipe. Or I’ll scweam an scweam and make a frightful scene. And Ana will give me a jolly good spanking and never invite me to stay again.

It’s a schoolgirl’s life

Hello! Lingerie model and part-time scribbler Pennybird here. (I have a lot of nicknames, don’t I? This latest one is courtesy of the lovely Emily Tilton, a charming and exquisitely talented young lady. Read her books – they’re hot).

Anyway. I know I say this a lot, but sorry for the lack of blog activity of late: I’m working like a well-spanked schoolgirl behind the scenes to try and make my Love Spanks contribution as good as it can be. It’s my first time in such an event and I’m anxious to repay the organisers’ faith in me.

Did I say like a well-spanked schoolgirl? Let’s run with that for a minute.

*****

Poor Penny. It was all Stacey’s fault, not hers, just like she had tried to explain... Stacey was the one who had put her up to it; she was just the one caught with the spraycan in her hand. That it was red paint only made things worse. And stupid Imogen! Some lookout she turned out to be!

And so poor Penny, surprised mid-prank and unexpectedly friendless, had been marched to the headmistress’s office, red-handed and red-faced... and – subsequent to a very severe telling-off from that lady, a prim tirade including threats of public thrashings and letters home to her parents – had her tight, pristinely white school knickers taken down to her knees and her bottom paddled until it was the reddest Penny part of all. If any of the wretched girl’s so-called friends had been listening at the door their hearts would surely have broken at the pained wails coming from inside. Or perhaps each would simply have been thankful that it wasn’t their own bottom on the receiving end.

And now the disgraced Miss Hasler sits on that sore little bottom, gulping back tears as she writes, and writes, and writes, all alone in that cold, drab classroom...

...and under that wooden school desk, unseen by all, she rubs her thighs together, feeling a wicked, filthy little tingle between her naughty little legs.

Her delicacy, her softness, her nobility

One of the nicest things about being a spanking fiction scribbler and blogger is that I get to count so many creative and downright nice people as friends.

They don’t come much more creative or nice than the lady I have as a guest today: the one and only Renee Rose! And it’s my real pleasure to showcase Renee’s hot new story, a beautifully-written historical romance with spankings galore... Humbled.

Over to Renee :)

Hi Penelope!

Thank you so much for having me on your blog today to pimp my new spanking romance, Humbled. It is about a blacksmith who rescues and tames a lovely young aristocrat during the French Revolution. They travel to New Orleans, where they negotiate the idea of a long-term future together. Here’s one such discussion...

He kissed her again, then tipped her head to the side to speak low in her ear. “I should punish you for coming to see me when I forbade it.”
She promptly stomped on his foot.
“Ow!” he cried, releasing her. “You will require taming, will you not?”
She stepped back, her hands at her hips, color high on her cheeks.
“I cannot believe you wish to be spanked here, in the middle of my workshop, with Madame Montpelier’s carriage driver sitting out front.”
She looked uncertain, still backing away.
He could not help but smile, the thought of a lifetime of battling wills with Corinne too great a joy to play stern. “Do you, Corinne?”
“Of course I do not!”
“Then apologize and I shall forgive it this time.” He walked forward, slowly, giving her time to think.
She held her ground, though her chest heaved with breath. Taking hold of her shoulders, he walked her backward, then turned her around and placed her palms on his workbench.
“No,” she said.
“I require your obedience, Corinne,” he said, dragging up her skirts. “Is this not how we began?”
“If you have a switch, I shall stomp on your foot again,” she said, though her demeanor lacked confidence.
He ran his hand over her bared bottom. “I shall think of many ways to punish you, Corinne. We will explore them all. And sometimes you will find yourself over my knee for no reason other than that I want you there, and you must obey.”
Corinne looked over her shoulder and he saw heat in her eyes. He gave her bottom a pat. “Apologize, dearest.”
“I am sorry,” she mumbled.
“For what?”
“Stomping on your foot.”
“Good girl,” he said, smoothing her skirts back down. “Now go, before you become too much of a temptation and I take you right here on the workbench.”

Humbled
Sentenced to die at age eleven for stealing a pig, Jean-Claude receives an unexpected reprieve when a young aristocrat girl takes the blame instead. When the mobs of the French Revolution fall upon her château years later, Jean-Claude knows he must save her and repay his debt, but as they begin their long flight to safety he makes it clear he is not her servant and he will deal firmly with any disobedience. Though he initially intends to send her off by ship, the beautiful, feisty Corinne inspires a fierce protectiveness in Jean-Claude that makes it hard to say goodbye.

Corinne is alternately infuriated and attracted to the handsome peasant who has no qualms about turning her over his knee and spanking her bare bottom when she steps out of line. When he ends up joining her on a ship to New Orleans, their futures become inextricably intertwined, but can a common-born blacksmith and the daughter of a lord find enough common ground to make a permanent match?

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Renee Rose is a modern dance teacher, Feldenkrais Practitioner(R), energy worker and kinkster. Named Eroticon USA’s Next Top Erotic Author in 2013, her books are all centered around her favorite kink: spanking.

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