I’m working on a new book. This one is a little different from the usual. It’s a period piece, set in the summer of 1895, on a country estate in England. It’s also a multi-viewpoint story, mostly told in the form of diary and journal entries, with the occasional letter, telegram, or newspaper clipping tossed in. It’s a style that was fairly common in the late 19th century, but isn’t encountered that often today. Or “to-day,” as they would have spelled it then.
Naturally, as this is one of my books, there’s a lot of sex. The terminology is a bit different than what I usually use. There are no pussies, cocks, dicks, pricks, or snatches, for instance. There are quims, some of them quivering, organs, manhoods (rampant and otherwise), secret depths, nether lips, and the occasional cunt (a surprisingly ancient word, as it happens, which can even found as an allusion and/or pun in Shakespeare). Setting a book in 1895 means adjusting vocabulary to fit the period, and even though the “quoted” writings are private, and purportedly set down in a secret cipher, the “naughtiness” quotient is somewhat dictated by the period and the social class of the writers. So is the spelling, so please don’t ding me about that. Victorians put hyphens in a lot of words we don’t: to-day, to-night, dark-room, cow-boy, and so forth. They also tended to abbreviate “et cetera” as “&c.” rather than “etc.”
What I’m wondering about is whether I should cut out the incest. Even though it takes a while to get there, the main “issue” is a vampire moving into the neighborhood. It takes a while to get there because, up to that point, I spend a lot of time establishing the relationship between Lady Anna and her visiting school chum, Susanne.
In Dracula, Stoker obliquely implied that Mina and Lucy may have experimented with lesbianism while at school together. With Lady Anna and Susanne, it’s not so much implied as overt. They were getting it on with each other on those cold nights at school, and they’re still getting it on now that they’re together again after Susanne takes a three-week holiday on Lady Anna’s estate.
It’s a rather “decadent” household. Lady Anna’s brother, Edwin, Earl of Muntglare, is a dedicated amateur photographer, whose favorite subjects are nude women, his sister included. When he organizes a photography session with his sister and Susanne, things just sort of happen between the two women, and he can’t help getting involved himself. The question I now have is whether I keep the sisterly blowjob, or have him get it on with Susanne instead.
The difference between those outcomes could easily be the difference between the book appearing in Kindle or being banned from Amazon, like most of my other books. Of the six books I currently have on sale, only one of them, One Room, can be found at Amazon. That one has its share of fucking, but no one is related, so it can be sold. The others are only at Lot’s Cave, and a few other outlets where they don’t worry so much about incestuous or other “kinky” content. The new book might just be good enough to go more mainstream, rather than fetish, so I’m going to have to decide which it will be.
I also need to decide what I’m going to call it, but that’s another issue entirely.