State of the Union address

 

Hello, lovely readers, or should I say Tal?

 

I thought I’d talk a little bit about what I have planned, going forward, in terms of writing. 

 

Steel World Inc only has three more chapters, with chapter 28 being the final one, so that’s nearly done and dusted.

 

Chloe is obviously working on the Secrets of Gor book, chapter by chapter, and we’re getting close to the halfway point there, so that will run for quite some time yet. Following Secrets of Gor I intend to turn my attention finally to the long delayed ‘Gods of Gor’ – the sixth book narrated pov by Emma. 

 

Yay!

 

It was never meant to be delayed so long, but the way I work is like this. The Emma pov books tend to be plotted out in intricate detail ahead of time, from beginning to middle to end, and in the past (Shadows and Ubara in particular) I wrote ALL the chapters (in at least a rough incomplete draft for each one) before I began posting any of them. Since then I’ve developed a separate writing style where I have a beginning, middle and end in mind for a story, but then I write it ‘on the fly’ sometimes on a daily basis with 3,000 word chapters. This works well in a ‘pulp’ style and it’s probably the way I’m going to write mostly in the future for the sake of speed and productivity. 

 

But what happens is, I’m all set to do some work on Gods of Gor, which is already plotted in detail, when I suddenly get inspiration for another story burning in my head, and I know that if I ignore those ideas in the short term they will dry up and fade away. Sometimes you have to follow the voices in your head when they appear and just get those words down on paper, or you’ll lose it all. And that’s why there have been so many distractions of late in terms of what I write. 

 

But I really want to get cracking properly on Gods of Gor, so that will be the book to follow Secrets. 

 

The other thing I’ve been doing of course is pairing a Chloe illustrated story with a simultaneously serialised book that Chloe doesn’t illustrate. This gets round the fact that I can write much faster than an artist can produce illustrations. So, while we’re continuing to serialise Secrets, and then Gods, I’ll write something else on the side to keep you entertained.

 

What that next book will probably be is a subject I’ve been asked to do for many years now: a book narrated by a kajirus. It’s a point of view that I haven’t touched on until now, so the next parallel book will probably be entitled ‘Kajirus of Gor’ and it will be the second book in the Corcyrus/Argentum war plot I started in Slaver of Gor (Legions of Gor will then be the third instalment).

 

The central character, as I’m working him out on paper at the moment, is Roland Martell, an Englishman who is abducted and taken to Gor to be a Gorean Lady’s silk slave. Where Roland will differ from the likes of Jason Marshall and Simon Rogers is that Roland will be, from the outset, a dominant, confident, Earthman, making his abduction and bondage to a Gorean Free Woman, chained to the stirrup of her riding tharlarion, all the more galling for him. On Earth he works as a bodyguard of sorts in an America that is under the sway of the New Feminism movement supported by the Kur factions. I say ‘of sorts’ as he exclusively bodyguards rich single women who pay him to act as a formal escort (without sexual favours, though if Roland takes a liking to the woman he’s often of a mind to initiate such things), as in the New Feminism America it is growing increasingly uncomfortable and awkward for a single woman to venture out on her own without male company. Roland’s (paid) presence offers both security and respectability as he accompanies a Lady to social events. 

 

As the years pass by on Earth, the influence of the Steel Worlds grows in the United States in particular, supported by the radical movement that slowly and surely rolls back the rights of women in the name of ‘New Feminism’. With the backing of the powerful American Families, all loyal to the Kurii, and in the absence of any counter intervention by the Priest Kings who continue to deploy their diminished resources purely to protect Gor from the alien predators, the Steel Worlds now enjoy considerable influence over government, law and the military on Earth, which is becoming their ‘beachhead’.

 

It is an uncomfortable experience now, for example, for single women to enters bars without an escort, and in some US states a woman driving long distances on her own might be routinely stopped by a concerned police officer who might suggest she checks in with a male relative before proceeding further.

 

He may even detain her if she proves uncooperative. For her own safety, of course. 

 

I’ve been slowly building this long term storyline in my Earth books for a while now. By the time of Kajirus of Gor, the situation in the US looks something like this:

 

Years on from the Supreme Court ruling against Roe vs Wade (this year in the real world), not only is abortion now illegal across America (with return of a Republican president), but women now have limited access to contraception. The argument goes that a single woman of respectable morality does not require contraception, as obviously she wouldn’t be having sex if she’s not in a formal relationship, and for those who are in a relationship, a doctor will require her to produce signed authority from her male partner before contraceptive pills will be issued. After all, the man may be in the relationship with the medium-term desire to raise a family, and if a woman secretly used contraception to thwart that behind his back, it would be a form of deceit that the courts would frown upon.

 

With contraception no longer easy to obtain, many women fear the risk associated with casual sex, and this in turn further enforces a New Feminism mantra of celibacy outside of a formal companionship. And so it follows that if a woman fears the possibility of male attention that might lead to a slip in her deeply regulated behaviour, she must dress modestly, un-provocatively, for a single mother is now frowned upon in polite society.

 

New Feminism has swept away the rights of a woman to automatically return to work after bearing a child. A company no longer has to offer her a job, and so many companies do not, fearing the stigma of being seen to employ single mothers who should instead be raising their child. And if a single mother cannot find work, and she has no financial support from her family, she is ultimately forced to fall back on  State support which now takes the form of strict ‘havens’ – fearsome looking houses with high walls and locked gates around the grounds, in which single mothers who are unable to support themselves are sent to live, practically imprisoned, enduring corrective behaviour lessons in addition to exclusively raising their child under the watchful eyes of the ‘Sisters of the Haven’.

 

No wonder so many women now fear casual sexual encounters and seek to conform to the strict dictates of New Feminism in the way they behave and dress. 

 

But if you are a rich woman of independent means, there still remains greater freedom. Men such as Roland Martell can be employed as ‘bodyguards’ - in reality respectable public escorts who permit such a woman to move through society and enjoy old fashioned freedoms without too much complaint.

 

So long as you have a man on your arm, you will be accepted.

 

So that’s kind of who Roland is at the outset of the story, when he comes to the attention of a woman who thinks he will do very well on Gor as a trained silk slave. 

 

Kajirus of Gor, starting soon after Steel World Inc finishes.