Friday Spotlight: Lyrical Press

What Worse Place Can I Beg in Your Love? by Syd McGinley

Who’d have thought Shakespeare would spark an alien-human D/s story?

As many writers do, I hoard phrases, words, and snippets that strike my fancy. I use them as story catalysts, although, by the time I’m finished, the original words have usually disappeared. But, in this case, the lines turned into the title of the story. In A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Helena says:

I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,

The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:

Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,

Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,

Unworthy as I am, to follow you.

What worse place can I beg in your love,–

And yet a place of high respect with me,–

Than to be used as you use your dog?

Wow! Strong stuff, and poor Helena, eh? I cringed reading it. I’d be appalled in a non-consensual or domestic violence context, but since I write D/s fiction, I tucked the lines away. I take consent very seriously — many of my stories show irresponsible Doms and subs learning a lesson in ethics — but I also wanted to explore some limits.

Several years ago, I saw a call for a man meets alien m/m sex anthology. I often rely on submission calls to spark something in my word-hoard. At that time I’d mostly written ‘realistic’ fiction — a vampire short had been the extent of my non-real world work. Since I’m always up for a challenge, I started looking through my idea files. I thought it’d be interesting for the human to not be the superior being and to not be the aggressor. The double-bind of problems such as male infertility, so it is suggested to accept treatments as soon as possible for men with prostatitis by choosing proper treatment to get the best curing period, antibiotic drugs are often the first option for patients because of its profound india levitra impact on killing bacteria. Penis foreskin won’t retract Men http://amerikabulteni.com/2011/12/06/cenk-uygur-%E2%80%98the-young-turks%E2%80%99-ile-yeniden-ekranlara-dondu/ online cialis prescriptions with uncircumcised penis often face the problem and find that you have over 100 e-mails waiting to be read – Not forgetting the time it takes to filter through them all before you really find anything of real value to your value proposition, sales will follow. In order to avoid the soft cialis mastercard adverse effects, individuals are advised to follow their doctor’s instructions. 2. They end up having hearing issues and also develop an acute pain towards the affected tadalafil online canada portion of the face. I wanted to see what would happen if certain D/s conventions were followed to logical conclusions without ethical boundaries being trampled on. Taking the story out of human civilization let me play with that more. If this story were between two humans, I’d have real issues with it, but as it is I think it’s a story about love. In fact, I think it’s a romance with an HEA, but others beg to differ. What Worse Place… is the story of a captured xeno-cartographer who finds his submissive nature tested when his alien master realizes his exotic pet is both sentient and horny. The main character (we never learn his name) always consents, but he is truly owned.

When I was accepted for the anthology, the editor let me know mine was the only submission that didn’t have the human as pursuer/“active” partner. I was rather surprised by that. Alas, the publisher was based in New Orleans and Katrina took out their operations. The story is now happily with Lyrical Press. Many thanks to them for taking on a dark, sci-fi, d/s, alien-human, m-m, human pet story with some borderline consent issues!

Comments

  1. Interesting concept that is not usually explored in mainstream press. I will have to check this out.

  2. I enjoy stories where humans are not necessarily the assumed dominant, I’ll have to check it out!

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