Collar Dread: Making Trouble In Paradise

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So one of the problems of creating a utopia in a story is that they can be dull reading. Happy happy nice nice forever is great for the protagonists, but it's dull for readers. That's why romance novels always have the HEA (Happily Ever After) at the end of the story.

My favorite solution to this problem is the one devised by Ian Banks for his Culture novels. The Culture is an interstellar empire where everybody leads a wonderful life because some very smart, very capable artificial intelligences actually run the society and handle all the heavy stuff like warfare. But the Culture is surrounded by less desirable human civilizations that range from early medieval civilizations to full spacefaring civilizations whose leaders aren't willing to cede power to any artificial intelligences.

The non-Culture civilizations run the gamut from well-run civilizations that get on quite well with the Culture to real  crapsack worlds that the Culture tends to interfere with to minimize human misery. It falls to a section called Special Circumstances to deal with such civilizations, and most Culture novels are about Special Circumstances agents having a perilous time dealing with crapsack worlds.

Collar World is definitely a utopia of sorts, and I've had to think how to keep the stories from being dull. The first Collar World story was easy, it was a Young Adult erotic romance that had built-in conflict. Romantic issues can happen even in paradise.

And for my next story, I decided to go with using the very feature that makes Collar World a utopia, the Collar Climax. A deep and life-changing psychological transformation that occurs when a submissive is collared by the right Master (or Mistress, if that is her inclination), Collar Climax has changed civilization on Collar World for the better. It is a combination of going into subspace, falling in love and experiencing an epiphany that leaves the slavegirl feeling calm and clear of thought. It may not make her more intelligent, but it makes her sane, better able to access her own intelligence for her own sake, and the sake of others she cares about.

(Disclaimer: although Collar Climax is based on psychological effects submissives have reported, particularly entering subspace, its long term effects are entirely fictional, so far as I know.)

It occurred to me that deep and long-lasting psychological changes incurred by collaring could be scary. One moment, you are you, the next moment Collar Climax has transformed you into someone else.

And that's when I came up with the idea of Collar Dread. For most women, Collar Dread might exist just as a sense of mild anxiety that you might get with any major psychological change, no matter how eagerly anticipated. But for some it's an overwhelming dread that can lead some of them to extremes, even suicide.

So the protagonist of Collar Dread is an orphan who has turned 18 and had to leave the orphanage, and now faces imminent collaring. For most female orphans this is a happy moment, when she will be able to find a Master of her very own to love her and be loved by her.

But for Arlette Spencer, it was a time of Collar Dread. An orphan, she knew the worst could happen to her, because it had. With a powerful libido, she knew her body's ability to control her. Extremely bright, she feared her mind shutting down when she took a man's collar, becoming a sex zombie, capable of nothing but lusting after the man that owned her.

The story is about Arlette trying to deal with her Collar Dread, finding a way out before she was involuntarily collared or fell to the dark forces that preyed on girls who could not find a collar.

Collar Dread has been one of the best sellers from my back catalog. I'm not surprised.

Collar Dread: A book about an alternate Earth where EVERYONE is kinky!

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The pitch:
Collaring. It was the most exciting thing for any woman on Collared World, the entrance to a new world of sex, love, romance and finding her rightful place in the world. Most women loved it, craved it, sought it with every bit of their submissive hearts.

But not all women felt that way. There was a thing called “Collar Dread.” Most women felt it now and again in a mild way. After all, being collared changed you, everyone knew that. And change can be frightening. We've all got a little Peter Pan in us, frightened of the changes of adulthood.

But most women got over it easily, and then loved being collared so much that many of them went into a sort of temporary insanity called “Collar Frenzy” if they lost their collar.

Some women were terrified of being collared, so much so that every year a few women killed themselves to avoid being collared. Sometimes it was due to mental illness, sometimes due to the quirks of personality and experience. Part of Arlette Spencer's Collar Dread was undoubtedly because her parents died when she turned 12 and she had to go to an orphanage because there were no relatives to take her.

But there was more to it for Arlette. Much more. She feared collaring like death itself, even though she lusted desperately for it And when she left the orphanage and became eligible for collaring, she lived in constant fear that the worst – or was it the best? -- would happen. Perhaps both. Collaring was a mysterious unknown looming over all of Arlette's life.

Arlette had always known she would be collared to some sleazy corporation and vended out to men for their profit, living for sex alone. She was an orphan, she knew the worst could happen to her. Once collared, the question was, how would she survive? Would Geoff, the hunky alpha male slave trainer who had a way of falling in love with his charges be the key? Or was it Dr. Kojak and his team of crack … or was it cracked? … corporate psychologists? Or did the answer lie in Arlette herself? And why did people keep telling Arlette she was going to experience something more wonderful than she could even imagine once she fully embraced her collar?

To find out, read the book. It'll be fun! Psychological suspense combined with erotica and just a smidgeon of humor.

"Collar Dread" is a 48,000 word novel and is number two in the Collared World series