I grew up in some rough places. During those early years, my nose got broken more times than I can remember. Some of my peers fared worse.

Fortunately, school was something of a refuge. Science and math became my comfort food. At some point as a teenager, things changed… I found myself at a traditional prep school, which was a strange journey indeed.

Despite discovering a love of writing at this prep school, I was still a geek at heart. I applied to MIT. They let me in, which was four very intense years. My career since then has been in technology – as an entrepreneur, manager, and executive. For many years, all I wrote were business plans and technical papers.

After school, I married a beautiful fellow geek. We discovered a mutual love of BDSM. In her work life, she has become a busy executive, with plenty of work-related stress. Fortunately, she has also discovered that being my sub is a wonderful way to unwind. I found that being her dom is equally wonderful. Together, we have greatly enjoyed exploring the wider world of kink and BDSM.

At night, we often snuggle together in bed and read BDSM novels. These fictional worlds help us slip away from the noise of everyday life. Of course, after a chapter or two, we usually find ourselves distracted by each other, rather than the stories.

It bothered us, however, that the depiction of BDSM in many of these stories had an underlying ugliness, which was completely at odds with our experiences in the BDSM world. When I couldn’t find any books that had the same sort of joy we found in BDSM, I started writing my own novel.

The truth is that I’m still a geek at heart. When I see a problem, I feel compelled to solve it, generally in the most direct way possible. As those who know me will tell you, it’s a bad habit.

My starting point for this book was my conviction that healthy dom/sub relationships are based on equality and respect. Melissa and Erik know that their relationship as a couple is distinct from the sexual fantasies they delight in bringing to life.

I also wanted the story to celebrate sexuality as a joyful, positive experience. Melissa and Erik are not afraid to try new things. They might decide afterward that they didn’t like a particular experience, but they don’t regret having tried it.

Of course, Melissa and Erik’s story is also a romance. While the overall plot may fall into the cliché of ‘innocent woman meets experienced man,’ I wanted the characters to be as real as possible. I was indeed amazed at how quickly each character’s voice became real for me. All of the characters had their own core integrity, which ironically meant that I couldn’t force them to do what I wanted – they had to navigate their own way through the story. Even though I had a “through-line” plotted out for the entire story from the beginning, the characters often surprised me along the way. Melissa sometimes took a completely different path through a chapter than I had intended. Her voice had become so real, I just got out of the way and let her tell her own story. Sometimes, she was serious and thoughtful. Other times, she was wonderfully playful and silly. Serena, of course, was always incorrigible. Whenever Melissa and Serena got together, all bets were off. (Alas poor Alouette, I deeply apologize; I truly didn’t see that one coming.)

After several years of writing this story in small bits here and there, my wife suggested that I try publishing it. I tried out her idea by putting some chapters on-line at literotica.com. The strong positive feedback shocked me. Tens of thousands of people read these chapters. Melissa and Erik’s journey clearly touched the hearts of many readers. Their positive response encouraged me to complete the story and publish it. Many thousands of people have now read the complete book on this website or purchased a copy at Amazon.

If you’d like me to write more, please let me know by sending a comment.