Author Spotlight: Vulgus

A quick update first. I did finish the first draft of The Adjusters #13 yesterday. It's clocking at upwards of 8000 words, 1500 of which were taken from my original version of that episode from two years ago, the rest new. No wonder it took a while, for an episode that was supposed to already be written. But at least I'm happy with it now. Next, a couple of editing passes.

Meanwhile, I'm almost done with #17. My aim has always been to have at least one sex scene in every episode, but for that one, I found it difficult to work one in. Part of the problem is that the episode is a transitional one (it's tentatively called "Intermissions"). But I think I figured a way out of that hole. We'll see how it's received.

I'm about to start on #18, which hadn't existed in my head until earlier this week. I want to use it to illustrate the life of the dick girls, and give some cheap thrills in the process. My working title is "A Day in the Life". Should be fun to write, and it will segue into the seven episodes making up the back end of Book II. But first, I need your help.

Informal Poll: In #18 I'd like, among other things, to give a couple of scenes of Serena and Kyra being used by the Delta Iota Kappa brothers as they go about their business. My question to you: is there anything you'd like to see? I have some ideas, but I'm happy to consider opinions from the gallery. As usual, no promises, but if something catches my fancy I'll happily work it in.

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In my last post I talked about blackmail stories. Here, I'd like to focus on an author that has made blackmail stories his speciality. (I'm assuming male here, but I admit to having absolutely nothing on which to base this assumption. I'm happy to be corrected.)

I discovered Vulgus maybe two years ago, completely by accident, on some random site that does not exist any longer, and rediscovered him through the Dijan Understories archive, where many of his stories are archived. More of his stories are available through Storiesonline.

Vulgus is quite prolific, and his tales tend to run long, which is something I love. I believe that really hot stories derive from getting to know the characters and care for them, which requires some room. That's not to say that short stories cannot be hot, of course, just that the mechanisms involved there are more subtle, and probably rely much more on the author connecting with something that's already there within the reader. But I digress.

I think of Vulgus a little bit like I do of Stephen King -- he has a few basic storylines he really likes, and he recrafts them into endless variations that maintain their own individuality. But you get the feeling that it's that way because that's the stories he enjoys telling, and he could write something else if he wanted to, and it'd be just as great -- he just chooses not to.

And that's fine with me. There are some real gems in his collection. Not all his stories are about blackmail, but many are. And they are rather rough; nonconsensual sex does occur with nontrivial frequency, so be warned. Here are some favorites of mine, in no particular order:

I Belong to Snake Now: A naive young wife who spends too much time home alone begins to explore the internet for the first time. After a few relatively harmless chats she finds herself being blackmailed into becoming a sex slave to a big bad biker.

I have just learned a valuable lesson. It has been, and continues
to be, a very costly lesson. Let me tell you about it.

My name is Ashley. I am 22, 5'6", 115, bright red hair, and as of
just over a year ago, very married. I met my husband in college
and we married as soon as I graduated last year. He graduated a
year ahead of me and is already well on his way to being the next
Donald Trump. Except for the hair of course. [...]

My Rival Wins; My Wife and I Lose: A not so friendly childhood rival becomes the employer of a young couple and fakes some documents and photos to blackmail them with. He abuses the young wife in order to torment the husband, his lifelong rival.

Ray and I had known each other all of our lives. Our parents were
best friends and next door neighbors so we didn't have any choice
but to try and get along. But for some reason, and I don't know
if either one of us could say what it was, we never liked each
other. We had maintained an uneasy truce and a less than friendly
rivalry since we started playing together at our parent's
insistence. Even back then though, even at the ages of three or
four we didn't like each other. [...]

A Bad Reaction: A young mother is falsely accused of a crime and convicted. She becomes a pawn and a sexual toy to an unscrupulous Parole Officer, she and her daughter both. EDIT: Someone reminded me that this story contains an underage character. To be honest, I tend to ignore that part and focus on what happens to the mother, but you may want to skip this story if that sort of thing squicks you.

I'm not even sure exactly what happened that evening, the evening that it all started. I was on my way up the stairs to my second floor apartment after a long, hard day at work. The elevator was out of service again. It was out more than it worked, so I wasn't surprised. I felt something on my butt and I didn't even think about it, I just reacted instinctively. I turned around and, seeing one of my neighbors behind me I did something that I had never done in my life. I drew back and slapped his face as hard as I could.

I saw the look of surprise on his face as he fell over backwards and rolled down the stairs to fall at the feet of his wife, who had stopped to check the mail. She screamed and that is the last thing that happened that evening that wasn't a part of the big haze. [...]

A Lesson in Social Justice: A young couple are taught a lesson in race relations when a black man moves in next door.

There are people who will not like some of the things that I
write in this story. If you are of the opinion that the south
will rise again (or that it should), if you are convinced that
the American Civil War was fought for financial reasons or to
secure state's rights then I highly recommend that you skip this
story. Some of the things I write here will offend your
sensibilities.

I will admit that a lot of what happened to me is a result of my
racist upbringing. If I had not been raised in a small southern
town by racist parents and if all of my friends had not been
racist I might not have done the things that I did. For it was my
misguided actions that triggered the events that I'm writing
about, events that changed the lives of both me and my husband.
I'm not saying that I deserved what happened to me, or what is
still happening to me. But I can't deny that I brought it on
myself. [...]

Amanda's Continuing Education: A young female high school counselor is seduced by one of the young students she is mentoring. His accomplice records the affair with a video camera and the young woman is forced into sexual servitude.

I am in more trouble than I ever imagined possible. I have always
been very goal oriented and very much in charge of my life. Or at
least I thought I was. I knew from an early age that I wanted to
work with troubled kids in some capacity. I excelled in school
and I was on the honor roll from the first grade until I
graduated from school. I always took the tough subjects and my
grades were perfect so I had no problem getting into the
university that I had my heart set on attending. Even if my
father had not graduated from there I would have had no problems
getting in.

I carried a 4.0 grade average throughout my undergraduate studies
and it seemed like I breezed through my post graduate work in my
chosen field. It was so easy it scared me. Really! When it was
all over and I had my Doctorate I kept thinking, "Is that all
there is?" I had a nagging fear for a while that they were going
to send me a letter some day and tell me that I forgot to do
something to meet some requirement and they had just discovered
it. [...]

Brian is Gone: Kim's husband is stationed in Iraq. She is drugged while attending a friend's birthday party. She is raped and filmed in compromising positions and blackmailed.

It was the first time I had gone out to have a little fun since
my husband had left for Iraq. His National Guard unit had been
called to active duty and before we had time to take a deep
breath he had been gone. He had been gone almost three months and
I was bored to death. All I ever did now was go to work and go
home and watch TV and write letters to my husband. I was a little
upset that I wrote to him every night and I got a letter from him
only once a week, if that.

I knew that conditions were rough over there and that he was
having a hard time of it. But just a note to say that he was okay
and still loved me would have been nice. We had only been married
for a little over a year and I knew he loved me, but I really
worried about him and I wanted a little reassurance. No, I wanted
a lot of reassurance, not so much that he still loved me, I knew
that he did. Rather that he was still alive and uninjured and
holding up alright. [...]

Brooke Can't Drink: An awful lot of bad things happen to a young wife as a result of a little problem she has when she drinks.

Everything seemed to come together at the same time in a terrible confluence of events that seemed destined to destroy me and my marriage. It all stemmed from a series of errors in judgment and very bad choices that quickly added up to a nightmare come true.

The first bad choice was made almost six months earlier. Taken by itself it would have been insignificant. It would have had no effect on my life at all. The small furniture manufacturing business that my husband and I started and have been running fairly successfully almost since we married eight years ago developed a small liquidity problem. It should have been no big deal. It happens to small businesses all the time. [...]

The next story is not strictly a blackmail story, but it hits so many of my buttons that I have to include it here.

A Wife with no Options: Ken decides to leave his wife of three years for a long list of very good reasons. In desperation she agrees to do anything and everything he asks of her if he will just stay with her. He puts her to the test, with the idea of getting some revenge. Maybe he should have done that three years ago!

I was furious when I left work. I don't think I had ever been so mad in my life. I had a chance to cool down a little as I dealt with the rush hour traffic. That was not my normal reaction to all of the idiots on the road. By the end of my normal commute I usually wished that I had a pair of fifty caliber machine guns mounted on the front and rear of my car so that I could shoot the idiots around me.

But this evening the crawling traffic had given me time to think and I no longer intended to storm into the house as soon as I got home and start screaming at my wife. [...]

How about you? Which is your favorite Vulgus story?