White Slavery

Writer's Journal: I'm slowly hacking away on The Adjusters #27. I don't foresee much problems with it, as it's a pretty straightforward episode. I suspect the rest of my Journal entries for the next couple of weeks will be pretty boring because of that. Although I'm not too crazy about the first sex scene, the one I'm almost done writing, but I'll work on improving it during my second pass. Right now, I'm just trying to get the beats down.

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Over the weekend I finished reading my copy of Agents in Harm's Way by Don Winslow (and no, not that one), a gift from the author of whom I've always been a big fan. The description from Amazon nails the story pretty well:

“Special Agent Mallory Channing has had to fight every inch of the way to forge a career in a male-dominated bureaucracy. Beautiful, intelligent, and well educated, Mallory is determined to prove herself by volunteering for the most dangerous assignments. But nothing in her training can prepare her for the peril she faces when she finds herself taken from civilization and deposited into the remote, barbarous world of "white slavery" which lies just beneath the surface of her modern, civilized world.”

It's well written, flows nicely, and has quite a few kinks there for those that want it. The only problem with it is that it's too short! This is a world and characters I'd have loved to see explored in more detail, over a long period of time. Then again, that's pretty much my reaction to all books that I enjoy, so...

I should point out that it still does not beat my favorite Winslow story though, The Joy Toy:

“Sid tells a story about a device that can make girls do anything he wants.“

This is one of my all-time favorite short stories (almost more a vignette than a story, in fact), and a bar that I like to challenge myself to reach whenever I try to write something I want to be arousing.

While we're on the topic of white slavery (man, that sounds bad... remember kids, don't try this at home. This is fiction. FICTION!), there's a very nice series of stories you should be aware of, loosely called the Bangkok Slaver series. Roughly, it's a series of stories sharing a universe, one which mostly revolves around white slavery in Bangkok and a Mister Vopat, proprietor of a club (really, a bordello) in said Bangkok. These stories are harsh and unforgiving, but exceedingly well written. They've all been collected at Understories.
The first four stories in the series were written by Parker and Marlissa, two amazing authors that deserve their own Author Spotlight here. Subsequent stories in the series were written by Stroker Ace and Spoonbender.

I'm actually quite excited about this, as the last few stories in the series are completely new to me! So while I cannot vouch for their quality, if they are anything like the preceding ones, then I'm in for a pleasurable read in the coming days.

In totally unrelated news: Kathleen Robertson is hot!