About The Stories -- And The Author by Master Ivan

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mrivan
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About The Stories -- And The Author by Master Ivan

Post by mrivan »

About The Stories -- And The Author

[This is a piece about me and the stories I’ve written, to explain where some of them drew their inspiration as well as revealing some interesting side-notes. No erotica here, but for those who like the work you may find it interesting.]

I was born in 1949.

I know I’ve been into bondage since puberty -- perhaps earlier. I enjoyed the feeling of pulling against the bedsheets and even had a bit of rope I played with.

Of course this was the early 60s. JFK was president; it was the American “Camelot" and people never discussed such matters in public. It was some years before I discovered I was not unique and buried in a world of my own private perversion.

I moved away from my family in 1968 and from RI to the Boston area in 1969. It was there I began to read and get an education n these matters. In 1970 I got involved in a steady and stable relationship and was able to experiment with tying and being tied for the first time.

It lasted a year. It was also during that time I had some of my most meaningful experiences in both politics and spirituality and I did a lot of growth.

Following that fruitful time, I had a number of relationships and did some more growing up. Spent the better part of a year living in a community based on an alternative church with which I am still affiliated.

It was also during those years when I tried my hand at relationships via snail mail. I made contacts via ads in alternative papers and then acted as a Master to train women who had no master in their area. The story I wrote later, called “Slave By Mail”, was directly inspired by those experiences.

In 1975 I met a member of The Eulenspeigel Society (TES) on the street. Heh heh -- to this day, I still get people who haven’t heard of that historic group -- I just describe it as “BDSM lib”. That pretty much covered it.

I remember that first meeting. I was VERY self-conscious as I knocked on the door and a face that looked like a cop at first challenged me about what I wanted -- I shuddered as I said “Eulenspeigel?” He smiled and put me at ease as he invited me in and introduced me.

They had monthly meetings in Brighton. Early on it was primarily men, but eventually it grew and women began taking part as well. In the beginning it was just business meetings and sharing some experiences. Later on, we had demonstration of techniques, and ultimately as the membership grew large enough we began having monthly parties.

It was at the parties I think I developed my own techniques. I discovered I had skills with rope bondage. I began making all my own leather restraints. I tried my hand at whip making -- a braided quirt about 4 feet long -- the damned thing took several months to complete and I had blisters on my fingers by the time it was done. But it was a terrific product, worked just great and I still have it. I used to brag I could whip a nipple with it and not touch the aureole -- obviously an exaggeration, but pretty close to the truth. It remains my favorite “weapon”.

A year later I met the woman I would later marry. We attended parties together and later on became founding members (with about a dozen other couples) of The Couples Club (TCC). Same interests, we partied once a month, with each couple playing host in turn. We also selected a theme for each party. It might be rope bondage one month, perhaps Femdom another. The one we hosted we chose black leather.

We partied for close to ten years with that crowd, and it was some of the most memorable time of my life. I learned a great deal about BDSM and eventually taught others what I had learned as well. I only gave it up because of a deteriorating work situation in my mundane job. I no longer could afford either the money or the time off.

Actually, the group was immortalized in video! One year, Dave Nesor came in and videotaped one of those parties, getting signed consent and eventually coming out with a video called “S&M New England Style”. Unfortunately, it would seem that a number of people were included in the video who did NOT sign the forms and did not want themselves shown. But those were the early days...

In the late ‘80s I began to try my hand at writing. I had a lot of false starts and failures, but finally in about 1991 I began coming up with pieces I was satisfied with. “Elena”, “Taken” and an early attempt at poetry called “The Chastity Belt” were the first ones out. If you look at the dates on the pieces, you’ll see the style matured quite a bit over the years.

By this time I had a mundane job involving deliveries out of the airport. A substantial number of the early stories, including “The Casino”, were written with pen and ink sitting in an old Dodge Minivan parked at one of the terminals at that airport. :-)

In late ’91, I started self-publishing.

I had a typewriter at home that could do typesetting. And I could get access to some Macintosh computers at Harvard University where I could do the originals for the covers. And I got it all printed using self-service machines at -- would you believe -- Kinkos! Yes indeed. And I always thought of it as poetic justice. :-)

The final product had grey covers with a title in black, a brief description of the story and my personal logo. It was printed on 8 1/2 x 11 paper folded in half to make a half-page sized booklet. The collection grew to the point where there were twenty such titles printed that way.

In two cases, “Surrender To My Wife” and “Slave By Mail”, the pieces were longer and had to be done in full 8 1/2 x 11 pages, all single spaced. They ran to 53 and 37 pages respectively.

The adult entertainment district in the local city had about half a dozen stores selling books, magazines and videos. I had about 4 stores that sold the books for several years. They retailed at $4.95 for the smaller ones, and I think it was $14.95 for the large format ones noted above. Can’t say for sure without digging out a lot of old records, but I think over the years I might have sold close to 2,000 of those small books total.

I really wanted to publish “The Casino”. So I tried going at it the same way as I did with all the others. Unfortunately, I got it to about page 113 before realizing it would run over 160 pages, cost me over $30 just to print each copy and would have to sell at close to $60 -- far too high a price, even for an established author.

But I did print ONE copy of it. There was a guy at the airport, a fellow driver like myself, who was literally my best fan and most ardent collector. I think he bought every book in the collection. So one year I went thru hell with my home printer and finally managed to get an entire copy of “The Casino” done. Again, I made the cover at Harvard and got it bound at Kinkos. I gave it to the guy for a christmas present. If he is still alive and still has that copy, it remains the ONLY copy in existence. I don’t even have one myself. I read my online copy when I want to.

There was one Femdom Bondage themed newsprint magazine published out of western Pennsylvania. I sent them a letter via snail mail and eventually talked to them on the phone. We worked out a deal where they published an excerpt of “Surrender To My Wife”, the first three pages, and offered it for sale via the magazine. It worked out well -- they sold over 50 copies.

While the response at the stores was very positive, and the one-shot exposure of the magazine was promising, I still couldn’t get a real publisher. Actually, I could have, easily. They were almost lining up to pay me so many cents a word to buy the material outright. But then it would get one cheap-ass print run, with a cover from their own photo files that didn’t even match the story, and it would be over in a month and I wouldn’t own it anymore.

Fast forward to about 1996. By this time I had a decent Macintosh computer of my own. The internet was in its embryonic stages. I got on an “e-group” called “Adriana’s List” which shared erotic stories via email. Eventually I took the plunge and posted an excerpt from one of mine called “The Four Rooms”. It got VERY encouraging responses, although it also got some warning bells from a lot of the members there who were decidedly vanilla.

So I started my own list -- the Master Ivan List. It grew to eventually reach just over 350 members, a substantial number given what is called a “niche” market. I remember talking with the publisher of another bondage magazine chain about the list -- he told me in this kind of market, that was a very high share.

He also shared something with me that came as a shock. One of the best known and most respected authors in this area is the late F. E. Campbell. He wrote a series of 113 paperback novels, each of which graced with a cover illustration by “The Bishop”. I own about 2/3 of his collection -- and I recently priced them on e-bay -- they’re often selling for $60 each. I was very sad to find out that Campbell himself made only about $200 from each book. And he was one of the best in the business.

I eventually started a website. Got all the material online, then started using the computer exclusively for writing after that time. That worked out well until Comcast, my ISP, started getting impossible to deal with. If I had problems that were software related and made the mistake of mentioning I was using a Mac, they’d instantly lock into the phrase “We don’t support that software”, and then I couldn’t get a damned thing out of them.

So I burned my bridges and went to Verizon, who made assurances that they could provide me all the services I was getting from Comcast. And as soon as I got there, they double-crossed me and told me that gee, they didn’t host FTP web space after all. So my website is now gone. Thank you, Verizon, for lying thru your teeth.

I’ve found Milovana. Kudos to them for providing the forums and hosting the writing of a substantial number of talented writers. At this time I’ve got almost 60 titles there which, at this writing, is most of the finished work. There are perhaps another dozen or so titles left to be posted, and then it will be just new items if and when they come up. And I also distribute a few copies via Second Life.

Some notes on the stories and their inspiration:

I’ve already mentioned “Slave By Mail” being based on several RL exchanges of snail mail with women trainees. “Strip-Club Slaveboy”, which has not yet been posted at this writing, was inspired by an actual club where I got to know a few of the dancers. I also gave them a copy -- which they said they found “funny”.

“Handcuff Escape” was damned close to being a true story, at least the first half. I simply finished what might indeed have happened on a memorable night. “Fiona’s Slave” was modeled after a couple of RL friends. “Slave Dance” borrows heavily from the John Norman material and his descriptions of Gorean slave dancing. It was also motivated in part by the strip club acquaintances I had made. I gave a copy of it to one girl there, and I actually did notice she spent a bit more time during her act holding her hands above her head.

“The Dare” was the result of my taking part in a Truth Or Dare forum where people would often request dares that could be done partly in public. Many times I would spend an hour working out something very detailed only to hear nothing about it later. The story is my fantasy of taking someone who took advantage that way and taking advantage of HER.

“Walk In The Park” is a combination of public exposure (with not quite enough clothing) and some decidedly extreme and edgy stuff. “The Game” is what happens when you get a terrific video game you can play with your partner for a pittance of a low price -- and only at the very end do you find out why they can sell it so cheap.

And of course, there’s always the girl who no longer has a RL Master -- so to replace him, she started a website. Now, the website and her subscribers are her Master. And she is a “Web Slave”.

Computers make for lots of fantasies. So I figured, why not a toy? “The Belt” was a chastity belt that appeared on a girl when she awoke one morning, proceeded to train her over a period of months, then finally left her only to appear on another girl to begin the process yet again.

I always wanted to do a story about shemales. “The Pussy-Match Game” was the result. I’m hoping to do at least one more before I hang up my word processor. At the parties I attended, there WERE a contingent of both shemales and transvestites. Since I am a hetero male myself in practice, I generally stuck to just females in play. But I do recall one memorable night in which a shemale I had known came to me curious about breast bondage. She had a set of Double DDs which would be fertile ground to work with, so I told her, “I have no interest in what lies below your waist, so it will take no part in our activities.” She agreed. And I gave her a rope ordeal on those breasts she will remember. :-)

“The Collar of Ambuchar” was one of my favorites. I felt it was well-written and an original kind of idea. Came out well.

“Katrina’s Clamps” was actually based on a set of nipple clamps I bought RL -- they had a large cylindrical body that housed a screw thread -- tightening the screw caused the pincers at the end to tighten on the nipple. They weighed several ounces to begin with, and they came with additional weights of 6 ounces each. For the story, I later inserted a brief author’s note to say that the story was written well before the devastating hurricane of the same name.

“The Stakeout” was in fact motivated by the movie title. Having never seen the movie, I still feel pretty safe to presume it was not about a girl staked out on a deserted beach for close to 24 hours and what happened to her as a result, as my story was.

“The Casino”, however, was my pride and joy. The idea occurred to me in a flash; it took a bit over 20 minutes to get the skeletal idea down on paper. It then took the better part of a year to finish the first draft -- again, all with pen and ink. (I still have those originals!) There was a chapter describing a character named “Cara” who was bought by the Casino from a women’s prison -- I later added close to twenty pages worth to enlarge upon the idea and recount her experiences at that prison.

The Casino itself has a great deal of descriptions of slave training methods, perhaps even more than the Gor novels -- can’t say for sure, my reading of that source ended about 16 books in. Book 5, “Assassin Of Gor” was part of the inspiration for my own methods, as was Story of O and several other works, known and unknown. It was from that story I was inspired to develop the techniques for intense psychological training, for revealing the hidden slavegirl within, for developing the emotional chemistry that allows a Master to be completely open about his methods with the girl and have them be even more effective as a result.

One final spoiler: At the end of the story, I was sitting at the computer, working on that last chapter, and I had to make a decision. I found it a hard one to make -- the first female character it introduced was at a crossroads where she would either be released or enslaved for life.

So I asked my wife. And I went with her answer. :-)

It’s all for you, the readers. Enjoy what strikes a chord with you; if you can learn something from them, so much the better. I certainly learned a great deal in the course of writing them. I still enjoy reading them -- I hope you will.

Master Ivan
10/27/16
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