I recently showed my sorority girl/spanking court novella to another writer, and she gave me some great feedback, including that she didn’t find my main character likable. Normally that’s not an issue, but since she’s the hero of the story and she becomes likable later I need readers to not hate her off the bat. So I took the suggestions and rewrote most of the first chapter. Kristen is no longer a sorority girl, for one thing.

Here’s the first part of the story:

Kristen Madison’s first-ever spanking came when she was twenty years old. Before that day, no one had ever smacked her bottom — not her parents, not her teachers, not her boyfriends. Her parents didn’t believe in spanking; her school, though it was Catholic, didn’t use corporal punishment; and the few guys she’d slept with hadn’t even slapped her ass while they fucked her from behind.

But as far back as she could remember, Kristen had been interested in spanking. She could pin down the exact moment, too: she was probably four or five, watching a Tom & Jerry cartoon, and in it, Tom had spanked Jerry’s nephew Tuffy. Tuffy showed his red, throbbing bottom to his uncle Jerry, who was livid and pretty much destroyed Tom after that. It was in that moment — when Tuffy’s bottom was on the screen — that Kristen knew she wanted to experience what Tuffy was experiencing.

She’d tried to get spanked while playing house, but none of her friends went along with it. She’d tried to get spanked playing truth-or-dare as a teenager, but no one ever suggested it no matter how much she tried to get them to do so.

Fortunately, there was the internet, and Kristen, as a good girl (most of the time) was trusted by her parents and didn’t have any content blocks on her phone. She read hundreds of spanking stories, watched dozens of spanking videos (hidden under her blanket at night, with the sound as low as it could be while still being able to hear what was going on), and even considered coming out and asking her boyfriend, back in tenth grade, to put her over his knee and spank her until her bottom was bright-red and throbbing.

She didn’t, though. Not until she was in college. Not until someone — she couldn’t remember who — had brought up a site called Kinkster, a social network for kinky adults. She’d joined that very night, and by the next morning she’d had twenty messages in her inbox, most of them photos of penises, but a couple actually wanting to discuss spanking with her.

That was how she met Ken.

Hopefully this opening works out better and makes her more likable. I’d post more of the first chapter, but I left off right in the middle of her punishment paddling, and I need to get back to it this week, while I’m away.