The Voss Papers

I've hinted in some of my more recent posts that I've been working on another full-length novel, and I'm excited to announce that it's now available!  It's called The Honourable Boytoy - a title which is one of a number of almost unavoidable nods to John le Carré (in this instance taking his Honourable Schoolboy title and, as it were, Voss-ifying it!) - and it's set in 1964, in Vienna, London, and a handful of other places mired in the intrigue and tension that arises when the intelligence services of two opposing ideologies face off in the twilight.  Well - I say opposing. Inevitably, my take on the Cold War requires that both sides are almost fanatical in their belief that the way to command - or break - the loyalty of a male agent is through tease and denial, through chastity, and through oral service. That's just unavoidable, when you think about it (and believe me, I think about it slightly more than I should...).  Essentially I've written what may...

Today, something strange happened: I woke this morning with a nagging feeling that something important was happening, and I couldn’t remember what it was. To be honest, this was a little worrying. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten to post the latest instalment of the little free novella I’m giving away as a Locktober present to the Reddit chastity community, because I woke to a stack of enthusiastic messages. Was it someone’s birthday? It didn’t seem likely, because the date felt a little too sad. I even tentatively combed old diaries trying to make sure it wasn’t the date a friend had been bereaved last year, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t until I was boiling the kettle and staring at a calendar that hangs in my kitchen that it clicked. Today is the 19 th of October. Today, in the world of The Ruritanian Pretender , is the anniversary of the raid on Romwald. And I woke up, with part of my brain somehow aware of that, and it made me sad without even knowing why. I find ...

My latest collection of short stories,  The Birthday Present and Other Stories ,  opens with a bit of a ghost story - very appropriate as a Locktober tale, coming as it does right before Hallowe'en!  But it's also a ghost story in another way: like one or two other tales in  The Birthday Present and Other Stories , it began as a very different story.  This happens to me a lot. I've talked before about how I like to write multiple stories at once to keep my imagination firing - but sometimes that doesn't work.  Sometimes I abandon a story, or I finish it (even share it!) - only to denounce it, so that it never reaches a wider audience.  ...And sometimes those stories refuse to die.  Instead, they niggle at me, snag at my attention when I should be doing something else, idly broadcast ‘ I'm still here and you didn't let me finish, look how patient I'm being! I'll wait as long as you want, fuck, please,  please  let me finish, I promise I'm...

On Chestnut Tree Lane was the first book I completed and if I am brutally honest, I sort of wish it wasn't.  Not because it's bad - I stand by it, and I am genuinely proud of it, because as far as I know, nobody else has ever managed “Orwellian Dystopia, but with Femdom”. I think I deserve to be proud of it.  But I do wish it hadn't been my first book, because I feel I could write it so much better now. There are some beautiful moments for the dommes who live at Whitmore House, but I think I undersold their pleasure. That's partly a function of the frame - it's tough making Orwell's register femdom even to begin with, it's extremely challenging to do so and give female leads interiority as well - but also I was a little less confident, a little less willing to take the kind of risks I took when it came to Anna Voss Writes The Classics .  Okay, I had a lot of fun slipping in sly references , but I regret now that I wasn't just being a little bolder with...