The Voss Papers

If prostitution is the oldest profession (and I bet you it is not, when you consider that for 'bartering-for-sex' to exist as a viable career someone somewhere has probably already developed farming, animal husbandry, or Knowing Which Berries Will Kill You Culinary Consultancy Limited and thus got things to barter with) - if prostitution is one of the oldest professions, then, perhaps one of the oldest jokes is "men who can't have sex get really desperate and it's hilarious". This is, basically, the core conceit behind Aristophanes' ancient Greek comedy  Lysistrata : the women of the various ancient city Greek states are fed up with all the men pissing about with the Peloponnesian War and decide they're going to go on sex strike until everyone makes peace, even the Spartans¹.  They refuse to fuck anybody, whatsoever, and abjure all sexual positions including something called The Lioness on the Cheesegrater  ( scholarly opinion genuinely exists on this ...

 Last year, as some of my readers may recall, I amused myself by publishing a short story in serial form, over on Reddit. It was called Penny Keeps the Keys  and it was tremendous fun. I'd written the whole thing in advance - at least partly as insurance against my tendency to abandon one draft the second a newer inspiration strikes me - and that allowed me to have the fairly unusual experience of interacting with the lovely readers of r/chastitystories  and enjoying their speculation and suggestions as they read through the story. Mostly of course, people read my work in private and I don't get much opportunity to even hear its impact, let alone discover where readers think a plot is going!  But with the serial, I was privileged to see what people were enjoying, and even had some delightful correspondence with various readers, several of whom were kind enough to say the experience made their Locktober, as it were, harder.  Later, of course, I presented a final,...