James the ‘Dark Dom’ and Michael the ‘Golden Lover’

Confessions

James the ‘Dark Dom’ & Michael the ‘Golden Lover’

Why do authors need beta-readers? Surely we know our own writing well enough to be able to assess and judge it?

Mmmm…

Here’s a little confession for you:

If you’re reading this, the odds are that you are a fan of James and Michael, the ‘Dark Dom’ and the ‘Golden Lover’ in their relationship with Charlotte.

You may even have read another blog post I wrote about how I visualise them now when I write.

It could all have been quite different. When I originally started writing ‘Buying the Virgin’, the first story was of course, ‘The Virgin – Auctioned’.

Here’s a paragraph for you from the very first version of ‘Auctioned’, as I originally wrote it…

A man pushes out of the crowd and passes a credit card to the auctioneer. A minute later he has keyed in a PIN. The auctioneer clips a lead to the collar on my neck and passes it to the man.
He is tall and quite good looking in a severe sort of way. Dressed in a white shirt, black pants and a hip-length leather jacket, his clothes look expensive but restrained. Blond but silvering hair frames a tanned face and deep brown eyes.
His eyes smile as he looks at me, but his mouth does not. “Nice to meet you Charlotte. I’m your new Master for the week.”

And here’s another from ‘The Virgin – Sold’

“Ah,” he says, standing to meet the stranger, and proffering his hand to shake. “May I introduce Michael. He will be joining us later today.”
I nod agreeably until my Master’s meaning suddenly penetrates. Abashed, I mutter something and look down.
The man Michael is shorter than my Master but still good-looking. Stockily built, against my Master’s tall and rather angular physique; dark-haired and blue-eyed. For all my sudden onset of nerves, I have to admit that he looks gorgeous. Is my Master picking and choosing on my behalf?

Have you spotted the ‘deliberate mistake’?

James is blond and Michael is dark-haired. What happened? It was a simple screw up on my part.

The next episode was ‘The Virgin No More’ and as I wrote the story, something re-wired itself in my brain and this is what came out….

In the mirror, I see Michael, sipping wine, watching silently through hooded eyes. His pupils are wide and dark, black against the halo of his golden hair.

By the time I realised my mistake, I was writing Part Nine, ‘The Virgin’s Master’. The ‘Dark Dom’ and the ‘Golden Lover’ were well established and changing them was out of the question.

So, I went back to the original stories and edited in new descriptions for James and Michael. And only people who downloaded the stories in the first couple of months would ever have seen the mistake.

And that, my friends, is why authors need Beta Readers lol!

And btw: if you have somehow found this page, but you have not yet read any of the stories of ‘Buying the Virgin’, Box Set One is a Free Download.