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Today on Dreamtimes Author Spotlight we have
fellow lj goddess Paige E. Roberts with us.
fellow lj goddess Paige E. Roberts with us.
Moon: How would you describe who Paige Roberts is?
Paige: That totally depends on what day it is. At midnight, when my husband and children sleep, I’m a superhero, or a cop or a vampire, or the captain of a starship while I peck away at my computer keys. During the weekdays, I’m a conservative professional. Frequently, on Saturday nights at parties, I’m a dominatrix with a bevy of pretty boys kneeling at my feet. On nights late in October, I’m likely to be anything from a two-headed mutant snake woman to a seven foot demoness in support of a good cause. This year, for Scare for a Cure, a local charity haunt, I’ll be an evil venomous spider queen. The Defuser, the newest superhero in Austin, newly anointed by Stan Lee himself, is my fearless leader. In a week or two, I’ll be crouched over a throne made of human bones in the center of a giant web messing with people’s minds. I always love that.
Paige: That totally depends on what day it is. At midnight, when my husband and children sleep, I’m a superhero, or a cop or a vampire, or the captain of a starship while I peck away at my computer keys. During the weekdays, I’m a conservative professional. Frequently, on Saturday nights at parties, I’m a dominatrix with a bevy of pretty boys kneeling at my feet. On nights late in October, I’m likely to be anything from a two-headed mutant snake woman to a seven foot demoness in support of a good cause. This year, for Scare for a Cure, a local charity haunt, I’ll be an evil venomous spider queen. The Defuser, the newest superhero in Austin, newly anointed by Stan Lee himself, is my fearless leader. In a week or two, I’ll be crouched over a throne made of human bones in the center of a giant web messing with people’s minds. I always love that.
Describing me is a bit like trying to describe the personality of Sybil. I’m a whole lot of people in one body.
Moon: Okay, I have to know after reading this, what's your sun and moon sign?
Paige: I’m an Aries, April 9. Not a big astrology person although I am Wiccan and a psyvamp. I also have a heavy science background. It’s an odd juxtaposition, being comfortable both with physics and metaphysics, logic and intuition. I had a chemistry professor back in college who said that you could judge a person’s suitability for a science career based on their opinion of astrology. I told him that I have the same respect for astrology that I do for alchemy. The only reason we have a science of chemistry is that once there were alchemists seeking the nature of chemicals in order to turn lead into gold. The only reason we have a good understanding of the nature of our universe is that a lot of astrologists spent countless hours studying the movements of the stars and planets to try to understand their influence on our lives. The ability to dream the impossible frequently is the key to understanding the real.
Moon: I see, would have thought you were Pisces and Gemini like me with all those personalities : ) Okay, so man many questions coming to mind. This'll be fun. Let start with when you saw conservative professional, what field would that be in?
Paige: I started a new job three weeks ago. I’ve spent the last three years doing data integration, and frankly, was bored to tears. Not to mention sick of the high stress, constant on call situations, and periodic crunch hours. I got a call from my old company that makes top notch data integration software that I’ve been a user of for the last few years. They were looking to revamp their website and other marketing related written content, demos and such. They needed someone who was much more technically oriented and had a good knowledge of the data integration industry and their software, and also was a skilled writer, communicator. So, they offered me a hefty raise to change professions, and become a tech writer again after ten years of doing programming and consulting. I’m enjoying the heck out of working with old friends and doing some creative website work. Even so, that’s probably the dullest aspect of my life. My day job is my Clark Kent personality. I’m conservative, friendly but reserved, and efficient. Folks that I’ve worked with for ages have no idea that I’m a very different person after hours. Although publishing erotica under my real name may eventually reveal the tights under my button down shirt.
Moon: Clark Kent huh? Well, lets talk a little about that alter ego shall we, or should I say egos. Just for the fun of it, lets begin with the weekend dominatrix. Tell us about her more.
Paige: I’ve been active in the kink lifestyle for about 7 years, and started taking leadership positions within a year or so of showing up at my first event. I met my wonderful bi switchy husband at a local kink party. I also have a collared sub. We just celebrated four years together. About five years ago, a friend and I founded a group that’s intended to help newcomers to the scene ease their way in and “learn the ropes.” It’s called Voyagers and it has about 700 members these days. I also founded a little life drawing group with a twist, we draw our models in bondage. I love to draw, but don’t get as much chance to do it as I would like. I don’t get to go to as many kink events as I used to either. I became a full time parent of two about three years ago and it put a big crimp in my kinky fun time. My husband and boy and I still sneak in as much fun as we can and I still make it to one or two kink parties a month usually, but being a mom makes it a lot harder to be such a wild thing as I used to be. My kids know I’m weird, but they just think I’m a witchy, hippie, poly type who loves Halloween. I intend to keep it that way. There are just some things kids should never know about their parents. My enthusiasm for acting in haunted houses has been a good way to explain all the leather and latex in my closet.
Moon: Okay, clue in those of our reader who might not be familiar with the kink scene. What is a collared sub?
Paige: That’s a tough one to define. It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. A collared submissive is a person who accepts you as their master. The essence of most kinky relationships is an exchange of personal power. The submissive person says, essentially, I’m yours, do with me as you will. They allow the dominant to tie them up, beat them, have sex with them, kick them, whatever they want to do with the person. The submissive may also serve the dominant in various ways by doing simple things like bringing them drinks or carrying things for them. In my case, my sub is the perfect gentleman who opens my doors, carries my burdens, sits at my feet and rubs them for me, brings me drinks, entertains me, serves me in any way I like, and is always available to me to tie up and play with if I feel like it. I play with other people occasionally, but my sub is willingly my property. He is my beloved toy, my treasure, my second favorite pet, right after my husband who was my very first collared sub.
Moon: Now you write erotic foction correct? Tell us more about Paige as a writer and how does or does not the kink lifestyle affect that?
Paige: Yes, I write erotica. I also write romance, fantasy and sci fi, and various mixtures of genres, urban fantasy, vampire erotica, superhero romance, erotic science fiction. I’ve written stories since I was old enough to write. I started my first novel when I was eleven, a romantic sci fi story. I drew a picture for the front of the book. It had a sexy half naked man and woman tied by their hands in a space ship. I think I was just kind of born kinky. I can remember loving to watch shows where the hero got tied up and tortured from a really young age. It may be part of the source of my love of superheroes. They get tied up and tormented a lot. Wonder Woman with her golden lasso was my childhood hero.
I put that passion for heroes in bondage and distress into a rich fantasy life that was the source of inspiration for the stories I wrote. It wasn’t until I divorced my first husband that I really stopped keeping my desires hidden inside my mind or in the stories stuffed in my drawers, and started living those fantasies out in reality. My husband has been my partner in exploration, and by giving me the freedom of a polyamorous open relationship, he has made my life even richer. I now live my fantasies. That has vastly increased the realism of my stories. I don’t have to imagine what it’s like to do most of the actions in my stories, whether it’s a martial arts move, a fencing stance, or the technique for swinging a flogger, or tying wrists without cutting off circulation, I know it first hand.
My kink life has also fairly directly given me plots for new stories. In “Midnight Raid and Fire and Ice,” the e book I have out on Eternal Press, the first story is entirely fictional, but every action in it is one I’ve done with my husband, so I know exactly how it works. The second story, “Fire and Ice,” includes a detail for detail description of a genuine scene between me and my former collared sub, Icarus, with a bit of story around it.
My sub, Rain, is an editor and a brilliantly creative man, and encourages my writing. It was a kick in the butt from him and from an acquaintance of mine, Elizabeth Moon, that got me submitting my work for publication a couple years ago, rather than letting it sit on disks and in drawers. Rain and I do an unusual style of kink play that involves creating fantasies together. My futuristic BDSM story, “I Want That One,” that’s coming out on Freya’s Bower next month in the femdom volume of “A Rose of Any Colour” was originally a plot that he and I came up with while we were playing together. The first story I published, “In Service Immortal,” an erotic vampire story published in Cecelia Tan’s “Blood Surrender” was also inspired by a scene between Rain and I.
In March, I’ve got an anthology of my vampire erotica coming out on Midnight Showcase. I’m working on a couple of the stories for that one right now, “Wolfhound” and “Sacrifice” and I was ribbed a bit by my critique group because the heroes in both stories have the same physical description. They bear a remarkable resemblance to my sexy husband.
Kink and writing are just two different ways to express the elaborate fantasies that have always lived in my head. One shares the fantasies with my partner, the other shares them with my readers.
Moon: I'd like to hear more about your work for Scare for a Cure and what it is exactly. How many years have you been a part of it and how were you first introduced to the idea?
Paige: I’ve been doing haunted houses since I was a kid and my family set one up in our garage for the neighbor kids to go through. But I got really fanatic about it starting in 1988. I got involved with Brittannia Manor, here in Austin, the most elaborate haunted adventure in the country, created by Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, now Commander British, a famous computer adventure game designer. We did full contact adventures with a plot and win\lose scenarios and lots of actions from the guests like rowing a boat, swinging on ropes, climbing, sliding, solving riddles, and such. The folks who went through were called guests because there was never any charge for the adventure. Folks waited in line as much as a week to get the invitations, though, once the word got out how cool it was.
When that ended, a bunch of us Haunt fanatics switched gears over to Haunted Trails, a similar haunted adventure that supported the Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve. Trails earned about a third of the Basin’s budget for nearly ten years and supported a lot of educational programs for kids. I’ve done everything from assistant direct one year, to write the script another year, and have acted or guided nearly every year. It ran from 96 to 2005. Last year, it just sort of fizzled, had run its course. This year, again, after a year off, we had a bunch of haunt fanatics looking for a place to go.
Scare for a Cure is a haunted house in Austin, Texas that has been running on a small scale for a couple years now. The proceeds all go to breast cancer research charities and this year also the Elk’s club scholarship fund. Jarrett Crippen is the man behind scare for a cure. He’s the police detective celebrating 20 years on the force this week who got onto Stan Lee’s “Who Wants to Be a Superhero” show this past season, and won. They’re going to make a comic book of his character, the Defuser, who is very anti-drug and uses taser gloves to take down bad guys.
There’s an interesting little story associated with that. Jarrett got a visit at one of the Scare organizational meetings from some guys all dressed in identical evil henchmen outfits. Apparently, “Lord Vile” Austin’s self-declared resident supervillain also has a hunted house, the Shadow Vault. He challenged the Defuser to a contest. If more people attend Scare for a Cure, then Lord Vile will donate half of his proceeds to the breast cancer charities that Scare supports. If more people attend Shadow Vault, then he’s going to donate half his proceeds to NORML, the organization fighting to legalize marijuana. The Defuser has accepted the challenge with enthusiasm.
I’m pretty seriously overbooked this year, so I was just going to do my part by buying some tickets and taking my family through, but a friend called me up and said she was looking for someone to play the main villain, a giant spider queen. There is nothing I love more than being wicked and evil and larger than life for a good cause. So, I got drafted. It’s hard to say no to something I love doing that much. And it’s a chance to live another fantasy, to help out a local superhero. How cool is that?
Moon: Oh, yes, Lord British from UO. I recognize the name. What a great thing to
set up for the kids. Yeah, that’s uber cool. So you live in Austin. Texas right? Before today I’d have thought that was a pretty tame place for someone as unique as you, but with superhero battle right there in town I admit I’m pleasantly surprised. How do you like it there?
Paige: Our spookhouses are usually a bit too much for little kids. They border on low budget horror movies. They’re really aimed at teens and grownups.
Austin rocks! High tech companies make for a high percentage of geeks for me to hang with and more book stores per capita than almost any other city in the nation. There’s live music every night of the week, kink events so often that they have trouble scheduling without bumping into each other, and an atmosphere of tolerance and indulgence for all kinds of fringe folks that you can’t find many places in the US, especially south of the Mason Dixon line. How many towns do you know that consider weirdness a point of pride? Keep Austin Weird is a slogan on bumper stickers and t-shirts all over town. set up for the kids. Yeah, that’s uber cool. So you live in Austin. Texas right? Before today I’d have thought that was a pretty tame place for someone as unique as you, but with superhero battle right there in town I admit I’m pleasantly surprised. How do you like it there?
Paige: Our spookhouses are usually a bit too much for little kids. They border on low budget horror movies. They’re really aimed at teens and grownups.
We’re like a chunk of San Francisco that floated away and landed in the middle of Texas.
Moon: Sounds like a blast. So beside the amazing place you live and a rather spicy romatic life, what other sorts of things inspire your writing. Where would you say your ideas come from?
Paige: Everywhere. Everywhere you go, you see stories happening all around you. It’s more a matter of deciding which stories to spend my time writing than trying to come up with stories.
Well, that went a bit off on a tangent, but those are the kinds of things that inspire me.
Moon: Before we go, tell us a bit more about your new book "Midnight Raid and Fire and Ice". Do you have any other project you are working on we can look forward to as well?
Paige: I’ve got a whole lot going on right now. I’m writing and editing like a maniac every spare minute.
“Midnight Raid and Fire and Ice” is an ebook with two very realistic and very hot femdom BDSM stories together available on www.eternalpress.com.au I put up a hot little excerpt and the cover on my LJ here 
I’m also working on editing an anthology of maledom BDSM stories that will be out in December with Eternal Press, “Take Me, Bind Me, Make Me Yours.” The cover is particularly stunning. I put up a copy of it here: I’ve got a good friend who has a few stories in there and she’s put up a nice excerpt on her LJ here: I’ve also got a story in the femdom volume of “A Rose of Any Colour” coming out in a couple weeks at www.freyasbower.com . The story is a futuristic slave taming story set in the city-state of New York. I put an excerpt from that one here:
On www.midnightshowcase.com in March, I’ll have an anthology of my female dominant vampire erotica coming out called “Bare Throat, Naked Hunger” as both an e and print book. Chances are that I’ll be making a novel out of one of the urban fantasy stories in there eventually. I haven’t got an excerpt up on the web yet. I’ll email a nice chunk to you, Moon.
The other thing I’ve got in the fire right now is a romantic superhero adventure that is under consideration by a friend of mine up at Graphic Universe as a possible graphic novel. I’d love to see that happen, but it’s a New York publisher, so I won’t know for six months or so.
I’m also working on a fantasy adventure trilogy with a three way bi romance between the main characters, but it needs some more polishing before I’m ready to let it loose on the world.
Thanks so much for joining us today, Paige. It was fun spending time with you and I hope our readers have more question for you.
and for the fun of it here's a picture of
Paige and next to her 
Paige's evil twin
