DOMIN8 by Stephen B. King

Welcome back to the Visiting Authors Corner, Stephen!

You’ve been busy! Tell us about this latest new release. I hear it’s been quite the journey for you.

Now Available: Bookbub, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple

Now Available: Bookbub, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple

Domin8 was the second book I wrote (I’ve written twelve more since) when I was contracted to a major UK publisher. They wanted everything from me after they agreed to publish Forever Night, and I gave them the outline for D8 and they offered a contract. The story of Dave was an idea I had carried around in my head for a very long time. I attempted to write it several times, one time I wrote four chapters and discarded them all when I realized I started at the wrong point. That was one of many false starts because Domin8 is a complex story. Dave Barndon is a 50-year-old car dealer who adores his wife of twenty-six years, and his three adult children. The only cloud on the horizon is that while he still desires sex with his wife as much as ever, she no longer does. Dave uses pornography to find release, and through some unusual circumstances becomes fascinated with women who chose to be submissive. Digging deeper into the internet through online chat rooms Dave gets to play with women, but, as he says, cybersex isn’t real, and he yearns for more. He discovers an internet website that specialized in hooking up married people who are looking for NSA dalliances, and Dave thinks he has found Utopia.

Believing Dianne, his wife, has given tacit approval so long as it doesn’t affect their married life, Dave edges deeper into a secret life; fueled by the internet, until someone starts murdering his lovers and tries to frame him. The police are getting closer and Dave must try to find who has targeted him, and how to stay out of jail. Things take a terrible turn for the worse when Dianne, his alibi for the second murder, is killed while he is in the shower, and Dave is arrested for three murders.

I watched the TV show that sparked Dave’s interest in submissive women which began his trek that ended in disaster.  Some would say it is his fault, yet some others look deeper. There are so many parallels between Dave and myself in real life, to make Domin8 as authentic as possible, for research only in writing I went online, and visited some of the plethora of dark D/s and dating websites on the internet. Some might find my descriptions of chat sessions far-fetched; I promise you they are not. As Dave asks the reader: ‘If what I did was so unusual, how come the internet is full of sex sites?’

Domin8 is a total work of fiction (other than my research) and written to entertain and most readers love the story. Of those who read and reviewed only one in ten guessed who the murderer was before he was revealed, and that pleased me to no end. The book is a thriller, a dark psychological one maybe, but also a police procedural and a whodunit.

Unfortunately, the wheels fell off the project when the publisher was bought out by one of the big four and they closed the line I was contracted to. In desperation, while the legal battle continued, I hired an editor, finished the book and self-published it. Truth be told, I was never entirely happy with the finished story, and in my heart knew it demanded better from me, though it did pick up some fantastic reviews.

Time and books passed and I found a new home with my wonderful publisher, The Wild Rose Press. About eighteen months ago, when I completed Book 3 of the Deadly Glimpses Trilogy, I picked up Domin8 and read it. I was horrified at the errors it contained, and I realized the editor I hired perhaps wasn’t as good as I thought. I removed it from sale and began a major re-write, confidant that I could do a better job, having learnt so much about the craft in the interim.

signature.jpg

I mentioned Domin8, and what I was doing to my TWRP editor, Melanie Billings and she was intrigued, in fact, she asked to read it. I was delighted when she loved it and wanted to contract it and so began twelve months of editing.

The nature of the story makes Domin8 hard to categorize. For me it’s a thriller and a whodunit but for TWRP the nature of Dave’s dalliances made it more erotic, and that made it hard to place in the right line. With Melanie’s help, I found the right balance, and from the very first draft of 150,000 words cut 43000 to the finished 103000. This is a case of less is more; fewer words told a much better tale.

My Beta readers, without exception rate Domin8 as one of the best stories they’ve read, and I am thrilled, finally, with the finished story. It has been one heck of a journey that took four years from tossing away those first four chapters.

Thank you, Jean, for hosting me and letting me chat about Domin8. While each book I’ve written are like raising children, D8 is like a special, most favorite child.

Find DOMIN8 online: Bookbub, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple