Several weeks ago I self-published an erotic novella, Winter Friends. Since then, I’ve had little time to promote or discuss it. I’m shocked it’s gotten the few downloads it has. I need to do a better job pushing my own work.
I love talking about the writing process and concepts and inspiration, but given this story is under the Shane pseudonym and all about a swinger relationship, I have few friends with whom I can discuss it. Alas, I haven’t even been able to celebrate with anyone other than Erin the fact I self-published a story.
This post is one part self-celebration and one-part a look at the story behind the story. With a dash of where these characters will go from here.
You don’t need to read Winter Friends to make sense of this post (though there are spoilers).
You can meet the characters in this short story, The Hot Springs Encounter. This bit happens in the middle of the main story, but the chapter is not included in the novella. It’s a standalone piece that advances the character and relationship development of the couples, Ulrick & Marron and Drallis & Eselda, but it’s not necessary to fully enjoy their story. At least, I don’t think so.
Winter Friends is a fantasy story and as such has fantastical elements like monsters and some magic. I think of the characters as viking-esque. If you are a Game of Thrones fan, you could easily imagine it taking place in the North Kingdom or perhaps among the freefolk north of the Wall, with Eselda being from somewhere more like Kingslanding or Dorn.
Though please don’t think that means the story is meant to take place in Westeros! The setting is totally original.
The Origins
The idea for Winter Friends has a very defined starting point: December 27, 2019, roughly around 7:00 p.m. ET. I know this because I keep meticulous notes about my substance use, and the story was conceived during an LSD trip I had with friends. I spent the last half hour or so of the peak frantically writing notes on my phone to ensure I captured the idea in case it evaporated like a dream after the trip ended.
It didn’t. I remember it all distinctly.
Inspiration for Winter Friends
I was lying on the couch at our friends’ house when I had the thought that in olden days, surely it must be that on cold, dark winter days like this, neighbors would get together to ease the toll the winter can take. I imagined (like a cartoon of sorts), a wood cabin in the snow. A “viking” couple there drinking by their fire, a warm fur blanket pulled up over them.
And then a knock on the door. Their neighbors arrive with a couple earthen jars of alcohol, loaves of bread, and maybe other food to share. They arrive uninvited and unannounced, something that seems so foreign in this age of cell phones. I’d be surprised if my parents or brother showed up at my door without sending a text asking if it was OK that they stop by. If it weren’t for all the package delivery services that knock on the door, Erin and I would be immediately wary of such an intrusion in our day.
And yet, uninvited and unannounced as these neighbors are, their company certainly isn’t unwelcome. The hosting couple invites them in with much excitement, and the drinking and singing and merrymaking begins.
And surely, I imagined, such drunken delights would eventually turn sexual. Maybe not swapping. Not at first. But across a long, dark winter of visits, there would be some flirting. Frolicking. Some naughty innuendo. Then parallel play. And after that….
After that, they would become Winter Friends.
Fleshing It Out
From that concept, I then began to learn about the characters. Who were these two couples, these four individuals, who would become such close friends across a cold, dark winter?
I was still tripping when I had these thoughts, so I thought them in symbols. I even wrote them in symbols.
There were two bears, you see. Bears because they were big and strong, yes, but also because they did not leave home. They had their cave and had lived many winters there together. Amusingly, I saw them both as large, muscle-bound barbarians similar to the character from Diablo 3 game but dressed in a deep royal blue. And thus we have Ulrick and Marron, the bears.
The other man I saw as a wolf. He had been friends with the bears when they were all cubs, but he had left the north for some years. He had only recently returned at the beginning of the story. I saw him as a barbarian as well, but not as large, dressed in red with blond hair and a toothy grin.
The wolf met a tigress on his travels south and brought her home with him. She was dark skinned and dark haired dressed in red silks not unlike Jasmine’s outfit from Aladdin. And so we have Drallis and Eselda, the northern wolf and the southern tigress.
As I reread my notes, I noticed that I didn’t keep to everything I had written, but most of what’s written came to pass in the story. I even wrote, “Start from the bear’s POV. Happy village life, family.” And that’s indeed how it starts, from Ulrick’s point of view as he walks around a spring-time faire with his children.
Spoiler Alert: The Ending
I even had the ending in my notes. It’s not a surprise/twist ending, but some people don’t like knowing the endings, and I’m about to ruin it. If you think it likely you want to read the story without knowing it, you can skip this section.
I didn’t foresee every scene of the story. Most of it just came as I wrote it. But the ending…the ending I had from the start, and I really liked it.
The story would start in spring and take the couples through to winter. Across the seasons, their swinger lifestyle relationship would grow until, in winter, they would be fully winter friends. As in they would be doing full-swap play.
The story would end when the bear and the wolf had finished a hunt. As they were to part ways at the fork in the road, they both paused and looked to the path that would take each to their own home. In a very “what if…” casual way, they would discuss what might happen if they each took the other’s path.
Then it would switch to the ladies’ combined POV, each of them waiting for their man. But when they hear steps outside their door, each of them think about what it would be like if it wasn’t their husband outside their door but the other man. And how both would be happy with either option. The door opens, and both women are delighted by whom they see….
But the reader is never told who it is who comes into the house.
I really liked the concept of that level of trust and desire, that all involved would be excited by either prospect.
Unrealistic, sure. But this is a fantasy erotica. There are some fantastical elements!
Playing With Points of View
I wanted each of the characters to have parts of the story told from their individual POV so that each character gets to express to the reader what they feel in the moment. The reader doesn’t need to trust a single narrator’s interpretation of the situation.
It is obvious that Ulrick loves his wife Marron because the reader experiences that through Ulrick. But I didn’t want readers to only experience Ulrick and not also see how Eselda regarded Drallis nor Drallis’s attraction to Marron and so forth.
That’s all well and good until I got to the full-swap scene. During that part, I wanted each character’s desires and worries and thoughts and insecurities on display. So that scene is actually from all of them, switching as necessary between the characters.
I wanted this scene to feel communal. All the voices are represented at one time because they are all equal partners in this action. This scene is about the four of them coming together, not the individuals each experiencing things on their own.
The Hot Springs Encounter is told from both Marron and Ulrick’s POV because I wanted to show them as a combined front. They are unified as a couple.
I played with this combined POV with the ending, featuring a scene from both of the men and then another from both women. The point being to show the truth of the characters’ feelings.
Substance Use
The story and characters were born from a psychedelic trip, but the original plot for Winter Friends didn’t contain any substance use. However, I decided to throw a little in there just for fun. And for the sake of world building.
In the story, psychedelic mushrooms are used by the northfolk to commune with their gods. Each of the various mushrooms are incarnations of a different god. All of them have psychedelic properties, but they are wildly different in how they affect the person who consumes them.
Two different mushrooms are discussed in the story, the flesh of Gabaila and the flesh of Maythar, but only one, that of Gabaila, is consumed in the story. She is a goddess of poets and artists. I made this experience more like an MDMA roll than a psilocybin trip, but it should still come across as trippy.
The experience is both spiritual and a little magical. The flesh of Maythar as well as the mystical nature of both mushrooms will be more thoroughly explored in future stories.
What’s Next for These Winter Friends?
I have quite a few ideas for stories featuring these characters. I see Drallis, who was a sell-sword during his time in the south, getting a little bored with the quiet life of a farmer and dragging Ulrick off occasionally for some excitement. These bring to mind Fafnir and The Grey Mouser, and I see them as being more fantasy/adventure in nature, though still will some steamy sex scenes.
Other stories featuring these characters are more purely erotica. For example, I have an idea in mind for a single volume entitled Winter Friends: Threesomes, which as you can surmise features the four combinations of threesomes possible between the two couples. Plenty there to develop the characters and show how their friendship is deepening, but it’s mostly about the sex.
Some of these stories occur in the next year or two after the events in Winter Friends. Some are further out, with Ulrick and Marron’s kids being grown and out in the world.
I just need to carve out the time to write the stories!