Guest Post:

In a book world saturated with BDSM romance books, your main character’s disability really helps him to stand out.  Immediately we fall in love with him and his struggles. Explain how you came to the conclusion to have him be a blind man and a Dom?

Parker is a blind masseur, struggling to cope with his everyday challenges. He runs a successful business and is total eye-candy. Any woman wouldn't think twice about going to bed with him. 

However, with his disability, he has lost the capacity to judge a person’s integrity by nonverbal cues like facial expressions. While he is fortunate to be surrounded by people he can trust, he is forced to be dependent on them in a hundred small ways in order to maintain the life he’s built for himself.

Being a Dom is a necessity for him; it helps to feed his flagging ego. He struggles to maintain a normal façade for the benefit of those who know him best, so the bedroom is the only place he can function without being reminded of his dependence on others. His situation makes his Dom tendencies understandable and accessible to those not familiar with that lifestyle. Clearly, we have a man who needs to claim some independence back, but at the same time, is relied upon in a very real way by the same people who provide the support he needs. He cares for the people in his life a great deal, and his need to take care of them means that he hides a good deal of his pain and struggles from them, choosing instead to shoulder the burdens he can. While the dependence between Parker and those closest to him goes both ways, he is never free from it—until he takes control in the bedroom.

Parker enjoys the power and the control he has over his partners. I believe that the nature of his kink and domination gives him the sense fulfillment. His situation is understandably real, and so his sexual tastes involve a good deal of fantasy and role play, providing an escape that would otherwise be impossible for him. Having limitations and being dependent on others is not easy for him to accept, especially since he is used to running the show, so to speak. When we see Parker as a Dom, we see him attempting to salvage even a small amount of independence. He does whatever it takes to hang on to that piece of pride. The desire to have some control over his life is almost as imperative as breathing. If he were not blind, he would probably still indulge in the more playful aspects of sexual fantasy. 

However, removing his sight brings an edge to that whimsy, and what might otherwise have just been personal preference now becomes an important compulsion. The way in which the plot plays out highlights the direness of Parker’s situation and the need to control whatever he still can, and we definitely see that the need to dominate and his blindness are closely linked. If you took away either attribute, he wouldn't be the same man, and this would have been a much different story.

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