Cornelia Quick

Voting in the Golden Pigtail Award semi-finals starts on February 1, and I’m highlighting one of my nominated stories each day until the ballot boxes open. Today it’s “Off the Leash”, which is nominated in the “Not Afraid of the Dark” category.

I’ve written about this story before. Originally, it was going to be part of A Dip in the Lake, with alternating chapters telling Phil’s and Petra’s lost weekend stories. But Off the Leash grew beyond that, and took on a darker, stranger tone than the simple (and fun!) sex-in-the-woods story it was pared with, and so I decided to explore Petra’s tale in depth.

This is a story of seduction and obsession, and of the dangers of la petite mort when taken to an extreme. It’s certainly a good deal darker than most of my stories, which tend toward the light and silly, though this does have a few moments of levity (I think the lumberjack stripper scene is fun), and there’s a nice redemption arc if you read the whole “Mapping the Boundaries of Love” series.

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