I don't know who I'm more grateful to; the people who challenged me to write stories on Rimsky-Korsakov's sexy princess and her demanding sultan, or the editorial team who encouraged some serious rewriting. Thanks to both.
Our amazing editors have now approved all four stories.
I've tried to appeal to the heart, as our heroine Lacie responds to different lovers, both male and female, and learns to balance giving with receiving, teaching with learning; and to weigh submission with feisty sexual wrestling and exhibitionism.
I hope I've appealed to the 'loins', oozing sex as every self-respecting Lush story should.
And I've appealed to the head. the more I discovered how erudite LS authors and readers are on the subjects of Russian music, the more the stories presented a plethora of puzzles, a cornucopia of conundrums and concealed citations of Russian composers and their works. The stories are full of anagrams, allusions and references to Russian composers and their works. (For instance, the ship is called the Coq d'Or, and a famous bumblebee makes a brief appearance towards the end).
If you know Scheherazade well, you will find every description of the music matches its position in the story.
Because of my delight in the profile of one of my challengers, a certain Alice Liddell insinuated herself into every story without my volition, and joined in the cryptic fun, from anagrams (the name of the heroine and her cat) to the mock turtle's definitions of the three R's, and that awful Sultan with his unspoken but ever-present threats of 'Off with his/her head'.
I have offered to pm a key if anyone wants. All this cerebration crept quite involuntarily into what is a series of stripteases and sex-romps, no less gratuitous than they ought to be for LS, but also serious looks at power balances, and sexual dynamics.
If you haven't already, and would like to read two other musical stories, (Octet and Rusalka) I've entered links to those too.
<a href="https://"> Scheherazade, Movement One: Lacie and the Sultan </a>
<a href="https://"> Octet </a>
<a href="https://"> Rusalka </a>
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