Golden Flower blinked as she was dragged up out of the darkness of her cell, her eyes dazzled by the light of the lanterns. It had been pitch black where she had been kept, a small, dark cell, with nothing to do but try to count the hours passing and await her fate.

Her two guards held her firmly, a little too firmly. Both were beautiful women, dusky-skinned, and dark-eyed. Their sultry gazes ravished Flower's beautiful and ill-concealed body, their full lips pursed into knowing smiles. The warrior woman blushed most uncharacteristically beneath their shameless attention.

She struggled as much as she could, but she was too weak, groggy from her imprisonment, from lack of sleep, from the blow to her head that had felled her. The guards could hold her easily, bringing her to the throne room where the new queen awaited.

End of Chapter Four

"How's the new story going?"

Amy looked at the e-mail, wondering how to reply. She'd been evading e-mails and phone calls from her editor for weeks now, but this was from Christina, her self-styled 'biggest fan'.

"Not well," she typed in. "I haven't been able to write anything in weeks."

She'd never had writers' block this bad before. Oh, there had been moments here and there, but nothing like this. It wasn't as if she were writing War and Peace after all.

It was simple. She wrote trashy lesbian bondage stories with various fantasy themes. Forty thousand words were enough. She usually managed by taking a fantasy genre, crafting a flimsy adventure plot, adding large amounts of lesbian sex, rape, torture, and there it was. She could do one in two or three months usually.

It wasn't as if she was actually a lesbian herself. She wasn't. She wasn't much of anything at all these days. She was shy, quite insular and had few friends. For as long as she could remember, she had always wanted to be a writer. As a child she'd written all sorts of fantastical stories.

Unfortunately she'd had no luck getting her serious stories published. They were always rejected for being too long, too serious, stilted writing style, all sorts of reasons.

Then, she'd stumbled across a publisher called House of Chains, quite by accident while searching for publishers on the Net. They accepted unsolicited manuscripts as long as they had lots of sex in them, and weren't too long. It didn't sound entirely inspiring, but Amy was running low on both money and self-esteem. If she could get something published, something on paper, then that would be something.

Her first book was done in six weeks, and was called A Rape of Panthers, about an arrogant noblewoman who buys a savage outlaw woman as a lesbian slave, only to be captured and taken off into the jungle as a slave in turn.

It sold out quickly. So did the second print run, and in no time at all the publishers were on at her for a second book. And then a third.

Without realising it, Amy had found herself a career. This wasn't what she wanted to write at all, but it was easy enough, the money was good, and she did enjoy seeing one of her books published. She used a pseudonym, of course, but she knew it was hers, and that was enough.

It also meant she could make a living from writing, which was all she had ever wanted to do. Now, at twenty-four, she was the author of sixteen books, the owner of her own house, and able to manage independently, which was all she ever wanted.

Except it now looked like it all might be ending. Maybe that wasn't so bad. She could go back to serious writing, give that a try. Have a break, perhaps. Work out what else she could do.

Except there wasn't anything else she could do. She had always been shy, very solitary, with few friends. Her parents were dead, and the rest of her family very distant. (God, if they knew what she did for a living, it would kill them!)

However, there were a few friends she communicated with by e-mail. She had never met any of them, and knew nothing about them at all other than what they chose to tell you. But then, she was selective with what she told them as well, so it all worked out. It gave her a little thrill to talk with people behind this illusion.

Christina was one of the best of those internet friends. She had e-mailed Amy after the first book was published, and it had been her encouragement as well as the money that had persuaded Amy to continue with writing.

"Maybe I can help," came back the next e-mail. "Send me what you've done, and I'll have a look at it."

Amy thought about this for a while. Christina had given her good ideas in the past, and she certainly followed the books with a passion Amy found both flattering and slightly disturbing. She had even worked out a chronology to place all the books in the same world, linking together two of the villains from separate books.

It was certainly worth a try. Amy sent her the first four chapters of her latest book, A Flower Chained, and set back, hoping for some inspiration to arrive from somewhere.

She had no idea what the problem was. The plot was not radically different from anything else she had written.

Her heroine, Golden Flower, was a swordswoman who had sworn service to the queen Taniella. However, Taniella's country had been invaded by her evil twin, Salome the witch. Flower had helped her queen escape, but had been captured in the process. She was just being brought before Salome.

That was where her ideas ended. She could not conjure up the image of what Salome looked like, how she dressed, what she would do to the helpless heroine. Whenever she tried to envisage something, she was merely reminded of her previous villainesses - the corrupt sorceress Senyakhaz from Castle of Slavery, or Lady Wranna from Songs of Decadence and Lust, or the shapechanging Ardala from Faces of Desire.

Maybe this was for the best.

Then, a day or so later, Chrstina replied to her. "I like it!" she began. "But I think I can see your problem. I have some ideas that might fix it." Amy smiled. She knew Christina would come up with something.

Then she read the next line.

"Perhaps we should meet up and talk. I'd love to have you come and visit me, to thank you for all the inspiration you've given me!"

Amy froze. Meeting her was nothing like what she had intended. She hadn't met anyone in person, except for her editor briefly. What if Christina had preceonceptions about her? She knew that Chrstina was a lesbian, and made a living as a lesbian dominatrix. Chrstina may assume she was as well.

No, she couldn't. It would be absurd. She would get around this herself. It probably wouldn't matter even if she couldn't finish it. This wasn't the type of thing she really wanted to write anyway.

She held off a reply for a while, pottering around, hoping for inspiration to come. Twice she tried to continue the story, and twice she was unable to write so much as a single word. The second time, she had stared at the blank screen for half an hour, before finally breaking down in tears.

She was alerted from her crying fit by the arrival of another e-mail from Christina.

"I really think this can be a great book," it said. "I'd like to help you. Please reply."

Drying her eyes, Amy did, and said she would love to come and meet her.

She had her doubts before sending, and deleted the message. But then she thought of that terrible blank screen and the utter lack of ideas, and she re-typed her reply. She had never before realised just how much writing meant to her. It was all she had done now for almost five years. Although it was easy to think of the stories as trashy and simplistic and immoral, she had written them. They were hers.

Amy didn't know what she would do if she couldn't write any more.

"Great!" came Christina's reply. It came with directions. Amy was relieved to know she did not live that far away. She knew from the e-mail address that Chrstina lived in Britain, and so it wasn't a foreign country or anything, but she was only a few hours away by train.

Arrangements were made, Amy packed a few belongings, including her laptop, and she went.