Event in Walthamstow with Melissa Todd

Real life event!

Hello friends! I just recorded a two minute excerpt from my story, with the name of the BDSM producer I'm talking about redacted, to see if anyone can guess. I shared it on Twitter, but I know you don't all follow me there, so here it is, for you to (hopefully) enjoy. It was such a fun chapter to write, cos I love my job, but sometimes I realise too late that I've maybe bitten off more than I can chew...

In other news, I've handed in my copy edit, and I'm waiting to hear about any changes the legal deparment might request xx

A SEX BIT!

Hello friends! In order to motivate people to pre-order my book I'll be Tweeting videos of me reading aloud from the extract that Unbound has already released. I videoed myself doing the reading yesterday and wanted to share it with you before it goes onto Twitter in small pieces, since you've already supported Playing To Lose in getting this far. Ahhhh I can't wait to do an audiobook! That won't come out til well after the print version, but in the meantime, I'm enjoying practising. Happy New Year! xx

Reading Aloud!

To take part, send your receipt to kinkyarielanderssen@gmail.com

A MASSIVE Christmas Offer!

Ahhhhhh we spent yesterday shooting the cover (hopefully) for Playing To Lose. We (Hywel, my lovely photographer husband) and I had a long discussion with the Unbound art director beforehand so we thought we probably knew what we needed to shoot, but it was still a bit nerve-wracking cos we want it to be right. I'd bought some outfits especially, and we also shot some clothes the art director had seen and liked already. We tried lots of different bondage (cos it would be *amazing* if we were allowed bondage on the cover) and the pictures are beautiful. Now we're waiting to find out which shots (if any) will be chosen for the cover. OMG!

Cover Shoot

Also; by all means count the number of times I say 'the cover of my book' in this video, because I cannot bear to.

An Art Director!

Omggggggggggggg it's starting! (maybe. Slowly)

TEAMS OF EDITORS!!!

Of all the exciting rewards I'm excited about sharing, I think I'm MOST excited about the erotic audio recording. When I started writing #PlayingToLose, back in 2016, I was absolutely sure I wouldn't include any actual sex, because writing anything that explicitly honest felt unfeasibly scary.  Then, the process of writing a memoir kind of stripped away any sense of wanting to keep things private. If I could share the worst events in my life, why not share the best, too?

So eventually, I learned how to write sex and BDSM without needing to hide under a blanket at the same time. And then I discovered I loved it; so much so that I started writing little erotic stories of my own, that weren't meant to be part of my memoir at all.

One of those turned out long, and I love it, so it's going to the be audio file I record for supporters who chose that level. But here's my very shortest one, which I wrote to try to express the UTTER PANIC I've sometimes experiened doing IRL BDSM. I assume some of this panic is ex-JW guilt, but some of it is also a fear that if I show the wrong person how submissive I actually am, they might find me kind of ridiculous, rather than hot :0  So here is my minature, panicky story, based on a long ago version of me.

 
                                                                           The Beginning

Fear, and wonder; joy, and panic. Your hands, confident, on my body in the doorway, then guiding me to the chair in front of the long mirror. Watching as you buckle the collar round my neck, exactly like a movie, but this time, real. The earth tilting, a feeling like vertigo, my breathing fast and loud. No hiding my feelings now; the relief massive. Your breath on my throat, the scent of your skin, your fingers in my mouth. On my knees, then over your knee, the shock of the pain from your bare hand spanking. Melting, liquid, my voice far off.  Back on my knees, the texture of the carpet. Your cock. Fucking hell, your cock. Crawling toward you like it was a magnet. My mouth, irresistibly drawn to it, exactly as I’d planned not to be. My lips, exploring its gorgeous contours. Desire for you swelling inside me, my mind whirring disbelievingly, it’s real it’s real it’s real it’s real it’s real.

On all fours, on the bed. Your voice, permeating every moment, calm and velvet. The cane; no memory of the caning, only the marks. Your mouth, on the stripes you’d made. Your touch, making me feel awake, alive.  Next to you, on the bed. In your arms, unexpectedly. A steel hand, clenching my chest; a warning.  Ignoring it; desire for you too strong to fight.  The perfection of your skin, my hands on your chest, my mouth on your cock. The room wrecked, the windows open, the noise of the hot city below us. You, beautiful and beside me. Fear, wonder, joy, panic. Hope.

Sharing is Caring

Hello friends! I've spent the last week editing my manuscript to get it down to under 105,000 words. I wasn't sure how hard this would be, but it turns out that by deleting every instance of my writing "to be fair to him/them/her" before describing someone's egregious behaviour, it was fairly easy. I also deleted approximately 1,000 instances of the word 'wonderful' and similar hyperbole. Only two paragraphs, and one chapter have been eradicated, and I'm sharing that chapter, the book's original epilogue, with you here. 

I'm ousting it in favour of a new one, for the following reasons. Firstly, It's old. It was one of the first chapters I wrote, right at the beginning of my book journey, and I'm talking about events and concerns from 4 years ago. Secondly, my editor warned me that because I've written what I consider to be a feminist book, I'm likely to attract critical reviews by the feminsts who don't like sex work. So it felt like playing into their hands, to have an epilogue which is about a man (hi Hywel!) making me feel really good. Though I wrote the truth, I think I can do a better job now of writing something that's more personal to me, rather than about us, as a couple. Is that more feminist? IDK, but I'll give it a go.  And thirdly, I read what a consider to be an absolutely hideous memoir by another adult model, and she'd included a forward written by someone else, which gushed about what an amazing celebrity couple the author and her partner were. I don't think this is how my original epilogue comes across, but I don't like the idea of potentially ending my book with an invitation for other people to look at my relationship as the perfect romantic ideal, and to feel bad about their own relationship or lack thereof. Life's more complicated than that and I don't want to make anyone think we're in some kind of unachievable BDSM fairytale.

So I'm going to write something more current and a bit more thoughtful, but I thought you might like to see the original. Content warning; there's sex and BDSM in it. So if you've pledged or pre-ordered my book and are intending to skip those bits (hello dear family!) you might want to give this a miss too xx


 Epilogue


 
It’s 31st December 2018.   Hywel and I have decided to experiment with going to a hotel over New Year.  We’ve had a good year business-wise but it feels against the odds.  Online piracy has shut down many of our peers and UK government regulation is a constant threat.  We have no idea if we’ll ever be able to afford to stay in such a splendid country house hotel for three nights of partying again, so we determine to enjoy it while we can afford to.  We’ve spent the day playing chess, walking by the river and preparing to stay up till midnight.  There’s a reception and formal dinner, so I’ve spent an hour making up my face as thoroughly as I would for a shoot, with false eyelashes and everything.  I’ve painstakingly curled my hair, and pinned it up in a loose, fragile arrangement, that I hope looks more effortless than it was.  I’ve not put on my black, glittery ballgown yet.  Instead I’ve been nakedly practicing tying Hywel’s bowtie on myself, because I insisted that he mustn’t have a fake one. In a household with two bondage riggers, at least one of us should surely have the skill to figure it out.

Eventually, I do.  The black bow sits neatly around my neck and I feel like a Playboy bunny.  Leaving the bathroom, I parade triumphantly in front of Hywel, who’s also enjoying a last few minutes of being naked before he has to put on his new dress shirt, dinner jacket and all.  I’m feeling rather pleased with myself, rather bumptious and triumphant over my rigging skills, and in my having forced him to come to a formal event like this one in the first place.  I’m quite annoying, and this is in no way accidental on my part.  Goading Hywel is one of my favourite things.  I sit astride him to give him the full up-close benefit of my excellent bow-tying, and he reaches up and grips each of my nipples between finger and thumb before pulling me, hard, towards him.

And suddenly,  there we are, slipping into the alternative versions of ourselves.  The gear change between normal husband and wife and Dom/Sub is seamless, instant, and in perfect synchronicity.  I’ll never stop finding it miraculous, and I never cease to be grateful for how unselfconscious it’s possible to be about this kind of play-acting. His hands are in my hair, my mouth is on his cock, my makeup has ceased to matter.  We don’t have time to do this, but we’re doing it anyway.  He’s fucking me from behind, gripping my hipbones hard enough to hurt, hard enough to feel like an act of ownership, not just of penetration.  His cock slams into me, so hard it’s on the edge of pain, reminding me that pain from him is always welcome, and always even better than I’d remembered.

We have no BDSM equipment with us - essentially we’re having vanilla sex, but it couldn’t feel less so.  My desire to have his cock back in my mouth, or even better, down my throat, is quite overwhelming.  I kneel in front of him, and as always, it feels like the best place in the world.  I look up at him and he keeps direct eye-contact with me as he slaps my face, each stroke harder than the last, until I’m sure that I’ll have bruises to go down to dinner with.  In this state though, I can’t process the sensation as anything but pleasure.  I don’t think I even make a sound; his power over me feels total and I want more.

Hywel, as always, has remained sane.  He stops slapping my face before it bruises. Digging his fingers into my hair and gripping my head between his hands, he starts fucking my throat.  I love this feeling, I’m not in control of the rhythm, the depth, the speed, and that’s exactly the way I like it.  My technique is far from perfect, I gag several times, tears in my eyes.  But relentlessly, he continues, confident in his ability to read my responses correctly.  And he is correct. I don’t want to stop. Actually, I want to orgasm.  And so, for the last time in 2018, that’s what I do, with my clever, kind, dominant husband’s cock down my throat, my makeup smeared, his palm prints on my face and his hands destroying my elegant hairstyle.

We wash and get dressed.  I retie Hywel’s bowtie around his neck this time, and slip into my ballgown.  I don’t bother with panties, and I think it very likely that I’ll end up barefoot too - I like the idea of seeing the New Year in, dancing barefoot in Hywel’s arms.  My cried-through eye-makeup actually looks better than when it was fresh; between us we’ve created the post-coital, slightly smudged look that I’m so often trying to achieve artificially for shoots, and though my hair is no longer neat, I like it, since it’s a souvenir of such a very recent and excellent encounter.

Hywel and I are pornographers.  We have spent another year turning our own sexual desires into art, to entertain others who don’t have the opportunity to live out their fantasies, and to inspire those who do.  In the process, we have had false starts, hysteria, disasters, artistic differences, and moments of perfect agreement.  He is the person who most makes me want to be the best version of myself, and who makes me feel safe to be the very worst, too, because I’m his.  As, in reality, he’s also mine.  If only I could tell my teenage, guilt-ridden self that my life would one day be this joyful adventure, it’d make my journey to this point so much less angst-ridden. I can’t tell her, but I can tell you.  And I hope with all my heart that you will have these adventures too.

It’s time for us to go down to dinner.  And hand in hand, probably looking like any other couple, that’s what we do.

An Ousted Epilogue

Mid-Edit!

Editing is beginning RN!!!!

Hmm. They got poor Hywel's age wrong, and massively misreported how much I earn. But they totally win at alliteration.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/22/jehovahs-witness-swapped-bible-for-bondage-roped-in-hubby/

All Publicity is Good Publicity?

Just home from my work tour, and full of excitement!

46% and no makeup!

Saturday & 40%!!

(The video wouldn't attach as one)

33% Funded Part II

... I just realised I can give anyone who would like access to my OnlyFans (and who doesn't have access already) a free 3 month trial! I'm only allowed to give 10 out at a time &amp; I'm not sure how often I can do it, but here are 10, so grab one if you'd like &amp; I'll add more as soon as I can. You won't want it if you're uncomfortable with nudity, but it's basically a BTS view of my entire professional &amp; personal life, updated multiple times a day. And of course, I talk about the book xx here's the link!  
https://onlyfans.com/action/trial/bvvzb3hkhtt61v6hw8fvaqzdf9ucdsp3

In thanks…

15% already, forsooth! Thank you!

The first 2 days!

In this bold and intimate memoir Ariel Anderssen charts her journey from a strict religious upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness to her current position as one of the most widely recognised BDSM performers in the world. Her route between the two includes a period as a wretchedly miserable, teenage political activist, a phase touring with a Christian theatre group, and accidentally discovering a talent for posing for art nude photography. This surprising and unconventional career path led her to a life-altering introduction to BDSM-themed erotic artwork and a whole world she never imagined existing.
This is a book about BDSM, and about sexuality, but most of all it is about one woman’s struggle for self-acceptance and the rewards that come from confronting who you are with honesty and compassion.
TRIGGER WARNING: this book contains descriptions of sexual violence that some readers may find upsetting
'In Playing to Lose, Ariel Anderssen creates an erudite and witty insight into the world of BDSM modelling, but more than that, it is a deeply felt exploration of freedom: what it takes to be free, and what it looks like' Ali Millar, author of The Last Days

…and quite unexpectedly, my world changed, irrevocably and forever.


 The first thing I saw was a bronze statue of a woman. She was nude,
 kneeling, and her hands were tied behind her. Seeing it felt like an
 electric shock. I was stunned. And I immediately felt horribly visible, as
 though everyone in the crowded gallery would be able to see the effect it
 had on me. And as the first of the shock wore off, I realised that it
 wasn’t the only statue. There was a series of them, and every single one
 included some kind of bondage. One figure was bent at the waist, secured in
 a set of stocks. One was on all fours, with a collar around her neck and
 cuffs on her wrists and ankles. What on earth, I wondered, frozen, was I
 looking at? It was like a mirror, reflecting the inside of my mind back at
 me. All my fantasies laid out before me in this gallery. It was
 overwhelming.


 Malcolm had noticed nothing of this, having spotted a friend of his. He
 introduced me to Paul, another artist who’d also organised the event. He
 was polite and friendly, but I was wildly distracted. Who’d made those
 sculptures? Were there any more in here? I excused myself, and walked
 further into the gallery. And there before me was a collection of framed,
 sepia-toned photographs, hanging all together and clearly all the work of
 the same artist. And just like the sculptures, they all depicted women. One
 picture was a back view of a woman bent over what looked like a church pew.
 In the foreground was a whip, lying menacingly on a table. Dear God.
 Another depicted a woman, caught in the act of lowering her Victorian-style
 bloomers. In another, a woman knelt in profile, glancing up anxiously
 towards the camera. It was like seeing my dreams brought to life in front
 of me, in artistic form. I felt hot, and giddy, and utterly transfixed. If
 there was art like this, I wasn’t alone, I realised. It’s hard to
 explain how much that meant to me. It’s not just that the pictures and
 sculptures were sexy, though they were. It was that suddenly, right in
 front of my eyes, was evidence that I wasn’t by myself any more. Someone
 had made these images, and these figurines. And whoever they were,
 they must, at least on some level, be like me.


 I’ve heard some Christians talk about their experience of meeting God, of
 having a conversion experience. I never related to it, though I didn’t
 doubt their sincerity. But, in recalling what it was like for me that night
 in the gallery under Waterloo station - the sense of peace, and the hope of
 not being alone and strange after all, in the way that I’d feared that I
 was ever since I was sixteen - I realise that what they describe doesn’t
 sound dissimilar. Once, as a confused sixteen-year-old, I’d had a sexual
 experience when I thought I was looking for a spiritual one. And looking at
 this work that was designed to be sexual, I had what felt like a spiritual
 awakening. I was part of something. And whatever that something was, it was
 here in this room with me.


 The people who’d made it were in the room too, though I didn’t know it.
 Paul, the organiser, suddenly appeared next to me. I hoped he hadn’t read
 my facial expression. I don’t know what it would have told him.


 'Do you like this work?' he asked, indicating the sepia prints. 'The
 photographer is sitting at a table over there, he’d like to meet you'.


 Good heavens. He was here? And I could meet him? We’d
 only been in the gallery twenty minutes. I was going from having no idea
 that artwork like this existed to meeting the artist who’d created the most
 electrifying work that I’d seen in my entire life, all in a dizzyingly
 short period of time. Giddily, I followed Paul over to where a tall man in
 his sixties wearing purple-tinted glasses and black nail polish was sitting.
 He stood up to greet me. And just like that, I met China Hamilton, one of
 the best-established and most-loved creators of BDSM-themed, erotic art
 work in the UK.


 'What did you think of my work?' he enquired courteously once I was sitting
 opposite him at his table, and Paul had absented himself again.


 'I like it very much!' I exclaimed, rather redundantly. I think that my
 feelings about his work were written all over my face. I’d never felt so
 young and ill-equipped to deal with a situation in my entire life. I didn’t
 know how to talk about photography. I certainly didn’t know how to
 talk about the wonderful, arresting darkness of the world he’d created in
 his sepia-toned prints. I literally did not have the vocabulary. I had
 never heard the term ‘BDSM’. I’d never had my own computer, so I’d never
 tried to search out anything relating to my interests. It’s hard to believe
 that a 25-year-old who’d been thinking about bondage and spanking since
 childhood had never looked for people similar to myself online, but I’d
 been sure that I was alone. There hadn’t seemed any point.


 'You’re very beautiful. Would you like to model for me?' asked China,
 blessedly far more comfortable in this arena than I, and not, as far as I
 could tell, in the grip of an overwhelming cocktail of unexpected emotions.


 And of course, I said yes. So we chose a date a couple of weeks away,
 and he invited me to stay at his house in Suffolk overnight, since he
 preferred to shoot after dark. Like a vampire, I thought later that
 evening, looking over his work at the gallery again, but this time,
 imagining myself in the pictures. My conversation with China had only been brief, but he’d made
 mention of a ‘BDSM scene’ in London; from the sound of things there was a
 whole network of people who knew each other, were into similar things, and who organised actual social events. It seemed quite
 unbelievable, but as Malcolm and I shared a taxi back to our respective
 flats later that night, he corroborated the story. In fact, there was an
 erotic life-drawing class that ran every week, within walking distance of
 my home, and they did bondage-themed classes. I could work with them if I
 liked! And, as I confided in excitement that I was going to work with China
 Hamilton, Malcolm asked if I’d like to come over to his flat the following
 week for dinner, and to do a short shoot to try out some bondage so that I
 wouldn’t be a complete beginner when I got to Suffolk. Thank goodness, I
 said yes. Because my first experience of being tied up was not at all how
 I’d expected.

Playing to Lose

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Thank you

Ask Ariel a question and she will answer it in a personalised video, sent directly to your inbox or posted publicly on her social media.  NB: Ariel reserves the right to veto any questions. Only 5 available

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A thirty-minute custom video made by Ariel following a discussion with you about the subject, content and storyline. Please note that Ariel will be clothed and the video will be safe for work. NB: Ariel reserves the right to veto any ideas.  Only 20 available

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Ariel will take you out for afternoon tea at a hotel. This is your chance to meet Ariel and ask her anything about the book and her work as a BDSM model. NB: Ariel will come to the nearest city to you in the UK, or will travel outside the UK if you cover her travel expenses. Only 5 available

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A private half an hour video call with Ariel. This is your chance to have a chat with Ariel and ask her anything about the book and her work as a BDSM model

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Join Ariel for a one hour one-to-one conversation in a hotel bar or cafe in Birmingham. This is your chance to meet Ariel and ask her anything about the book and her work as a BDSM model. NB: Date and exact location TBC.  Only 5 available

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