Ken and Raven - Author Commentary

"Never piss off an author, an artist, or a musician." -- Unknown

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Someone may know the author of that quote or variant of it but it's a very solid warning. It's been shown time and time again that artists of all kinds use people they know in their work and if they don't like that person it can get very ugly very fast. What's worse is that unless the target is also an artist of some kind they're screwed.

My "Ken and Raven" series is written around a real Ken and a real Raven. Those aren't their true names of course. I'm not that blatant. I know Ken better than I know Raven (more on that later) so his character has true-to-life aspects. I don't like Raven so I not only make no attempt to make her character likable I try to make her unlikable, unpleasant, and tacky.

I have no idea what their marriage is like. I decided as an author to make it fragile and based on different motives. Personally I don't understand how two people can get married but live apart not only in the beginning but knowing they'll be living apart for years. To me they got married -- they're not married. It's not a subtle difference.

I've known Ken for several years. When my own marriage was all but over we got to talking online and found we had a hell of a lot in common. We started down the path of cybersex and I flew out to spend a long weekend with him. A month later he flew out to see me and have another long weekend. We were lovers during that time and things seemed to be on the path to a long and interesting relationship of some kind.

I decided to follow my heart for the first time in my life and made plans to move so Ken and I could see if what we had was real. Ken had other plans and started casually dating someone before I could make the move but did everything he could to help me get here. I was smart enough to want to have a job lined up before I moved and that takes time. I wasn't concerned. He wasn't serious about his girlfriend and when I got there we would try things out.

It didn't work that way. From the moment I arrived Ken hid behind other women's' skirts. He stayed with that casual girlfriend for a year and a half even though he realized six months in that she was psycho possessive and they didn't have much in common.

The following is all what Ken told me so I take it with a dump truck of salt. Ken likes to make himself sound better than he really is. He reactivated his online dating profile "to help a friend revise hers to make it better" and met Raven. Meeting her "was meant to be" because he said he only had his profile active for a week. During that week he had to give her his direct contact info (or visa versa) because if he did disable his profile after that week they would no longer have been in contact.

Ken overlapped his current girlfriend and Raven for at least two months. He got very upset when I asked if he test drove Raven before dumping the girlfriend. That level of anger, very early in the relationship, says he did and found her an acceptable substitute.

Here's my take on Ken. He is a control freak to a certain extent. He's passive aggressive. He married very young and the first woman he slept with. After about fifteen years and two children she started having an affair that lasted the rest of their marriage -- almost six years. During that time Ken moved into the basement of their house and played blind. He stayed faithful while he knew she was seeing someone else. At that time he wrote erotica to have some outlet for his sexual needs besides his trusty right hand.

His stories at that time were soft. They started out with him very obviously in the story right down to using his own name. Later stories stayed soft but explored other directions. Once he was able to start having sex again he stopped writing.

While I was on Literotica recently I got curious about him and looked at his profile. He had written a new story after all these years.

His new story was harder and far more controlling. If you compare it to one of his earlier stories you wouldn't see much in common at all. The new one has very little leading up to the sex, the action is how he likes it, and then oddly enough has the female performing an act he always said he didn't like. But it puts all the control in his hands.

Biased analysis lets me think that he's getting tired of Raven. The previous girlfriend was highly possessive so he could control that relationship by controlling the time he spent with her. He can do exactly the same thing with Raven because he goes to her. She's not allowed to come to him.

The problem comes from getting married - legally binding them together and letting her assume the "wife" role with all that implies. As most men know once the woman gets that piece of paper she puts on the flannel nightgown and doles out sex as a reward. Even though he can control the amount of time they spend together she can take control of what they do when they're together.

I'm not arrogant enough any more to say that Ken stayed away from me because he was afraid that our relationship would be "the one". I was that arrogant at the time. I was confident enough that I changed my entire life thinking it was worth trying. I'm neither confident nor arrogant any more.

So if you're reading about Ken and Raven don't worry if you don't like either one of them. I'm not trying to make them likable. I make them do things that will advance the story I want to write. They just happen to be convenient targets.