This is one of a pair of stories - Bimbo's only ones to date - submitted at the same time. They are not connected.

"Castrated for Music's Sake" has all the essentials for a good read: (i) a pretty preteen boy with a nice treble voice that he wants to keep (ii) a pushy and persuasive music teacher (iii) a home castration performed in the teacher's bathroom and described blow by blow. I'm not sure I believe all the detail but that's by the way.

This story begins well - and then just stops. I felt it deserved more, so am attempting a sequel. I've given the boy a name and introduced a girl. Having done that I'm at a bit of a loss how to finish. Any offers?

C van D, I always love to read your stuff. That you are entertaining a sequel to "Castrated for Music's Sake" sounds wonderful, and I can't wait to read it.

For me, the mark of a great story is always that the character finds himself unwittingly falling into a deep hole, from which there seems no escape. What makes the story worthwhile is reading how the character finds footholds and things to pull himself up by that eventually leads to him escaping the hole he found himself trapped in.

The main character might find himself being even further used and exploited by his music teacher. He may find himself at the mercy of a situation he didn't envision for himself.

The music teacher is ambitious and controlling. The girl is forever out of the boy's reach because he is castrated and emasculated in more ways than one. He feels alone, and as though his life is totally out of his control. He can never achieve any of his desires.

Then, slowly, inch by inch, the boy begins to learn that HE has a sort of power over those who are controlling him. The girl he thought was out of reach is actually far more into him than he let himself imagine. Eventually he turns the tables on his abusive music teacher, gets the music career he always wanted for himself, and gets the girl by embracing his own sort of power. He might be castrated, but by finding his courage he discovers that he was NOT emasculated.

That's the kind of story I would love to read. The hole the boy finds himself in is obvious. You just need to find the path for him to climb back out again.

Well, it's here - that is to say it's "in the tank" as I believe the correct expression is, for stories that have safely reached EA but are not yet released for general consumption.

It's very early days - too early to have taken up more than a tiny fraction of Cainanite's ever-helpful suggestions. So far, Terry - don'r know why I called him that but had to call him something - has met his girl, and filled a few gaps in her knowledge of how boys are neutered - that it's not just a matter of having 'them' squeezed out and snipped off.

Actually, it's a matter of waiting for enough new stuff to come in to make an update worthwhile.