Back to Vanilla

When Alasdair isn’t spending cosy days with his son and three grandchildren, he patiently prowls the web on the lookout for a fix. A retired journalist grappling with alcoholism and encroaching old age, he finds his role as a veteran dominant in the BDSM scene a perfect way of raging against the dying of the light. The internet delivers just what he needs into the comfort of his front room.

In a world of characters from the in-your-face bonkers to the simply mundane, he meets Tamsin, an enigmatic young graduate troubled by the idea of women in a liberated world submitting to male domination and pain as a form of sexual expression, yet fascinated by everything she has heard about the almost spiritual release to be found therein.

And Megan, a middle-aged mother bored with the tedium of the daily grind, who through her own tentative online odyssey grows to believe that having your cake – polyamory, bisexuality, whatever – is as simple as eating it.

Sex and the internet were made for each other; a perfect interface of the oldest of primal urges and new ways of satisfying them. Think your desires are too weird to act on? Think again; the web is a world of adventurous playmates you haven’t yet met, and this is the world that Back to Vanilla explores. Careful, though, it’s addictive, particularly when online leads to adventures offline…

Back to Vanilla joins these three adventurers – as well as a host of other assorted everyday weirdos – on their journeys through the world of online sex. It’s a raunchy, rewarding read that’s full of heart, ultimately revealing that what might look twisted at first glance is actually just a celebration of humanity.