The Courier
Copyright 2008 by EC
EC's Erotic Art & Fiction - http://www.ecgraphicarts.com/

(warnings: erotic discipline, sex between adults, medical fetish, 
public nudity, harsh police interrogation)


Introduction

The Courier is my fifth book, which I began after more than a 
year of taking a break from writing.  The story of Maria Elena 
Rodriguez-Torres had its origins in a Poser picture series I did 
for my website shortly after finishing The Pledge Mistress 
during the summer of 2007.  I was thinking of expanding the 
captions of that series into a novel, but at that time I was left 
mentally exhausted after finishing my previous novel The Pledge 
Mistress.  The story was further delayed by several important 
changes in my personal life, which distracted my attention from 
writing another novel.  I feel that delay was fortunate, however, 
because it allowed me to start fresh with a new project without 
the mental exhaustion that I felt after finishing The Pledge 
Mistress.

The Courier introduces a new main character, 19-year-old Maria 
Elena Rodriguez-Torres.  Unlike my previous characters, who are 
all either from the US or my fictional country of Danubia, Maria 
Elena comes from another country that exists in real life, 
Colombia.  Lured by the promise of quick money and an escape out 
of her unpleasant life in South America, Maria Elena becomes a 
courier for a cocaine trafficking group.  The story begins with 
her swallowing a kilogram of cocaine, with the expectation that 
she can take it to Europe, expel it, and turn it over to her 
trafficking group.  With the money she expects to be paid, she 
hopes to start a new life in Spain.  Her plans go horribly awry 
when her flight is diverted to Danubia and she ends up as a 
prisoner in the hands of the Danubian government.

In spite of the fact that The Courier takes place in an 
imaginary country, I tried to keep the details surrounding Maria 
Elenas cocaine-smuggling effort as realistic as possible.  As 
incredible as it may sound to someone unfamiliar with drug 
smuggling, large numbers of travelers, especially women, do 
indeed transport drugs such as cocaine and heroin by swallowing 
small wrapped plastic packages called pellets, or ballons.  
Typically the amount transported by a drug swallower is around 
one kilogram, which is divided up into 50-100 pellets.  The 
purpose of swallowing drugs is to prevent detection at airports 
by ion scanners and drug-sniffing dogs.  This practice can be 
extremely dangerous, because a pellet can break in the couriers 
stomach, causing an immediate overdose, or the pellets can become 
blocked in the intestinal tract and require surgery for removal.

The fact that Maria Elena is from Colombia is not really a 
reflection on that particular country, because drug couriers come 
from every country in the world, including the US and Europe.  I 
figured that Colombia was a good a country as any for my 
characters place of birth, but for the purposes of my novel 
Maria Elena could have been from any country in Latin America.  
My purpose in creating a character who spoke only Spanish was to 
allow me, as a writer, to view Danubia and the characters from my 
previous novels from a different perspective. 

While The Courier focuses on a new main character, it also 
continues the life stories of several other characters from 
previous novels, most notably, Spokeswoman Kimberly Lee-Dolkivna, 
Criminal Adjunct Tiffany Walker-Dukovna, Cecilia Sanchez, Jason 
Schmidt, and the family of Danubian Prime Minister Vladim Dukov.  
Readers of my previous novels will notice that many of the 
characters have changed and behave somewhat differently than they 
did in the past.  The reason for that is very simple: five years 
have gone by and characters who were introduced as university 
students now have careers and marriages, so of course they will 
act somewhat differently.  Each of my characters has a life story 
that, in my imagination, extends beyond the confines of any 
particular novel.  An important reason I chose to write The 
Courier was to relate more of that ongoing life story for 
several of my characters. The story also will allow readers of my 
previous novels to re-visit Danubia, which under the government 
of Vladim Dukov is rapidly changing.  I also will explore some 
areas of Danubia and aspects of its society that I was not able 
to develop in previous works.

