Saturday, December 31, 2011

Numbers from a Newbie Writer's First Year

Here's the latest post I put up on the Self-Publishing Revolution blog detailing how my first year as a self-published(ish) writer has gone. Thanks to everyone who supported me through buying my books and I hope you enjoyed them! More to come next year!

I had a nice early Christmas present when my third quarter royalties came through. I was expecting this to be fairly light, but it also included some October sales, which was when my third collection of short stories, A Succubus for Halloween, came out. The amount this quarter was $600, a nice little sum right before Christmas.

That takes my total profits, after taking out initial setup costs, author copies and seller’s/publisher’s cuts, to $1,300 for my first (kind of) year as a writer. Obviously this is nowhere near the same ballpark as self-publishing titans Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath, but this is all money in the black, with the only outlay being my free time spent in an activity I enjoy doing anyway.

I put out three collections of short stories, with A Succubus for Christmas coming out October 2010, A Succubus for Valentine’s Day coming out February 2011 and A Succubus for Halloween arriving October 2011. Christmas and Valentine’s Day were originally priced at $5.99 and this was dropped to $3.99 about halfway in the year after eXcessica head honcho Selena Kitt did some experimenting on pricing. Christmas and Valentine’s Day sold just under 200 copies and Halloween just over 100, making 500 books (print + ebook) in total for the whole year. It’s a modest amount, but not bad considering collections of short stories rarely sell well and my subject matter is about as far from the mainstream as you can get! :)

More promising is the growth. Christmas and Valentine’s Day sold nearly 200 each over the whole year. Halloween came out at the end of the third week in October and my royalties run up until the end of October, which meant it managed those hundred-and-so sales in the first week. Baby steps, I know, but they’re going in the right direction.

Unsurprisingly, the lion’s share of these sales was through Amazon, but they are not the only game in town. I can understand why some might think Amazon’s current dominance is a cause for concern, but I suspect if Amazon really started to abuse that dominance to the detriment of writers and readers, they’d quickly find themselves outstripped by one of their competitors in the way Nintendo was usurped by Sony in the console wars of the ‘90’s. For the moment they’re fantastic and a budding writer would be foolish not to take advantage of what they have to offer.

Writers shouldn’t restrict themselves to only Amazon. Having their own webpage for direct sales can be very useful once they’ve built up a following. By promoting eXcessica’s coming soon link for A Succubus for Halloween heavily on my personal blog in the month leading up to its release I was able to generate 40 sales, nearly half of the total for that book, directly through eXcessica’s own store (which also took Halloween to the top of their bestsellers list, yay! Now if only I can match Selena’s sales out in the rest of the big bad world. :)).

For people looking to self-publish as a route to fame and riches, these numbers aren’t very exciting. If I was trying to make a living as a full-time professional writer, 500 sales and a return of $1,300 for the year would be horrifying. Thankfully I’m not, so I can feel chuffed about the numbers instead of worrying about what I’m going to live on next year.

Next year I plan to put out my first novel and a fourth collection of short stories. I don’t know where the path is going to take me, but it’s going to be fun to find out!

All the best for 2012!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Monster Girl Quest Ch.2 - A Review

Hurrah for とろとろレジスタンス (hope I pasted the right characters there) and Monster Girl Quest Ch.2. Mention of that always triples the number of hits to my blog. :D

Now if only I could persuade all those people lured here like victims to the alluring, pulsing, moist sack of a pitcher plant girl to check out my stories...

Now that the shameless book-whoring is out of the way, let's get on with the review.

Monster Girl Quest is a hentai RPG game. You play Luka, a young man on a quest to bring peace and harmony to his world by slaying the evil Demon Monster Lord. His companion on this quest is Alice…the Demon Monster Lord.

The majority of the hentai comes from the combat encounters. Luka’s world is filled with monster girls, and all of them want to rape and do unmentionable sex things to the poor lad. Have Luka lose a fight (conveniently, the game makes this very easy with various assorted commands that exist purely to suicide poor Luka) and you’ll be treated to an ending scene where the monster girl gets to have her wicked way with the hapless hero. The game also features an unlockable encyclopedia of monsters encountered so far and gives the player the option to…erm…“battle” them again at different difficulty settings.

There are 85 encounters in the second chapter, each with one or more Game Over scenes. That’s a lot of choice and variety. As with the first chapter the creators have tried to cover just about every fetish imaginable (and a few you might never have known previously existed). The monsters vary from the traditional sexy humanoid types such as succubi, elves, fairies, cat girls…

Oh Alma Elma, we'd have such a future together if you didn't keep killing me...

…to some truly WTF! creations.

We strongly recommend your next action be "Guard".

The only true constant is they’re all female and have a pair (or more!) of boobies. As with the first chapter, the artwork is of varying quality, but some scenes, especially in the succubus village, have a lot more artwork per encounter than before.

While the number and variety of hentai scenes is impressive, the creators have also taken the time to make it a proper game with a decent storyline to stitch the fights together. This isn’t a visual novel where the only interactivity is clicking “Next Page” over and over. In the first chapter a lot of the fights were puzzles where the player had to work out which sequence of attack options to use. The second chapter adds extra complexity through the addition of elemental spirits Luka acquires on his quest. Refreshingly, the game steers clear of the clichéd elemental Jankenpon mechanic and instead each spirit gives Luka new abilities.

When summoned, Sylph allows Luka to dodge status changes and some OHKO attacks, while Gnome boosts defence and allows Luka to break restraints faster. Undine gives a kind of temporary invulnerability to most attacks and Salamander boosts attack and resets special points to full, but prevents Meditating to restore Hit Points while she’s out. The game compensates by making the encounters much harder. In the later battles Luka will need to summon Sylph and Gnome just to be able to fight normally. Failure to do so will result in being hit by restraint attacks he can’t break out of and special attacks that will defeat him in one hit.

The storyline continues the humour and strong characters of the first chapter. Luka is a decent and likable protagonist. Alice continues to be sarky and make fun of him at every opportunity, but it’s clear her respect and affection for him grows during the game. (Tip: Pay attention during the last fight otherwise you’ll need that box of tissues sitting next to you...and not in the way you thought!)

I played the game using AGTH and auto-translation software. It was enough to follow the action, but I suspect I missed a lot of the jokes and swipes at mainstream RPGs. Thankfully, RogueTranslator is working on putting together a full English translation. Progress on that can be followed at his blog here.

I love this game. Obviously I’m biased through my own predilections, but it’s great to see a piece of entertainment with porn as its raison d'être not take the lazy way out and actually aspire to have playability, plot and decent characterization as well as the obligatory Tits’n’Ass (or rather Tits’n’Orifices-of-questionable-function).

With around 9,000 downloads in the first week (9,000! Why am I wasting my time writing dusty old books!?), it’s also great to see the creators have been rewarded for their time and effort. Hopefully, its success will pave the way for other similar games in the future. It would be interesting to see the concept expanded to incorporate random battles or branching paths through the story.

I always did like those old game books… ;)

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Feedback / Q'n'A for "A Succubus for Halloween"

A Succubus for Halloween has been out for a month or so now. Thanks to everyone who bought it, I hope you enjoyed it.

I thought I'd use this post as a general request for feedback. Let me know your favourite/least favourite story from the collection and what you liked/didn't like. This will give me a chance to tighten the screws on my internal filth compass and make sure it's still pointing in the right direction.

I'm going to continue killing 80% of my protagonists off regardless of what's requested. It's an addicton, I can't help it. :D But I do want to make sure the stories are still sexy and entertaining, and I haven't been tempted down the dark and dangerous path of trying to write fancy-and-pretentious-like.

Also if you have any questions about any of the new stories fire away right here (or to my email address manyeyedhydraATgooglemail.com if you'd rather not comment in public).

Ta

Saturday, December 03, 2011

A Thing of Subtle Beauty (Not!)

Oh Anne Billson, you are such a tease. I saw a link titled Six Reasons Why The Thing Prequel Is Better Than John Carpenter’s 1982 Film and feared the worst. The film critic and horror author formerly known as Anne Billson must have been consumed, digested and copied by an alien shape-shifting horror. Fetch the flamethrower before it can infect others!

Then I read the article and all was right with the world.

I saw the film back around Halloween and as low as my expectations were, they were not low enough. My criticisms are the same as Billson’s—The needless introductory scene for Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character, her cute-but-clever scientist character coming straight out of the big book of Hollywood monster movie stereotypes, the evil scientist dude from the same boring book of clichés, the bland CGI fx, and the many many moments of bone-headed stupidity.

The biggest shame is this wasn’t a case of They Just Didn’t Care. Someone went to a great deal of effort in recreating the look of the Norwegian camp from Carpenter’s film and explaining how the camp ended up as it did right down to an axe embedded in a wall. Unfortunately, it seems like all that care and attention was thrown out of the window when it came to the script.

aside

Hollywood, you need to value writers and storytellers. They’re the people that link the flashy CGI explosions and fx together in a way that makes sense to people with more than a two-minute attention span.

/aside

[Spoiler Alert!] The tooth-filling test is a nice idea, but it’s crying out to be subverted later in the film. Even if the Thing cannot duplicate inorganic material (but apparently always has a spare set of clothes on hand. Either that or it somehow managed to eat and copy Joel Edgerton’s character without shredding his woollies), it should be smart and amorphous enough to realise it needs to put the earrings and tooth fillings back in afterwards to beat the imperfect test.

The main strength of the Thing concept is no one knows who a Thing is. This would have been a perfect opportunity to ramp up the tension as the audience has their safe conclusions on who is or isn’t a Thing rudely shredded. In John W. Campbell’s original Who Goes There?, characters make an initial assumption a person attacking a Thing couldn’t be a Thing as a Thing wouldn’t attack another Thing. They’re wrong.

This also highlights John Carpenter’s genius. His 1982 The Thing is a much more faithful adaptation of Who Goes There? than the 1951 film. Most of his characters have the same names as in the book. Now, considering the main strength of the concept is no one knows who’s a Thing, this could be a serious drawback. If he follows the source material too closely, anyone familiar with the original is going to know all the twists.

So what does Carpenter (or Bill Lancaster, the man responsible for the screenplay) do, he shuffles the characters around. This is best exemplified in the blood test set piece, where Kurt Russell’s MacReady has the rest of the crew tied to a bench as he tries to establish who’s a Thing. MacReady’s sure it’s the station commander Garry, the audience thinks it’s probably Garry, anyone who’s read the book knows damn well it’s Garry. So they sit there with a smug smile on their face as the film attempts to build tension.

Windows…MacReady…Copper…Clark…Palmer…What The Fuck!

Take that Mr Smug, I-Know-The-Original Man. They’re even more blind-sided than the regular viewer!

The remake should have aimed for that spirit. Instead it retreads the set pieces from the 1982 version and plays them straight, failing to realise that completely diminishes their effectiveness. If you only watch American films and love monster movies, these are very lean times indeed as Hollywood seems to have forgotten or lost the people who knew how to make horror click.

One day I will write my pornified homage to The Thing. I already have the rules for the monster sketched out in my head. It will work and there will be rational explanations for the gratuitous amounts of sex. If you thought "The Orgy of the Pink Flesh" was squicky…

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

A loss of one of Britain's under-appreciated film directors

It’s a sign I’m getting old when the authors and filmmakers that inspired me as a youth are exiting this world. Last week we lost the Grand Dragon-lady of Pern, Anne McCaffrey. This week one of Britain’s more flamboyant and iconoclastic film directors, Ken Russell, died at the age of 84. Sadly, his vision and talent never really found a home in either Hollywood or the British film industry, and he struggled to find funding in his later years.

While best known for The Devils and the Oscar-winning Woman in Love, which earned Russell a nomination for Best Director, I’ll always have a soft spot for his campy cult horror classics Gothic and The Lair of the White Worm. Here’s a clip of the delectable Amanda Donohoe vamping it up as Lady Sylvia Marsh in the latter film (won't allow me to embed unfortunately):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK61O6H3E9s

If you ever wondered how the characters in my stories "Naga Special Massage" and "Naga Massage Review" got their names, now you know.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Fun Things to do on a Black Friday

We don’t have Black Friday in Britain. The term confused me for a while as Black [Insert Weekday] in Britain is used for points in history when whatever moron we had for a chancellor at the time spunked millions (or billions) of pounds up a wall. I suppose the nearest equivalent we do have is the Boxing Day sales after Christmas.

I’m a bad person. Ok, that’s a lie. I’m a good person, probably boring by most people’s standards, but I do have bad bad thoughts.

After reading about the scrums, crushes and even shoppers using pepper spray on each other, impish little ideas started to germinate in my corroded black cortex. Wouldn’t it be fun to go to one of these stores, where people have been queuing outside all night and are grumpy and sleep-deprived, and hand out swords and maces like a regular Leland Gaunt. Out of idle curiosity…to see what happens next…

Hopefully, nobody actually died today, otherwise this blog post might be rather inappropriate.

I think I’d find it hard to be too sympathetic. All death is ignoble, but being trampled in a stampede to get the latest Playstation for a hundred dollars less has to be one of the more depressing and pointless ways to exit this earth. I’m being a curmudgeony young fart, I know, but pictures of mobs bulldozing into stores, their eyes lit up with naked greed at the thought of the bargains inside, highlight a side of human nature that’s a little unseemly to me. Kind of like Reality TV shows.

Anyway, how about this lovely--and very sharp--little sword…?

I’m a bad bad person.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Making my own personal NaNoWriMo

November is turning out to be one of those months. Certain projects (curse my atrophied artistic skills) are stubbornly refusing to get finished. I think I'll run from the official NaNoWriMo and make December my own personal NaNoWriMo instead.

A week or so of clearing out the nagging remnants of old projects and then 50,000 words of juicy Succubus Summoning here we come!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Some Naughty Little Bondage Elves For Christmas

The season of new manyeyedhydra stories is not quite over. Literotica have kicked off their Winter Holidays competition and I have a runner. Because it's the season of goodwill, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., I did the usual thing and entered a nasty horror story with lashings of gratuitous and inappropriate sex.

You might never look at Santa the same way ever again:

"What Bad Boys Get For Christmas."


Perfect bedtime reading for unruly children...

Bad Horror-Head! Get back in your cave!

With another anthology opportunity/deadline presenting itself and my glacial art skills leaving the cover for Succubus Summoning 101 still at the top of the Urgently To Do list, this is a bad month to attempt NaNoWriMo. I think I'll set myself my own personal NaNoWriMo from Mid-Nov to Mid-Dec to see if I would have achieved it with a clear run right from the start.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Don't Judge a Game by the Cover: Catherine

A little tale. I was in my local video games store. They’re a small store, so they tend to only stock the latest AAA titles. I was surprised to see Catherine sitting on the shelf. Catherine is an odd little Japanese game made by Atlus, the same people that did the Persona series. I’d been interested in picking it up, but had resigned myself to having to order it through Amazon or someone like that as my local games shop is useless and only stocks the latest slick-but-empty titles from Activision/EA.

I mentioned my surprise to the girl behind the counter.

“Oh, that one’s been popular. There are not many games for girls.”

Feeling my manliness being called into question, I of course responded with:

“Um. It’s a horror game.”

Doubtful glance from girl behind counter.

“A pair of girls bought a copy yesterday.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a horror game,” I said rather feebly as I handed over my money.

I don’t think she believed me.

It’s understandable as the cover looks like this:



But the game is actually this:



The uh-thing is firing pink hearts out of its mouth. I guess that’s girly. Right?

Despite the titillating nature of the promotional material, another reviewer summed it up correctly by describing it as an adult game without being an “adult” game. This isn’t Monster Girl Quest. It is, however, completely bonkers and a lot of fun. Well worth checking out. I'm also glad to see it's sold a lot as well, this bodes well for a future where oddball games can exist.

And Catherine, the character, is completely adorable, even if she is a [Spoilers!]


(Oh, and I know the concept of girl’s games and boy’s games is/should be an anachronism in this day and age, but you know what I mean--I hope!)

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

I'm on Goodreads

Goodreads is kind of like a Facebook for readers/writers. I set up an account a while back, but it was classed as a reader account and didn't link to my books because I'd used "M. E." as the first name rather than "M.E.". Ah, CompSci string matching. Anyway, I set up an author page over the weekend, which is here.

I'm not sure how I'm going to use it just yet, but I'm sure it will come in useful at some point.

I might move onto other social media at some point for the filthy book plugging. I tried with Facebook a while back, but it seemed a little finicky when I tried to create a page for this pseudonym rather than the real actual me, and given Facebook's inconsistent approach to what should remain hidden, I really don't want to risk the separate identities being linked!
Until we've finished absorbing and assimilating this foolish human. Hssss...

Of course there's always FetLife, but I'm a little scared of the girls my stories might attract... :)

Saturday, November 05, 2011

Succubus Summoning NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is an annual writing competition to encourage people to quit procrastinating and finally focus their energies to spit that novel out. It’s a simple goal – write 50,000 words in the month of November.

I’ve been wanting to give it a go for a couple of years, but in the past I’ve been too busy finishing up final edits for anthologies and panicking about deadlines to take best advantage of it. Technically, this year is no different. I still have the cover/final tweaks to finish on Succubus Summoning 101 and need to finish two stories for a fourth collection. Then I thought, what the heck, I’ll sign up anyway. I might not get to 50,000, but if I get a good chunk of a novel idea done it will have achieved its purpose.

I also have an outstanding writing project that could use a little push to get over the edge. It’s time to finally drag Succubus Summoning 201 off the backburner and continue Phil’s (mis)adventures.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

All Hallow's Read: The First Time

A little later than planned, but here's the brand new story I promised to post for All Hallow's Read. It goes without saying that the language gets a little fruity later on. If you're not an adult, begone now. If you are, don't be reading this anywhere the boss might see. ;)

Happy Halloween and enjoy!

* * * * * * *

The First Time

JT Suggs left the note on the counter and walked out of the house. He walked past nice but bland suburban houses as he left his quiet cul-de-sac and turned down the road that led into the centre of town. He walked down leafy lanes alongside a seldom-used railway line. In the centre, opposite the shining glass edifice of the local Tesco supermarket, he hopped on a bus to the neighbouring, bigger town. At the main bus station there he caught another bus that was heading out to an anonymous district on the fringe of the town centre. He didn't have a map; he'd already memorized the route after looking it up on the internet.

JT's heart thudded in his chest as took his seat on the second bus. He trembled with a barely suppressed cocktail of excitement and trepidation. He'd been struggling to keep it all in since he'd made that phone call at lunchtime and been aroused by the seductive, velvet voice he'd heard on the other end.

He was finally going to do it.

The bus reached his stop. He got out, walked down the busy street, turned left and then left again, entering a plain little back street. He identified the door right away. The number was painted on the burgundy surface in white paint. The door was slightly ajar.

JT's heart pounded in his ears.

He walked right by, continuing almost to the point where the side street opened out into the main thoroughfare again. He turned around, walked back, passed the slightly ajar door again.

Yes or no? He wasn't forced to. He could walk back to the stop, catch the bus and return home.

No! He was fed up of having it hanging over him.

Heart pounding, pulse pumping, hands trembling, JT walked up to the door, drew in a deep breath, pushed it open and stepped inside. A small hallway led to a staircase and then up to another short corridor that terminated in a plain white door with an intercom on the wall next to it. Pictures on the walls of beautiful models with come-hither eyes and dressed only in skimpy underwear gave more of an indication of this establishment's function.

JT pressed a button on the intercom. He heard a buzzing sound and a click as the door was unlocked from the other side. The door swung open and JT was greeted by an attractive, busty girl wearing nothing but a skimpy black negligee. Very busty, JT thought, unable to stop his gaze slipping down to the impressive curves of her chest.

"Welcome to Sinful Delights," the girl said. She smiled at JT.

JT mumbled back. His tongue felt like it had swelled up to twice its size and soaked up all the moisture in his mouth. He followed the girl inside.

Beyond both the exterior and interior door, the massage parlour saw no need to mask its presence anymore. JT walked into an open room with a leather sofa against one wall and a stripper's pole in the corner. The walls were decorated with lurid neon tubes twisted into 'XXX' signs and the outlines of sexy devil girls. The room was dim and everything was tinged red in the low light.

Two girls sat on the sofa. One was a blonde with long silky hair and a frilly white blouse, the other was an extremely busty girl with flame-red hair. The redhead wore a tight-fitting, shiny black PVC catsuit. All three girls looked like they'd stepped fresh from the set of a high-class porn flick.

JT had a mental checklist of items that needed to be satisfied for him to go through with this. One of them was the girl needed to have a minimum standard of good looks. If he was going to pay for it, it had to be with a girl he wouldn't be ashamed of picking up in a meat market after a night on the pull.

JT didn't pick up girls at the local meat market after a night on the pull. He wouldn't be here if he could. The principle was still the same. If he wouldn't be interested in the girl if they met under disco lights, why would he want to pay for it with her?

All three were way hotter than any girl he'd have a chance of speaking to under disco lights.

Check.

"I'm Sally," the girl who'd led him in said. "This is Mint and Asami," she gestured first to the blonde and then the redhead. "We're all available at the moment."

Both Mint and Asami smiled at JT. Their full, glossy lips glistened in the low red light.

That was another checkbox on JT's list. He wanted the girl to seem interested. He didn't want anyone who looked bored, disinterested or miserable.

The two girls pouted seductively at JT and pushed out their chests, accentuating their already impressive busts.

JT gulped.

Check!

"Who would you like?" Sally asked.

JT honestly didn't know. He thought this part would be straightforward. There'd be one girl that ticked his boxes and he'd pick her. He hadn't expected to find three girls way way better than his expectations. What did he want? Sweet, filthy, girlfriend experience, porn star... He hadn't given it much more thought than getting laid. Maybe they had specialities he could ask about? JT paused while he tried to make up his mind.

"I'll take him," Asami said, standing up from the sofa.

Wasn't he supposed to make that choice? JT thought. He didn't complain, though, as Asami took his hand and led him through a door at the back of the room. She was fucking hot. And kind of kinky in her shiny, tight black PVC.

Intimidating, but kinky.

More importantly, she looked like she knew what she was doing. Given his inexperience, it might be best if the girl took the upper hand. Asami looked like a girl who liked to take the upper hand.

She led him up some stairs--JT admired the shiny curve of her ass--and into an intimate bedroom. Like the room downstairs, the bedroom had been decorated as a neon temple to seedy pleasures. Dim lighting illuminated the psychedelic swirls on the walls. The 'bed' was a transparent orange plastic inflatable that looked somewhere in between a mattress and a beanbag.

"How long?" Asami asked in a velvet voice.

"Uh?"

JT was too busy staring at her vinyl-covered body. She was hot. Really fucking hot. Beneath the gleaming curves of her bosom her body tapered down to a perfect wasp waist and then swelled back out into a luscious ass on top of long, lithe legs. Her PVC catsuit clung to her like a second skin and gleamed in the low light. This was his fantasy. In flesh.

"It's fifty pounds for half an hour, seventy-five for the full hour," Asami said.

JT realised it was the same velvet voice he'd heard on the phone earlier that day.

"Um, sorry," JT said. "Can we start with half an hour and see how it goes?" he asked.

"Of course," Asami said.

She switched on a stereo and the quiet strains of some kind of goth electronica with haunting female vocals added to the background ambience.

"I'm not...very experienced at this," JT said.

Asami looked him up and down.

"First time," she said.

Was it that obvious? Yeah, JT supposed it was. Twenty-three, and still obviously a virgin. Still obviously a loser.

He nodded.

"You'll be fine." The smile she gave him was pure filth. "Now take off your clothes."

JT kicked off his shoes and unbuckled his belt.

"I didn't think I'd end up doing this," JT said. "Paying for it."

He dropped his trousers and stepped out of them.

"I'm not a heartthrob, I know that, but I thought I'd find someone. Everyone finds someone."

He'd thought that. Two years at a sixth form college, three years as an undergraduate, and now two years into his post-graduate studies hadn't borne it out.

He unbuttoned his shirt. Asami didn't offer any comments. She watched him with an amused smile on her face and a latex-gloved hand resting against her slinky hips.

"It's not the embarrassment, or the jokes, or the sense of missing out," JT explained.

Although they did get fucking annoying--and old--very quickly.

"I'm scared I'm going to meet this girl, and she's going to be just right, perfect and everything, and then we're going to go to bed together, and I'm going to fuck it all up and be all crap because I haven't had sex before, and that girl--someone I really like--is going to be gone when I wake up the next morning."

He took off the rest of his clothes.

"Does it sound bad if I say I'm doing this for practise?" he asked.

She probably thought he sounded like a loser, but was too interested in his money to let it show.

Asami's gaze dipped down to JT's crotch. She moistened her lips with her tongue.

She looked keen. He hadn't expected that. He'd expected someone a bit more...detached. Professional. Fucking loads of different blokes all the time must get old quick; he was under no illusions there. While he would have liked to have found a prostitute that was girlfriend and porn star all rolled into one, his little checkbox was more prosaic: Gives it more enthusiasm than a corpse.

Asami definitely showed enthusiasm in her bright brown eyes. He could almost kid himself she wanted him. She must be a good actor, or maybe he was letting his own wishful desires superimpose thoughts and emotions that weren't really there.

She was still fully dressed.

"What about you?" he asked.

Her PVC catsuit looked damn hot, but it was going to make intercourse difficult, and that was what JT was here for, to get his damn cherry popped. He wasn't going to be fobbed off with a handjob, blowjob, or any of the other tricks.

"I want to go the whole way," he said.

That was another checkbox--nothing less than full vaginal intercourse. The cherry WAS going.

"You do, do you," Asami said. Her brown eyes twinkled and her moist red lips curled up in a sultry smile.

She reached between her legs and pulled down a zip, exposing the shaved valley of her sex to JT. He saw the folds of her sex--light pink on the outside and darker on the inside.

Blood rushed to his temples. He felt a little dizzy. He was going to do it. He was actually going to do it.

Asami found another zipper just below her neck. She pulled it down, exposing first the shadowy crease of her cleavage, and then pulling it further and further down, revealing more and more of the soft swell of her breasts. Free of the constraints of her tight bodysuit, they looked even bigger. The opened V of her outfit was deep enough to expose the pink circles of her nipples.

Wow. What a body, JT thought.

"Do you like what you see?" Asami pushed the soft pink curves of her boobs together.

"Yea-eah," JT replied.

He couldn't take his eyes off them. What the hell was a girl like this doing stuck in a place like this?

"I can see," Asami smirked as she glanced down at his crotch.

JT looked down. Of course he had a noticeable stiffy.

Asami took two brisk strides, placed her hands on his chest and shoved him backwards. JT fell right into the big, see-through mattress-cum-beanbag thing. It was squishy, but dry squishy. The surface felt like soft, smooth rubber and it was quite comfortable to lie in.

Asami didn't waste any time. She'd already climbed on top to straddle him. One gloved hand pressed down on JT's chest while the other reached down to stroke his twitching hard-on.

"Shouldn't I be wearing a cond--"

He didn't get a chance to finish. Asami positioned the swollen head of his cock at the entrance to her vagina and pushed her hips down, sliding his whole length inside her. She pouted her moist porn star lips and made sultry moans of pleasure as she swallowed him.

JT felt the silky smooth lining of her pussy slide against his unprotected dick. He felt pressure as her tight vaginal walls squeezed up around him. He'd barely been able to contain his excitement since entering the massage parlour and this sensation was far too much. He closed his eyes, released a little sigh and felt his hips give an involuntary twitch as he popped and spunked cum inside her.

Oh, that felt good, JT thought.

Oh, was that it?

He'd come so quickly. This was why he'd decided to give up and pay for it. How crap would it be if he'd performed like this with a girl he really loved? She'd never get into bed with him again.

"Sorry," he said. Even if Asami was a hooker, it still felt appropriate.

She paused on top of him. Her spine was arched back and up, with her head tilted to the ceiling. Her big round boobs were pushed out above JT's chest. She held that pose and JT felt a cold flash of alarm. He'd just spunked his load right up inside her pussy. Without a rubber johnny. He didn't think he was allowed to do that.

Was she going to go all ape-shit crazy on him?

No. She looked down at him with a vulpine smile on her full red lips.

"You don't need to apologise," she said, all velvet and cream. "Not at all."

She shifted position on top of him, keeping his still hard dick deep inside her. The soft, fleshy entrance to her cunt squeezed around the base of his cock, holding him in place. Deeper inside her, the moist walls of her vagina throbbed and pulled on his dick. Whoa, could girls do that? Her pussy was sucking on his cock and it felt about a million times better than his hand had ever done.

"We've only just started," Asami said.

Her eyes changed colour. Her hazel irises became red rings, as if they'd been injected with blood. The pale pink of her overflowing breasts darkened, becoming redder.

What?

She dropped down on top of him and murmured sweet pleasures as she squashed the great soft mounds of her boobs against his naked chest and rubbed them against him. The strong musky scent of her perfume settled over him like a blanket. Her arms slid under his back and she embraced him tightly. Her body was hot--not in the metaphorical sense, but real actual heat hot. Her thighs gripped and squeezed his sides. She rolled her hips against him, rubbing the silky smooth walls of her pussy against the still swollen head of his cock.

Her heat and scent were stifling. Before JT could question what was happening, she pressed her soft lips against his mouth in a scorching kiss.

Her breath felt like flames streaming into his body. Her fire found something combustible within JT and ignited it. Even though he'd just come, he felt he could go again and again and again. Blood boiled through his veins. It felt like a head of steam was building in his testicles and they ached from the mounting pressure.

Her vagina coerced him with teasing little squeezes. Her moist walls gripped him--tugged, sucked. JT's muscles tensed. He was coming. Again. Already. He gasped into her kiss and his hips twitched as he released the pressure into the welcoming clasp of her sex.

Uh. So good, but intense enough to scare him.

Asami broke off the kiss with an orgiastic sigh of pleasure. She tipped her head back and JT saw she wasn't just a wanton hooker, she was a devil. His eyes widened.

Her complexion had darkened to red. She still had the same gorgeous, glamour puss face and porn star pout, but her skin was as red as blood. Her irises glowed like hot coals. Horns curled down through her tangle of flame-red hair. Beyond her shoulders JT saw the black leathery sheets of her folded up wings.

He was fucking a devil.

A devil was on top of him and fucking him.

Wisps of white vapour danced between her glossy red lips. She sucked them down with an ecstatic sigh.

"Delicious," she purred.

JT saw the same wisps escaping his own mouth. It was from him. She was gulping down him.

Then she was lying back down on top of him again--warm pillows of her breasts pressing against him, hot lips wrapped around his. The fires burned higher in JT, fanned by her lust. He couldn't do anything. He was overwhelmed by the urge to fuck, fuck, fuck. He started to thrust his hips back at her, aided by the springy rubber mattress beneath him, wanting to push his cock deeper into the fleshy pit of her sex.

Asami gave another sultry moan. Her soft vagina bunched up around the root of his cock and rolled up the shaft in an irresistible, tugging suction. JT's muscles clenched again and he felt his cock swell inside her as he spurted another full load of cum into her hungry pussy.

Lost in the throes of an even stronger orgasm, JT opened his mouth and let loose a gasp. Asami placed her hands on either side of his head and let her lips form a seal around his. She caught the vapour escaping from JT and drew it into her body.

She was burning him up.

Burning him out.

He couldn't stop. The fire was out of control, tearing through his body. He was fuel and she was going to consume him until he was completely spent.

Asami broke off the kiss with another euphoric sigh.

"Yes, I think I'll slurp you all up," she said.

She looked down at JT and gave him a vulpine smile.

"It's not often we get to fully consume one of our guests. Too noticeable if too many men disappear. So we take a little portion of their sexual energy and let them leave none the wiser."

She ran a black-gloved finger down JT's chest.

"Such light snacks are so unsatisfying," she said. "Sometimes we treat ourselves to a proper meal. The occasional man can go missing without any suspicion arising. No one will know."

She placed her hands on his shoulders and moved on top of him with smooth thrusts of her hips. The full red globes of her overflowing breasts bobbed up and down. JT felt the wet friction of her hot vaginal walls as his cock moved back and forth inside her.

"You're my feast and I'm going to enjoy you to the full," Asami purred.

"Someone will know," JT said.

More white vapour escaped from between his lips and Asami drew it into her body with a sultry sigh. He felt the same plumes escape through his penis as the succubus--she could be nothing else--gave his member another soft squeeze with her vagina and sucked another long ejaculation from his body. She took his vitality with it. He had no strength to resist. The heat of her body wrapped around him sapped out all his fight and he sank deeper into the soft rubber mattress.

"No one ever tells a soul when they go to visit a prostitute," she laughed. "Now lie back and enjoy your final moments. All our men do."

The room was darkening. There was a sulphurous odour in the air that mingled with the twin pungent aromas of her sex and perfume. The music was gone and instead JT thought he heard flames roaring off in the distance. And screams. Many countless screams.

"I did," he said, little more than a wheeze. "I left a note. On the counter at home. Just in case."

Asami stopped. Her lush lips narrowed into a frown. She gripped the sides of his head and forced him to look straight up into her burning eyes. Her gaze filled his world. It swallowed him whole and violated the hidden and secret corners of his soul.

The corner of her lips turned up in a little half-smile.

"So you did," she said. "What a clever cautious boy."

JT shuddered as the soft smothering walls of her vagina relaxed and released his organ. The flow of his essence into her black womb was cut off. The sudden removal of the pleasure she'd caused him felt as bad as a kick to his groin.

"How disappointing," the succubus said. "If I don't let you return home a number of irritating persons are sure to visit here and ask a lot of inconvenient questions. I can't allow that. My sisters would be most displeased with me."

Her finger traced circles around his nipple.

"Lucky boy. It seems I must content myself with a snack after all."

She pursed her lips together and blew JT a kiss. Her breath expanded out into a spectral pink heart that enveloped JT's face. It streamed up his nostrils and settled within the hidden lobes and folds of his brain. She used it to work on the substance of his mind--breaking some connections, rewiring others; gently shaping and remoulding his memories as it suited her.

* * * *

JT thought he'd feel more elated.

It had been good, he thought as sat on the bus home. At least he'd thought it had been good. The intensity of the memory had already faded to a kind of haze. It didn't matter. He'd done it. He'd finally had sex--paid-for-sex, but sex nonetheless. That damn cherry was no longer hanging over him.

Strangely he felt a little empty, hollow even. There was a nagging feeling he'd lost something without being aware of what it was. Stupid guilt, probably.

He got home and saw the handwritten note he'd left on top of the kitchen counter. It had the address of the massage parlour. He'd left it for his mother in case 'something' happened to him and he didn't get back before she finished work. He didn't know what that 'something' might be other than massage parlours were illicit and vaguely criminal and it would be best to be on the safe side just in case he ended up being drugged, abducted and having his kidneys removed for the black market.

It was silly, really. Of course nothing had happened. This was the real world, not a stupid gangster flick. He should have been more worried about his bus getting stuck in traffic, or his mother finishing work unexpectedly early and getting back before him. That would have left him with some awkward and extremely embarrassing questions to answer.

Smiling, JT crumpled up the useless note and tossed it into the bin.

THE END

Saturday, October 29, 2011

A Succubus for All Hallow's Read

This is a brilliant idea from Neil Gaiman. Give someone a scary book this Halloween. I love it. Anything that encourages more people to read is always good.

In a very brief moment of insanity I did think about leaving one of my anthologies in the book cupboard at work. Then I thought it through. The upside is I’d have a lot more time for writing. The downside is I’d probably starve to death after about a month.

I also thought about getting involved by giving away some copies of A Succubus for Halloween, but I felt it would be a slap in the face to the long-time fans that supported me by buying the book on the first day it came out (and taking me to the top of the bestsellers list on eXcessica’s own website—thanks!).

In the horror world I’m still plankton (or maybe single-celled algae), so I have to start off small. Maybe one day I’ll grow big enough to give whole books away. In the meantime I’ve got a nice compromise that should please everyone.

For All Hallow’s Read I’ll put a brand new short story up here on my blog on Halloween*. Yep, check back on Monday, October 31st and there’ll be a brand new never-before-seen tale of spooky succubus fun.

And if you want to get involved, please feel free to pass out extra copies of “A Succubus for Halloween” to friends, family, outside schools—

HORRORHEAD! Bad Head! Down! Get back in your dark cave, now!


Check back here on the 31st. ;)

*Bear in mind I’m chronically bad with deadlines so it might appear late Monday night or sometime Tuesday.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

The Tidal Wave of Choice and a Deceptive Cover

More tubthumping from The Self-Publishing Revolution. My scheduled monthly post ended up being a real bitch to write so I'm doubling it up here to fill in for my usual Tuesday/Wednesday/uh Thursday? slot.

One of the fears about the rise in ebooks and self-publishing is that the world will be buried in a tidal wave of crap writing. It’s a familiar argument—there will be so many bad Twilight knockoffs and other rubbish uploaded to Amazon no one will be able to find anything worth reading amongst the great steaming piles of ordure.

It’s one way of looking at it. Personally, I think it’s just as easy to turn it around and see the positive aspects.

The problem when creativity is commodified is that the bottom line suddenly becomes the number one consideration. It’s not enough to be good; if someone has stumped up cash in advance, they’ll want to see a return on their investment, which means the work needs to be both good and popular (or failing that, just popular, hey, Hollywood ;) ). I suspect more than a few writers have run into, “It’s good, but we don’t think there’s a big enough audience”, before the gate slammed down on their foot. As a result niche, interesting, challenging is often overlooked in favour of safe, bland, reliable (Hey, hello Hollywood! ;) ).

The beauty with ebooks and self-publishing is that the initial outlays are so small. Writers can take risks. Even if they only find a niche audience appreciative of their work, that’s still profit (providing you don’t think too hard about the time spent creating and polishing your work!). It’s also good for readers. Yes, there are going to be a lot of bad books that shouldn’t have seen the light of day (and these too might find fans—taste is subjective), but there are also going to be a lot of quirky, interesting books that might not have made it out of the slush pile under the old system. Personally, I think more choice is better than less choice.

Take short stories. I love short stories, especially horror stories. Mainstream publishing houses seldom publish short story collections. They don’t sell very well. There was even a recent tweetathon to save the short story.

I’ve put out three collections of short stories. They haven’t found a massive audience, but they have been found by readers who’ve enjoyed them a great deal. Publishers have to worry about the cost of print runs and marketing budgets. I don’t. I’m free to write what I want. It doesn’t take many sales to cover the initial costs and everything after that is gravy. That’s good for me, good for the readers who like my writing, and good for short stories, as there are plenty of bloody-minded fools like me that still enjoy writing them.

I suppose this would be the appropriate point for the blatant book plug:



I love the cover Selena and the people at eXcessica came up with. It’s totally inappropriate. This is either the darkest collection of erotica you’re likely to read this Halloween, or the most twisted, sexy-perverse collection of horror tales you’re likely to read this Halloween. Someone is going to pick up this book thinking it’s another cutesy paranormal romance with fashion-conscious demonesses, and get the shock of their lives.

I’m more in love with that idea than I should be. I can’t help it. I’m a horror writer. We want to scare people. It’s in the blood. While marketing-types would be aghast, I’m sitting here and grinning like a Cheshire Cat as I go, “open it… open it…”

It’s Halloween. I’m going to have fun. Bottom line be damned.

Enjoy the book. She’s as cute and adorable as her cover. Honest… ;)

Saturday, October 22, 2011

A Succubus for Halloween is out!

She's out in the wild and eager to snare fresh prey with her seductive wiles:



My third collection of short stories is available to buy from eXcessica, amazon, smashwords, B & N and others. And if you'd prefer a more tangible copy, the print version is also available from CreateSpace (and probably amazon too, shortly).

So go on, enjoy a slice of darker erotica this Halloween...

Thursday, October 20, 2011

A Succubus for Halloween: The New Flesh

Only a few days to go before my third collection of short stories, A Succubus for Halloween, hits the online streets. I’ve talked before about trying to find a balance between posting stories up on the internet for all to read and holding some back to sell ebooks (which is good, as it incentivises me to write more stories). There are five brand new, previously unseen stories in A Succubus for Halloween. I’ve posted some excerpts over the past couple of weeks, now here are a few summaries to raise the excitement level.

Cleric vs. Succubus

Most of the stories are contemporary this time around, but I did include this tasty little historical piece. A luxurious Roman bath becomes a deadly battleground as a holy man fights for his soul against the seductive wiles of a rapaciously erotic succubus.

Oil-Wrestling a Succubus


Splash on some oil as it’s time for some kinky grappling with a lithe little hellcat. With succubi it’s always that kind of wrestling, but don’t expect her to fight fair.

I thought it was about time I covered the femdom wrestling fetish and this story gave me a perfect excuse. There’s also an interesting little scene for those that like to follow the tidbits of continuity I bury in my stories.

Shrimp and the Crab-Centaur Girls

In H-Space, beware the girls with multiple legs and pussy lips that can swallow a man whole…

This one’s insane. One for the voreaphiles to appreciate (I haven’t forgotten you) while everyone else can scratch their heads and wonder why I’m still allowed to roam the streets. If you like crazy Japanese anime, this might tickle your bits.

Serving the Earth Mother


The sultry witch, Annette Brite, lures a young couple into an obscene arcane ritual.

Every good horror film or book needs moments. These are the set pieces that stick in the memory and everyone talks about afterwards. The plot of this story is one such moment. You’ll understand what I mean after you read the story and attempt to describe it to someone else.

Fucked up doesn’t even begin to cover it.

It’s the penultimate story of the collection. It’s there for a reason. By this point the reader is probably thinking the stories can’t possibly get any darker or crazier.

They can and do.

Which leaves the last tale:

A Halloween Party with a Succubus

Fans of the lovely Nicole can rejoice. This is the all-new story featuring her.

She escorts a doctor to a Halloween reunion party where old resentments bubble under the surface. Nicole is not afraid of a little bit of exhibitionism, so the good doctor is in for a livelier night out than he first thought!

There’re these and a few old favourites, all wrapped up in the darkest, weirdest, most insane collection of horror erotica you’re likely to find this Halloween.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

"Strange Love" anthology out this week

October is certainly shaping up to be an active month for me. Strange Love, the fourth of the four anthologies eXcessica puts out every year to raise funds, is out today and features one of my stories: "A Summer Dance with a Succubus".


"A Summer Dance with a Succubus" features a young man being accompanied to a summer dance by the gorgeous and mysterious Nicole. It's one of my favourites out of the stories I've written. Mainly because everything dropped nicely into place as I was writing it. Winning me most of my kindle by placing in an online competition also helps!

Longtime readers will probably already be familiar with this story. I'm hoping that having it appear in this anthology will introduce the story to a wider audience that aren't familiar with my work.

And vice versa. If you've ever wondered what the other eXcessica authors get up to, here's a chance to pick up a sample of their work and maybe find someone new to read.

Strange Love - shapeshifters, genies, robots and other strangeness. Out today.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

A Succubus for Halloween: Excerpt IV

Continuing with the excerpts, here's the lovely Nicole being very naughty (naughty as in if you're not 18, scram!) in "A Halloween Party with a Succubus."

* * * *

They stood outside on a wide balcony overlooking the park behind the house. It was quiet out here. Everyone else was back inside in the light and the noise of the party. Robert took a sip of beer and leant on the balustrade. He stared down at the trees below.

“Is everything okay?” Nicole asked. She put an arm around him.

“It was a mistake bringing you here,” Robert said.

“Oh,” Nicole said. She sounded hurt. “Did I do something wrong.”

“No, not you,” Robert said quickly, alarmed he might have hurt her feelings. “Them.” He nodded towards the light and noise of the party.

He paused.

“No. Me. What was I trying to prove? All I’ve done is expose you to their sniggers and snide remarks. I can hear them. They never did learn to talk quietly. Some of the things they’re saying about you...” Robert shook his head. “It’s not right, whatever your job and background are.”

Nicole looked back at the bright lights of the house. A muted babble of conversation and loud braying laughter could be heard on the other side of the windows.

“They’re not very nice people, are they,” she commented.

Robert paused. He hadn’t wanted to admit it himself.

“No, they’re not,” he said. “Aldrich was that kind of school. I was hoping the years might have changed them, but no, Aldrich is that kind of school.”

He plonked his half-drunk bottle of beer on the stone balustrade.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We don’t have to stay around here and listen to them snigger behind our backs. There’s a pub not far from Josef Schwarz with much better company.”

Nicole’s hand was in his. He turned to walk away, but Nicole didn’t follow. Instead she pulled him back with startling force.

Robert barely had a chance to register his surprise before her arms enfolded him in an embrace and her soft lips pressed against his. Her lips were moist and lusciously soft. A warm buzz flowed through Robert as she pressed them against his. She wrapped her arms around him and pushed her body up against him. A jolt ran through Robert’s body as she wriggled against his crotch.

She broke off the kiss and Robert blinked as he looked at her smiling face. That had been unexpected.

Still smiling, Nicole backed away and twisted from side to side, dancing to a rhythm only she could hear as she crouched down lower and lower. Robert shivered as she pressed a palm against his groin and rubbed. Robert’s member, already slightly engorged, swelled up to full hardness.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Nicole gave him a whimsical smile before grasping the zipper of his fly and pulling it down.

“Something fun,” she said.

She reached into his trousers.

“But they’ll see,” Robert hissed.

The drapes were all pulled back. There was only glass separating them from the party guests.

“I want them to see,” Nicole said. Her smile matched the horns on her head.

“Why?” Robert asked. He trembled as she extricated his throbbing erection and brought it out into the cool October air. “Isn’t this confirming—”

Robert was cut off mid-sentence—mid-thought even—as Nicole kissed the tip of his cock with her soft lips and then sucked, taking in his full length right down to his balls. He leant back against the stone balustrade and closed his eyes as Nicole crouched in front of him and bobbed her head up and down on his erection.

* * * *

Not long now...

Saturday, October 08, 2011

October is the month for new manyeyedhydra stories

Not only do I have a 3rd anthology coming out on the 21st (I may have mentioned this a few times), but I also have a few runners in Literotica's annual Halloween competition.

"Guard Duty" features gangsters, a mysterious crime boss and a succubus in a cage. It expands on the little universe I'm slowly putting together and introduces a new player. It also features a very nasty bit of philosophical fridge horror if you look hard enough.

"Naga Massage Review" is a follow-up to "Naga Special Massage" and shows a different aspect of the lovely Amanda.

I might also enter a new Nicole story for the less death-by-sex inclined if I manage to finish it in time.

So there you go. Stories are like buses. You wait ages for one to show up and then a whole bunch appear at once.

Enjoy! ;)

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

A Succubus for Halloween: Excerpt III

Ever had the feeling you started something a little earlier than it needed to be? :)

Never mind. Here's an excerpt from one of the new stories in A Succubus for Halloween. The sultry witch, Annette Brite, is up to more mischief in "Serving the Earth Mother":

* * * *

Aaron felt a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach as he heard the clipped, perfect enunciation of the new voice. His yell for help had caught the attention of someone.

“It’s difficult to judge the amount of force required to knock somebody out, and it would have spoiled everything had I swung too hard and caved your skull in.”

Brite stood in the entrance to the stone cell. Her pale face looked white and insubstantial in the dim candlelight. She wore the same voluminous black dress as before, with a necklace of large wooden beads around her slender, elegant neck.

“What do you want with us?” Aaron asked.

“You’re a witch,” Andrea said. “You follow the Earth Mother, you know the Rule of Three. How can you do this?”

Brite chuckled.

“It’s a curiosity how language changes down the centuries,” she said. “Words that mean one thing can come to mean another. The same word can take on many different meanings. Many different meanings can even come together under the same word.

“What you call witch is a practitioner of Wicca. The word also has an older, darker meaning, a label given to those that seek knowledge and power through blacker arts. The old fairy tales were not so far from the truth.

“I am not a practitioner of Wicca.”

Brite took off her necklace and slipped out of her voluminous black dress. She was wearing nothing underneath and—like her face—the rest of her body was pale and flawless. She had a fantastic figure—soft and curvaceous around the breasts and hips, but lean around the waist and legs. In other circumstances Aaron might have thought her very sexy. Currently, sex was far from his mind.

“What do you want with us?” he asked.

Brite busied herself in the corner of the room. She painted a complex circle on the floor with a substance that was black and sticky like tar.

“The entities I call upon are more demanding and have darker appetites than your Earth Mother, I’m afraid,” she said. “And they are far less forgiving if their conditions are not met.”

She finished her design and stood up, examining each line and symbol carefully for possible errors.

“It won’t work,” Aaron said. He tried to ignore his fear and the chains around his wrists. He needed his voice to sound calm, a rational knife to cut through the woman’s obvious insanity. “It doesn’t matter how you sacrifice us. They won’t answer. They don’t exist. It’s all nonsense.”

It might be nonsense, but it wouldn’t make Andrea and him any less dead after she’d sacrificed them to her mythical deities.

Brite paused and her supple red lips curled up in an amused smile.

“I love this era,” she said, “so sure in your truth of the world even though you’re as innocent as newborn babes.”

She opened a black canvas bag and pulled out a roll of ancient parchment. She unrolled it and Aaron had the uncomfortable feeling he was looking at a tanned square of human skin.

The shopkeeper’s voice rose as she recited words in a language Aaron had never heard before. It sounded dry and long dead, like dust blowing through long abandoned temples. The words echoed and reverberated off the cold stone walls and sent shivers rattling up Aaron’s spine. The words sounded completely alien, as if the vowel and consonant sounds were not designed for human tongues.

Mumbo jumbo, he thought, products of her madness. They didn’t mean anything.

Brite finished reciting the words from the scroll. There was an expectant hush, as if the room itself was holding its breath.

“See, I told you nothing would—” Aaron started.

He didn’t finish.

The black candles standing around the circle Brite had drawn on the floor started to fizz and crackle. Thick plumes of brown smoke welled up from the candles like exhaust fumes from Hades. Rather than disperse through the room, the smoke coagulated into a thick brown cloud. A vile stench assaulted their nostrils, like a mixture of meat gone bad and stale flatulence.

Parlour tricks, Aaron thought. Nothing but—

The smoke slowly dissipated, revealing...

* * * *

That reveal will have to wait until Oct 21. ;)

Saturday, October 01, 2011

A Succubus for Halloween: Excerpt II

Three weeks to go and it's time for another excerpt to crank the hype handle. While I do love a deliciously sinful demoness with horns, wings, tail and a body so hot it smokes, occasionally I like to cut my imagination loose and get really freaky. Yep, it's time to enter Hell-Space again. Here's an excerpt from "Shrimp and the Crab-Centaur Girls":

* * * *

“Base, can you hear me? Base? Over,” Collins said into the radio.

All he got back was a hiss and crackle.

“Radio’s fucked again,” he said.

“Must be atmospherics,” Rutherford said.

“Or something else,” Shrimp said.

He showed them his iPod. The screen was going nuts. Black shapes flittered back and forth across it like over-anxious ants.

“That’s not all,” he continued. “None of my electrical equipment is working either.”

“We’ll carry on,” Hackett said. “It could be just a localised disturbance.”

They carried on down a barren wide valley lined with rough brown boulders. They travelled a short distance before Banks stopped them again with a raised fist. His hand wobbled, as if he wasn’t too sure of himself.

“What now?” Hackett asked. “You seeing another bare-breasted blonde?”

“Um...actually, yes” Banks replied.

What? Collins hurried round the bend in the path, eager to see like the rest of the squad.

A blonde girl stood behind a boulder up ahead of them. Only her upper body was visible and it was completely naked. What a body it was too. She was tall and curvy—a natural cheerleader. Her blonde hair was long and silky and her eyes were as blue as the skies back home.

At first she was coy. Her arms were folded to hide her exposed breasts. Then she looked at the men, smiled and her shyness tumbled away as she dropped her arms. A large pair of titties swung free, each topped with a perky pink nipple. She looked down at them, as fearless as a stripper.

Fuck, she was hot. Brains versus looks conversations aside, Collins had been lucky enough to have his pick of the girls during his school life. He would have traded all of them for a chance to put his hands on those ripe melons and fuck her from behind like a dog.

Everyone was motionless. No one was quite sure what to do. Rutherford looked like he wanted to wolf whistle as if he was back at his favourite strip joint. Shrimp’s eyes were as big as saucers. He probably hadn’t had many opportunities to see girls like this, naked and in the flesh.

Fuck, even porn directors didn’t get to see girls like this.

The girl moved to the side. A naked leg, lithe and gloriously long, stepped out from behind the boulder. She wore no shoes and even though her foot looked delicate, the rough ground didn’t bother her as she rested lightly on the ball of her foot.

A second leg followed, coming down a little behind the first and then it at all started to get weird.

A second leg?

Collins wasn’t sure of what he was seeing.

There was her right leg, gracefully bent at the knee, and behind that, another right leg, the same as the first.

He watched, incredulous, as a third joined the other two.

What the fuck?

It reminded him of paintings he’d seen in an Indian restaurant. The people in them had three times the number of heads and about five times the number of arms and legs. This was just like that.

A fourth leg stepped out behind the others and then the girl, or whatever she was, slid out from behind the boulder.

Her upper body was human right down to her hips. After that she became something monstrous. Her lower body expanded out into a wide bulbous disc. It looked like the abdomen of a spider or crab, but covered in fleshy pink human skin rather than a hard carapace. Four legs sprouted from each side of her abdomen. They looked like human legs, but she used them like a crab.

The worst part was where her human torso joined with her monstrous abdomen. There was an orifice there, right where the pussy would be on a normal girl, but it was far far larger. It looked like a mouth, a mouth with a gigantic pair of overstuffed lips. They were pink, plush and currently pouting in the grotesque mockery of a kiss. The lips parted a little and Collins saw an interior that was pink and moist.

* * * *

Don't worry. Not all the stories are this weird. Some of them are worse...

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Covers Lie

I love this cover. It’s so deceptive. I think my publisher has a perverse sense of humour. Look at the cute little demon on the pumpkin—so naughty and so sweet. No one would guess the horrors lurking within these pages…




It’s a perfect fit, especially for the nameless succubus from the succubus tablet. She’s cute, she lures you in and then…snap!

I suppose technically it’s the kind of cover that’s more in keeping with an urban fantasy book—maybe a tale of modern-day sexy witches or vampires fighting crime, or the perils of buying fashionable shoes. These stories are much darker and weirder than that. A reader expecting another collection of run-of-the-mill urban fantasy stories is going to have their mind…opened.

Maybe I could have asked for something different, but I like this cover. It’s deceptive. It’s going to draw in unsuspecting readers. Boring marketing theory be damned. It’s Halloween—a time for devils to play. I’m going to have some fun and what can be more fun for a horror-erotica writer than shocking some unsuspecting readers.

This is my trap. Open it on October 21. I dare you…

Sunday, September 25, 2011

A Succubus for Halloween: Excerpt I

Here's an excerpt from "Oil Wrestling a Succubus", one of the new stories from a Succubus for Halloween. Spot the recurring character. ;)

* * * *

What kind of ring was this? Janssen thought as he walked into the arena. There were no ropes and the floor was sunken. If anything, it looked like a large inflatable paddling pool covered in a blue plastic tarpaulin. The wall didn’t rise much higher than his thighs. Janssen stepped over it onto a surface that rocked and swayed beneath him.

It was a damn inflatable paddling pool.

Janssen looked up into the rows of seats. There wasn’t much of an audience, maybe twenty people or so. He saw Rodríguez sitting with a grotesquely overweight man. He guessed that must be the big boss.

What was he supposed to do?

Janssen’s confusion deepened as he watched a statuesque girl step into the pool. Her short black hair was swept up like flames.

Surely they didn’t expect her to fight him?

The girl took off her fine black silk robe and tossed it aside.

Oh man, what a body.

She looked like one of those porn star angels he’d seen on DVDs while over at one of the other guy’s apartments. Fresher though. Without the worn out and used up look some of those girls had. And fit as well. In the athletic sense. Sure, she had the big bouncy boobs he liked to see in those dirty films, but the rest of her body was trim and lithe. Her titties were contained in a black bikini top the same colour and sheen as a pool of black oil. It was stretched taut to hold them in place.

He wouldn’t mind getting his hands on those. Or pinning her and...

He felt the phantom thwack of his grandmamma’s stick as a series of lurid thoughts ran through his head. But hot damn, a body like that sure was distracting.

The girl walked forwards, no trace of fear in her clear blue eyes. There was an easy grace to her movements. She looked like she knew how to handle herself.

But she was a girl. Tall, well-toned and lean, but still a girl. Janssen had maybe a hundred pounds on her. She couldn’t seriously expect to beat him.

“Welcome, treasured guests.” A sultry female voice came over the PA. “Tonight, for your pleasure, we have a very special bout.”

The voice lacked the typical bombast of a fight announcer, instead oozing the quiet sensuality of a late night radio host.

“Another brave challenger has come to take on the exotic wiles of the Ebony Succubus. A round of applause, please.”

What did he do? Janssen wanted to look good for Rodríguez and the Ojos de Oro, but he didn’t want to hurt her. His grandmamma had brought him up well. He didn’t hit girls.

An object hit him in the chest and landed at his feet. It was a clear plastic squeezy bottle.

He looked to where it had come from and saw the blonde girl.

“Have fun.” She winked at him.

Over on the other side of the ring the black-haired girl was squirting clear liquid—oil—all over her body and rubbing it in until her pale skin glistened under the lights. She gave Janssen a grin that looked exactly like one of the girls from the guys’ dirty DVDs.

Oh, so it was that kind of wrestling.

* * * *

A Succubus for Halloween and Other Tales of Terrifying Temptresses, available in print and ebook from Friday, October 21st.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

New manyeyedhydra stories: Halloween 2011!

It's time to crank the hype handle. My third collection of short stories, A Succubus for Halloween and other tales of Terrifying Temptresses, is coming out in a month's time.

Here's the full story rundown:

1. A Succubus for Halloween
2. The Orgy of the Pink Flesh
3. Naga Special Massage
4. Pearls of the Mediterranean
5. Halloween Nÿte
6.The Big Black Bed
7. Succubus vs. Cleric
8. Oil Wrestling a Succubus
9. Shrimp and the Crab Centaur Girls
10. Welcome to the City
11. Capramendes, the Milkmaid
12. Serving the Earth Mother
13. A Halloween Party with a Succubus

Some of those titles will be familiar, some not. Even the titles that seem familiar will be a little different to what might be expected ("Naga Special Massage" - unless you caught the version in Divine Matches).

What to expect. Succubi. Lots of hot sexy succubi. It's Halloween and the sex demons are out to ensnare their victims in webs of seductive pleasures.

There's also weirdness and—because I can’t keep horrorhead under control—some blood-curdling squick. Exactly what a good anthology devoted to both horror and sex needs.

One month to go and I'll be giving out excerpts to whet the appetite over the coming weeks. In the meantime I'll lead off with the obvious:

"They'll give you pleasures beyond your wildest dreams, and terrors beyond your darkest nightmares..."

Monday, September 19, 2011

Song for the Week: Mar De Grises - A Sea of Dead Comets

This is the last track (okay next to last if you include the bonus) from Chilean doom metal band Mar de Grises's last album, Streams Inwards. The ending puts me in mind of a world collapsing into a black hole. Haunting.



Great album.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Night of the (Predictable) Demons

Two reasons to see Night of the Demons:


Ugh. Sorry. I don’t know what came over me there. The sixties maybe. Or a strong urge to put on a flat cap and take t’whippet for a walk.

Anyway. The attractive lady is Bobbi Sue Luther, who also happens to be the face of St. Pauli Girl beer. Not that I make a habit of stalking attractive scream queen’s Wikipedia pages or anything. Um…

Sadly, the film is rather disappointing. No fault of the gorgeous Ms Luther. It's all a bit too predictable—place a cast of attractive plastic people in a spooky house and kill them off in gory fashion over the course of ninety minutes or so. Nothing new there. Bobbie Sue Luther plays the one-who-drinks-too-much-and-must-die; Diora Baird plays her friend, the slutty-one-who-has-sex-and-must-die; and Monica Keena rounds out the trio as the goody-two-shoes-who-obviously-survives.

*gnashes teeth at predictable, crude, clunking horror movie morality*

There’s an interesting scene that hints at what the movie could have been. Diora Baird’s character, fresh after being converted to demonhood, pushes a lipstick into her breast, which then travels down her body and exits in a puddle of blood presumably from her intimate nether regions. It’s kinky and perverse and it would have been a far more interesting film if the makers had taken that theme of demonic perversity and dialled it up to eleven. Instead the film falls back onto the safe old clichés of snarling, fright-show mask demons jumping out of the darkness and pulling out their victim’s entrails. It’s fun, but it’s been done before and much better in countless other horror films.

I’ve been disappointed with most of the spate of recent horror remakes. Compared to the inventiveness and craziness shown in some of the recent Japanese gore movies, the US films look staid and straitjacketed. Where’s the sense of fun that was around back in the days when Sam Raimi was running around with a camera strapped to a plank?

Monday, September 12, 2011

Song for the Week: Shining (NOR) - Fisheye

Some more musical craziness from Norway. This is Shining (NOR - there's also a Swedish black metal band with the same name just to confuse matters) with "Fisheye" from their recent Blackjazz album. Bonkers.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Monster Girl Quest: Chapter 2 Demo Out

Hmm. Hits are down. Need to drum up some interest to get the publicity for Succubus for Halloween rolling. Let's blog about Monster Girl Quest! :)

Torotoro resistance has put up a trial version for Chapter 2 of Monster Girl Quest (or Monster Girl Assault or whatever is the best translation in English). You can check that out here. And if you want a version you can read, the ever-resourceful IchigoGyuunyuu/RogueTranslator has already done a translated version, which is...uh...not there, because Hongfire is moving to a new datacentre. Awkward.

I'll post that link when it resurfaces again.

The demo is set in a succubus village—Yum!—and features some amusing comments from the ever-snarky Alice as to the real reasons why heroes from all over the land have arrived there to “defend” the village from succubus attack. The trial fight is with a freshly converted succubus and she sports a new level drain attack. I’d have preferred a different fight being trialled as she’s a bit too ‘fresh’ compared to the more classic succubus, Arumaeruma, from the first chapter, but this is to be expected in a game where the creator has gone out of their way to try and encompass as many different tastes (perversions? :)) as they can.

Something to whet the appetite, and hopefully it means chapter two is not far from completion.

Thursday, September 08, 2011

2011 2nd Quarter Royalties

My second quarter royalties for 2011 came in from eXcessica today. At $180 I think it's safe to say I won't be handing in my notice at work tomorrow. :)

$180 is still $180. Can't sneeze at that. Both Succubus for Christmas and Succubus for Valentine's Day have sold nearly 150 copies each now. With Succubus for Halloween coming out next month (more on that later!) I'm hoping it'll create enough of a bump to take the overall year up to somewhere between one or two grand. I know my stories are far too extreme to ever trouble the mainstream, but it's nice to have a little sideline and maybe sow the seeds for a little longterm notoriety.

Thanks to everyone who bought the books and I hope you enjoyed them. Plenty more on the way if all goes to plan ;).

Now the question is, how much of that $180 to plough into a nice book cover for Succubus Summoning 101 after I finally acknowledge I'm too rubbish to do it properly myself...

Monday, September 05, 2011

Song for the Week: Kvelertak - Mjød

Love those crazy Norwegians. There's still a bit of that viking blood bubbling away under the surface. "Mjød" from Kvelertak's eponymous album:

Saturday, September 03, 2011

The Importance of Pseudonyms

This little furore, where a teacher was suspended and reinstated after being found out as a part-time stripper, reminded me of the importance of pseudonyms. The thrust of his defence is correct (apart from the facebook part—teachers shouldn’t really friend pupils for good, professional reasons), but even in The Guardian, a paper so wet it would make your fish’n’chips soggy if you wrapped them in it, there were plenty of comments along the lines of, “I wouldn’t want you teaching my child.” Presumably these would be the same people who, a decade or so ago, were totally against openly homosexual teachers working in the classroom for fear they might “infect” their cherished offspring.

The other type of comment—“Well, he’s a male stripper, that’s not as bad as…”—completely misses the point. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a million times again: What consenting adults get up to in their own time is their own bloody business. Would it matter if a teacher, a good teacher, worked—legally—as an escort after hours, or liked to frequent fetish clubs and have their arse paddled red? Should it? Obviously, it would be a problem if that teacher abused their position to tout for business amongst pupils/parents, or turned up too tired to do their job properly, but most people can and do successfully partition their public and private lives. Sadly, a lot of people are too judgmental, resulting in this kind of silliness.

I’m not ashamed of what I write about, but I’m realistic. I don’t and probably won’t ever be able to make full-time living from my writing. I don’t want to find myself blacklisted from future employment prospects because a recruiter googled my name and found out I wrote some bizarre, creepy porn stories a decade ago.

While future employment prospects are a concern for me, it pales into insignificance when compared to people in other parts of the world, where they face imprisonment—or even death—for having incompatible views, beliefs or sexual orientation.

So to facebook, google+ and the rest—first guarantee me a world where I won’t be killed, imprisoned, ostracised, or have my current and future livelihood damaged for what I write/post, and then I might give you my real name.

Thursday, September 01, 2011

12th Annual Literotica Awards

It's time again for the Annual Literotica Reader's Choice awards. It's not as grand as it sounds. I don't think most of the readers know or care it exists, and there's usually a writer or three making a tit of themselves by taking it far too seriously.

It's hard to take it that seriously. There's no prize other than bragging rights and it's an internet vote that struggles to scrape double figures. Mind you, I'm probably just bitter I get nominated for the Erotic Horror category every year and never win it. Not even with "Succubus Summoning 114" surprisingly, and that's been the number one chapter/story on Lit's Erotic Horror all-time top list for just about forever.

This year "Succubus Summoning 202" is up. I keep trying to tell myself it's not important, nobody actually cares, and I should ignore it, but I have a stupid competitive streak That. Won't. Let. It. Lie.

So, to keep it happy, here's the link where you can vote. Or even check out some of the other nominated stories to see what the other writers on Literotica are up to.

The embarassing part is realising just how long it's been since I posted that chapter. I really need to get back to that series.