Sunday, March 27, 2011

Locked in with a Succubus, part 2

Here's part 2 of the little mini-serial I'm running here. Part 1, the introduction, is here.

This was a nice place, George Mead thought as he walked up the steps to the front door. Elegant Georgian terraced housing stretched right up the hill. A quiet street. Posh without being ostentatious.

He rang the bell and was surprised by the woman who answered. She was younger than he’d expected, and far more attractive.

“Nicole?” he asked.

“Yes,” the woman replied. “And you must be George. I was told to expect you.”

She was gorgeous. Delicate high cheekbones, luscious red lips and pale white skin on a face that could easily grace the cover of a fashion magazine. Her jet-black hair was cut in a stylish bob with wings to frame those perfect features. Her figure was hidden by an elegant white fur coat. Her eyes were also hidden; she wore a large pair of black sunglasses. They looked very chic.

Absolutely gorgeous. She could have been a French film star, or a perfume model. What was he doing here?

“That’s right,” George said. “Miss Kitson sent me.”

Nicole didn’t seem so thrilled. Actually, that was a bit of an understatement. George thought he was about to get a door slammed in his face.

“I bring wine,” he said, holding a bottle aloft with a cheerful grin.

The bottle was Miss Kitson’s idea. It was also her bottle. George didn’t have a clue on the quality. There wasn’t even a name on the bottle, just a label featuring silhouettes of sylph-like women dancing around oversized bunches of grapes on a plain yellow-gold background.

It overcame Nicole’s reticence. She looked at the bottle and her cold hostility thawed into a warm smile.

“Come inside,” she said.

George tried to place her accent. He didn’t think it was French, although it had a similar sensual eroticism. Brazilian?

“Let me take your jacket,” Nicole said as he crossed the threshold into a neat little hallway.

“Er, thanks,” George said.

He let her help him even though he didn’t really need the help. Was it him, or was she standing a little closer than was entirely necessary? She seemed to linger a little over helping him remove his garment. Odd girl, George thought as he watched her hang his jacket up next to the door. Extremely beautiful, but odd.

She picked up the bottle of wine and examined the label. Her supple lips turned up in a smile.

“Will you join me for a glass?” she asked.

“Sure,” George replied. It was why he was here after all.

He followed her through into a large kitchen-slash-dining room. For all her glamorous appearance, Nicole’s house looked surprisingly normal, bland even. Her kitchen was so clean and tidy George wondered if she’d ever prepared a meal in it. Nicole opened a cupboard and brought out a pair of pristine wine glasses. She popped open the wine bottle and took in the released aroma with a murmur of pleasure. George caught a whiff of something both fruity and spicy. Nicole poured out two glasses, but instead of passing one to George, placed both on the table instead.

She pulled out a chair and motioned George to sit on it. Again, she seemed to linger a little longer than was necessary behind him. This time George felt a strange prickling sensation on the back of his neck. What an odd girl.

Nicole moved away, leaving behind traces of an exhilarating musk that crackled up George’s nostrils. Nice perfume. She sat opposite from him, her eyes still hidden behind big black shades.

The wine was an odd colour, George thought as he examined his glass. He’d thought it was a white, but it was yellower than any white he’d ever seen, almost like sparkling honey or amber. It must be a specialist brand. That would explain the label.

“I hope this isn’t really expensive,” he said.

“Why?” Nicole asked.

“It’d be wasted on me,” he said. “I’ve got no palette to speak of at all when it comes to wine. It’s all grape juice gone off to me.”

Nicole laughed.

In truth, George didn’t really like wine, but he took an experimental sip anyway. It would be rude not to drink it.

Mmm, that was nice, really nice. It was sweet rather than dry and made his whole tongue come to life, like there was a wild party kicking off in his mouth. He took another sip—bigger this time—and relished the fizzing sensation as it slipped down his throat. Delicious. He took a gulp. He could drink this all night, or at least until he fell out of his chair.

Nicole swirled the glass under her nose. Her nostrils dilated as she savoured the aroma. She didn’t drink.

“How do you know Inari?” She asked.

“Miss Kitson? I’m sort of her odd-job man,” George answered. “I do a bit of gardening here, mend a few wires there. That kind of thing. I help her out with her psychiatry work sometimes.”

“Really,” Nicole said, leaning forwards. Her wine glass was in her hand, but she still hadn’t touched a drop.

“Well...” George started. “I say help out, but really it’s just talking to people. And listening. Miss Kitson sends me out to visit people and I talk to them and listen to their stories. They’re usually old dears, poor things. It’s sad really. Their husbands are long dead, the family doesn’t give a toss, so they’re left on their own. I go over, have a cuppa with them and try and cheer them up. That’s all people need sometimes—someone to talk to. I don’t need any fancy certificates to do that.”

George looked at Nicole.

“I thought that’s why Miss Kitson sent me here, but you don’t exactly look...”

“Old,” Nicole finished for him with a smile. “I’m not lonely either,” she added.

Her smile held extra meaning.

Of course, George thought. A girl as pretty as her would never lack for male attention. It didn’t mean she always had someone to talk to. Being beautiful wasn’t always a guarantee against feeling isolated and separated. Maybe that was why Miss Kitson had sent him.

“But do you ever get a chance to talk?” George asked.

Nicole cocked her head to the side, as if George had said something which had genuinely surprised her. She looked at him and then laughed. It was light-hearted laughter, nothing malicious or mocking about it, more like she was laughing at herself for missing something obvious.

“It’s very noble,” Nicole said, “giving up your time to talk to those lonely old dears.”

“I like it,” George said. “I’ve always wanted to be a writer. To be good at that you have to get out there and hear what people have to say. Some of these people, the things they’ve seen throughout their lifetimes, the stories they know...It’s fascinating. I never understand why they get abandoned when they have such tales to tell. It’s tragic.”

Nicole looked at George with an impish smile. “I can give you some stories,” she said. “Did Inari ever tell you what I do for a living?”

“Um no, I don’t believe she did,” George said. He wondered what was coming next.

“I’m a prostitute,” Nicole said, absolutely straight-faced and without a hint of shame. “Men pay money to have sex with me.”

To be continued...

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Other online authors with stories like me

Here's some links for some similar online writers. I suspect most of these might already be familiar. Feel free to add any I've missed in the comments.

I'll start with the general:

Literotica
Biggest sex stories site on the web? They have everything. My stories lurk in the Erotic Horror section. They also have Non-human and Sci-Fi & Fantasy categories for people that like happier endings. I usually check either the Last 30 days Top list for horror or enter "Succubus" into the story search every so often to see if anything interesting popped up. The quality is as you'd expect for an amateur writers site, but there are some gems to be found.

MonsterGirlUnlimited
Monster Girls galore. They have a fanfic section with lots of stories in progress. Kenkou Cross's Monster Girl Encyclopedia is the primary influence despite my best efforts to hijack the forum to my own nefarious purposes. A place to go if you like stories where the girl doesn't end up killing the boy at the end.

Eka's Portal
And for those of you that prefer Girl eats Boy, there's Eka's Portal. It's predominantly a Vore site, but there's a slight overlap for lovers of sexy, predatory females. Some of my stories (Flesh Pitchers of Prague, Wrapdance) fall into this overlap and I post them up there every so often. There's other writers/artists tackling similar themes. 4ofSwords(used to be ohida) runs a regular writing group thread I keep meaning to submit stories to, but never get around to doing.

Lost Boy's Other-Worldly Story Links
Quite possibly dead. Updates very rarely nowadays. It does have a fantastic collection of good stories. This was the first place I blundered into when searching for succubus fiction on the net.

And the writers:

mjm202036
The first writer I stumbled upon, so it's all his fault. His Castlevania fanfic got the idea of a succubus perfectly I thought. She kills through sex and in a way that feels more concrete and realistic than a nebulous energy/spirit/soul/aura drain. Both his Lustful Summoning and Succubus Ranch series are highly recommended. He's been a little quiet of late, so go prod him.

Oblimo
It's Always Time is a great goo (slime) girl story that features a fairly clever plot alongside all the messy sex. I haven't heard much of him of late, but if he's still out there he should probably stick the story up on amazon and make some money from it (hint hint).

4OfSwords
Likes a sexy female pred. Ranges from vamps to full-on vore. Damn good artist as well.

Xxxecil
Boobs! Gigantic Boobs! Boobs of the apocalypse! Always fun.

AJ Watson

Some good fantastic femdom-y succubus-y type stories. Also needs prodding.

Bobsamade
Borrowed Verde's garden and filled it with some fascinating creations.

There's others I've undoubtably missed or not got round to finishing yet such as Galloglaich's Cemetery Summons series and bashfullyshameless's Angels, Demons and Alex series (nominated in Literotica's sadly pointless and horribly abused end of year awards). As well as others I'm too tired to remember as yet another blog post has ballooned into a huge essay. Feel free to mention any I've missed in the comments. I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting succubus stories.

Happy reading!

Monday, March 21, 2011

A new manyeyedhydra mini-serial starting here!

It’s time to try and boost readership of this blog. Plus I haven’t posted any original stories up on the internet for a while. A while back someone asked for a bone. Well my friend, here’s a nice juicy one for ya.

I have an ulterior motive for this (besides the obvious if-you-like-this-then-go-buy-my-books). There’s a short story I’ve been working on since Christmas that keeps juddering to a halt. By breaking it up into nice bite-sized chunks and posting them up here, I might start to feel enough deadline pressure to get the damn thing finished. Readers baying for new chapters often has that effect.

Er, Succubus Summoning 201. Shhhh!

The story will start proper next Sunday, but in the meantime here’s an introduction to whet the appetite. It goes without saying all work is copyright me (as in M.E. Hydra). Reproduce it elsewhere and I’ll send NĂ¿te round to tear out your twitching soul. Also, if you happen to have found your way here despite being less than eighteen years old, please leave now. You might be safe for the first chapter or so, but sooner or later the story will head off into areas that will make your hormone-riddled brain implode and I really don’t want to be landed with the clean-up bill.

Anyway—

* * * *

Locked in with a Succubus

A phone rang in an innocuous little terraced townhouse. It was answered by an extremely attractive woman in a chic white fur coat.

“What do you want, Inari?”

The woman seemed irritated by the intrusion.

“Why me? I told you I don’t want to get involved. I’m not one of your game pieces.”

The girl paced. Her delicate nostrils flared with anger.

“Gift?”

The girl paused. Suspicion and anger gave way to surprise.

“Really? How old?”

She heard the answer. Her full red lips curled up in a predatory smile. Her cheeks flushed bright red.

“Oooh...”

To be continued...

Thursday, March 17, 2011

A Short, Sharp Dose of Reality

Last week I got my first real quarterly royalties cheque. At the princely sum of $84 I think the appropriate comment is “ouch!”

Oh well, we can’t all be Joe Konrath or Amanda Hocking.

If I take the perspective of wanting to be a full-time writer, it's fairly terrible. There's no way I'd ever be able to live off that.

Thankfully, I don't have to take to take that perspective. I'm fortunate enough to already have a full-time job, one I enjoy and is relatively well paid. I can take the other perspective. I'm doing something I like (writing stories) and receiving money for it.

$84 is still $84. That's the second half of the kindle I already bought with money from a Literotica contest plus some books to load it up with. It's more than I ever picked up trying to slog through the old fashioned route of submitting to horror/sci fi magazines and certainly $84 more than the manuscript would have got languishing forgotten on a slush pile somewhere.

It's not all. My first book is still out there, still picking up the same trickle of sales. That means in another three months I'm going to get another $84 or so. Actually, there's two months of the second book's sales on top of that, so it's probably going to be more than eighty bucks. And then later in the year I have a third book coming out. It's easy to see how it can start to mount up. I can't live off it, but on top of my regular salary it's a nice extra to put towards a vacation, or a new TV.

One of the points I've seen raised is the current explosion of self publishing and 'race to the bottom' in terms of pricing will kill writing as a viable profession for all but the already wealthy. I don't really see this. A lot of authors had to start off juggling other jobs with their writing until they made enough to leave the day job behind. An advance can help with this sure, but it can backfire horribly if the first book tanks and they aren't picked up for a second. This is even assuming they make it through the gatekeepers. The vast majority don't and won't ever see a single dime for the manuscript they spent a year or two lovingly putting together.

With self publishing a writer can start to see a return as soon as the book is finished and use this to tailor their life accordingly. I go into work every morning and I write on my spare time. I won't need to think about changing this unless my income from book sales starts to outweigh my regular salary, or my spare time suddenly becomes a lot less spare. And of course, even being comparatively unsuccessful in the meantime still generates a bit of extra cash for a few luxuries.

I enjoy writing and it makes me a bit of extra money. Can't really complain about that.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Using Fetishes for Fun and Fear

People get turned on by different things. What they get turned on by has a habit of creeping into their work. Take Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. Did you notice all those long lingering shots of beautiful women's feet hanging out of car windows? And this scene from From Dusk till Dawn gains a whole extra context to my formerly innocent little mind. Who says writers don't have any perks.

A little fetish fuel can add some spice to a story. Where it doesn't work so well, in my humble opinion, is when it becomes the sole focus of the story. In those stories I find I can't relate to the protagonist at all because I don't get the fetish and therefore the character's actions come across as odd. Fine for people in the niche, but of little use outside of it.

Playing through Monster Girl Quest reminded me how smart a lot of Japanese creators are at playing to the fetishes. Loli's, Big Tits, Bondage, Giantesses, Mind Control - take your pick, there's something for everyone. Darkstalkers, a considerably more mainstream game, gave us the iconic succubus, Morrigan, but there's a whole host of other quirks to add a bit of extra spice. Most of the comedy anime/mangas featuring harems will pull the same tricks to ensure everyone has a character to latch on to.

That isn't to say these things are innately perverted (okay Monster Girl Quest is - it's designed to be). From Dusk till Dawn is still a tense crime movie that morphs into an outrageous vampire film halfway through. With a bit extra if you happen to like feet. It's spice. If it's so much the audience starts to feel a little icky, then you've dumped too much curry powder in the Balti.

Unless you want...ahem...to make people feel a little icky.

I like mixing up horror and erotica for the mindfuck factor. Targeting fetishes plays an important role in this. What's a turn on for one person, can be twisted into something creepy and horrific for somebody else. One's reading it for the sex, the other for the horror. They're both getting something from the same story. Everyone's happy (at least until Horrorhead rears up and squicks everyone out).

My own weakness. With story titles like Crushed Between Her Breasts and The Biggest Tits in the World, it's all rather boring and obvious really...

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Monster Girl Quest game out

Remember that hentai game I talked about back here.

It’s out.



I managed to fiddle around with the Japanese website and buy it using my credit card and judicious use of a translation program. It was an interesting exercise in cryptography and sheer bloody-mindedness, and one you don’t have to go through as it’s already up on the English side.

You can get it here: http://eng.dlsite.com/work/=/product_id/RE074254.html

I imagine I’ll be able to pick up some inspiration for some even more twisted and perverse demons to include in my stories. I’d love to be able to create a game like this. Of course, Horror-head will probably bludgeon all traces of kawaii out of it.

In the meantime the game seems like fun. Steering your character to an untimely end has never felt this satisfying since getting Lara Croft to swan dive off a very high cliff back in the old Tomb Raider days.

Sunday, March 06, 2011

Half price offer on smashwords.com

Smashwords.com, or indy Amazon as I like to think of them, are running an ebook promotion this week. Selena Kitt has signed eXcessica up for the promotion, so for this week (up until the 12th) all eXcessica ebooks are half price on smashwords.com. This includes both of my short story collections - A Succubus for Christmas and A Succubus of Valentine's Day.

If you've been thinking about checking them out, but haven't got round to it, now is the perfect time as you can get them each for the low price of $3 or so. If you've already got them, thanks and sorry you missed out on the promo. You can always take this opportunity to check out what some of the other talented writers at eXcessica are getting up to.

I used smashwords a while back to pick up a copy of Edward Lee's "Succubi". It's a bit light on the devilish seduction and a lot heavier on the demons and gore, but a fun book nonetheless. The man writes some good splatter.

I think I might use this promotion to have a little furtle around to see if I can find anything interesting. Horror-head needs appeasing. He's been out of control on the last few stories I've been working on.

Thursday, March 03, 2011

Also found in Britain!

A couple of nights ago I had a pleasant little surprise as I realised both my books are available on amazon.co.uk and are also doing slightly better, at least on ranking. I thought they were only available on the US site for some reason.

Yeah, I really am that out of touch with everyday reality.

I was corresponding with an old university friend. He mentioned a colleague who'd picked up a nice deal with Puffin (I won't mention the name as no children's writer should ever have the misfortune of being linked, however tenuously, with the sexual atrocities I regularly type up on my laptop). We were both quite envious.

I looked for the guy's book on Amazon.com and was surprised to see the kindle version ranked down in 200,000's. Okay, British author, might not have had much of a push out in the states. I flipped over to amazon.co.uk.

Kindle ranking around 25,000. That makes a little more sense.

On a whim, I put M.E.Hydra in and was surprised to see my books come up. Cool, Selena must have put them up on the UK site as well. Okay, so how are we doing?

7,000.

That was an eye opener. Christmas was also at 15,000.

Okay, so I don't know entirely how the rankings work in reality. It could mean I happened to sell five copies on that particular day. And 7,000 is awful if you're used to the success stories on Joe Konrath's blog. I don't really care. There are 500,000 or so kindle ebooks on the UK amazon site and at that one point in time my book was doing better than 493,000 of them. I don't have an agent. I don't have a deal with a big publishing house. I'm not even at a super low price. I still have my regular 9-to-5 job.

I love this new ebook revolution. For anyone that's ever dreamed of being a writer, now they actually have a realistic chance of achieving their dream. The future looks so promising.

And I intend to fill it with such tales of twisted perversion...