Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A Succubus for Freedom: Excerpt 2

Okay, so the 3rd was a smidgeon optimistic. The 17th is looking more likely now. Sorry about that.

By way of an apology here's another excerpt. This is from "Riding the Medusa", one of two previously unseen H-space stories in the collection.


* * * *

When Gossow had first heard about Riding the Medusa he’d thought the guys were yanking his chain.

“So you let her wrap her tentacles around you and reel you right up . . . and then you fuck her . . . ?”

Gossow might look like a hick and speak like a hick, but that didn’t mean he had nothing but straw between his ears. He recognised a game of wind-up-the-new-guy when he saw it.

Of course this was early on, before he’d heard all the other rumours. Turned out H-space was a really fucked-up place, with the emphasis on fuck. The eggheads had managed to open up a doorway to super-porno-rapo world.

Erlandsson’s theory was they hadn’t left Earth at all. He reckoned their brains had been fried by some kind of failed military experiment. Here was some kind of hallucination or dream; they were really drooling vegetables back on Earth.

He could be a morose little fucker sometimes.

Gossow had stabbed him in the thigh with his knife. Not hard, just a little prick. See. No dream.

“Yeah. You let one catch you and pull you right up to her. You don’t have to do anything. Just lie back and she’ll do the rest.”

Gossow wasn’t convinced.

“It’s a jellyfish. Won’t it be cold and squishy?”

“No man. It’s fucking awesome. It’s like fucking an ass and pussy and getting a blowjob all at the same time.”

* * * *

And that was how Gossow came to be standing on a rock at dawn, as naked as the day he was born, stubby erection between his legs, with the great black expanse of Lake Latex stretching out before him. He trembled with excitement as he saw a jellyfish girl glide down out of the roiling clouds towards him.

Come and get me, babe.

“You’re fucking crazy,” Erlandsson hissed from his hiding place in the rocks.

Gossow motioned for him to be quiet.

Erlandsson was there as his wingman. A man going off to Ride the Medusa needed to have a good wingman, if he wanted to live. As good as sex with a jellyfish girl was supposed to be, it would kill a man if it went on for too long.

Initially Gossow was sceptical on that point. He didn’t know much biology, had spent those lessons drawing smiley-faced sperm in the textbooks, but he was fairly sure it was physically impossible for a man to come himself to death.

That was until he was part of the team that had found Private Wiberg.

They reckoned Private Wiberg had gotten a little too excited after hearing the stories and gone off to try Riding the Medusa without first finding a wingman. Private Wiberg had been eighteen. The body they’d found looked like it belonged to an eighty-year-old.

Riding the Medusa needed a wingman. Their job was to wait until the man had had his fun and then put a bullet through the balloon-like bell. Then pfft, the man would float gently back to earth as the balloon deflated. Technically the men had strict orders to avoid the jellyfish girls, but as the girls’ bodies always evaporated to nothingness after hitting the ground, no one would ever find out. As long as a man brought along a wingman, Riding the Medusa was easily the best recreational activity to be found at FOB Rigg.

* * * *


You just know it's all going to go horribly wrong . . . ;)

I'm still waiting on eXcessica for an ISBN number. I'll post the coming soon link as soon as it's ready and hopefully A Succubus for Freedom will hit the amazon store and everywhere else on the 17th August.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

A Succubus for Freedom: We have a cover!


Tentatively, I also have a date, which is next Friday (August 3rd). I'm just waiting for confirmation on that. It will either be that or the 17th. These vagaries happen when writers write too slowly and miss their scheduled slots. :)

I'll post a more detailed follow-up including the full story list as soon as I have confirmation.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

A Succubus for Freedom: Excerpt I

It's a little (lot!) overdue, but I'm down to the final editing and formatting for my 4th collection of short stories, A Succubus for Freedom and other tales of Obscene Orgies. There will be thirteen stories in total, with six of them being brand new, never-before-seen. Here’s an excerpt from one, “Exile”, to whet the appetite.

* * * *

I don’t know who They are, but I know They exist. They left me with that even as They gouged out everything else. They left me with the knowledge this is my punishment, but not what I’m being punished for.

They left me a reminder of what I’ve lost.

If I close my eyes I can see it. Somewhere else. A world of fire and passion. It’s there in my memories, a far-off tunnel I walk down until I emerge into a maelstrom of flames and screams. Countless voices soar and swoop in a crescendo of pain and fear. An orchestra of agony, playing the most sublime symphony of suffering, its instruments countless tortured souls.

It is beautiful.

Pure.

Leaping flames twist and sway across the midnight-black sky. They dance like exotic birds with long plumes of brilliant yellow, red and orange. Their partners for the dance are souls pinned on long blackened iron spikes. Ten feet high the flames reach, caressing feet, ankles, hands, sexes with long flickering tongues. The flames’ lascivious touch scorches hair, chars skin and melts fat. There are pauses in the dance, when the flames die down to flickering red embers. It’s a respite to allow fingers and toes to regrow, molten fat to solidify back into tissue, and skin to creep back over scorched muscle.

The souls scream loudest then.

Looming beyond the fires are the great iron windmills. Powered by great sails of living human skin, black cogs and gears turn ceaselessly, a constant metronome to the unending orchestra of agony. There are people caught in the gears. Caught between the teeth of unyielding metal, their bodies stretch and twist but never tear. The cogs turn and turn, contorting individuals into stretched tubes of skin and meat with a core of splintered bone.

Nothing truly lives here, so death has no dominion. There is only sensation.

Eternal sensation.

I walk down a path paved in mewling babies, their bodies compacted into living blocks. They stare up at me with eyes like glossy marbles and cry through tiny mouths lined with teeth as white as precious pearls. Their wails buoy me up like a feather in a breeze. Up ahead is the palace where she awaits me.

I enter her chambers and walk through into a room where she sits on a throne upholstered in human skin. The still-living heads of the skins’ owners are positioned at the end of each armrest. They chatter and gibber nonsensically to each other while she ruffles a hand through each head’s hair.

She. My vision of perfection. My avatar of passion.

My succubus.

I drink in the vision of her sitting on the throne, one lithe leg crossed over the other, like a starving vampire in the presence of a virginal beauty.

No virgin is my succubus. No trace of innocence clouds her eyes. They burn with lust and passion, fires to turn all her human prey into moths eager to cast their pitiful mortal forms into the burning sun of her desire. I feel that black hole attraction and she mine.

More than simple hunger burns in her eyes as she uncrosses her legs and stands up on obsidian black hooves. A moist tongue dabs around exquisite full lips. I take her hand and together we exit her throne chamber.

Her bed is covered in the still-living skins of a hundred virgin women. Their owners sigh and moan, and the bed undulates as they thrust their sexes at me, begging me to fill them with my prick. I ignore them. Only one sex interests me.

I throw my succubus onto the shifting bed and get on top of her. There is no need for delay or patient build-up. Our passion is a conflagration needing no spark to ignite. The close presence of our bodies is enough. Her legs wrap around me, hooves crossing behind my back as I drive my prick into her boiling sex.

* * * *

A Succubus for Freedom, coming soon. I’ll the post the exact details here as soon as I have them.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Recently, I Have Been Reading . . . Conan!

Conan, lots and lots of Conan . . .

Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian is one of those characters where you think you know who they are, but then you realise you only know the caricature of who they are. I read the L. Sprague de Camp-padded out paperbacks when I was a young lad because they were cheap and had lurid covers with warriors fending off snakes the size of double-decker buses. I came back to Conan because I had an idea for a story where the classic muscle-bound cliché of a barbarian is easily outwitted by one of my succubi.




However, Howard’s Conan is a completely different beast. Multi-lingual, well-travelled, whip-smart, adept tactician; he’s a lot more than a dumb beast with a big sword. Despite this, Conan still manages to be in significant danger in most of his stories. Howard’s Hyborian world is a dark and dangerous place, filled with hostile tribes, dark magic and the occasional Lovecraftian abomination. While Conan is freakish by normal human standards, he needs to be to survive in that world, and often only does so by the skin of his teeth.

The books I remember were padded out into paperback novels by de Camp. Howard’s original versions were stories that appeared within the pages of Weird Tales. With the exception of The Hour of the Dragon (which is still on my to-read list), the stories are all novella length. Despite the brevity, Howard managed to pack a lot of story in each tale. Given the doorstop-size of most fantasy epics nowadays, it’s astonishing to think one of the grandfathers of the genre managed to build his lushly detailed world within the slimline pages of magazines. And Howard’s world broods. Each paragraph sweats atmosphere and menace.

I believe most of Howard’s stories are out of copyright now (tragically, he committed suicide at the young age of 30). I accessed them through Project Gutenberg Australia here. Well worth a read to appreciate just how good the early pulp masters were.

As for my own muscle-bound expy, well you can see how they get on in my forthcoming collection, A Succubus for Freedom.

Let’s just say they aren’t the real Conan . . .