Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Monstergirls nearly take over Kotaku's GOTY

Haha, this is brilliant:
http://kotaku.com/pranksters-almost-voted-an-erotic-game-as-our-readers-1491717281

Monster Girl Quest 3 pipped to first place by only 24 votes.  Might have been an interesting article if that had been the other way around.

"And our reader's choice game of the year is . . .mutter mutter . . . a hentai game."

The author of the article blames 4chan.  I did see a post mentioning the poll on 4chan, but it was buried deep in one of the (many) Monster Girl Quest threads.  Ironically, the overall Monster Girl Quest series probably has a better plot and writing than most of the other games on that list despite being an eroge (as I mentioned when I reviewed it back here).

Funny to think that when I wrote this about two years back it usually came up as one of the first hits for anyone googling "Monster Girl Quest."  Not anymore.  Monster girls are a little bit more popular now.

This can only be a good thing considering what I write books about . . .  ;)

And the monster girl eroges keep coming.  Dieselmine put out the 4th installment of their Violated Hero series today.

Time to welcome our new monster girl overlords.




 

Monday, December 30, 2013

#52Books - 2013, End

And the final score is:

31

Um, yeah, pretty weak really.

It’s even worse when I think of all the words of stupid clickbait articles from newspapers like The Guardian I read instead.  Sigh.

I’m not disheartened as the aim was to read more books and the kindle (and Amazon) has been brilliant for this.  I’ll go for it again next year but I won’t bother with the blog posts and reviews.  They don’t get a lot of hits in relation to the other posts.  As I’m aiming to improve my writing productivity it’s better for me to spend my time writing 1,000 words on the latest story/chapter than scratching around on a two paragraph review of a fifty-year-old book.  I might throw up the occasional round-up, but they won’t be as detailed.

With that out of the way, here’s the last of the books I read in 2013.  Overall my favourite was Brian Keene’s Earthworm Gods and I also really enjoyed Shane McKenzie’s novellas.


#25: Shane McKenzie – Fat Off Sex and Violence

Another slice of fun’n’gruesome from McKenzie.  When I read the synopsis I wondered if this might be McKenzie’s version of a succubus story.  It’s not, although the feedlings are inventive and interesting demons.  As the title states, they feed off sex and violence and are very adept at causing both.

The protagonist, Gary, is indeed a real fucking loser—the start of the book has him caught masturbating in the toilet of the comic store he works.  He’s every negative geek/nerd/gamer/comic fan stereotype wrapped up in a soft, blubbery human shell.  It works because most people will know a Gary or three, or even been one themselves at some point.  It’s easy to feel pity for him for the first half of the book, but there are also plenty of hints that a lot of his problems are self inflicted or at least made a lot worse through his weakness of character (I liked the scene where a young fanboy gives him money so they can both have lunch and Gary unthinkingly orders a burger so expensive there isn’t enough money left for the other boy – sums the character up perfectly in a couple of lines).

The inevitable demon-fuelled roaring rampage of revenge, when it arrives, is satisfying (and gory!), even though you know it’s going to go horribly wrong for poor Gary (which it does).


26: Brian Keene – The Cage

Another short novella from Brian Keene packaged with some additional short stories.  It’s a good concept and gives the story a lot of pace as you want to read on to see what the not-quite-so-randomly-psychopathic antagonist is up to.  Unfortunately the ending is a little anti-climatic as the protagonists don’t really protag all that much.  Maybe Keene will come back to this one day and round it out with additional novellas in a similar way to what he did (to brilliant effect) with Earthworm Gods.  Disappointingly, the kickstarter to make this into a movie fell through.


#27: Lee Thomas – Ash Street

After the other high-octane offerings from Sinister Grin Press, this was a little bit of a surprise—a slower, multi-viewpoint tale of ghosts haunting a small town in the aftermath of a serial-killing atrocity.  Solid overall, but unspectacular.

#28:  Joyce Carol Oates – The Corn Maiden and other Nightmares

First time reading Oates.  Wow, the prose is good.  I wish I could write like this.  It’s not all style over substance either as, a few iffy endings aside, the stories are mostly solid.  The title story is the classic small town meltdown over a missing child and ends with some interesting questions as to who pulled whose strings.  It’s a shame the horrors are all of the mundane (non-supernatural, non-weird) kind, but I think I’ll pick up some more collections of hers for the prose alone.


#29: Edgar Rice Burroughs – The People That Time Forgot

The follow-up to The Land That Time Forgot is a bit too light on the dinosaurs and too heavy on the overly-simplistic politics between the various cavemen tribes.  An okay adventure story, but misses the tension the uneasy alliance with the Germans provided in the first book.



#30: Thomas Ligotti – My Work Is Not Yet Done

My first exposure to Ligotti, another name spoken highly of in horror circles.  For the first half of the book I was wondering if the blurb had been telling porkies as it looked like a simple revenge tale about a “good” man getting the shaft in a corporate environment and then going off the rails.  Then the supernatural elements kicked in and were followed by some highly imaginative and (mostly) deserved deaths.  The revenge fantasy is also cleverly subverted—karma is not in play here and the whole story is riddled through with cosmic darkness.


#31: Rick Hautala – Bedbugs

A solid collection of horror tales from the other horror writer from Maine.  Yes, it’s predictable in places, but I’ll take that every day of the week over a lot of the plotless, style-over-substance nonsense that abounds nowadays.

Friday, December 27, 2013

Hentai Game Review - Monmusu Delicious -Lunch-

The epic Monster Girl Quest has concluded, but if you’re suffering from withdrawal symptoms a spin-off came out over the holiday season.  It’s a follow-up to Monmusu Delicious -Breakfast- (which I talked about here), this time called Monmusu Delicious -Lunch-.  Presumably there will be a Monmusu Delicious -Dinner/Dessert- at some point using characters from MGQ’s third chapter (where Black Alice probably vores everything).


Monmusu Delicious -Lunch- isn’t strictly speaking a hentai game.  It’s a collection of alternate Bad End scenarios featuring monster girls from the second chapter of MGQ.  As the title suggests, the emphasis is on vore and most of the protagonists end up in someone’s belly.  Most of the time that’s MGQ’s protagonist, Luka, although other characters are used such as Sylph, Camel’s Cecilia, the loli Vampire Girl, and ever odder choices such as the Slug Girl and Dullahan.  Pretty much every monster girl that had a vore Bad End in MGQ’s second chapter gets a scenario.  There are also vore scenarios for some of the non-vore monster girls such as Beelzebub and Lilith & Lilim.  Erubetie gets another opportunity to use her rather dubious de-aging power before slurping up a hapless Minotauress.  I expect it won’t be long before the paedoslime memes hit 4chan.

I'm not sure "It's okay, I'm eating them," is a valid defence, Erubetie.
This is vore, so if you thought that aspect of MGQ was icky and played the game with the vore endings switched off, this isn’t going to be your cup of tea.  If you like vore and enjoyed Delicious Monmusu -Breakfast-, Delicious Monmusu -Lunch- is more of the same.  It's currently in Japanese, but if you're patient and keep an eye on Dargoth's site, there might be an English translation at some point in the future.

Starfish Girl table manners leave a lot to be desired...
Last time round I pointed out they’d missed off the Sea Anemone Girl and wrote a little sex/vore tale to make up for it (a creature not unlike the Jellyfish girl also found its way into A Succubus for Freedom as well).  It was fun and I liked how the story turned out so I might do it again (and writing a simple ‘dude stumbles on monster girl – suck, fuck, slurp!’ story will be a good breather after the complex storylines of A Succubus for Remembrance).

Now which monster girl to have fun with.  Monmusu Delicious -Lunch- didn’t leave out any glaring omissions.  By my reckoning Alra Vore and two of the Canaan Sisters (the Venus Flytraps) didn’t get a scenario, but that section of the game is nicknamed the Forest of Nope! by fans for a reason.  The only other one, I think, was the Dragon Girl, but I always thought she was a little too much licky-licky and not enough fucky-fucky.

Anyway, at the moment I think I’ll be wandering into the Forest of Nope! to see what sexy plant girls are around.  This isn’t set in stone yet, so if there was a girl from MGQ2 you were disappointed didn’t show up in Monmusu Delicious -Lunch- let me know in the comments.  It's the holiday season so I might pick them instead.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Hentai Game Review - Tokyo Tenma

Your blog hits have fallen through the floor.  Quick, give them a review of a mucky game.

Okay okay.  First off, the final part of Monster Girl Quest Chapter 3 has been translated to English.  You can find it here on RogueTranslator’s blog (and the actual game can be bought from here).  If you stumbled here by accident and are new to all this I highly recommend checking out Monster Girl Quest as it’s (still) the high benchmark for this type of game.

http://www.dlsite.com/ecchi-eng/work/=/product_id/RE119143.html

And so onto Tokyo Tenma.  I missed this first time around.  I like my monster girls to be bad and in control of the H-scenes and this looked more like a game where the hero shows the girls what for and builds up a harem through repeated use of his big “weapon” (Personally I have no ideological problems with that type of game – they just don’t stimulate my kinks).  Tokyo Tenma is a game where the hero does build up a willing harem of monster girls, but despite not featuring any Game-Over-Rape, the H-scenes are probably closer in tone to games like Monster Girl Quest and Violated Hero.

Fortunately, grabbing it later, after it was recommended on forums of Monster Girl Unlimited, meant I managed to miss all the game-breaking bugs that afflicted the game on release.  Most of that has been ironed out and it’s a pretty good game.

You'd be right to be concerned by those tails...

Plot- and mechanics-wise it’s very similar to the mainstream Shin Megami Tensei series.  A strange blackout hits Tokyo and both demons and angels show up for a ruckus.  You play a dude that posts the highest score in a mysterious game and gets a guardian angel or demon for a bodyguard as a prize (Either a Crow Tengu or Fenrir demon depending on how the player answers five initial questions).  The player can recruit other monster girls to their fighting team.  This is done through answering questions correctly, having the right inventory items to gift to them, or the right monster girl present in your fighting squad when attempting to recruit them.

There is no Game-Over-Rape (it’s not a sex battle game – let the girls beat you up and you get a simple “Game Over” screen to reward your uselessness).  The hentai elements are provided during the contract scenes when you recruit fresh monster girls to your team.  Meet the right conditions and you’re rewarded with two different H-scenes for each girl.  These can be skipped and viewed later (or re-viewed) at “Slave Rose” points on the map.  Oddly, given the method of recruitment and the “Slave Rose” facilities where recruits are “trained”, the H-scenes often have the monster girl in the dominant role (at least the ones I chose to view did).

Now who's the slave here again?
It’s also another hentai game with noble aspirations to be an actual game.  Each of the monster girls unlocks different skills as they level up.  As with most RPGs you’ll want to put together a balanced team (The sprite is quite useful for her healing magic).  At one point I thought the game might be a little too easy as it didn’t seem to matter how under-levelled the other girls on my team were.  Then in the later dungeons I ran into monsters with attacks (confusion, stun, sleep) that took my main (and highest-levelled) character out of combat.  Those fights didn’t go so well . . .

The artwork is fine.  One thing I liked is that the battle sprites aren’t completely static.  The animations are simple sprite transformations, but are very effective at giving the monster girl enemies a little extra – ahem! - jiggle and bounce.  Some girls will hit the spot, some won’t, and it will vary from person to person depending on their kinks.  There’s a good variety to choose from, so there should be something for everyone (although I was a little disappointed the pink slime girl in the tutorial fight doesn’t get a scene).

Sorry slime girl fans, she ain't available.
The game is a hybrid of top-down 2D RPG-maker type wandering about and pseudo-3D Dungeon Master-esque dungeon crawling.  As with most games like this you’ll have to struggle through some garbled machine translations to work out which quests unlock certain areas.  If you get stuck there is a helpful guide thread on the ULMF forums.

Overall the game isn’t up to the same standard as Monster Girl Quest and the artwork doesn’t match the lushness of the Violated Hero series, but if you’ve exhausted those games and want something new it might be worth a look.

And speaking of something new, I hope no one minds if I sneak in a plug for my brand new book, a tasty new collection featuring lots of delectably depraved succubus action.  If you like this type of game, you’ll also enjoy my books.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

#52Books - Uh, sometime in 2013

Now that the last minute panic of getting A Succubus for Remembrance is nearly out of the way (there will be a print version - details here as soon as that's out) it's time to catch up on some of the other posts, such as the increasingly erroneously named #52Books.  I'm a little further along than books 21-24, but I'm still going to fall short by some way.  I'll try again next year with the additional resolution of not imploding like the England cricket team in Australia the moment a submission deadline looms.

Here's what I was reading just before that aforementioned implosion:

#21: William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland

Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland is a fairly important weird text as he was one of the first to plough down that particular furrow, and The House on the Borderland is a very weird book indeed.  The majority of the book is the account of the un-named protagonist of the various weird things that happen to him within the eponymous house, which seems to be some kind of dimensional nexus.

Hodgson doesn’t waste any time as within the first few chapters his protagonist is under siege from hideous pig men.  He fights them off and then the book swings off into an audacious flight of cosmic weirdness where the man sees time accelerate all around him, eventually seeing the end of the solar system and travelling through some kind of rebirth that places him right back where he started.  The final segment switches back to more conventional horror as a more hideous entity than the pig men creeps up on both the house and the hapless narrator.

It’s an old book, so it’s not an easy read, especially as Hodgson seems to regard commas as caltrops to be sprinkled liberally through the text.  Despite that I never found it dull and the crazy inventiveness makes it easier to forgive the barely coherent plot.  It reads more like Hodgson is letting his imagination tumble out onto the page rather than cynically exploiting the “Insert Own Plot” con-trick much over-used by modern writers.  It can be picked up for free from the Gutenberg project and is worth a look for fans of old weird fiction.


#22: Brian Lumley - Hero of Dreams

Yay, for nostalgia.  Lumley is probably better known for his Cthulhu Mythos fiction and Necroscope series, but he also found time to pen this fantasy series set in Lovecraft's dreamlands during the eighties.  It's an unashamed fantasy romp and the main characters, David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer, are loveable dolts that would last about two seconds in modern GRRM-influenced fantasy, but who cares, it's fun.

I remember it mainly for the Eidolon Lathi, a sexy (until you find out what she is) monster girl queen that fired the imagination of my teenaged self in ways that were probably not entirely healthy.  If you want insight on where my ideas come from, some of the blame can definitely be left at Lumley's door. :)


#23: Shane McKenzie - Jacked

I really like Shane McKenzie’s novellas.  They move fast, have interesting ideas and don't faff about.  No insert-own-plot or look-at-how-clever-my-writing-is wankery here, just a simple idea executed very well.

Jacked features two employees trapped in a gym after weird green slime starts pouring out of the ground in a river.  Anyone caught in the slime is turned into a squishy, slime-spewing zombie and soon Sid and Gabe are besieged.  Unfortunately for them, also trapped in the gym with them is Crow—a monstrous, crazed steroid junkie—and it’s only a matter of time before being outside starts to look safer than being inside.

Fast and fun.



#24: Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Land That Time Forgot

Time to take another dip into the copyright-expired Gutenberg barrel to dig out another pulp classic.  I’ve always had a soft spot for monster movies and the 1975 Amicus adaptation was a favourite of mine while growing up.  The dinosaurs might look rubbery and immobile by today’s fx standards, but it’s always been a fun adventure romp.

The first half of the book is a masterclass in pulp adventure writing.  There’s the dastardly shelling of an ocean liner, the heroic capture of a German U-boat, betrayals and reversals, until both crews end up having to co-operate after fetching up on the mysterious and dinosaur-infested land of Caprona.  The film version wisely decided to give Von Schoenvorts’ character a little more depth.  In the book the dirty Boche are a fairly one-dimensional bunch of backstabbing assholes (understandable given the book was written in 1918).

Sadly, the protagonist, Bowen Tyler, ends up getting lost and isolated for the second half of the book and the book ends up getting lost with him.  After a wham-bam start the book peters out.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

A Succubus for Remembrance is unleashed!

Finally, after a few hiccups, my new collection is out:


Think paranormal erotica is only about sparkly vampires and fluffy werewolves?  Think again!  You’re about to enter the bizarre and twisted universe of M.E. Hydra.  His sexy succubi and other assorted femme fatales will give you a wild ride, but be careful they don’t eat you whole in the process.

This, his fifth collection, contains thirteen tales of the darkest erotica.  A terrifying succubus wreaks vengeance on a group of former soldiers in “A Succubus for Remembrance”.  A man is sent by his therapist to an unusual nudist camp in “Iron Girders and Steel Springs”.  Two lovers look to a magical artefact to solve their problems in “The Skinning Knife”.  A sinister mobster engages sexy diabolic help to demonstrate “Ways to Break a Good Man, #1” (and no.2 and 3).  Bizarre and imaginative sex demons abound in a triptych of tales set in the hell-space universe.  Also includes an extra bonus tale, “Nazi vs. Succubus,” for lovers of extreme, no-holds-barred fiction.

Prepare to be surprised, shocked and aroused by these and other tales of fiendish femme fatales.  They'll give you pleasures beyond your wildest dreams, and terrors beyond your darkest nightmares...

You can pick it up from:

Directly from my publisher, Excessica (variety of formats)

Amazon.com (kindle)

Smashwords (variety of formats)

Barnes & Noble (nook)

and others...

The last tale is a little nasty.  Horror-head got a little carried away and squeezed out a horror-exploitation (I really shouldn't let him watch all those video nasties from the '70s and '80s).  I like to push things as far as I can, but that one might be a little too far for some readers.  The warning is there to steer them away as I don't want it to spoil their enjoyment of the rest of the collection.  (I might be worrying about nothing and it's actually unintentionally hilarious.  It's difficult to tell with these things sometimes.)

I hope you all enjoy it.  If there's any questions or you want to leave feedback, feel free to use the comments below and I'll answer what I can.  And please spread the word - succubi need new willing acolytes! ;)

And now i can finally get back to Phil's adventures...

Thursday, November 21, 2013

"A Succubus for Remembrance" Excerpts - A Succubus for Remembrance

And we have a release date!  A Succubus for Remembrance and other tales of Femme Fatales is finished.  I'll be uploading the files tomorrow evening and it should be available from most online bookstores Friday or Saturday.  To whet the appetite here's another excerpt, this time from the title story:

* * * *

Greg Holmes was dreaming.  He knew he was dreaming because he was standing beneath the cliffs overlooking Kabul.

He knew it was a dream because he was on the other side of the world to Kabul and nothing—not wild horses, not masked men with guns, not even a direct plea from Her Majesty herself—would make him return to this wretched patch of rock, sand and sun.  It didn’t matter.  A piece of him would always be left here, frozen in time amongst the heat and dust like fossils in the sand.

He was not alone.

A woman stood at the base of the cliff.  As with most women from this part of the world she was covered from head to toe in a black burqa.  In itself that wasn’t an unusual sight.  What was unusual was the level of ornamentation added to her costume.  Exotic designs and symbols were stitched onto cloth usually as plain and black as midnight.  An exotic golden frill hung from the black scarf wrapped around her forehead.  The niqab covering her face was composed of gold and precious stones.  This was attire to attract rather than deflect attention.

And her eyes.  They simmered with sinful desire.

The sun plunged out of the sky and the cloudless blue of midday turned to the deepest indigo of night in a few blinks of an eye.  Time rushed around him as though he was standing in a time-lapsed film.  The only fixed points were him and the girl.

She turned and headed towards the entrance to one of the caves that carved deep holes into the rocky cliff face.  A warm orange glow emanated from within, promising warmth and shelter from the harsh desert night.  The same fires flickered in her eyes as she reached the entrance and glanced over her shoulder back at Greg.

The meaning was clear.  He followed her into the cave.

He was naked now.  So was the girl.  By the soft light of candles he caught glimpses of dusky skin, long lithe limbs, shapely swells of breasts and ass, and then the shadow-painted cleft of the most intimate part of all.

She beckoned him on with an outstretched arm, an exotic wraith painted in swirls of shadow and candlelight.

He stepped towards her, wanting—no, needing!—to put his arms around her and bear her down to the soft earthen floor of the cave.  Needing to feel her warmth between his legs.  Needing like a parched man needs water in the desert to hear her quiet sighs as they lay entwined together.

She opened her eyes and they flared orange like the fires of burning suns.  Like the balls of fire rising up from a city as airplanes rained destruction down on it.

Greg’s desire burned away to fear.

Something terrible with burning eyes awaited him in the darkness of that cave.

Yet he couldn’t stop.  Trembling legs put one foot in front of the other as he was drawn, inexorably, towards her outstretched arms.  Her eyes expanded.  Twin suns grew from tiny spheres the size of marbles into burning stars that filled his entire world.  They became his world and consumed him.  Beneath their scorching glare his body shrivelled to blackened charcoal and blew away like ashes before a bomb blast.

Greg jerked awake with a start.

The fuck?

Greg was not normally a dreamer and never as vivid as that.  He stumbled out of bed and walked into the bathroom to splash water onto his face.

He’d heard some vets complain of Post-Traumatic Stress, but he’d barely seen any action in Afghanistan.

Barely had still been too much.

Frowning, he looked down.  An erection was tenting the front of his underwear and showed no sign of going down.  He supposed part of the dream had been sexual.  He took care of it with his hand and returned to bed.

* * * *

A Succubus for Remembrance and other tales of Femme Fatales, out this weekend!

Thursday, November 14, 2013

"A Succubus for Remembrance" Excerpts - Ways To Break A Good Man, 3

Still buried in the guts of editing and formatting A Succubus for Remembrance.  Watch this space, soon, etc, etc.

In the meantime here's another excerpt from one of the new stories, "Ways To Break A Good Man, 3":

* * * *

DCI Ben Millard noticed the girl with the flame-red hair as he was walking back to the station after lunch.  Or rather, it was her perfume he noticed first—a seductive melange of sensual aromas that surrounded her in a cloud.  The perfume tugged at his nostrils as he walked past, teasing him with fragments of half-remembered erotic exploits.  The scent seemed familiar although he couldn’t place it.  Maybe it was a brand Adrienne used to wear.

Millard pushed thoughts of Adrienne aside.  Not today.

Even though he was single now, Millard didn’t usually look at other women.  Old habits die hard and all that.  This girl was hard to ignore.  She stood beneath a streetlamp about fifty feet from the rear entrance to the station.  Her appearance was as attention-grabbing as her perfume.  Her slim figure was hidden beneath a glossy leather coat that extended down to just above her knees.  A pair of long lithe legs emerged from the hem of the coat and terminated in a stylish pair of black shoes.  Her hands and wrists were covered in a matching pair of black gloves.  Lustrous red hair cascaded down onto her shoulders in waves of shimmering fire.  Millard thought she resembled a starlet from an old ‘70s thriller.  Unusual to see a young woman embrace the old fashions.  Classy.  Most girls today were either aggressively dowdy or ineptly raunchy.

“That’s a bit of alright,” DI Martyn Ward said to him as they passed her and entered the station.

“Bit young for me,” Millard said.

“Never stopped Berlusconi,” Ward said with a wink.

Considering he was a detective chief inspector in one of the largest metropolitan boroughs, Millard’s afternoon was remarkably incident free.  He debriefed the team on the forensics results from the latest murder case.  Case was possibly too strong a word.  One young lad, Joe Turner, had stabbed one of his mates in a petty dispute over a girl.  They had the motive—as feeble as it was—the murder weapon, and both Turner’s fingerprints on the murder weapon and his DNA at the crime scene.  This wasn’t one for the casebook of Sherlock Holmes.

Oh, the young lad would continue to swear black was white even when given irrefutable evidence of his guilt, but it would be enough for a jury.  Millard was sympathetic to the plight of disadvantaged youth, but—god help them—they didn’t half make it harder for themselves.

And that was mostly it for the afternoon.  Millard took advantage of the brief respite to get stuck into his paperwork backlog.  No doubt another alcohol-sodden city-centre weekend would leave him with a full plate of work again when he came back in on Monday.

“Hey boss.”  Ward popped his head around the door as the hands of the clock swept around to five-thirty.  “Looks like we’re all done here.  We’re going to have a poker night over at Chris’s.  You in?”

“Yeah, su—”

Millard pulled a face.  He looked at the phone sitting on his desk.  There was still one item sitting in his in-tray.

“Sorry, Martyn.  Still some work I need to get done.  Maybe next time.”

“Sure, no problem, boss.  Give us a buzz if you change your mind.”

Millard knew Ward was trying to help.  They all were after that . . . business with Adrienne.  The frustrating thing was this time he would have come along . . .

He looked at the phone again.

. . . if there wasn’t something else he had to do.

Millard carried on with his paperwork for another ten minutes or so and then got up to stretch his legs.  He walked over to the window and watched as most of the staff headed out to either their homes or their local watering holes.  He was tempted to say sod it and join them.

He noticed the girl with the flame-red hair was still waiting underneath her streetlamp.  Her arms were folded and she glanced left and right along the road.  She couldn’t be a working girl, could she?  She’d have to be a bit daft to set up a pitch here, not fifty yards from the largest police station in the city.  Poor lass must be waiting for someone.  No doubt they’d be in for an earful when they finally showed up.

* * * *

This one has links with another story in the collection and features a returning character from the last collection (Freedom).

Coming soon (providing I don't collapse from overwork :) ) . . .

Sunday, November 10, 2013

"A Succubus for Remembrance" - Cover

And we have a cover . . .


I still don't have an exact release date as I'm in the middle of the annoying fiddly formatting stuff at the moment.  It was supposed to be last Friday but has been revised to: 'as soon as I get the annoying fiddly ebook formatting stuff done and upload it.'  This should take place within the next week.  I'll put a post out as soon as it's up.

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

"A Succubus for Remembrance" Excerpts - Vernon the Volunteer

I was going to post a new excerpt yesterday but had a horror journey back from holiday that culminated in a car that wouldn't start and a flooded kitchen.  Fun times.

I still don't have a concrete release date as I'm still waiting on a few things like a cover and some final editing tweaks.  Usual #ChaosWriting, in other words.  I'll update here as soon as the new book goes live (hopefully sometime next week).

In the meantime here's an excerpt from the third of the hell-space stories in the collection, "Vernon the Volunteer".  (It's also a little bit more NSFW than the other excerpts).

* * * *

“—give a demonstration of the techniques used by H-space indigenous life forms to overwhelm and subdue opponents.”

Vernon didn’t really hear the doctor.  He was still staring at the girl who’d joined them up on stage with slack-jawed appreciation.  Holy shee-it.  Were all the girls of H-space as hot as this?  She was fucking smoking.  She looked like a lingerie model.  That was all she was wearing as well—lingerie.

Well kind of.

Vernon didn’t know what it was.  Some kind of inky-black substance covered her boobs and pussy like a cloud.  Didn’t bother Vernon that much.  Why be bothered about that when a super-hot babe was standing in front of him.  Vernon certainly wasn’t.  Like he wasn’t bothered by her horns either . . . or those yellow eyes . . .

Vernon frowned.  His brow furrowed.

. . . or her wings . . . or her tail . . . or the way she looked like a . . . devil . . .

Then she smiled at him with a face that looked like it belonged on the cover of a magazine.

No, it was way better than that.  Model types were all haughty, stuck-up bitches.  He could see she wasn’t like that.  She was more like one of those pretty actresses that play the sweet girl next-door, and were just as nice as the characters they portrayed.

Vernon knew a girl just like that back home.  What was her name again . . .

Vampyrotiea’s eyes met his.  Her smile looked innocent and sweet on the surface, but there was a little curl at the corner that promised naughty pleasures once the lights went out and it was just them, alone.

. . . oh, he couldn’t remember.  Didn’t seem important.

“Vampyrotiea is a succubus,” the doctor said to him in a quiet voice.

Vernon’s eyes remained fixed on Vampyrotiea’s.  The doctor’s voice was an irritating mosquito whine in his ear he tried to ignore.

“Sexual intercourse with her will kill you.”

“Uh huh,” Vernon said, not caring what the doctor said.

She was gorgeous.  Amazingly, beautifully, gorgeously hot.  She had the full package—nice rack, peach of an ass, long toned legs.  And she was smiling at him.

Him!

“I’m so sorry, son,” the doctor said before walking away.

“Uh huh,” Vernon nodded again.

His hands were pointing forward from his sides.  He had the strong urge to reach out and grab her round the waist.  No.  Mustn’t scare her off.  He had to be smooth.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

She placed a warm hand against his cheek.

“Vernon,” Vernon replied.

His hand itched at his side.  He ached to slide it over the curve of that peachy ass, to feel her smooth skin beneath his fingers.

“I’m Vampyrotiea, Vernon,” Vampyrotiea said.

She caressed his cheek.  The strange inky-black substance covering her breasts flowed up her arm like the tendrils of a plant.  Didn’t seem important.

“I want you to do something for me, Vernon,” Vampyrotiea said.

He picked up a strange scent.  It must be her perfume.  Fancy perfume.  Expensive perfume.  Sexy perfume.

“I want you to pull your pants down.  Can you do that for me, Vernon?” she asked in a voice as smooth as the most expensive silk.

For a babe like her, of course he could.  Vernon undid his pants and dropped them and his underwear to the floor.  His boner popped up like a flagpole.

Vampyrotiea’s eyes lit up.  She murmured sexily and her other hand stroked up and down his shaft.  It was soft and gentle, just like her smile.  Twin tendrils of darkness slithered down her arm and nudged against his exposed boner.  Ticklish.

“I want you to fuck me, Vernon,” Vampyrotiea said.  “Fuck me hard from behind.”

She turned around and bent over a chair with her legs splayed apart.  That peach of a bubble-butt ass was right in his face and waggling invitingly.  The oily black cloud swirling between her legs parted like rainclouds before the sun and for a moment Vernon glimpsed . . .

. . . something like a maw.  A circular maw like the mouth of a lamprey, but with no teeth.  Instead Vernon saw rows and rows of fleshy lips.  It gaped open, deep purple in color and lined with pulsing black veins . . .

. . . the folds of her exposed vagina, moist and dewy-dropped with arousal.  She glanced back at him over her shoulder.  Her luscious lips were bunched up in a sultry pout and need smoldered in her eyes.  She was eager for him.  Desperate for him.

* * * *

I don't think this demonstration is going to end well . . .

Apologies for the continuing vagueness over the release date.  Keep an eye out here and I'll post as soon as the book hits the (virtual) shelves.


Thursday, October 31, 2013

"A Succubus for Remembrance" Excerpts - Slugjob

As promised yesterday, here's another excerpt from one of the brand new stories in my forthcoming collection A Succubus for Remembrance.  As it's Halloween, I thought it appropriate to let my sexy (and scary!) little witch, Annette Brite, come out and play.

* * * *

He saw light flickering in the archway on the other side of the room.  Someone was coming down the steps.

Annette Brite.  Naked Annette Brite.  Naked and gifted with the body of a complete sex goddess Annette Brite.  Hutson stared at her wistfully.  He’d thought she might be hiding a knockout body beneath that voluminous velvet dress, but the reality beat even his desire-fuelled imaginings.  She had gorgeous long legs and a pair of tits a reality TV show sleb-wannabe would sell her mother for.  Her skin was a little pale, but it suited her exotic features and was far easier on the eye than the gaudy fake tans favoured by the orange people.

He was less aroused by the occult symbols daubed all over her exposed flesh.  The markings were dull red in colour.  It could be paint but Hutson didn’t think it was.  She was still wearing that necklace of wooden beads.  She carried a torch in one hand and a long ebony staff in the other.  In the flickering light she looked like an albino aboriginal witchdoctor.

The feral savage look didn’t really suit her, in Hutson’s humble opinion.

What a crying shame.  Hottest bod he’d ever seen in the flesh and its owner was a complete fucking nutcase.

God, you’re a dick.

“Hello studmuffin,” she said, giving him a smile.

“Hi,” Hutson waved his hands out of the top of the manacles.  “It’s normally the blokes that have to resort to the Rohypnol, you know.”

“It’s crude, I know, but you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to bring men back here.”

“It’s not exactly the Playboy mansion,” Hutson commented.

The pool in the centre burbled again as a couple of bubbles broke the surface.  An odd smell came from it.  Hard to describe.  Not rot, not decay, not chemical, but bad.  Nasty.

And that definitely wasn’t a jacuzzi, Hutson thought.

“I don’t suppose I can get that massage now?” Hutson asked.  “These manacles are buggers on the wrists and shoulders.”

Brite paused.  Her full lips pursed and puzzlement flashed across her eyes.

Good.  That’s what he wanted.  He wanted her knocked off balance.  He wanted her to worry she might not be as fully in control as she thought she was.  Plus, it was what all the cool dude heroes did in the face of danger in the big Hollywood movies.

“No, I’m afraid not,” Brite said.  “But don’t worry, you’ll find tonight’s activities to be equally as pleasant, I’m sure,” she added, leaving the innuendo hanging in the air.

I Was Forced To Take Part In Satanic Orgy! Says Local Man.

“As long as you have condoms,” Hutson said.  “I always practise safe sex on the first date.”

Another puzzled look from Brite.

“You’re being very flippant,” she said.  “Do you think this is a dream?”

It took his mind off the fact his insides felt like ice-cold porridge.  It was taking nearly all of his willpower to stop himself from shitting streaks of thin diarrhoea across the stone floor.  He wondered if the cool dude heroes of Hollywood movies ever had that problem.

“No, I’ve been kidnapped by a crazy bitch who wants to sacrifice me to the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s evil twin.  But I don’t let anyone intimidate me.  Only my old man gets to do that and he’s been under the ground for over a decade now.  Where’s the rest of the Manson family anyway?  Shouldn’t your little coven be showing up by now?”

Those were the questions Hutson asked, but what he really wanted to know was: How long have I been out?

Brite smiled.  She recited some gibberish words that sounded like no language Hutson had ever heard before and banged the base of her staff on the stone floor.  He’d told her he wasn’t scared of her, and he tried to tell himself the same thing, but there was something really wrong here.  It was more than her obvious craziness or the weird symbols daubed on both the stone surfaces and her flesh.  It was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, like his senses were trying to scream something through a thick glass window and he couldn’t quite hear them.  There was something not right about her.

More bubbles welled up to the surface of the pool and popped with oily plops.

And that rancid pool gave him the fucking willies.

“You do realise if you stab me through the heart you’ll suffer three simultaneous heart attacks,” Hutson said, trying to bolster his flippant front.

Puzzlement again, then Brite gave a little giggle of laughter.

“Ah, the Wiccan Rule of Three,” she said.

“I thought you’d be aware of it, being the leader of the local Wicca group and all that,” Hutson said.

“It’s a sweet religion,” Brite said, “but the fate of the sweet is always to be crushed by the cruel.  My true religion is older and darker.”

“Older than Christ?”

“Older than man.”

Hutson knew it was nonsense, but felt an icy chill slither through his guts nonetheless.  His eyes widened, briefly cracking his shield of flippancy before he wrested back control from his primal fears.  Meant nothing.  Crazy people always sounded convinced of their crazy beliefs.  It’s why they were crazy.

How long had he been out?

She recited another occult verse and punctuated it by banging her staff down on the stone flagstones lining the edge of the pool.  More bubbles welled up and blopped at the surface.

Coincidence, or some kind of trick.

“Older than man?” Hutson queried.  “Are you seriously trying to tell me Cthulhu himself or one of his mates is going to rise up out of that pool and crush me in his slimy beard tentacles?”

He tried to show his derision through laughter.  He couldn’t keep the unease out of his voice and it came out too high-pitched—brittle and panicky rather than smooth and dismissive.

Her naked body.  What wasn’t right with what he was seeing?

“That’s all makebelieve,” Brite told him with a smile.  “An American writer made it all up and other writers copied him.”

She recited more ominous gibberish and banged her staff on the floor.  Hutson couldn’t pick out her words.  Even though she’d said them mere moments ago, they slipped straight from his mind.  It was as if his ears and brain found them so abhorrent they rejected the sounds and dismissed them from his memory.

Stop it.

More bubbles were streaming up to the surface of the pool and popping with noxious burps.

Burps.  That was a word to use.  And farts.  Children’s words.  The mangy pool was plurping and garargalling.  Pretend he was Ricky Gervais inventing stupid animals and calling them stupider names.  Twist her insanity and see it for the ridiculousness it was.

Hutson couldn’t keep out the atmosphere of dread.  It seeped through his skin and crept up his bones.  The sludge in the pool sloshed about like something was moving below.  Something big.  Even though he knew it had to be nonsense, he couldn’t shake the feeling that some vast and indescribably malevolent entity was rising up to the surface.  Coming to claim him.

Stop it!  Stop scaring yourself.

Brite raised her staff again.

Okay, that was enough.  Time to play his hand.

* * * *

Why the title "Slugjob"?  Uh . . . um . . . no particular reason . . .

*reads a little further*

Oh dear fucking god!  What the fuck was I on!?  Imagination, you're sick!  Sick, I tell you!

"Streetwalking with a Succubus" takes 3rd place in Literotica Halloween Story Contest

Literotica's Halloween contest results are in and "Streetwalking with a Succubus" took 3rd place:
http://www.literotica.com/stories/contest.php/halloween-2013

This is a nice boost before I enter the formatting hell of getting A Succubus for Remembrance ready for publication.  It's also quite hard for the shorter stories to place in Literotica's contests, so thanks to everyone who voted and I hope you enjoyed the story.

I'm now ineligible to place for the next couple of contests.  Anyone that's been following my writing for long enough will know this usually means an excuse to let Horror-head out of the cage and enter the nastiest story I have lying around.  I don't have anything for Lit's Winter contest, but I can promise something really dark and sexy for the Valentine's Day contest next year (and - shock horror! - succubus-on-girl action).

Before then I'll be putting out the A Succubus for Remembrance collection (there will be another new excerpt posted tomorrow) and then getting Phil's misadventures back on track.  It's annoying the Succubus Summoning series has slipped off its monthly schedule and I'll try to fix that.  Unfortunately I still haven't mastered the art of not falling to gibbering bits every time a publishing deadline comes around.

Monday, October 28, 2013

"A Succubus for Remembrance" excerpts - Ways to Break a Good Man, #1

Last Halloween I posted a story called "Ways to Break a Good Man, No.2".  A few people asked where the hell is "Ways to Break a Good Man, No.1"?  In truth there was an original "Ways to Break a Good Man, #1" story involving my succubus-wielding mob boss, Koontz, and a dangerous game for a 'good man' Governor's soul.  I liked the idea and it had a really effective horror scene early on, but the story kept petering out in a mess of convoluted dialogue (One character realised they needed to stall for time and I made them so good at it they kept filibustering the story into oblivion).  I've finally straightened that story out and it will be present in the forthcoming collection, A Succubus for Remembrance.  Here's an excerpt to whet the appetite:

* * * *

“My people are turning this hotel upside down as we speak,” King said, trying to regain composure, authority.  “They will find me.  And you.”

“Tut tut, Governor King.  You didn’t think Ceptophthorié was the only demon I have working for me . . .”  The fat man grinned like a toad before turning away.  “Enjoy your time with Ceptophthorié.  She’ll give your fall a soft landing.”

He tittered as he left the room.

That left King alone . . . with the demon.  He sat up on the bed and his gaze flicked back and forth between her and the lamp sitting on the bedside table.  He was ready to pick it up and hurl it at her should she make an aggressive move in his direction.

The girl didn’t move.  She sat on her chair and her full lips curled up in amusement.

“You look very tense.  Would you like me to give you a massage?” she asked.

“No thanks.”  King’s gaze flicked back and forth between her and the lamp.  “I’m not going to let you do to me whatever you did to McMillan.”

“That’s not how it works,” Ceptophthorié said.  “You have to do me.”

King’s brow furrowed.

“Like McMillan,” Ceptophthorié said.  “He shoved his big prick inside me and filled my gorgeous pussy with his cum.  Then I made him into my little toy.  Those are the rules—the man must instigate sexual intercourse of his own free choice.”

“Then I won’t,” King said.

“No?” Ceptophthorié arched a pencil-thin eyebrow.

“No,” King said, his voice flecked with ice.  “I have a wife and daughter I love very much.  I’m not interested in a common whore.”

Ceptophthorié smiled at his insult.

“I could make you,” she said.  “I could use my magic to pin you to the bed, climb on top, swallow up that gorgeous prick with my luscious pussy and ride you until you melted inside me.  Or I could entangle you in a web of seduction so potent the merest pluck of a thread would bring you to me on your knees like a faithful little dog.”

For a moment King felt that oppressive force of her presence wrapped around him like a velvet glove.  He feared her words were no idle boasts.

“Do it,” he challenged.

Ceptophthorié smiled.  “Where would be the sport in that?  There’s no fun in taking a man as if he were a common beast.  It’s not what I want.”

“What do you want?” King asked.  The more he kept her talking the more time it gave the others to find him.

“I want to play a game,” she said.  “Would you like to play a game with me?” she asked with a coquettish expression of wide-eyed innocence.

“What if I say no?” King asked.  “What’s to stop me walking out of that door right now?”

Ceptophthorié pushed her lower lip out in a disappointed pout.

“That would upset me.  I don’t like it when my games are spoiled.  And when I’m upset I take it out on the loved ones of the person who upset me.  McMillan is not my only toy.  Would you like your wife and daughter brutally gang-raped?”

The furious intensity of King’s glare was broken as he stared into the demon’s burning red eyes and realized she wasn’t bluffing.  It felt like ice-cold water poured down his spine.

“Now for the rules of the game.”  Ceptophthorié switched back to coquettish playfulness.  “It’s a challenge—your resolve versus my erotic temptations.  At sunrise I must depart this plane.  If you can resist my seductions until then you win and get to keep your soul.  I’ll even make it easier.  I won’t use my demonic abilities to entrance or otherwise compel you into having sexual intercourse with me.  I won’t even touch you . . .”

The corner of her full lips turned up in a suggestive smile.

“. . . unless you ask me to.  How does that sound?”

“It sounds very easy.  I don’t want to have sex with you.”

“Really?” Ceptophthorié said with a teasing smile.  “It seems your body has other ideas.”  She glanced at the obvious erection tenting the front of his underwear.  “He seems eager to greet me, to feel the warmth of my flesh wrapped around him.”

King reddened and shielded the embarrassing protrusion with his hands.  It was an automatic response, that was all.

Ceptophthorié giggled.

“If I decide to play, what guarantee is there that you’ll stick to the rules?” King asked.  “If your . . . demonic—”

It still felt wrong to use the word even though he’d accepted the impossibility of what she was.

“—abilities are as powerful as you claim, what’s to stop you using them once it gets close to sunrise and I’m about to win?”

“My word,” Ceptophthorié said.

King snorted.  “You’re a demon.”

Ceptophthorié was about to feign an expression of hurt, but laughed instead.  “True,” she admitted.  “I won’t cheat though.  The game has no challenge if I allow myself to break the rules whenever the game doesn’t go my way.”

She fixed her gaze on King, temporarily casting aside her flirtatious mask.

“I want to see you fall.  I want you to feel the wind flutter through your hair as you plummet into my abyss and know it was you that jumped.  That is true pleasure.”

She closed her eyes, brought her hands up and lewdly squeezed the swollen mounds of her breasts.

“It won’t happen,” King said.  “You made a mistake.  You showed me McMillan.  Do you think I’d be stupid enough to fuck you after I saw what it did to McMillan?”

Ceptophthorié threw back her head and laughed.

“I always show the men the consequences of their own damnation.  It makes the game so much more interesting.”

The succubus made no move towards King.  He watched her warily.  At least it started that way.  His gaze dipped downwards and was pulled in by the lush, swollen hemispheres of her breasts.  It orbited her fleshy curves, trapped like a ship caught in a black hole, sucked down, tugged into the shadowy cleft of cleavage while he became aware of the steady beat of blood through his temples.  Down his gaze fell, sliding down a flat belly to the beginnings of her short skirt.  She uncrossed her legs and he glimpsed the gates to her sex—plump, dewy, welcoming.  His vision narrowed until it seemed like the shadowy pink cleft between her legs grew to encompass his entire world.  It was like he stood on the edge of the hotel roof, staring at something far below, staring then teetering, teetering then falling.  He was falling down into a fleshy canyon and the soft pink folds of her sex were opening to accept him, opening to engulf him.

* * * *

I suspect this game will be a little harder than Governor King first thought.  A Succubus for Remembrance, out November.

Monday, October 21, 2013

A Succubus for Remembrance Excerpts - Hugh the Hero

The holiday back home with the folks has been unsurprisingly chaotic.  I'm still endeavouring to get A Succubus for Remembrance ready for an early November release, although this might slip - I'd rather put out a good book two weeks late than an on-time book filled with embarrassing errors.  In the meantime here's an excerpt from one of the new stories, "Hugh the Hero."  This is the parallel-quel story to "Trent the Traitor."  You'll recognise the opening scene in the excerpt, although this time it's from Hugh's perspective.

* * * *

They paused outside a large ornate door.  Hugh saw a face he recognized walking in the opposite direction with an accompaniment of succubus guards.  One of the lower-ranked infantry grunts.  He’d seen him a few times in the main mess tent at Helmuth.  Weaselly-looking dude.

“Hang in there,” he bellowed.  “Don’t let them break you.  The marines will come.  They’ll bust us all out of this hellhole.”

Hugh truly believed that.  He believed in supreme American military might.  The unusual H-space physics and unorthodox hindig tactics had caught them off guard, but they would find a way to adapt and then they’d flatten this little shitball just as easily as they’d steamrollered over Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and all the other fucktards.

 “Pray to Jesus!” he shouted.  “Keep your faith in...”

Hugh’s words tailed off.  Why wasn’t this guy in chains?  Why did he look more like a VIP with an escort detail than a prisoner with guards?

An awful thought germinated in Hugh’s mind.  The attack on Helmuth had been too easy.  Even with their unorthodox tactics the devils should not have been able to penetrate their outer defenses and surprise them like that.

Unless they’d had inside help.

“You sold us out.”

Rage exploded within Hugh.  This asshole hadn’t just sold out his side, he’d sold out his country, his species, his world, God.  For what, a piece of demonic tail?

“You motherfucker.  You sold us out.  That’s how they got in so easily.  You sold us out for a piece of ass.  You traitorous fuck.  I’ll tear your fucking lungs out.”

Thoughts of waiting patiently for the right opportunity were incinerated in the incandescent blaze of Hugh’s righteous rage.  Right then, at that moment, he cared about nothing other than putting his hands around that fucker’s scrawny throat and squeezing until the asshole’s eyes popped out.

The bubblegum-skinned demon girls giggled and opened the big ornate door.

Hugh tensed his muscular frame to pounce and...

...was suddenly travelling backwards in the opposite direction.  He felt a constriction around his waist and looked down to see pink tentacle as thick as his thigh wrapped around his midriff.  It was fantastically strong.  Hugh was lifted up off the floor and dragged through the open door and down into darkness.  One of the succubi gave him a little wave as she closed the heavy door behind him.

Hugh’s struggling form was dumped onto a floor that was underneath an inch of what he initially thought was water.  The substance was wet, but as he moved his hands through it he realized it was too viscous to be water.  It felt more like warm slime.  The floor didn’t feel much like a floor either.  It yielded beneath his weight and felt more like a trampoline, or the surface to a waterbed.

Unsteadily he got back to his feet, wobbling on the yielding and slippery floor.  Initially the room seemed to be in darkness, but as his eyes accustomed he saw the slime beneath him was mildly phosphorescent.  It wasn’t as bright as the corridor outside, but his eyes were able to adjust and see—

Oh Mary-fucking-mother of God.

Most of the hindigs looked like the typical devil girls of computer games.  Some were weirder—he’d heard of floating jellyfish girls; strange plant hybrids; girls that were half spider; and he’d glimpsed the giant fog puffers that had overwhelmed FOB Helmuth.  The hindig before him was half octopus or squid.  From the waist up she had the voluptuous body of a porn queen.  There was a regal cast to her face as well.  Hugh might have thought it beautiful if it wasn’t for the unnatural bubble-gum hue to her skin, or her yellow eyes.  She didn’t have hair either.  At first he’d thought it contained within a pink sack hanging behind her head.  Then he realized that sack was part of her body.  He watched it swell up and down as if it was breathing.

That part, her upper half, Hugh could just about deal with.  It was her lower half that nearly tore his mind asunder.  His disintegrating sanity tried to tell him it was a ball gown—a giant, elaborate, puffed up ballroom dress, like a princess might wear in a Disney cartoon.  One that was so huge she needed to stand on stilts to wear it.

He wasn’t yet insane enough to be fooled.  It was a ring of pink tentacles, each as thick as his thigh.  They bulged out of her waist and curled down to the ground.  Hugh saw it clearly even though he knew it should not be.

“Welcome,” the demon said in a surprisingly melodious voice.  “I am Enteroctia.”

* * * *

And that's a little more of Hugh's eventual fate revealed.  For the rest you'll have to wait until the new collection comes out next month.

There is also a line in this story that should hit like a slap in the face.  Don't worry, I love you all really... ;)

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

A first preview for "A Succubus for Remembrance"

In an ideal world this would be where I show off a cool new cover and a coming soon link.  As I normally write in a state of complete chaos those aren't ready yet.  It also didn't help that the last few stories ended up being 10,000+ word monsters and a couple needed full rewrites.  In the meantime, while I'm trying to get my shit together, here's a peek at the contents list:

1. A Succubus for Remembrance
2. The Skinning Knife
3. Vernon the Volunteer
4. Trent the Traitor
5. Hugh the Hero
6. Slugjob
7. Iron Girders and Steel Springs
8. Ways to Break a Good Man, #1
9. Ways to Break a Good Man, No.2
10. Ways to Break a Good Man, 3
11. Vampiric Boobies
12. Streetwalking with a Succubus
13. Nazi vs. Succubus

Some of those will be familiar, but not as many as with previous collections.  This time over half will be brand new stories making their first appearance with this collection.  These are also some of the longest stories I've written.  This time I built the running order from my ideas file and then wrote the stories afterwards.  I wouldn't recommend this approach to any budding writers as you end up with a 90K monster instead of the more sensible 70K words it should be! :D

The list isn't 100% finalized.  "Nazi vs. Succubus" was supposed to be a succubus-themed parody of the Ilsa nazisploitation films.  I let horror-head out of his cage for that one and he ended up rampaging off into some very dark and disturbing territory.  I'll have to run that one past the folks at eXcessica to make sure it doesn't cross the line.

Overall A Succubus for Remembrance might be a little darker and more monstery than my other collections.  Perversely, it also has my highest number of happy-ish endings so far.  Some questions are answered - such as what did happen to Hugh in "Trent the Traitor" and you'll also get to see "Ways to Break a Good Man, #1" after I confused everyone with the title "Ways to Break a Good Man, No.2" last Halloween.  More of the devious witch Annette Brite's background will be revealed, the hell-space campaign continues to worsen, and I add Octopus Girl/Scylla to the list of monster girls I've written stories about.

Provisionally, the collection should be out early November, although there is a chance the date might slip (Chaos writing, sorry).  I'll be giving out further details in the coming weeks as well as excerpts from the new stories.

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Literotica's 2013 Halloween Story Contest: Nicole needs your votes!

Ok, I need your votes.

Literotica has started its 2013 Halloween Story Contest.

Here's my entrant, a sexy little succubus tale featuring Nicole:
Streetwalking with a Succubus.

This time I thought I'd put a serious entrant in rather than trying to ambush nonhuman-romance fans with a gruesome horror tale.  If you like it, please show your appreciation by voting.

I talked about Literotica contests before.  They have quirks.  Because of the way the scoring works, anything other than the maximum '5' is strictly worse than no vote at all.  While a '4' might look like a helpful vote, it's actually a bullet through the head for a story's chances.  Also, the site owners are pretty good at detecting skullduggery.  Multiple votes and votes trashing an opponent's story are filtered out.

While I'd like to place (oddly, given what I write about, I've never placed in Literotica's Halloween contest), mostly I hope people enjoy the story.  I do write lighter and fluffier succubus tales from time to time.

If you like my darker stuff, never fear.  I've been sitting on a little stockpile.  More will be revealed on that over the coming month. ;)

Think of this tale as a little preview of goodies to come...

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Hentai Game Review - Violated Fantasy (Okasare Fantasy)



I mentioned Violated Fantasy (Okasare Fantasy) back here in a little hentai game roundup.  It’s the follow-up to Violated Quest.  I finally got around to picking it up last weekend and was pleasantly surprised.

Like its predecessor, Violated Fantasy is one of those RPGMaker clones.  Also like its predecessor it does away with the whole tedious grindy random encounter stuff.  Unlike its predecessor it has more of a plot as well as winnable battles and levelling.

The plot has you kidnapped by the demon queen ruler of a fantasy world.  She wants to do the naughty with you but is worried her succubus powers will blast your brain out of your ears and bring the sex to a quick and messy end.  To toughen you up she sends you out into a world full of over-amorous monster girls in order to build up your sexual resistance.  To prevent the over-amorous monster girls from fucking you to death/slavery/etc., she equips you with a magical collar that yanks you out of the fight the moment you lose.

I don't think she's taking 'No' as an answer.
The collar is a nice touch.  I know some people like the sexy fights in games like Monster Girl Quest, but get turned off by the Bad Ends where Luka gets digested, sucked dry, etc.  This game might be more to their liking.  To people that like the Bad Ends, don’t worry, there’s a point near the end where the collar is removed and you’re free to send your protagonist off to any doomed end you desire.

I liked how they handled the fights.  Normally in these games, if you want to see the good stuff you have to throw the fight and lose.  Violated Fantasy is a little different.  Each monster girl has multiple attacks (each with their own CG).  You unlock them by knocking off more of their health/energy bar in the fight.  Want to see more – win the fight.  It’s a simple but effective little tweak from a game design perspective as it rewards the player for trying to win while still allowing the monster girl to be sexually dominant.  I wouldn’t be surprised if other games copy this – it allows the game to flow more naturally than: lose, watch Bad End, game over, reload.

Again they’ve been generous with the enemies with 52 encounters (although 7 of those are with the demon queen at different stages).  The artwork is variable, but mostly fine.  I liked the work of the artist who did the goblin, boar girl, nymph, etc....

Nymph - Yes
 ...while the crazed cartoon lolis didn’t really do anything for me.

Frog Girl-Thing - Um...no.
That’s standard for this type of game.  They’re aiming to hit a wide variety of kinks, some of which are a little weird.  I don’t think I’ve seen a Sea Urchin girl used before.

Sea Urchin Girl - Ouchies!
Her scene looks a little...uncomfortable.

The one big flaw with the game is the levelling up math.  It went a little haywire for me.  For a game with no random grinding (although you can fight the same monster girl multiple times for extra experience) I’d have expected it to be about fighting the girls in the right order with the difficulty spiking if you happen to miss one.  What actually happened was I found my fighting (technically resisting) ability vastly outstripping the power of the enemies.  By the third area I’d hit some kind of quasi-god status.  By the fourth area it was a struggle not to kill most enemies with one or two hits of the most basic attack (and miss some of their attack CGs in the process).  This meant that all the extra skills and items they’d added to the game seemed superfluous.  I never figured out what most of them did and didn’t need to.

Also, as with the first game, if you’re using AGTH you’ll want to add the H-code /HBN*0@470D5A to unscramble the text before translation.  (Oh, and as I sometimes neglect to mention this part – the game is in Japanese.  You’ll need to set your locale to Japanese and use a text hooker + machine translator to convert to – sometimes garbled! – English.  Back here I posted some links to helpful guides on how to set this up.)

Overall, it’s not as detailed as Monster Girl Quest, or as pretty as Violated Hero, but if you’ve exhausted the scenes in those and want to try something new, this is worth a look, if you’re willing to overlook the slightly shonky JRPG math.

And finally the obligatory plug.  If you like games like this, you’ll also like my books.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

#52Books - July

September seems to have a bookish theme on the blog.  Don't worry, I don't believe in boring books - I like mine filled with sex and violence... ;)



#17: William Hope Hodgson – The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’

This is a real oldie, being first published in 1907.  You can pick it up for free from the Gutenberg Project here.  Most people associate weird tentacle horror with HP Lovecraft, but Hodgson predates him.  This is a weird horror tale concerning the adventures of a group of seamen after their boat sinks and their lifeboats encounter strange islands and an eerie weed continent.  The book was written over a century ago and the prose features a lot of quirks.  For starters there are no dialogue tags.  The entire book is written as an account of the narrator’s adventures.  Despite this I didn’t have any problems with the pacing and found it an enjoyable, if old-fashioned, yarn.

If you’ve devoured all of Lovecraft’s works and fancy something in the same vein, The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ might be worth a look.  Hodgson has a similar flair for weird horror.  The weakness he has compared to Lovecraft is there is no over-arching mythos underpinning the work and it lacks the cosmic bleakness of Lovecraft’s stories—it’s more of a romantic adventure in a very odd setting.  The story is effectively eerie and creepy in places and worth reading for fans of old weird horror.


#18: Wrath James White: To The Death

Zombies meet MMA cage fighting in a satisfyingly brutal book from Wrath James White.  The default setting for the ever-popular brain munchers is zombie apocalypse, so it’s refreshing to read a book where the apocalypse sort of fizzles out and never materialises (there’s a minor subplot where an African warlord uses them as an army and fails).  The real focus of White’s book is to put an MMA fighter in a cage with a zombie and describe the messy results in graphic detail.  Being a former fighter himself allows White to bring a degree of verisimilitude to the brutal and pulpy fights.

And it is a pulp story—there are evil mob bosses, cops and a hard-up fighter trying to win his last lucrative fight and get out with the money before the authorities shut everything down.  Tyler Pope is the fighter, and waiting for him in the cage is the monstrous Lester Broad (I’m guessing an expy of the real-life Brock Lesner), a recently-deceased former professional wrestler, former MMA champion, and now returned as a hulking, two-hundred-and-eighty-pound, ravenous-for-human-flesh zombie.

The editing is a little sloppy, but thankfully this doesn’t detract too much as White’s entertaining slice of gore-noir zips along at breakneck pace.  I thought White might have missed a trick with the ending though.  One of the characters would have made a good foil to his recurring main villain, Vlad, in future books, but alas, a round two is not to be.



#19: Cameron Pierce – Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

My experience of Bizarro fiction thus far appears to be this:

Books written by Carlton Mellick III == good.

Books not written by Carlton Mellick III == meh.

This book was not written by Carlton Mellick III.

Pierce’s sophomore effort is a tricky book to write about.  It’s set in a suitably bizarro universe where nazi-themed ass goblins (asses on legs with eye stalks emerging out of the butt cheeks) abduct kids from Kidland and take them to Auschwitz to make toys out of children’s body parts.  Pierce has a fantastically loopy imagination and a flair for describing the gross and perverse.

The book didn’t really hit the spot for me.  Pierce is going hell-for-leather for total offensiveness and gross-out description, which is great to see, but the characters were too detached from reality for me to really care about the varied and highly imaginative indignities Pierce heaps upon them.


#20: Shane McKenzie – Bleed On Me

Fasten the seatbelts, this one is high-octane gore fuel.  Deadbeat slacker, Chris Taylor, goes down to complain about the noise his gangbanger neighbours are making and finds himself in the middle of a massacre.  The new drug they stole and tried out has the unfortunate side effect of opening up the body to demon possession.  And by possession I mean rip the body apart and reshape it in new and imaginative forms of body horror.

The book is short, fast and completely drenched in gore.  There’s barely a chance to pause for breath as Chris is pursued by twisted demons.  It would make a great action-packed horror film.  There are some weaknesses—McKenzie could have filled in some more of the background, in particular why a character’s blood does what it does—but overall the book is fun, fast-paced and perfect for gore lovers.

Saturday, September 07, 2013

Japanese Mushroom People and Ghost Ships: The story of how I rediscovered William Hope Hodgson

I was a voracious reader as a child.  My school had a small library and I devoured all the horror, fantasy and science fiction I could find.  I loved (and still love) scary short story collections.  There were two stories I remember as really scaring the bejeebers out of me.

The first featured a remote part of rural America being slowly corrupted by a blight that came from a meteorite.  This blight took the form of a strange colour and caused plants and animals to grow in bizarre and horrifying ways.  I remember the plight of the hapless farming family, unable to leave despite knowing the colour is slowly consuming them from the inside.  The ending is unsettling as well.  On one hand it seems like it’s over—having eaten its fill, the colour shoots back off into space—but on the other the narrator reports seeing a residue still present at the bottom of the well.  Worse, the whole area is going to be flooded and turned into a reservoir, potentially spreading the contamination further.  For a child used to ghost stories with nice neat endings, an ending that implies it might not be over, that it might, in fact, get much much worse, gave me shivers.

Most horror aficionados will immediately recognise that as HP Lovecraft’s classic: “The Colour out of Space.”  I didn’t know who Lovecraft was at the time, but when I bumped into his work—and the Cthulhu mythos—again later, it was no great surprise to learn he was the writer responsible for a story that had left a mark on me.

The second story was about a group of sailors that found a queer abandoned boat.  The boat is floating in a patch of scum and covered all over in strange fungal growth.  As the sailors climb aboard, the sense of something being wrong deepens.  Below the decks they think they hear what sounds like the pumping of a great heart.  Then the fungus starts to move.  One man is gruesomely consumed and the others barely escape with their lives.  Worse, this is not a story that ends with the monster meeting a final and fiery end.  The narrator ends his story and the reader is left with the knowledge that the fungal ship is still out there.

Trying to identify this story was more of a puzzle.  Sadly, back then I was too young and stupid to actually pay attention to the names of the writers who provided me with these wondrous stories.  Or in this case even the title.  I knew it was a story about a creepy boat covered in man-eating fungus, but as I couldn’t remember either the writer or title, and had not come across it since, I figured this was going to be one of those pieces of nostalgia forever lost to the mists of time.

And so time passed...

Recently I watched the cult Japanese film “Matango.”  Fans of Kenkou Cross’s Monster Girl Encyclopedia will recognise that name.  It’s used for this entry:

No, not that Matango...

I don’t know if KC took the name from the film or both have the same roots in Japanese mythology.  (On a tangential note, Alraune, another frequently appearing monster girl, comes from German myth, and the Hanns Heinz Ewers novel of the same name has also spawned a few films)

Matango is an odd 1963 Japanese film where a bunch of characters get ship-wrecked on an island.  The interior of the island contains lots of strange mushrooms and they find the wreck of a research boat covered in strange fungal growth.  They avoid eating the mushrooms at first, but then food supplies run low and the horror kicks in when they discover eating the mushrooms turns you into a mushroom person (with appropriately icky slow transformation)


So far so Japanese.

Except it isn’t.  The plot is based on the short story “The Voice in the Night”, written by the English writer William Hope Hodgson.

“...boat covered in strange fungal growth.”  Could this be the mystery author of the mystery story that scared the bejeebers out of me as a child?

And indeed it is.  After a little digging through Hodgson’s bibliography and the wonders of out-of-copyright work being made available on the internet, I was able to rediscover “The Derelict.”

You can read it here.

“All about him the mould was in active movement. His feet had sunk out of sight. The stuff appeared to be lapping at his legs and abruptly his bare flesh showed. The hideous stuff had rent his trouser-leg away as if it were paper. He gave out a simply sickening scream, and, with a vast effort, wrenched one leg free. It was partly destroyed. The next instant he pitched face downward, and the stuff heaped itself upon him, as if it were actually alive, with a dreadful, severe life. It was simply infernal. The man had gone from sight. Where he had fallen was now a writhing, elongated mound, in constant and horrible increase, as the mould appeared to move towards it in strange ripples from all sides.”

Brrr.  Yep, still as creepy as I remember.

Hodgson came before HP Lovecraft and while his work lacks the core cosmic bleakness saturating Lovecraft’s works, he’s worth checking out if you like old weird horror.  His books can be found for free at the Gutenberg project here.  He also created the supernatural detective Thomas Carnacki.

And that, through a rather convoluted path, is how I rediscovered the stories of William Hope Hodgson, a writer who scared the bejeebers out of me as a child.