Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Looks like Monmusu Quest: Paradox is coming out in April

Preview page on DLSite, in case anyone hasn't already seen it:

http://www.dlsite.com/maniax/announce/=/product_id/RJ150726


 Guess I'd better get everything else cleared out of the way by the time April rolls around...

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Uh oh. Blogger have dropped the Prudehammer

Blogger have changed their Adult Content policy.  I (and many like me judging from the displeased mutterings on Twitter) received an email last night informing me of the changes.  Here they are . . .

https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/6170671?p=policy_update&hl=en&rd=1

. . . and yeah, they're not good, not good at all.  It looks like I'll have to pack my bags and find a new (online) home come March 23rd.

In theory I could comply, but it would mean deleting nearly every screenshot of every game I've written about and as I know a lot of you out there enjoy those posts, that's unacceptable to me.  Also in theory I could mark this blog as private going forward, but as the primary purpose of this blog is to publicise my books, it wouldn't be doing a good job of that if no bugger can find it.

With discussions like these it's impossible not to invoke the dreaded 'C' word.  Personally I think anyone using the hur derp, "It's only censorship if the government is involved," argument is a moron that isn't aware the world has moved on in the last century and a half.  I've argued before that if the end result is the same, people are going to use the closest word that fits.

Of course, against that we have to weigh up that Blogger is Google's platform and they are fully entitled to decide who or what goes on it.  It's disappointing that Google have taken this line, but it would also be churlish of me not to be grateful to them for giving me a nice set of tools to get my voice online essentially for free for the past five years.

I'd put this in the mild censorshit bracket - a damn nuisance, but not an oppressive gag as there are plenty of other alternatives.

Last night I purchased the manyeyedhydra.com domain.  It's about time.  I have a nice author page on Amazon, I might as well get a proper web address.  Currently it should redirect to this blog.  Next month I'll look at migrating to a new, more tolerant, online home.

I'd like to think we're moving to a future where companies will stop doing this as it will generate more bad publicity than good.  Sadly, until then, those of us working with adult material are a soft target and will have to continue to expect and work around arbitrary chilling effects.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Sandwiched by Slimes: You Choose the Ending

Yep, I totally got carried away on this one.  I blame it on the two slime girls having far too much fun playing with their food.  I'm currently over 8K words with possibly another 1-2K to go.  Other than the story being later than planned I'm happy with it going long rather than short.  You, the reader, will definitely get your 99c worth from this one (more so if you like slime girls and enjoyed stories like "Jackson in HRPG-World 3" and "A Real-Life Goo Girl").

Anyway, I'm coming up to the end and interestingly there are two paths I can take.  I could follow the route of a happy ending where the protagonist escapes or is let go from their sticky clutches (after being given many happy endings of the other kind).  Or I could take the other path to a sexy-but-terminal Bad End where the protagonist has their life and soul slurped out.  Oddly, I have no real preference.  When I first came up with the idea I leaned one way, but as I was writing the story I thought the other option might also work.

Then I had a mischievous idea.  Why not open it up to a little bit of audience participation?  So let's have some fun.  Let me know in the comments below if you'd rather this story had a Happy Ending or a Bad End.

Interestingly, this decision will likely have further ramifications.  I'm very flexible when it comes to planning my longer story arcs.  I think of characters as game pieces placed on a board.  I remember the status and position of the pieces at the end of each story and that often acts as inspiration for future stories.  "Sandwiched by Slimes" is set in one of my existing universes.  The characters from here will likely pop up again, but I haven't yet locked in their roles.  They could be antagonists or allies.  The path taken here will likely have a say in determining how I use them in the future.

Maybe.

Sometimes it's the metaphorical act of tossing a coin that determines the decision rather than the outcome of that coin toss.  If the coin comes up tails and you wished it had come up heads then you know the heads decision was the one you wanted to take all along.  For this reason I reserve the right to completely ignore all results and go with the path I think is right.

This also has the happy side effect of avoiding any spoilers.  Sure, the vote might go for Happy Ending, but you won't know for sure I acted on it until you read the story.

As it is kind of dickish to give readers a choice and then completely ignore it, I will penalize myself if I take this option.  I'll make one of the stories in my current stockpile available to read for free on Literotica.  (This will also have the happy side effect of forcing me to write more new stories to ensure my collections have the requisite mix of exclusive material).

So let's embrace some true #ChaosWriting.  Thumbs up or thumbs down.  Happy Ending or Bad End.  Let me know in the comments below.

UPDATE
After 24 hours we have:
Happy Ending - 9
Bad End - 4
(and a few I wasn't sure on, but was going to use as a tiebreaker in favour of happy in the event of a tie.)

The public have spoken and it's a thumbs up.  However, Caesar is capricious and cruel and may not necessarily follow the will of the people.

I'll see if I can get the completed story out next week.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

New Trial for Mon-musu Quest: Paradox out

Update here.

I haven't had a chance to look at it.  It sounds like the content is the same as before but the game is now stable enough that players will be able to transfer save games over to the finished game when released.  This sounds very encouraging.  From とろとろレジスタンス's (torotoro resistance) blog it sounds like they're deep into testing.  Maybe we'll see the completed game in a couple of months.

I'm currently deep in a deadline crunch and buying a house.  Once I've got that all out of the way I'll start looking at how to tackle a Let's Play of this enormous sexy beast.

Monday, February 16, 2015

"Why don't you post your Let's Plays of Violated Hero and such on a site like XVideos?"

This question came up in the comments for the last blog post (thanks, anonymous!).  I was going to answer it there and then thought of a whole bunch of other stuff while I was writing and decided to splurge them out in a full post instead.

The short answer is I have absolutely no experience or knowledge on how to put together videos, edit them and upload them to sites like Youtube, Twitch, etc.  This is not a particularly good excuse as I could probably read up on these things and figure them out.  I even have the free time to attempt this if so inclined.

The bigger question is: Would it work?

One of the more interesting things I've learned from following #GamerGate over the last few months is just how popular youtubers like TotalBiscuit and Boogie2988 are.  I knew this kind of videogames coverage was out there, but I hadn't realised just how huge it was.  In fact, one of the more interesting narrative frames that can be applied to #GamerGate is that it's about one form of media (traditional blogging/journalism producing written articles for gaming websites) being supplanted by another form of media (new youtubers/twitchers producing gameplay videos for Youtube, etc) and raging at their own oncoming obsolescence.

(It is by no means the only narrative frame that can be applied to #GamerGate, but we're not going there.  Nope, definitely not going there.)

Let's Play videos are a big thing now.  Unfortunately, doing them for the type of monster girl hentai games I like runs into problems with hosting venues and audience expectation.  Youtube and Twitch have fairly strict anti-lewd rules which rule out a lot of explicit content.  There are Let's Plays of Monster Girl Quest that get around the problem by sticking black squares (or more humorous censors) over the lewd bits, but MGQ is a weird case in that the story and characters are still entertaining even without the lewdness.  It's still less than ideal though.  After all, what's the point of Let's Playing an eroge if you can't show off a nice pair of giant round tits.

Cap'n, we don't have a black square big enough!

The other option, as suggested, would be to go to one of the porn youtube clones like XVideos.  I don't think this would work because of audience expectation.  People go to Youtube for entertainment.  Person providing commentary while playing through something like Monster Girl Quest could be entertaining.  People go to porn youtube clones to fap.  Random British guy wittering over monster girl hentai game - not fap material.

I think Let's Play videos of various monster girl hentai games could be highly entertaining, I just don't think there's a good place to showcase them at the moment.  For that type of Let's Play video anyway.

While I was thinking of ideas, one thing I thought would work is to have a voice actress with a sexy voice play through the game and read out the dialogue of the female characters.  I think that could work very well on the porn youtube clones, but it does rely on the Let's Player being female, having a sexy voice, and not giving two fucks about weird smutty material.

Sexy voice + Alma Elma RP = profit?
 
As a lumpen Brit with a lumpen voice, this isn't really an option for me.

Could be a good opportunity for the right person though...

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Update on "Sandwiched by Slime Girls"

I was hoping this would be a post announcing "Sandwiched by Slime Girls" is out.  Predictably, I'm running late again.

There's a couple of reasons for this.  The first is that I'm in the middle of buying a house in rainy old England.  This tends to throw up a lot of nuisance paperwork and errands that drag me away from the computer.  I'm also currently living on a mattress in my mother's front room while waiting for everything to go through.  Writing red-hot sexy-weird smut in this environment is a little awkward as you can imagine.  Once the house is done I'll have a personal office set up and start hitting proper 8-hour-a-day+ writing shifts.

The second is that the story wandered off the path a little in the middle.  I'm currently whacking it back into shape with the editing hammer.  Originally I was hoping to hit a regular date each month, so it's a little annoying to be already running behind.  Quality is always my primary concern though.  I'd rather put a good story out a week late than a bad story on time.

Wednesday, February 04, 2015

Writing Update Feb 2015

Because I’m getting queries on when the next Succubus Summoning chapter will be going up (it’s delayed again, sorry).

The original plan was to finish the Succubus Summoning 201 arc along with some extras for the ebook version in November/December.  This didn’t happen because of some substantial real life disruption.  Now that window is temporarily closed as I’m in a deadline crunch to get the next collection, A Succubus for St Patrick’s Day, finished in time for, well, St Patrick’s Day.  Once that’s done I’ll get back to Succubus Summoning and keep on it until the full 201 arc is finished.  #ChaosWriting is temporarily suspended while I force myself to be disciplined for a change.

Here are some progress reports to give everyone an idea of what’s on the way in 2015.


Sandwiched By

Committing to this seemed a much saner idea when I didn’t know December and November were going to vanish in a black hole.  Oh well, flying by the seat of my pants to maintain a monthly schedule is going to be fun.  I’m halfway through “Sandwiched by Slime Girls”.  The two girls in this one are proving to be very enthusiastic (a little too enthusiastic – they’re distracting me!), so it should be a fun read.  I’m also halfway through another Sandwiched by story that features a character inspired by one of Monster Girl Quest’s weirder monster girls.  It’s a bit voreish so I didn’t want to put it out too early in case I scared everyone away.  March and April are likely to be Scylla and Succubi.  We’ll see.  This is my challenge to me to bring out the speedy pulp writer after all.


A Succubus for St Patrick’s Day and other tales

This was the collection I originally intended to put out last year, but decided to postpone rather than rush it out with sloppy editing.  I wanted it done by the end of January but I suspect it will be mid-February as I still need to give three stories a thorough editing (plus the usual formatting and getting a cover together).  Expect to see teasers and excerpts in a couple of week’s time.  As with the last collection there will be six old stories, six brand new stories and one from an Excessica collection that might have been missed by a lot readers.


Succubus Summoning 201

Should have been finished in November if I hadn’t let such trifling concerns as losing my job and having to move country get to me.  Bah!  This is next in the queue after the editing on A Succubus for St Patrick’s Day is finished.  There are two chapters to come and both will be smallish in comparison to the previous chapters.  I’ll then do some chopping and changing to edit it into ebook form to go into the earliest available slot in Excessica’s release schedule.


With both of those projects out of the way I’ll be free to turn on #ChaosWriting again.  I tend to be much more productive when dealing with fresh ideas and both of the previous projects dragged on far longer than I’d have liked.  One of my aims this year is to really get my teeth into my ideas folder and get them written before they go stale.


A Night with Ceptophthorié

I definitely want to keep playing around with Twine and create some more interactive stories.  I had to put this on hold when I realised I was running behind on the other things.  When things get a little less hectic I’ll be running this alongside my more conventional writing projects.


Jackson in HRPG-World

This has been on hold for too long.  I have some ideas of future games to lampoon, so expect Jackson’s (mis)adventures to start up again later in the year.


And then we get into freer territory.  Other than the ton of short story outlines sitting in my ideas file I have these ideas for longer novellas and novels:

A novel featuring both Nicole and Madam Voluptula.  Also ties in with another short story of mine.  I’ve been wanting to write a novel-length work about Nicole for a while and I think the idea for this one will work.  I’m pretty sure this will become my main focus once Succubus Summoning 201 is out of the way.

Okasare Kenny.  A serial about a protagonist stuck in a Violated Hero-type game/world.  Me trying to out-ick Violated Hero while still keeping it sexy.

A novella with Amanda.  Originally it was a very strong short story idea that gave me an excuse to show off her dominatrix skills.  I think there’s enough in the story for it to go longer.

Slutdroppin’.  Four students play a practical joke on a drunk female student and end up in a weird dimension where something is tracking them.  More of a horror story – for the people that prefer my nastier Bad Ends.

Porno Fighters from Planet Earth.  Another lengthier piece I started a while back.  Has a great manga-esque plot.  Still not sure on the pacing.  Might end up a trilogy of short novels.

A short novel about a soapland run by succubi.  Been wanting to write this a while, but it involves some complex mythology/riddles alongside the usual sexy bits.

Succubus Summoning 301.  Phil’s adventures aren’t done yet.  201 was supposed to be set more in Wargsnouts, but ended up drifting back to the succubi’s castle.  301 might be based more on Earth.  I’m still thinking of what the overall plot arc will be.


The Nicole novel will likely be the first thing I tackle on the list (I’ve already written the first couple of chapters).  After that I’ll probably reorder depending on levels of interest, so let me know what takes your fancy in the comments below.