Thursday, October 22, 2015

Chad's Challenge

My 2nd story for Literotica's Halloween story contest is up.  You can read it here:

Chad's Challenge

No idea where this one came from.  It bubbled up from the little black cells at the back of my brain and I wrote it down.  I wanted to write a simple old-style manyeyedhydra short story with monster girls and dangerous snu snu to get the machinery moving again.  It took a little longer to write than I expected, probably because it's also about 1.5K words longer than I originally anticipated.

It's a little freaky, especially on the sex bit...

I hope you all enjoy it anyway.

I've got today to finish the 3rd entrant.  That might be a little too tight.  The subject matter is topical, so even if I don't make the deadline I'll still post it to Literotica as soon as the story is finished.


Monday, October 19, 2015

Writing Updates: Oct 19th, 2015

Somebody highlighted this on my twitter feed.


My first thought was:  Well, durr.  You people have become the Stop Having Fun people, and it's in the nature of youth to rebel against the Stop Having Fun people.

(@radicalbytes is the man behind Feminist Frequency, responsible for the Tropes vs. Women series on Youtube.)

In the past it was the religious morality brigade.  Nowadays it's authoritarian SJWs.  South Park has already lampooned it with PC Bros, it's only a matter of time before other comics lock the trope in.

This is nothing new.  The late 80s/early 90s saw a similar push for political correctness and trumpeted the arrival of the 'New Man' - in touch with his caring, sharing side.  By the mid 90s the New Man was soundly rejected by women as an unsexy wet drip and Political Correctness was buried beneath universal mockery.  This was the decade that saw the emergence of Lads' mags and Lad Culture in Britain.

The same cycle is repeating itself now.  Unfortunately, the viciousness of the more extreme fringe of activism is greater and more visible this time around because of social media.  And I think that means the resulting pushback will also be vicious.  My own personal opinion is that the average person is considerably less [foo]ist and [foo]phobic nowadays, but there's only so many times you can get hit in the head by a rock before you give in to the temptation to start throwing them back.  It's become a cottage industry (or, in some cases, a financially lucrative business) to throw a rock at a group, then scream harassment and seek sympathy when the riled-up group throws rocks back.

Where does that leave us?  Probably with a bunch of virulent anti-women misogynists when those 10 to 14-year-old boys, fed up of being constantly told they're the root of all evil, grow up.

And on that cheery note, it's time to get back to writing.

This week I'll be trying to finish off the two stories I have planned for the Literotica Halloween Contest.  It ended up not quite being the story bonanza I was hoping for.  Progress was a little too much on the stop/start side.  I suspect I might be going too long on my short stories (6-7K instead of 4-5K words) and not getting them finished fast enough.  I've noticed my productivity and enthusiasm for a story starts to wane once it drags past a certain number of days.  Getting an idea down in 2-3 days, while it's still fresh, is what I should be aiming for.

The second story features plenty of weirdness and dangerous snu snu.  That's typed up and should be posted in the next few days after I've finished editing it.

The third story references the #GamerGate controversy, so the response to that should be... interesting.  It also features an appearance of one of my regular characters.  Sort of.  I'm deep in the 1st draft for that one.  The closing date for the competition is the 22nd.  That might be tight, but I'll still post it even if I fail to make the deadline.

Originally I had another third story planned.  The first draft is nearly done on that one.  Horror-head and Erotica-head had a fight over the ending and Erotica-head rightly pointed out the original ending, as planned, would likely leave readers feeling like they'd been cheated out of some of the sexy stuff.  The story does have plenty of nice cliff-hanger moments, so I'll be running that here on the blog throughout November as a mini-serial.

Then it's back to getting the long-delayed "Sandwiched by Scyllas" ready for publication.  I'm hoping a break from banging my head against the wall trying to write the second half of that will get it flowing again.  Lots of tentacle goodness to come there. ;)

Breaking the Sandwiched by series out of the monthly cycle that wasn't doing me any good means I won't be immediately pressured to get the 5th done (currently pencilled in as the slightly voretastic "Sandwiched by Stomachs").  That means it will be time to do what people have been asking me for all year and bring Succubus Summoning 201 to a satisfying end.

Thursday, October 01, 2015

Snuff/Skin Flick

The first (and hopefully not only) story for Literotica's Halloween story contest is up.  You can read it here:

"Snuff/Skin Flick"

This is a little more horror than my usual stories.  At one point after writing it I did briefly consider sending it out to more mainstream horror fiction magazines.  Then, after I'd stopped laughing, I decided that was a stupid idea.

All the horror movie references are real horror films.  Ruggero Deodato, the director of Cannibal Holocaust, apparently was arrested on suspicion of murdering his cast for real.  That must have brought a warm glow of job-done-well to the heart of whoever was responsible for the special effects.

I don't expect "Snuff/Skin Flick" to score very highly.  The main PoV character is too far removed from the action to have the same level of sexual intensity as my other stories and my Nasty End stories never score as highly as the Nice End stories.  Still, I hope people appreciate it as a more mainstream-type horror tale.  There are more typical succubus stories on the way (don't worry, they still have fucked up elements ;)).

As always, if you have any questions about the story or there were things that bugged you about it and you want to let me know, feel free to scrawl something in the comments below.

Oh, I might as well tackle something I saw on Literotica's boards.  Snuff is on the list of things that Literotica doesn't allow in stories.  So how does a story with Snuff in the title get through?  (and correspondingly, how the hell do you get anything posted there at all, Hydra, considering the typical death count in your stories?)

I can't speak for the official policies of the site, but in general it seems to be don't submit anything where the PoV character gets sexually aroused by killing another character in a way that could be copied out in the real world by anyone reading that story.  PoV and realism are the important factors.  From a horror literature point of view this does rule out certain types of story, but I don't blame the site owners for wanting to be cautious here.  No-one wants to feel tangentially responsible for a nutjob enacting a murderous sexual fantasy they picked up from reading a story online.  Despite this, there is still plenty of leeway for a writer to depict brutality, as this story will attest. :)