Changes with M.E. Hydra books

I should have posted this earlier, but it's been a busy month yadda yadda.

A few weeks ago I received an email that eXcessica would be closing its doors and unpublishing all its books at the end of November.  First up, there's nothing controversial about this.  Excessica was started as a sort of writer's collective right before Amazon's Kindle blew the doors off self-publishing.  This was back when alternative book sites required "publishers" to have at least three authors in their stable and Selena Kitt wanted to both start her own career as an author and recognised there was a lot of untapped talent on Literotica that could be brought along for the ride.  I feel honoured and grateful to be one of those writers and have nothing but praise for Selena and her hardworking crew for having me along.

All good things must come to an end, and in an era where it's trivially easy for a writer to upload their work to Amazon and other places, there is no longer the need for writer's-collectives-cum-publishers.  It's time for us to make our own way, and I fully understand the decision.

What does it mean for M.E. Hydra books on Amazon and elsewhere?

As far as I know, the ones put out through eXcessica will be unpublished at the end of the month, so if you want to grab the old versions, you might want to do it pretty sharpish.  The books affected are Succubus Summoning 101 and 201, and the A Succubus for collections (6 of them).  The Sandwiched by novellas were fully self-published by me and won't be affected (I really should get back to finishing that series off!)

The books won't be gone for good.  As soon as I've sorted out the logistics of rights transfers and the rest, I'll be reuploading them under my own author account.  For Succubus Summoning 101 and 201, that will probably be right away as I'm happy with the current covers for those.  They'll just need some tweaks to the copyright page and the removal of the old logo and should be good to go.

As for the A Succubus for collections, I might use this as an opportunity to tweak these and rebrand the series as a whole.

As part of the rebranding I definitely want to redo the covers and number them as a series.

The other thing I might do is rejig the contents and running orders.  Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed links between characters and events, and realised these are all taking place in a shared universe.

This was not always the case.  Early on, I wrote them as standalone short stories, which means there are some that don't quite fit within that shared universe - the superhero parodies, that one science fiction story, some of the "Succubus vs." stories.

While I haven't put any books out for a while, I have continued to write stories.  Some have been Patreon-exclusives, others have been posted on Literotica.  I probably have enough for a new collection and some left over.  I'm thinking of replacing some of the older stories in the older collections, and then rebranding the collections as part of a much larger ongoing story in the same universe.

What do people think about that?

Go with the rebrand, or preserve the collections with their original line-ups?

Either way, expect the Succubus Summoning series to be reuploaded fairly quickly, and I'll likely follow with the new A Succubus for editions over the first half of 2022.  Maybe, if everything falls into place, a brand new 7th collection to follow the updated editions.

As for covers, I'm still checking on whether it's allowed, but the WOMBO dream app has thrown up a few pictures I wouldn't feel too bad about sticking on a book cover.

A Succubus for Halloween?

A Succubus for Freedom?

A Succubus for Remembrance?

What do you think?

Updates and a St Patrick's Day Sales Promotion on All Romance Ebooks

Yes, yes, there should be a Succubus Summoning 212, part 3 here, I know.  I knew that chapter was going to be a swine to write and likely slide around the weekly schedule until I got on top of it.  The next part has some interesting revelations and a bunch of exposition that was tricky to write.  My first draft didn't exactly nail it, which meant the typing up part was a little slower and more painful than normal.

There should be a new part out this week.  It's about 500 words and a decent edit away.  I was going to put it out tomorrow and shift the usual H-space slots back, but what I'll do instead is post the H-space MGB pieces in their usual slots (as they're already done) and bump SS212, pt3 to Saturday.  That'll give me a chance to triple-check I haven't borked the exposition passages.

In other news, it's St Patrick's Day tomorrow, so it would be rather remiss of me not to remind you of the appropriately themed collection of short stories I put out this time last year:

I liked the cover on this one, but for some reason the book didn't come out the gate with similar sales as the other collections.  One of those things, I guess.  Anyway, if you missed it the first time around, there are thirteen stories waiting for you to read, some of them brand new and appearing only within this book.

The other reason to mention St Patrick's Day is because my publisher, Excessica, has let me know they're part of a St Patrick's Day sale on All Romance Ebooks.  For that day Excessica's entire catalogue of books will be 25% off on All Romance Ebooks.  So, if you've found me recently through my stories/reputation and would like to see what my published work is like, tomorrow is a good time to pick up my previous books at a discount.

My books can be found on All Romance Ebooks here.

Also, here are the other books Excessica offers.  Give them a look and see if any take your fancy.

ETA:  Hmm.  Okay those links don't quite go to where I was hoping.  They're still easy to find.  Author -> M. E. Hydra in the top right search box on the page will take you to my books and Publisher -> Excessica Publishing will do the same for my publisher.

Further Update: The links now go to the correct places.  Thanks for the fix suggestion in the comments, Anon.

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.

Print Version of A Succubus for Freedom Out & Other Anthology News

The print version of A Succubus for Freedom and other tales of Obscene Orgies is finally out. You can grab it on Amazon here, or from eXcessica directly here. I live in hope one day I might actually get both the print version and ebook version out on the same day. Sorry for keeping you print lovers waiting. My own copies are winging their way towards me to be added to my Shelf of Books Guests Must Not Read...

I also have a few new stories coming out in eXcessica's fundraising anthologies.

The first, Colors, is out now.


It's an anthology of interracial erotica. I submitted a story about two lovers skinning each other and having sex.

Sometimes I wonder why the good folks of eXcessica put up with me...

The next is back to more familiar territory for me: an anthology of erotic horror tales to chill the bones in time for Halloween.


My story for that one is titled "Crabs" and I believe the anthology will be available on the 12th October.

Warning: Will Make Readers Wince.

A Succubus for Freedom: Out Now!

You can’t escape . . . You won’t want to escape . . .

Succubi and other monstrous femme fatales abound in M.E. Hydra’s fourth collection of wild, warped and wickedly dark erotica. Lie back and enjoy as alluring sirens ensnare helpless prey in thirteen weird tales of sex and horror. They'll give you pleasures beyond your wildest dreams, and terrors beyond your darkest nightmares . . .



Here's the full list of the stories:

A Succubus for Freedom
Exile
Guard Duty
Don't Fuck the Flowers
The Biggest Tits in the World
A Night at McHooligans
Barbarian vs. Succubus
Onychophoral Dreams (The Soul Worm II)
Naga Massage Review
Come on the Candle
What Bad Boys Get For Christmas
Riding the Medusa
Locked in with a Succubus

Some of the titles will be familiar, but I managed to boost the original story content up to nearly half. Six of the stories are brand new and only appear in this book. I also modified a couple. "Locked in with a Succubus" should now have an ending that makes more sense. "The Biggest Tits in the World" is actually my lowest rated Lit story, partly because of some scale issues in what happens. No problem - Lovecraftian Geometry to the rescue!

The six brand new stories feature the stone tablet succubus being thoroughly evil in a hefty 11K word novella (if you like your demon girls BAD, you'll really enjoy this), the Robert E Howard 'Conan' homage I mentioned in previous posts, something a little experimental with some lush descriptions of hell, an odd succubus summoning rite with candles and smoke, and two Hell-space stories featuring some bizarre (and sexy) monster girls.

Why are the chapters for "Locked in with a Succubus" alternating with the other stories instead of in one place?
Originally it was a weekly serial and I wanted to preserve that feeling of having a 'pause' between each chapter. It's one of those things that might work or could suck. It wouldn't be any fun being independent if I couldn't do the odd bit of experimental craziness now and again...

The book can be found on amazon, and in amazon UK (where no one actually reads me, which is ironic considering they're the only people that might understand some of my more obscurer references! :) ). It's also on B&N, smashwords and also directly from eXcessica's own site. I even put it on various romance fiction sites, because that's where we upload books, although I pity the poor person downloading it in search of fuzzy paranormal romance.

I hope everyone enjoys it anyway. Sorry it was so late coming out. It does mean I can now finally get back to Succubus Summoning 201, another project I've fallen a little (okay a lot!) behind on. I would love for people to leave reviews, but appreciate that amazon's insistence on real names might make that unappealing for some people. Please feel free to let me know what you think in the comments below or even email me directly at manyeyedhydraATgooglemail.com. The same for any suggestions. I can't guarantee I can satisfy all of them, but I don't mind tweaking scenarios to cater to specific fetishes (especially ones I haven't got around to covering yet) or even tweaking character descriptions if there's someone/thing you'd like to see in a story.

A Succubus for Freedom: Out this Friday!

Yep, that's right. A slot opened up and so it will be out August 3rd after all. It means I'll have to compress my book plugging, but hey, who wants to read book plugs when you could be reading the actual book.

Here's an extract from the title story, "A Succubus for Freedom", to celebrate:

* * * *

Andy thought the girl from his dream was just that—a dream. Then he saw her in the flesh a few nights later while they were playing a gig at The Wyld Hart.

The Wyld Hart was an odd sort of pub. It was too far off the beaten track to be absorbed into the bland franchise chain conglomerates and it didn’t have the history and character to be one of those defiant locals’ haunts. It wasn’t really the town’s rock pub either—that was The Drunken Choir out on Newcastle Street, where the bikers hung out—but it had been colonized by the metal and emo kids from the town’s schools and college. They had nowhere else to go, so they fetched up at The Wyld Hart because it had a jukebox that wasn’t full of R’n’B and Landfill Indie.

The landlord didn’t mind. The kids brought custom and even if they were ‘funny looking’, they were a lot less bother than their peers, who normally required scraping off the vomit-sodden streets every Saturday night.

Scott Battersby was normally around anyway, and no one messed with Scott Battersby.

Most people assumed Scott was the landlord even though this wasn’t the case. He did rent rooms up on the first floor and spent most of his time either behind the bar or manning the door, but he didn’t own the pub. Scott looked intimidating—bald and squat like someone had taken a seven-foot person and squashed them down to six—but he was a decent enough bloke in Andy’s opinion. Unless he was in a mosh pit. Then you stayed the fuck out of his way. Andy and the band had gone with him to a Megadeth gig. Scott had been quiet for most of the night, and then “Hangar 18” came on and a neat hole formed in the crowd around him as Scott started moshing. Scott was old school.

Scott read the board they’d chalked the band’s name on as they were setting up their gear.

“Perverts In Satan’s Service?” he said, doubtfully.

“Our new band name,” Stidolph said. “Cool, isn’t it.”

“You do know what it spells out?” Scott said.

Both Andy and Chris gave him the dejected ‘yeah, we know’ look.

Chuckling, Scott shook his head and walked away to tend the bar.

Confusion fluttered across Stidolph’s face. “What’s the problem? Is there something wrong with the band name?”

Andy put a hand on his face.

Stidolph wasn’t exactly the brightest spark, but he was still a decent frontman. The gig kicked off and straightaway he was snarling out lyrics and prowling the front of their makeshift stage as if possessed by the spirit of Ozzy himself. Of course, it would have looked more impressive had he been, you know, taller than five-foot-four.

They were halfway through a cover of Dimmu Borgir’s “Succubus in Rapture” when Andy saw the girl from his dream amongst the collection of onlookers that might loosely be termed the crowd. It was impossible to miss her. She wore a lurid red corset that accentuated her cleavage, an indecently short miniskirt and kinky red fishnet tights. Goth-wear with the kinkiness dialled up to eleven. Andy was so surprised to see her he fucked up and missed a few beats. It didn’t matter as Chris did the same. The only one who didn’t fuck up was Daniel, and that was because he was staring at the floor.

The girl watched them all the way through the set. She leant against a pillar in the centre of the room and looked so hot Andy wouldn’t have been surprised had the old oak timber caught fire. Both Stidolph and Chris were convinced they were the ones she had eyes for and showed off accordingly. Andy was a little unnerved. She looked exactly like the girl he’d dreamt about a couple of nights ago.

She wasn’t the only unexpected onlooker. As Andy was packing away his kit at the end of the gig he noticed Richard speaking with Scott over by the bar. No, more than speaking, laughing and joking as if the two men were old friends. Whatever could a boring fart like Richard have in common with an old-school thrash-head like Scott?

He didn’t get a chance to ponder it further. The hot girl, her eyes smouldering, was walking towards them. Both Stidolph and Chris stepped up to introduce themselves. She walked straight past them without a sideways glance. Her burning eyes were on him. They had been all night.

“Um . . . hi . . .” he started.

The girl shushed him with a finger on his lips. Her other hand grabbed a twist of the T-shirt covering his chest and formed a fist. Both Stidolph and Chris gaped at him in surprise as the girl shoved him in the direction of the toilets.

Yes, for the first time in rock history, the hot chick ignored the singer and lead guitarist and went straight for the drummer.

* * * *

Hey, someone found the succubus tablet . . .

It'll end in tears. (But there'll be some hot sex along the way).

Here's the nice coming soon link on eXcessica's site. It'll also be out on Amazon, B & N, Smashwords and the other usual places. I'll put the links up on Friday. There will be a print version, but it will probably be a week or so later. Given that I've never managed to successfully synch an ebook release with a print release in my entire (short) writing history, this will not exactly come as a surprise.

A Succubus for Freedom and other tales of Obscene Orgies, out Friday!

A Succubus for Freedom: We have a cover!

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

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

A Big Erotica Freeze Is A-Coming...

This isn't the best of news.

In a nutshell, the morality police have deployed the banhammers and no one has the slightest idea where the line of acceptability is anymore. I don’t know where this leaves my publisher, eXcessica, or the status of my own titles. Without Paypal (someone—Google, Bitcoin, anyone not Apple—please put these jokers out of business) I’m probably not going to be able to sell directly through the excessica.com store, as it won’t exist unless Selena Kitt can find another payment processor. On top of that there’s the uncertainty of not knowing what the other book retailers will accept.

Bestiality, Necrophilia and Paedophilia have always been big no-no’s for erotica. Incest was heading there, and now it looks like Pseudo-Incest (where the participants are not blood relations) and Rape are about to join them.

Personally, Incest isn’t something that appeals to me. It’s an enormously popular category on Literotica, but I’ve never felt the desire to write about or read it. Doesn’t matter. If other people want to read or write about it, that’s their business and fine by me.

As for Rape, what the hell does that cover? That can range from ugly stuff where dudes fantasize about gang-banging the uppity cheerleader with their homies, to non-consent fantasies written and enjoyed by women about pure and sexually-frustrated maidens being ravished by hunks of studliness. Where does that leave my stories? Does it count if it’s female-on-male? I have no fucking clue. Selena tried to clarify with Paypal on BDSM—a category with sometimes dubious consent—and was told to yank the lot. Last I heard, BDSM is a hefty chunk of erotica and mostly features consenting adults. How do you stay within a line when there is no fucking line?

You might think this doesn’t matter to you, that it’s only the muckiest of mucky stuff that’s affected. It does. Same for all the paranormal erotica writers that let out a sigh of relief when bestiality was clarified to not include werewolves and other shape-shifters. Don’t get too comfortable. They WILL come for you next. It’s what they do.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" – Evelyn Beatrice Hall (often misattributed to Voltaire)

Maybe we should just ban the people that try to ban things.

Coming Soon... Succubus Summoning 101: The Novel

Out Friday 3rd Feb

“Is this where you tell me, ‘Yer a wizard’,” Phil said.

The man laughed. “No, not a wizard,” he said. “A warlock.”

“What’s the difference?” Phil manhandled a big bin liner full of crap into the skip.

“One’s make-believe while the other is very much real.”

So are daemons…

Phil Rowling, a normal eighteen-year-old, discovers this when he is plucked from a dead-end life of fast-food service and enrolled into Wargsnouts College for Warlocks. At the college students are taught how to summon and control daemons from hell.

Everyone at Wargsnouts knows what a succubus is, and why warlocks summon them. It’s a dirty joke shared in sniggers amongst the students. Succubi are female sex daemons, famed for their mastery of the arts of pleasure. Eager to experience this pleasure first-hand, Phil and his friend, Jake Pulman, take the Daemonica Malefique from the library and use it to summon a pair of succubi for a night of sexy fun. After all, succubi are sex daemons, used only for sex, how dangerous can it be…

Phil finds out exactly how dangerous when the ritual goes wrong and he is taken prisoner by a harem of hot succubi. Trapped in a perverse corner of hell, can he escape before the erotic wiles of the succubi claim his life and soul…?

Yes, I finally got around to collecting my Succubus Summoning 101 series together into a novel. If you ever wanted the complete story in a nicely formatted ebook, or even an actual paper-print book, you'll get your chance in a week's time.

So what's new? As you may have noticed already from the little excerpt in the blurb above, I've included some extra pages to give more of Phil's background--how he came to be recruited, who he met on enrolment, and so on. Nothing major, I don't want to dilute all those sinful succubus sex scenes after all, but enough to add more flesh to the world. I also spent some time cleaning up the chapters, fixing some iffy grammar, correcting typos; basically all the boring editing stuff required to bring the novel to as close to a professional standard as I could manage.

One thing I haven't cleaned up is the sex. Some authors tone their work down before putting it up on sites like amazon. In true John Carpenter style, I cut nothing. No need to worry there. Verdé and company are just as sexually uninhibited (depraved?) as before.

In case you're wondering, I'm not going to pull the existing chapters from Literotica and the other places I posted them. While I intend publishing the follow-up, Succubus Summoning 201, as an ebook first, I will continue to serialise the chapters on Literotica. All I ask is if you read the series and enjoy it, please support my writing by buying the ebook.

If you haven't read it yet, whoo boy are you in for a treat!

Next Friday...

Numbers from a Newbie Writer's First Year

Here's the latest post I put up on the Self-Publishing Revolution blog detailing how my first year as a self-published(ish) writer has gone. Thanks to everyone who supported me through buying my books and I hope you enjoyed them! More to come next year!

I had a nice early Christmas present when my third quarter royalties came through. I was expecting this to be fairly light, but it also included some October sales, which was when my third collection of short stories, A Succubus for Halloween, came out. The amount this quarter was $600, a nice little sum right before Christmas.

That takes my total profits, after taking out initial setup costs, author copies and seller’s/publisher’s cuts, to $1,300 for my first (kind of) year as a writer. Obviously this is nowhere near the same ballpark as self-publishing titans Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath, but this is all money in the black, with the only outlay being my free time spent in an activity I enjoy doing anyway.

I put out three collections of short stories, with A Succubus for Christmas coming out October 2010, A Succubus for Valentine’s Day coming out February 2011 and A Succubus for Halloween arriving October 2011. Christmas and Valentine’s Day were originally priced at $5.99 and this was dropped to $3.99 about halfway in the year after eXcessica head honcho Selena Kitt did some experimenting on pricing. Christmas and Valentine’s Day sold just under 200 copies and Halloween just over 100, making 500 books (print + ebook) in total for the whole year. It’s a modest amount, but not bad considering collections of short stories rarely sell well and my subject matter is about as far from the mainstream as you can get! :)

More promising is the growth. Christmas and Valentine’s Day sold nearly 200 each over the whole year. Halloween came out at the end of the third week in October and my royalties run up until the end of October, which meant it managed those hundred-and-so sales in the first week. Baby steps, I know, but they’re going in the right direction.

Unsurprisingly, the lion’s share of these sales was through Amazon, but they are not the only game in town. I can understand why some might think Amazon’s current dominance is a cause for concern, but I suspect if Amazon really started to abuse that dominance to the detriment of writers and readers, they’d quickly find themselves outstripped by one of their competitors in the way Nintendo was usurped by Sony in the console wars of the ‘90’s. For the moment they’re fantastic and a budding writer would be foolish not to take advantage of what they have to offer.

Writers shouldn’t restrict themselves to only Amazon. Having their own webpage for direct sales can be very useful once they’ve built up a following. By promoting eXcessica’s coming soon link for A Succubus for Halloween heavily on my personal blog in the month leading up to its release I was able to generate 40 sales, nearly half of the total for that book, directly through eXcessica’s own store (which also took Halloween to the top of their bestsellers list, yay! Now if only I can match Selena’s sales out in the rest of the big bad world. :)).

For people looking to self-publish as a route to fame and riches, these numbers aren’t very exciting. If I was trying to make a living as a full-time professional writer, 500 sales and a return of $1,300 for the year would be horrifying. Thankfully I’m not, so I can feel chuffed about the numbers instead of worrying about what I’m going to live on next year.

Next year I plan to put out my first novel and a fourth collection of short stories. I don’t know where the path is going to take me, but it’s going to be fun to find out!

All the best for 2012!

The Tidal Wave of Choice and a Deceptive Cover

More tubthumping from The Self-Publishing Revolution. My scheduled monthly post ended up being a real bitch to write so I'm doubling it up here to fill in for my usual Tuesday/Wednesday/uh Thursday? slot.

One of the fears about the rise in ebooks and self-publishing is that the world will be buried in a tidal wave of crap writing. It’s a familiar argument—there will be so many bad Twilight knockoffs and other rubbish uploaded to Amazon no one will be able to find anything worth reading amongst the great steaming piles of ordure.

It’s one way of looking at it. Personally, I think it’s just as easy to turn it around and see the positive aspects.

The problem when creativity is commodified is that the bottom line suddenly becomes the number one consideration. It’s not enough to be good; if someone has stumped up cash in advance, they’ll want to see a return on their investment, which means the work needs to be both good and popular (or failing that, just popular, hey, Hollywood ;) ). I suspect more than a few writers have run into, “It’s good, but we don’t think there’s a big enough audience”, before the gate slammed down on their foot. As a result niche, interesting, challenging is often overlooked in favour of safe, bland, reliable (Hey, hello Hollywood! ;) ).

The beauty with ebooks and self-publishing is that the initial outlays are so small. Writers can take risks. Even if they only find a niche audience appreciative of their work, that’s still profit (providing you don’t think too hard about the time spent creating and polishing your work!). It’s also good for readers. Yes, there are going to be a lot of bad books that shouldn’t have seen the light of day (and these too might find fans—taste is subjective), but there are also going to be a lot of quirky, interesting books that might not have made it out of the slush pile under the old system. Personally, I think more choice is better than less choice.

Take short stories. I love short stories, especially horror stories. Mainstream publishing houses seldom publish short story collections. They don’t sell very well. There was even a recent tweetathon to save the short story.

I’ve put out three collections of short stories. They haven’t found a massive audience, but they have been found by readers who’ve enjoyed them a great deal. Publishers have to worry about the cost of print runs and marketing budgets. I don’t. I’m free to write what I want. It doesn’t take many sales to cover the initial costs and everything after that is gravy. That’s good for me, good for the readers who like my writing, and good for short stories, as there are plenty of bloody-minded fools like me that still enjoy writing them.

I suppose this would be the appropriate point for the blatant book plug:



I love the cover Selena and the people at eXcessica came up with. It’s totally inappropriate. This is either the darkest collection of erotica you’re likely to read this Halloween, or the most twisted, sexy-perverse collection of horror tales you’re likely to read this Halloween. Someone is going to pick up this book thinking it’s another cutesy paranormal romance with fashion-conscious demonesses, and get the shock of their lives.

I’m more in love with that idea than I should be. I can’t help it. I’m a horror writer. We want to scare people. It’s in the blood. While marketing-types would be aghast, I’m sitting here and grinning like a Cheshire Cat as I go, “open it… open it…”

It’s Halloween. I’m going to have fun. Bottom line be damned.

Enjoy the book. She’s as cute and adorable as her cover. Honest… ;)

A Succubus for Halloween is out!

She's out in the wild and eager to snare fresh prey with her seductive wiles:



My third collection of short stories is available to buy from eXcessica, amazon, smashwords, B & N and others. And if you'd prefer a more tangible copy, the print version is also available from CreateSpace (and probably amazon too, shortly).

So go on, enjoy a slice of darker erotica this Halloween...

"Strange Love" anthology out this week

October is certainly shaping up to be an active month for me. Strange Love, the fourth of the four anthologies eXcessica puts out every year to raise funds, is out today and features one of my stories: "A Summer Dance with a Succubus".


"A Summer Dance with a Succubus" features a young man being accompanied to a summer dance by the gorgeous and mysterious Nicole. It's one of my favourites out of the stories I've written. Mainly because everything dropped nicely into place as I was writing it. Winning me most of my kindle by placing in an online competition also helps!

Longtime readers will probably already be familiar with this story. I'm hoping that having it appear in this anthology will introduce the story to a wider audience that aren't familiar with my work.

And vice versa. If you've ever wondered what the other eXcessica authors get up to, here's a chance to pick up a sample of their work and maybe find someone new to read.

Strange Love - shapeshifters, genies, robots and other strangeness. Out today.

2011 2nd Quarter Royalties

My second quarter royalties for 2011 came in from eXcessica today. At $180 I think it's safe to say I won't be handing in my notice at work tomorrow. :)

$180 is still $180. Can't sneeze at that. Both Succubus for Christmas and Succubus for Valentine's Day have sold nearly 150 copies each now. With Succubus for Halloween coming out next month (more on that later!) I'm hoping it'll create enough of a bump to take the overall year up to somewhere between one or two grand. I know my stories are far too extreme to ever trouble the mainstream, but it's nice to have a little sideline and maybe sow the seeds for a little longterm notoriety.

Thanks to everyone who bought the books and I hope you enjoyed them. Plenty more on the way if all goes to plan ;).

Now the question is, how much of that $180 to plough into a nice book cover for Succubus Summoning 101 after I finally acknowledge I'm too rubbish to do it properly myself...

Back from the Dead(line)

Ugh, that was painful.

I used to be good with deadlines. Sure, I used to faff around and procrastinate like everybody else in the time leading up to the deadline. Then, with the deadline suddenly imminent, I’d burst into life and get the project finished in a blaze of activity.

Nowadays that bursting into life is more like a feeble stirring followed by a resentful crawl leading to something being spat onto the screen a few weeks later, maybe.

It’s been the same for the last stories of every anthology I’ve written so far. This one was worse as I lost confidence in my ability to do the story justice about halfway through writing it. Normally I’d have tossed it back into the ideas file and gone back to it later, but I’d already made a commitment to contribute to one of eXcessica’s fundraising anthologies and didn’t have an adequate back up plan.

Anyway, it’s done. It’ll be appearing in one of eXcessica’s anthologies next year. I had to pretty much drop everything and focus on finishing that story, even though my productivity went to hell. I hate it. It’s an ugly baby that probably deserves to be drowned in a bucket. Maybe I’ll grow to like it after a few months. I didn’t like Arachne’s Web much after I took the route-march approach to getting that one finished as well. I like it better now.

Deadlines, avoid ‘em I reckon. Write whatever wants to be written and then pick whatever’s most suitable at hand when the time comes around.

Time to get this blog back up and running at regular intervals again!

Encouragement for all Erotica Writers

Zowie! Go Selena Kitt! Or should that be $elena Kitt.

Selena Kitt started off eXcessica publishing and is now doing very very well out of erotica ebooks. Success well deserved, I'd say. Selena was ahead of the curve when she set up eXcessica. Back then it was to have the requisite stable of writers to get work up with Fictionwise. Of course, then Amazon came along with the Kindle and ebook publishing mushroomed into a huge market.

It's encouraging news and indicative of how much the ebook revolution has opened things out. I wonder how many more Amanda Hockings, Joe Konraths, Selena Kitts and M.E. Hydras will emerge in the new world of epublishing.

Okay, maybe not that last dude. Should be locked up in the nuthouse if you ask me. Writes those horrible stories...

Half price offer on smashwords.com

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

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

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

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

"Divine Matches" anthology out this week

"Divine Matches", a new anthology from eXcessica, is out this week and it features one of my stories!


This is a collection of erotic tales about mythical creatures and gods and goddesses. My contribution is "Naga Special Massage" and features a naga, a creature with the upper body of a beautiful woman and the lower body of a snake, in a modern day setting. Technically, I suppose it should be "Nagi Special Massage" as she's female, but even mythical entities have to move with these modern, liberated times! In the story, she takes a man suffering from claustrophobia and shows him she's very adept at using her serpentine body to give a sexy full body massage. And then things get hotter...

Anyway, check it out if you fancy getting a taste of what the other talented writers at eXcessica are up to.

"A Succubus for Christmas" is available!!!

It's out!!!

I've been waiting for this moment for a long time. My first collection of short stories is out from eXcessica.

You can buy it directly from them here.

The ebook is also available from smashwords here.

The print version can be bought from Amazon right here. Currently it's ranked #5,585,978 in books. There could be room for improvement there... :)

If you have one of those new-fangled Kindle things (I envy you!), you can even get the Kindle version here. I have no idea how good/bad being ranked #42,575 is, but having a ranking means someone's at least already bought a copy (I think), so yay!

Huge thanks to Selena and eXcessica for the formatting and getting the book out there. I hope everyone enjoys the anthology as much as I did writing it.

This is where I go out drinking to celebrate.

In a few months I'll be out drinking again to drown my sorrows when I find out I've only shifted five copies. :)

Closing the gap

Long time followers of my writing on Literotica and Storiesonline (Eep - I didn't even get round to posting any of SS201 on there!) will notice I haven't exactly been prolific for 2010. This is because I've been busy creating short story collections for eXcessica and they run a year in advance. I was hoping to fill in the gap by continuing Succubus Summoning 201 but...more on that later.

Anyway, the good news is that the gap is about to close. New Many-Eyed Hydra material is on the way. "A Succubus for Christmas" is out in two weeks time. A lot of the stories will be familiar already, but there's a brand new story that's long and packed to the brim with the usual mix of sex and horror. I'm currently finishing off the new stories for the third collection, the unsurprisingly titled "A Succubus for Halloween". I'm thinking of entering one or maybe two of them into Literotica's Halloween competition running at the moment, mainly to show I haven't dropped off the face of the planet.

The bad news is that the reason I've looked like I haven't been as prolific as usual, is because I haven't been as prolific as usual. Some combination of real job impinging, deadline allergy, tricky story plots and other things have put a ball and chain on my writing. Still working on fixing that.

Phil's adventures in Succubus Summoning 201 are on hiatus at the moment, although you might have already guessed this since it's been a few months since 202 came out. Don't be alarmed. This isn't 'hiatus' as in 'the lead singer slept with the drummer's girlfriend and now the band all want to kill each other' hiatus. I don't think it's fair for me to continue to release the chapters in the stuttering dribs and droughts that are happening at the moment. When it comes back, it'll mean I've got a good chunk of the 201 arc written with the next few chapters already in the bank.

Hmm, NaNoWriMo starts next month...