New story for Halloween – What Kevin Did Last Summer

It’s that time of the year where I go shamelessly vote-whoring.

Literotica’s 2014 Halloween story competition has started and I have a runner.

Actually, it was supposed to be my entrant for the Summer contest, but the succubus ended up having far too much fun and the story grew too long for me to finish in time for the deadline.  Like pretty much every story I’ve written, it also fits the Halloween theme.  So I entered it into that competition rather than wait until next year.

Hope you enjoy it.  It’s a hot one:
What Kevin Did Last Summer

I talked about how voting works in the Literotica contests back here.  In short, anything other than a 5 is worse than no vote at all.  Literotica is also fairly sharp at spotting shenanigans.  Bashing competitors and multi-voting on a favoured story doesn’t achieve anything as they have a good filtering system for removing dodgy votes.  It’s why I like Lit’s contests.  I play fair (I don’t even vote on my own entrants) and can still place.

I don’t know how this one will do.  “Streetwalking with a Succubus” placed in the money last year.  This features a similar character to Nicole and is nicer than my usual ambush-the-unsuspecting-paranormal-romance-fans-with-horror-and-vore entrants.  The sex is hot, but the story might not have as strong an aww factor as my previous winners.  We’ll see.  A lot will depend on the quality of the other entrants (no full-length novels this time, please!).

Speaking of Nicole.  While I was writing “What Kevin Did Last Summer” I had an idea for a story—possibly even novella or novel length—featuring both Nicole and Madam Voluptula together.  How does that sound?  Would you like to read about Nicole and Madam Voluptula double-teaming some poor (lucky!) unsuspecting dude?

The Clitorides Awards

A link to the Clitorides awards appeared on the Literotica front page today.  It's a set of awards for the most popular erotic fiction found on free websites.  Any story from 2013 is eligible and they have multiple different categories (including Erotic Horror).  There are no prizes apart from bragging rights, but if it's popular I imagine the winning authors/stories will pick up some new readers.

If anyone feels like nominating any of my stories, here's a list of the new stories I put out on free websites in 2013:

Jackson in HRPG-World 2: Exploding Kiwis in the Nether Regions
Jackson in HRPG-World 3: A Sticky Starting Scrap
Jackson in HRPG-World 4: Bubble Bother (hmm, that reminds me.  I still need to put this up on Literotica)
Snared, Sucked and Slurped
Streetwalking with a Succubus
Succubus Summoning 203
Succubus Summoning 204
Succubus Summoning 205
Succubus Summoning 206
Succubus Summoning 207
Trent the Traitor

If you enjoyed any of these feel free to go and give them a nomination.  Likewise, if you have another favourite writer you feel deserves some recognition, go give them a nomination.

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...

Literotica's Contest Scoring Explained

A question from Ed that makes better sense to answer as a short blog post (and to assuage my guilt over leaving it there for three days without replying):

"AS an author, would you say generally its better to give a story a 5 rating or none at all on literotica or just for contests?"

For Lit's contests, sad to say, no vote is indeed better than anything other than a 5 for the majority of authors. The reason is how the scoring works. For an entrant to be eligible it must pick up at least twenty-five valid votes. Once a story gets over that threshold, the score is then the average of all votes. This can throw up the counter-intuitive scenario where a story with twenty-five perfect 5 votes will place higher than a story with ninety-nine 5 votes and one 4 vote. It's not Literotica's fault. Whatever they run with is going to be less than perfect, because that's how it is when judging an activity as subjective as writing short stories.

So, while a 4 is technically a "good" vote, because the winning entries usually end up with final average scores of around 4.80+, it's easy to see it doesn't take too many "good" 4 votes to completely torpedo a story's chances of winning. Unless the author is struggling to reach the twenty-five vote threshold, they really want 5's or nothing. Knowing this, the savvy authors tend to enter very long stories with slow build-ups, warm and fuzzy endings, and obtuse titles so that the more disinterested readers have already backclicked long before they even get to a rating button.

(Now what kind of cynical, soulless monster of an author would even think of engaging in such shameless skullduggery. *whistle* Iron Girders and Steel Springs *whistle*)

At the end of the day it's best to treat the contests as a bit of fun and not too seriously. If you think a story only deserves a 4 (or a 3 or . . . ulp . . . less), give it a 4. Ultimately all literary contests are nonsense. Peel the layers back and all that lies at the heart is flawed subjective opinion.

Good for a giggle, though.

Close, but no Earth Day goodies for me

The winners of Literotica's 2011 Earth Day contest were announced yesterday. My internet connection has been lousy all week (which is why this is a day late), but I was able to log in and find out I'd finished outside the top three.

Don't Fuck The Flowers did a lot better than I expected considering it's a weird erotic horror story with a bad ending and some highly dubious humour. At one point, right before the cut off, the story was in second place, although I think this was more a quirk of the anti-cheating measures Literotica has in place. It finished 5th, about .01 off third place in score.

I was surprised by how close it came. Traditionally, slushy feel-good stories come out on top. People like nice endings. I enter freaky kinky horror stories that are more likely to squick out than please the average reader because... well, that's just the way I am. :)

Thanks to everyone who read and voted. Hell-Space is turning into a nice little playground for me. I have a word file filling up with snippets and story ideas, so expect me to return there again in the future.

No fish were hurt in the writing of this story...

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Rosa and Verdé need your votes!

It's the 11th Annual Literotica Reader's Choice Awards and Succubus Summoning is up in the Erotic Horror category. Actually, two chapters of Succubus Summoning (113 and 114) are up, which is a little awkward.

If you like the series and want to show your appreciation, then please vote here. 114 is probably the best choice to avoid splitting the vote as it's the end of the first story arc.

I haven't forgotten the 201 arc. It's just that pesky real life thing gobbling up my time. Must write faster!