Plot Bunny - EPL Football Stars in Racist Orgy Shocker!

I saw this news story floating around the UK papers.  Some members of Premier League football (soccer for my US readers) team Leicester City filmed themselves taking part in an orgy with some sex workers in Thailand.  This is the type of story the UK tabloids loves to whip themselves up into a salivating froth over as witnessed by this Sunday Mirror piece.

There is an uncensored video floating around on the various porn clip sites (I found it on XVideos after about 2 seconds of searching).

I'm not really interested in the morality of it.  Young, stupid oafs behave in young, stupid, oafish way and say young, stupid, oafish things.  I doubt the sex workers were that fussed so long as they were adequately compensated for their time and work.

My interest as a writer is the potentials of the scenario and getting an ear for the dialogue.  Especially as the setting is Thailand, a country known for having an active sex industry (and therefore a good setting for my type of erotic horror story), but not one I've actually visited (I hope this wasn't too obvious in my recent story "Number 66").  While I've been toying with adding annoying SJWs to my roster of asshole victims, the old standby of oafs being oafish to sex workers and getting their (disproportionate) comeuppance at the hands of sexy succubi is always fun.  Work out what interesting forms the succubi take when they reveal themselves and hey presto, instant manyeyedhydra story.

Now that's the obvious route a story like this can take, but then the little black cells started to spark and think about other options and pathways.

The one thing modern mainstream media is very good at is omitting context, especially context that gets in the way of establishing a juicy narrative guaranteed to whip the audience up into a forth.  Context is the bigger picture that might show the events being witnessed in a different light.

In this case we have a minute and a quarter of some guys indulging in an orgy with some working girls and making a lot of degrading and derogatory remarks about their (I'm assuming) paid-for-escorts.  Now, the thing is, if you took any random minute and a quarter of a dom roleplaying with a sub, it's going to make the dom look like an asshole.  And if you want to, you can likely take any random small slices of someone's life and stitch them together in a configuration that presents the person in any way you choose to present them.  Reality TV shows run off this chicanery.

For example, a writer/storyteller could take a fictionalised version of this minute and a quarter and pan the picture out to reveal a more complex scenario.  Within that minute and a quarter frame it's fairly clear-cut - those characters are horrible, we want them to come to a Bad End (in my erotic horror stories, that's usually literally).  Pan outside that fictionalised version of a minute and a quarter frame and...

Maybe this is all role-play.  Some usually-perfectly-gentlemanly guys wanted to experience being in a really filthy orgy.  They hired the sex workers, responsibly went through with them in advance what was and wasn't permitted and the minute and a quarter is a snapshot of an artificially arranged scenario.  Maybe their oafish behaviour was encouraged by the working girls themselves.  Why?  To liven up the orgy to give better client satisfaction.  Because they're not actual sex workers and playing at being degraded cheap whores is a turn-on for them.  Because this is a honey trap and they need to show their marks off in the worst possible light.

That's the fun part of playing what if? or devil's advocate.  What the storyteller initially presents to the audience might become more complex with future information.  It can be rewarding to veer the story off down a path the audience was not expecting.  It's great if you can switch the audience's perception of a character and maybe have them hoping for a different ending than the one they were expecting.

There's definitely stuff I can play around with here.  I might try both versions.  The conventional story where usual asshole victims come to sexy Bad End at vaginas of succubi/monster girls.  And maybe an unconventional story where things are not as they first appear.

As a should-be-obvious postscript, I hope people aren't thinking I'm attempting to defend the real-life people caught up in this scandal.  Sometimes people are assholes that hire women for sex, treat them like shit, are found out and then punished accordingly.  Sometimes there's no more to the story than that.  (Although it goes without saying - modern mainstream media is not very trustworthy.  Always leave yourself open to the possibility there might be more to the story than the narrow slice you're being fed)

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.

Hydra's Inspiration - A Succubus for Valentine's Day (part 3)

This is a look behind the scenes at how the stories of my second collection, A Succubus for Valentine's Day, came to be.  The first part is here.


Venus of the Red Lights

I’ve visited Amsterdam a few times and De Wallatjes (better known as the main red light district) is an evocative location for a horror story.  In fact this idea is a leftover from my days when I tried to write “normal” horror.  Most of the non-supernatural elements of this story are based on firsthand experience or stories I’d heard.


The Soul Worm

I have no idea where the monster girl from this one came from.  They bubble up from the depths of my imagination every so often and I think it’s best not to pry further.

At the end is a blink-and-you’ll miss appearance of a character you’ll see more of in the future.


Foam Shower

This is the follow-up to “Bubble Bath”.  The unusual succubus from that is just as pleasant to share a shower with as she is with sharing a bath.  Sadly, those pleasures are invariably fatal, but we can’t have everything.


A Summer Dance with a Succubus

One of the pleasures of writing is when a story comes together and all of the elements slot neatly into place.  I’d read a few articles about sex workers who provided services to disabled persons who would otherwise not experience the pleasures of sexual intercourse.  This was something I could see my “good” succubus escort character, Nicole, doing.  I also needed a story for a summer-themed contest and one of the things about summer is it’s ephemeral – all summers end to be swallowed by the dark and cold of winter.  Some lives are also tragically short and ephemeral.  But rather than obsess over the coming cold and dark, we enjoy the sunshine and long lazy days while they last.  And life is no different.  That’s how I pictured Terry – proud and defiantly making the best of an unfortunate hand.

This was the first of my stories to place in the Literotica contests and I used the money from that to buy a Kindle from Amazon.  It’s still one of my favourites to this day.


I hope you've enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at how some of my stories came to be.  I'll do the same for A Succubus for Halloween at some point in the future.

Hydra's Inspiration - A Succubus for Valentine's Day (part 2)

This is a look behind the scenes at how the stories of my second collection, A Succubus for Valentine's Day, came to be.  The first part is here.


The Spiders of Thomisoidus

I’m not entirely sure where this came from.  Spiders and silk work well with bondage fantasies and a planet full of sexy babes is a classic sci-fi fantasy.  Also the intro allowed me to have fun with a character bemoaning his lot after being suckered into taking a contract on a pleasure world that doesn’t really live up to expectations.  The teasing, stop-start nature of the sex scene was also highly pleasurable to write.


Delivery Special Soap

This is another story to indulge my fetish for soapland-style mat play.  It’s heavily influenced by Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s Wicked City (anyone who’s seen the anime will know the scene).  I was starting to think about how my story universe worked and how the various monster girl demons interacted with each other.  As the demons are operating under a kind of masquerade, it made sense for them to have rules to prevent the sort of overt conflict that would attract the attention of the human authorities.  It also made sense that Inari would know how to work these rules to her advantage and by including a reference to her I could also hint at a larger story taking place beneath these short stories.


Knight vs. Succubus

This story has an interesting tale behind it.  I was asked by a developer working on a succubus game to write a story that would help publicise the finished game (sadly, I don’t think it was ever finished).  My first attempt was this story, which was rejected for being too dark.  I liked the story and then had an idea for another loosely connected series of “X vs Succubus”.  The connection is largely restricted to the title.  This is a much darker tale than the tongue-in-cheek “Slayer vs Succubus”.  It’s also one of the few times I’ve felt guilty about offing the protagonist.


Interrocution

I think the initial idea was a cocky criminal bound to a chair and at the mercy of a succubus.  I like blending gritty mob tropes with supernatural elements.  The story is also a fitting introduction to Koontz’s right hand “man” – Physalia.  She’s a much colder and fearsome succubus.  As Koontz’s enforcer she’s definitely not to be messed with.

The title is a mashup of interrogation and execution.


Crushed Between Her Breasts

This story came about through an impromptu challenge contest on the Literotica forums.  The theme was revenge stories if I remember correctly.  I had the idea of a chauvinistic IT manager annoying one of his female workers to the point where they seek external help to teach him a lesson.

Oddly, the double team of Eryx and Eunectis are also part of my recurring roster of characters, although readers wouldn’t know it as those stories are still waiting to be published.  Nancy’s debt is still outstanding . . .


I'll post the last part on the remaining stories tomorrow.

Hydra's Inspiration - A Succubus for Valentine's Day (part 1)

This is another post where I go over where some of my stories come from.  Last time up I went through my first collection, A Succubus for Christmas.  This time I'll run through A Succubus for Valentine's Day.

There might be a few spoilers for people that haven't already read the stories.


A Succubus for Valentine’s Day

When it comes to Valentine’s Day I’m a bit of a black-hearted curmudgeon.  Most of the stories I’ve entered into Literotica’s Valentine’s Day contests have been anti-Valentine’s Day tales of some description.  It was while trying to think of an entrant I hit upon the idea of re-using the nameless succubus from “A Succubus for Christmas”.  This then became an idea for a (semi) regular series featuring her, the succubus tablet and various themed days.  In this story she’s playing a similar role to before – the evil genie that gives her poor victim what they think they want . . . until they actually get it.

I did get some comments misinterpreting Kurtzberg as a ‘nice guy’.  Admittedly, I did set the story up to present him in a sympathetic light, and maybe fool the reader into thinking this might be one of those romcoms where the unfortunate slob ends up with the pretty girl after all.  Then the story takes a turn into murkier territory until it culminates in what I hope is a gut punch of an ending (as every good anti-Valentine’s Day story should have).  Kurtzberg is unfortunate and deserves some sympathy, but his actions take him far beyond the realm of nice.

Observant readers will have noticed the version in the collection, A Succubus for Valentine’s Day, differs from the version online.  When I first started out I used to seek feedback on the Literotica forums.  For this story someone made the suggestion that the ending would be nastier if Kurtzberg was left alive to let the horror of what he’d done sink in.  It was such a good suggestion I rewrote the ending to incorporate it.


Initial Infiltration

Aside from the usual asshole victims, a regular target of mine is the naive.  GRRM has it right with A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones for TV watchers).  When one of his characters makes a poor choice politically, he doesn’t step in to bail them out.

There has been cultural pressure to move Science Fiction away from blasting the Other on sight to presenting stories where the only correct response is to attempt to resolve conflicts through discussion and understanding.  Personally I don’t like simple black and white certitudes.  When the motives of the Other are completely unknown, which approach is correct can only be ascertained with the benefit of hindsight.  In another story, another universe, Donaldson would have been the perfect protagonist to prevent inter-dimensional war.  Sadly for him, this is not that story and hell-space is not that universe.


Succubus Summoning 101

This story eventually ended up being the first chapter of the novel of the same name.  It was originally meant to be a short story about student warlocks making incorrect (and fatal) assumptions about which bits of succubi are dangerous to stick your cock in.  On the surface there is a twisted sense to the logic.  Succubi pervert the role of sexual intercourse to create new life by using it to take life.  Anal sex can’t create new life; therefore under the same logic succubi can’t use it to drain life.  Of course it doesn’t work out that way.

I neglected to kill Phil at the end of the story and since then he’s stubbornly just about managed to stay alive despite my best efforts.

The main reason I put the story in the collection was to protect myself from plagiarism.  Someone had already tried to pass off the Succubus Summoning 101 series as their own on another website.  Amazon’s kindle store was rife with plagiarists mining story sites like Literotica for material to rip off.  Having the original Succubus Summoning 101 story in here would give me some protection against that kind of shit while I was working on the ebook version.


Puffed Up

This is another superhero deconstruction story in the vein of “Squeezed”.  Sexy villainesses have always been a feature of comics even if they rarely get to fully show their stuff (generally speaking, the hero has to survive otherwise that’s the end of the comic book).  This story is a none-too subtle dig at the counterproductive aspects of the war on drugs in our own universe.  Reading it years later I think I might have been a little too cynical with the ending.

I stopped included the superhero stories in later collections because they didn’t fit in with the shared universe elements that were starting to emerge in the series as a whole.  I do have some ideas for other sexy super-villainesses.  At some point I might assemble them into a themed collection.


I'll go through the remaining stories over the next couple of days.

Hydra's Inspiration - A Succubus for Christmas (part 3)

And the stories behind the stories for the remaining five tales from A Succubus for Christmas:


Wrapdance

The club and background comes from real life inspiration.  I was in Moscow and - after copious amounts of alcohol - found myself in a strip club where the girls gave out lap dances in a similar fashion to how they’re described here.  I changed the dancers to succubi and made the venue another Strip Club With A Dark Secret.  The real tension is the protagonist’s struggle between his body’s desire for primal pleasure and the mind’s desire to stay alive.  The story picked up an editor’s choice tag when it went up on Literotica.  This gave me a nice little ego boost at the time and made me think I was doing something right with my writing.


The Coils of Aenictia

This is another story inspired by artwork I’d seen on the internet.  This time it was of a lamia or slug-type monster girl engaged in unbirth.  I didn’t know that much about the vore fetish at the time.  The picture seemed sexy and it gave me an idea to give the protagonist a kind of twisted rebirth (to make a change from all the Sucked To A Withered Husk stories).  The planar catastrophe was another excuse to throw a clearly non-human monster girl into a contemporary setting.  Trying to think about how that catastrophe happened gave birth to hell-space, my goto setting for monster girls that aren’t an easy fit for a modern-day setting.


Squeezed

This was the second story I submitted to Literotica.  Succubi and similar monster girls are one interpretation of the highly seductive, sexually-dominant femme fatale.  Other classic examples come from super-hero comics (eg. Poison Ivy).  The character that eventually became Sister Squeeze was originally going to be in “The Embrace of Uvulu’ai” until I realised her bright and colourful powers were more suited to a comic book setting.  The story was also a fun opportunity to have a sideswipe at the so-called moral guardians who are less than moral themselves.


Happy Ending

The title is both a troll and an allusion to the euphemism of ‘Happy Ending’ (a sex act that gives a client an ejaculation at the end of a massage) used by massage parlours.  Erotic body-to-body massage given by a girl on top of an airbed is one of my favourite porn scenarios and I’ve used it a number of times in my stories (it’s also a lot of fun irl too ;) ).  It was a perfect opportunity to bring back Annette Brite and also add a sneaky reference back to “Bubble Bath” (yes, the stunning girl Clive walks past as he enters the shop is the succubus from “Bubble Bath”).  The troll part is an acknowledgement that most of my stories, while sexy, often don’t end well for the central characters.  The title reflects that irony.


Incall with a Succubus

And then the real happy ending.  I knew I couldn’t constantly write about ‘dude encounters sexy demon girl, demon girl sucks out his life/soul’ without it starting to get repetitive and/or people starting to wonder if I had some deep-seated psychological problems about sex.  Horror (and horror films specifically) doesn’t have a good track record here when the central message of most slasher flicks can be summed as thus:  Have Sex And You Will Die!!!

I needed a ‘nice’ succubus and along came Nicole.  All the sexy goodness with none of that icky death stuff.  Maybe.  I wanted to leave enough hints of darkness so the readers don’t forget what she is (and a little uncertainty makes the sex more thrilling).  Jack Newman is a politician because it was a realistic way of establishing Nicole’s credentials as an exclusive escort and also because I liked the irony of a politician, normally a despised profession - with good reason - in fiction, being the one to get the ‘happy ending’.

Hydra's Inspiration - A Succubus for Christmas (part 2)

Carrying on with where the inspiration came from for the stories from my first collection, A Succubus for Christmas.


Hookahed

This was the first story I submitted to Literotica.  It’s another old fantasy of mine.  For the early stories the plots were usually excuses to set up a twisted sex scene with hot demonesses.  Koontz’s unconventional appearance was inspired by news stories of a real life mob boss (think it might have been Vincent Gigante) walking around outside in nothing more than a bathrobe to make the authorities think he was crazy.  The idea of a mob boss with a harem of succubi at his command seemed too good not to use again, and so Koontz became another of my regular characters.


Pool of the Undine

Another story inspired by a monster girl picture I’d seen online, this time of a slime girl.  The weird cave out in the moors seemed like a nice location for her to hide.


Slayer vs. Succubus

This was intended as an affectionate subversion of the classic eighties action hero stereotype.  I love those films even though it’s obvious anyone behaving like that in real life would most likely fuck everything up epically.  Super virile action hero versus infernal mistress of temptation was never going to end well in my universe.  This is a story I’m torn on.  It’s fun, but it’s also very goofy.  Quite a few readers let me know they liked this one and I try to remind myself to write similar stories every so often to break up the flow of grimdark ones.


Arachne’s Web

This one is unique to this collection.  I’d wanted to do an Arachne story for a while, but unlike succubi, which are easy to hide in a modern-day setting, a demon with the lower body of a giant spider is a little more noticeable.  I made her a dream demon to get around this.  The non-sex part of the story was inspired by a real life (and tragic) news story of an otherwise successful Brit going on the run in the states after shooting his wife.

The writing of it is another story.  Selena Kitt spotted my work on Literotica and encouraged me to put a collection together for publication through eXcessica.  I knew it would crazy to expect people to pay for work that was already available for free online, so I decided to include at least one original story (ideally a novella) for the folks prepared to part with their cash.  That was this one and it ended up being a complete bitch to write.  I suspect this was because I knew I was writing something for publication rather than fun and some of those old niggling writer doubts about being good enough had resurfaced to fuck around with my productivity.

I hated the story at the time.  It was only when I came back later I saw how nicely the concepts and imagery (the way she ‘eats’ the memories of his past loves and replaces them with her) came together.  It’s my favourite of the collection.  It might make a decent horror film as well (hint hint, for anyone out there with experience of making such things).


I'll finish off with the last five stories on Friday.

Hydra's Inspiration - A Succubus for Christmas (part 1)

A couple of months back I wrote a post on examples of where I got my inspiration from.  I said I might expand on this for stories I'd already written and a few folk seemed interested.  Most horror collections include some musings by the author at the back as to where the stories came from.  I thought I'd copy that theme and run through the stories from my first collection, A Succubus for Christmas.

It's a behind-the-scenes look, so there might be a few spoilers if you haven't already read these stories.


A Succubus for Christmas

I wanted a Christmas-themed story to enter into one of Literotica’s online story competitions.  For a while I was struggling to think of a way to combine succubi and horror with holiday niceness, and then the little black cells vomited out this idea and it fell into my lap pretty much fully formed.  At the heart it’s the classic horror genie trope—character finds artefact containing wish-granting entity, gets good stuff . . . but what about the cost.


The Masterton Covenant

Another classic horror trope—old guy in a bar telling a tale of woe.  It’s one of the few stories I’ve written using first-person PoV.  I’m not a big fan of using it for horror as—found footage stories and obnoxious stylist tricks aside—it’s a fairly glaring tip off the protagonist survives.  In this case it’s the point of the story.  He’s trying to warn others but he knows that ultimately the succubus left him alive as bait to draw in fresh prey.


Bubble Bath

This is an old fantasy—a sexy succubus coalescing out of bubbles to share a sexy bubble bath with a(n) (un)lucky dude.  This is the first story to feature Annette Brite, New Age shop owner and possible witch.  In the original idea she was a wizened old crone with a market stall.  I changed her into the alluring and mysterious owner of a New Age shop and realised this was an interesting character I could reuse in further stories.


Flesh Pitchers of Prague

The inspiration for this came from various artworks I’d seen of monster girls that were pitcher plant hybrids.  This was the 7th story I posted up on Literotica and my old short story writing instincts were returning with a desire to add more background and story to flesh out the obligatory sex scenes.  Strip Club With A Dark Secret is another classic horror trope (Think From Dusk ‘til Dawn, Vamp, etc.).  In those stories the survivor is usually the morally upstanding one that never wanted to be there in the first place.  I deliberately subverted that as brutally as I did to knock readers off guard.  The imagery for the final scene was inspired by a scene from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.


I had a set plan when picking the stories for my first collection.  The first is a generic succubus story.  The second lays out the general background for people unfamiliar with the succubus myth.  The third expands on the myth and shows more imaginative interpretations.  The ending of the fourth is to let the reader know we’re not fooling around here – this is an erotic horror collection.

I'll continue running through the other stories later this week.

Where does Hydra get his inspiration from: part 1 of an infrequent series

Monday was one of those days when a whole bunch of news stories caught my attention and triggered some ideas.

I was going to post this on Monday, but I was out drinking that night and after that in the middle of a blog post on something else that I later abandoned because I realised it was pandering to the holier-than-thou crowd, and as they're a group not exactly known for their intelligence or reading comprehension, it was time I was better off spending on something more worthwhile - like writing more succubus smut.

First off there was the story of the poor drunk lass tricked into giving 24 blokes oral sex in a Magaluf nightclub for a $4 cocktail (she thought she was getting a holiday).  This is fairly extreme behaviour even by the usual standards of drunk Brits abroad.  Sadly for her, some wanker filmed it, uploaded it to the internet, and . . . well you can guess what happened next.

While it's an embarrassing story for the poor lass in the middle of it, I thought that scenario could be flipped around into an interesting succubus story.  A group of drunken lads out on the lash in a Spanish tourist hotspot, and then a ribald and debauched challenge organised by one of the tour guides.  The woman is mysterious and extremely sexy, and she seems eager to give out blowjobs to a whole line of blokes.  Of course she sucks out more than semen and that might be a fun story to write from the perspective of the last bloke in the line as he starts to get a feeling something is wrong . . .

Then I heard about a US artist taking a slum vacation in one of Bangkok's shanty towns and using the resulting shack as an installation piece.  I don't really want to judge the bloke.  It sounds horribly condescending to the people that have to live there day in and day out, but he might have done it with the best of intentions.

Of course, in fiction-world, that sort of character can be painted as the stereotypical rich, condescending asshole more interested in stroking their own ego that helping the plight of those in poverty.  Tasty monster girl chow, in other words.  I have a few ideas for some interesting monster girls, but no protagonist to make it a proper story.  Take exotic locale, throw in annoying artist tourist, ring the dinner bell . . .

And speaking of prime monster girl chow.  This showed up in my facebook feed as a (presumably feminist) friend of a friend posted it with a single comment: "vile".

http://www.returnofkings.com/37273/a-guide-for-getting-laid-at-anime-conventions

Um, yeah.  I don't do the whole outrage or holier-than-thou thing, so we'll describe that one as a little . . . blunt, and leave it at that.

An anime convention has certain advantages as a succubus story location.  As with Halloween or a fancy dress party, the succubus-type character can be placed in the open.  All the other characters will assume she's just a hot girl in a slutty succubus costume (although I may have used the 'protagonist realises it isn't a costume' denouement a few too many times already).  The protagonist presents options.  They can be an out-an-out bastard, in which case it's a straightforward Cosmic Justice tale.  Or I can muddy it up and give them an insecure centre to make them a little more sympathetic (although last time I tried that I muddied it up too much and ended up with a protagonist more sympathetic than I originally intended.)

I also now have the desire to create a 'landwhale' succubus character for the hell of it.  Big, curvy, beautiful, irresistible . . . yum.

For anyone writing their own stories, taking newspaper/online articles and thinking up a possible 'masquerade' explanation for what's happening behind the scenes is a good story-telling exercise.  But avoid the obviously weird ones, because hundreds of other writers will already have gone through the same thought processes and scrawled down the exact same story.

And then there's my highly fucked-up imagination.  I saw this:

(I found it on E-Hentai galleries, bizarrely enough.  The artist is Caroline Jamhour and more of her work can be found here)

. . . and remembered the eyes-as-nipples scene in Ken Russell's Gothic.  I was thinking there wasn't really anything I could do with--

The demon woman has eyes where the nipples should be.  She pushes her boobs into the face of her victim.  The eyes in her breasts eat the eyes of the victim and then take their place.  They send feelers into the brain and the victim sees . . .

Um, thanks imagination.  I guess.

That was one day of the little black cells working on overdrive for new story ideas.

If it sounds vaguely interesting, I can write some more where-did-that-idea-come-from pieces for the stories I've written (assuming I can remember, some are a few years old now).  Let me know in the comments below if there are any you're curious about.

Resurrecting the #DailyWriting Tag

For most of last year I used the #DailyWriting tag on twitter as an aid to writing.  I set a target of either typing at least 500 words or handwriting 3 notebook pages a day (roughly 1-2 hours of writing).  Before going to bed I'd tweet the word/page count.  I doubt the people of twitter cared either way, but having the illusion of witnesses was a good way to keep me honest.  It was a good discipline aid.  One of the best tips for writing is to make it a habit.  Once it becomes a habit it's a lot easier to keep the words flowing and a few pages every night eventually pile up into a full novel.

I stopped doing it earlier this year.  A big part of that reason was because I'd become pissed off with twitter and all the self-righteous, holier-than-thou jerks that stink out the place.  It was also because I was worried it had become a creative straitjacket - that I'd end up joylessly grinding out a bare minimum of useless words every night because of trying to keep to arbitrary targets.

I was also worried about how it would look on my twitter feed.  Posting word counts is often sneered at as something those vulgar self-published types do.  It's just not the done thing.

By the way, that reason above is without a doubt the stupidest reason of the lot.  A quick check of most of the more vocal, sneery writery types on social media will reveal them to be rather light in the publishing credits column.  Give those characters a wide berth (and most online writing communities in general, though there are exceptions) and your muse (and readers) will thank you.

Anyway, I decided to stop using the #DailyWriting tag.  I was getting the pages done anyway and there was no need to bore the world with the proof.  Then indiscipline crept in.  A couple of weeks ago I was off work and had a good writing week where I finally burst through a Succubus Summoning chapter that had been blocking me for a while, as well as finishing off another short story that had been clogging up the tubes for a bit.  Then the following week I was a lazy cunt and barely got anything done at all.

After that I decided to resurrect the #DailyWriting tag.  I'm a shameful procrastinator.  Once I start writing I can normally clock in a good hour or two.  Starting that first hour and not bumming around on facebook or youtube is the problem.  It's surprising how much difference a little tag can make.  When I stopped using it I'd have those nights where I'd fart around until the clock ticked past midnight and then think, fuck it, it's too late.  The first night I decided to start using it again the same thing happened, but instead of going to bed I thought, no, let's get those 3 pages written first.  Sometimes a little psychological push is all that's required.

So the #DailyWriting tag is back and you can follow my feed here:
https://twitter.com/manyeyedhydra

It also has the nice side effect of reassuring people I'm still alive and writing during those periods when this blog goes quiet.  I know a few people were concerned about that given the shit that went on earlier in the year.  It should also give an idea of what I'm working on currently and how far along I am.  (The next chapter of Succubus Summoning needs a further 2.5-3K words typed up and a full edit before posting).

Moving the Forthcoming Collection back to 2015

The curse of date-themed collections strikes again.  I don't think I'm going to hit the date I need this month without some severe rushing, and if I do that there's a risk I'm going to end up with error-filled stories that aren't as enjoyable to read because I was stupid enough to suck the enjoyment out of writing them by trying to force-march myself through an arbitrary deadline.  Normally I subscribe more to the no-nonsense, words-on-page pulp-writer ethos rather than precious-little-snowflake "literary" noodling, but that's not an excuse to rush out crap to foist on the reader.  I might write smut, but I take pride in writing good-quality smut! :)

The last couple of collections I've been writing stories specifically to fit those collections.  This isn't working as well as I'd like as when I feel I "have" to write certain stories, procrastination and distraction behaviour kicks in.

(Plus I think readers can tell when something looks forced)

I'm going to switch to ChaosWriting for a while and write the ideas that seem hot'n'sexy at the time until I've built up a nice buffer of fresh material.  That should mean better stories and less last-minute panicking (and also more Succubus Summoning).  I'm not going to sit on all of these, so expect some new stories/chapters to show up here and on places like Literotica at frequent intervals throughout 2014.  The main thing I want to change is to organise my time better so that I'm not still writing/editing a book in the same month it's due to come out.  That time should be for promotion only.

I know some people were looking forward to "A Real-Life Goo Girl".  I do have a surplus of original stories for the next collection (although unfortunately not as complete as I'd like), so I'll be posting that up here later today.

The next book should now be Succubus Summoning 201.  At least that one isn't dependent on a specific date.

Date-themed collections, why did I think that was a good idea.  Sigh... :)

Enough moping, it's time to get back to writing

Okay, that’s enough moping around.  Time to bash the black dog’s head in with a shovel.  Who am I kidding, I doubt I could stop writing even if I had to.  I enjoy it too much and I’m not going to allow a spot of holier-than-thou bullying poison the satisfaction I get from writing these stories.  I’m probably worrying about nothing anyway.  One of the problems with writing horror is that the mind gets very good at spinning out a scenario and stringing together the worst combination of outcomes.  I doubt the person was credible and even if they were the most it would likely amount to is some awkward conversations with my workmates.

(Note: this is my situation.  For other writers of erotica the circumstances might be very different, which is why an attitude of “They should write under their own name so we know who they are” is the mark of an ignorant asshole.)

I’ve had a week to think things over and I’m going to make a few minor changes.  I let myself drift a little too close to the world of “serious” writing.  My personal opinion is those online communities are toxic.  They’re highly politicized and if – like me – you don’t fit rigidly within a political ideology you get a clubbing from whichever side you get too close to.  I don’t think they’re healthy for budding writers either as they’re stultifying environments detrimental to creativity.

(Some might be reading this and thinking:  Hey, that doesn’t sound like the warm and friendly community I know.

Well bully for you.  Your face fit, someone taught you the secret handshake, or you found an entry point manned by the many decent people I hope don’t feel as if I’m tarring them with the same brush.

Unfortunately I saw a lot of unpleasant sneering assholes, took one too many brickbats to the face and decided I was better off staying right the fuck out of it all.)

“Serious” writing appears to have forgotten the contract between writer and reader and become obsessed on the things that are only ever proxies to this contract between writer and reader.  If you write something and even if only ten people read it and enjoy it, congratulations, you have still increased the overall happiness of the world.  Do not let anyone else try to tell you otherwise.  Only the worst kind of person tries to dictate to everyone else what their fantasies should be.

And hrarghhullll.

That’s another sticky black hateball I had to get off my chest.  I hope I’m not going to make a habit of this, otherwise I’ll have to stick a note on the blog – “It has been 7 days since Many-Eyed Hydra’s last online meltdown.”

Plus I assume you’re all here for the sexy succubus action, not a bunch of whiny ranting from someone who should be old enough and wise enough to know better.

The tl;dr version – Fuck the snobs and holier-than-thou bullies, I’m not going to stop writing the stories I enjoy writing.

To show I am most emphatically not done with this writing lark and as a thank you I’ll post one of the stories I have saved for the next collection.  There’s even going to be a choice:

Busted Bankster: A city trader is drawn into a deadly cage fight with a succubus and is smothered by her large breasts.

A Special Tube of Lube: A work-at-home software developer is given a sensual ‘4 hands’ massage by two busty students that ends up with them demonstrating a very special tube of lube.

A Real Life Goo Girl: A researcher studying an unusual slime girl brought back from H-space is trapped in the lab with her when she escapes.

Pick the one that most takes your fancy and let me know in the comments.  I’ll post the one with the most votes tomorrow.

(don’t pick the one I haven’t finished editing yet . . . don’t pick the one I haven’t finished editing yet . . .)

Thank you all for your messages of support and I'm sorry for being stupid enough to allow myself to get distracted from what's important - supplying the world with sexy succubus smut.  Next week normal service should be resumed.  I’ll wrap up the walkthrough of Violated Hero 4 and after that I have some reviews of some other monster girl hentai games I’ve played recently.

And of course I'll keep scribbling away on new stories/chapters, it's what I enjoy doing.

Succubus Summoning 207 and Plot vs Porn

It wasn't quite the first week of July as I was hoping, but I did finally manage to post Succubus Summoning 207 up on Literotica last week.  It was an awkward chapter to write as it features the reality-bending, fourth-wall-breaking Cέrμləa and her mind-melting description of how the universe of Succubus Summoning works (and also a few oblique hints to my other stories as well).

I was curious to see how this chapter would be received.

Anonymous - "this shit sucks!  THis is so fucking boring. Wheres all the fucking? I went fucking limp during this"

:(

Um, yeah...well...

To be fair, I'm highlighting one negative comment when most of them have been positive (thanks for those!).  Quite a few people were asking for more plot and background and I hope 207 delivered on that.

Plot versus porn is an interesting discussion.  I find a lot of modern porn a little dull and mechanical because it's completely stripped down to only the sucky-fucky.  On the other hand, in adding plot/characterization/background/etc it's easy to lose sight of what an erotica/porn story should do - arouse.  Water down the sexy bits too much and you end up with a tasteless gruel no one is going to find appetizing.  That's why I tend to stick to the classic erotica rule: Every Chapter Must Have A Sex Scene.

In this case Cέrμləa was going to provide the exposition and Ab'ĝalga the sex scene.  And then the sex scene came out...weird.  Don't get me wrong, I like how it turned out, but I'm fully aware it won't be everyone's cup of tea.  Then, given my other stories, this probably isn't much of a surprise.

The tl;dr version - this chapter was long and weird, normal succubus fucking will resume next month(ish).

And because this is probably the best place for it, here's some clarification for points raised in the Lit comments.

First off an important point on source reliability.  If you're a fan of Doctor Who you'll be aware of Moffat's "The Doctor lies" whenever a retcon is required.  Cέrμləa is a daemon.  Daemons lie.

On the inevitability of hell reabsorbing worlds - Cέrμləa perceives time very differently.  Many inevitable things take a very long time to occur.  (no one sweats that much about the sun going supernova and turning the Earth into a cinder even though this is part of the inevitable life cycle of a star)

Ab'ĝalga would have dissolved Phil if she'd decided he was too 'ordinary' (and Cέrμləa was aware of this).

Yes, there was a nod to the hell-space series of stories.

207 is at the upper range for chapter length.  It's easy for some fantasy series to get longer and longer as the writer gets more into it.  Personally I think this is a warning sign the writer is losing control of their story.  I'll be trying to get future chapters down to a more manageable 5,000 words or so (plus, I have to keep some stuff back for the inevitable ebook).

If you have any more questions/feedback feel free to put them in the comments below.

I'm aiming for first week of September for 208, although this will probably slip given my usual slowness.  It will feature Cέrμləa - or rather a facet of Cέrμləa we haven't seen before - and will see Phil visiting another dominion.

Oh, and if you ended up here because Google told you I like to blog about certain types of games and none of this post makes any sense.  Please feel free to start with this:

Available as an ebook from Amazon.  If you like games like Monster Girl Quest and Violated Hero, this book is perfect for you.

Horror doesn’t need to be literary, but it needs to be horror.

I’ve been ruffling a few feathers again.

This Guardian article, “Horror: a genre doomed to literary hell?”, is exactly the sort of bunkum that gets written when literary types point their condescending noses at those horrible plebby “genres”.  It’s a nonsense argument.  Asking why horror isn’t more “literary” is like asking why Slayer don’t sound more like Coldplay.  They’re different beasts, with different aims.  Horror works best when it’s hitting the senses at a visceral level.  Sometimes it’s raw and not very pretty, but that’s fine so long as it evokes the right response in the reader.

That’s about as much of a rebuttal as needs to be written and it wasn’t the article but the clip-clopping of comments beneath it that dragged me out from under my bridge.  People offered up their lists of talented writers and argued this as evidence of horror fiction being in rude health.

I’m sorry, but this isn’t true.

It’s closed bubble thinking.  It’s one of the perversities of modern technology.  While the whole world is opened up to anyone with a keyboard, it’s easy to fall into little circles where shared thoughts and opinions are bounced around, amplified and magnified out of all proportion to their relevance to the rest of the world.

Step outside the bubble.  Who’s reading?  Who’s commenting?  Who’s reviewing?  Who’s recommending?

Who cares?

On my last visit to England I popped into my local branch of Waterstones.  Next to several shelves full of Twilight clones was the horror section.  The only books I saw by writers that hadn’t been fixtures on the horror shelves for at least two decades were Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and Adam Nevill’s Apartment 16.

This is not a sign of health.

Step outside of the usual writer’s haunts and go clip-clopping into the tangled jungle of the World Wide Web.  Look for the places regular(ish) people hang out.  Look at how much is written about films, music, TV shows, computer games, anime.  Look at how little is written about books.

Even in The Guardian’s own book section.  Take a look at this thread recommending horror books to read for Halloween.  Spot a work that was written this century.

This is not a sign of health.

It’s not a mainstream thing either.  I have a fairly esoteric taste in music, yet if I want to find the best new death metal and black metal albums released there are plenty of online resources I can use to help me discover brilliant new bands.  Ditto for games and movies.  For horror books the best I’ve been able to manage is to slum around articles like this and see what gets recommended in the comments section.

That’s not to say there aren’t online resources.  Nick Cato and his team do a wonderful job with The Horror Fiction Review, there’s plenty of interesting stuff on the VanderMeer’s Weird Fiction Review, and there are also the websites of award givers like the HWA and BFS.  The crucial difference is these horror fiction resources are (mostly) written by writers, for other writers, while the others are written by fans, for other fans.  It’s crucial because the other media reviews don’t require me to disentangle the tainted web of who knows who to determine whether the recommendation/review/award is unbiased enough to be trustworthy.

This is not a sign of health.

We have a finite amount of leisure time and there are plenty of competing activities to devour it.  If we want people to read horror fiction we have to give them a compelling reason do so, otherwise they’re going to spend that time watching TV, going to see films or blowing zombie’s heads off on their Playstation.

Talk of horror becoming more “literary” raises the hairs on the back of my hands.  Trying to appease literary critics is a trap that has swallowed many a promising horror writer.  For me, the problem with a lot of modern horror is the writers are trying to court a literary audience that will never like, appreciate or understand them.  It’s like the hapless nerd of a teen movie trying to impress the prettiest, most popular girl in class when it’s obvious she’s a bitch and the right girl for him is the one hiding behind glasses and mousey hair.

This doesn’t mean horror fiction has to be shit, but first and foremost it needs to be aware of what it’s trying to do.  It’s a rollercoaster.  It’s a way for people to confront their fears from a position of safety.  It’s a spike in the heart rate, a prickle on the back on the neck, a lurking miasma of dread, a bowl of ice in the pit of the stomach—all from the comfort of the reader’s armchair.  The very good modern horror films and computer games know and provide this.

Horror fiction doesn’t need to become more literary, it needs to find and re-engage with an audience that, neglected, has turned to other genres and media for its thrills.  It needs to burst out of the bubble clique, grab readers by the throat and shout “Read Me!  Put down that remote and Read Me!  Put down that controller and Read Me!  Then go and tell all your friends to Read Me!  Because I’m the scariest, spookiest, creepiest, eeriest, most spine-tingling muthafucka you’ll ever spend an evening with.”