Showing posts with label smashwords. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smashwords. Show all posts

Saturday, August 04, 2012

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.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The Pastor and the Smut Writers

“First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

I’ve seen a few blog posts using Martin Niemöller’s famous quote in different variations. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a big chilling effect hitting erotica writing right now. PayPal, a payment processor with a highly dominant, almost monopolistic market position, has begun a crackdown on what type of books online retailers can sell. Bookstrand and All Romance went first as mentioned in Selena Kitt’s blog, and now Smashwords has also succumbed to the same pressure.

I’ve also seen some comments expressing outrage over mucky erotica writers using Niemöller’s warning. How dare they compare their inability to foist degenerate smut on the world with the murder of six million people. They’re not. No one’s seriously expecting erotica writers to be dragged out of their homes at midnight. Some are going to have to find another source of income, some hobbyists will lose an outlet for creative expression, and some readers will miss out on works they might enjoy. Small beans compared to one of the worst atrocities in human history, but those small beans still mean something to the people involved.

Niemöller’s “First they came…” refers to a regrettable tendency of people to stick their heads, ostrich-like, into the sand and stand by and let things happen because it’s “Not My Business”. I’ve read lots of head-in-the-sand rationalising over the past few days ranging from the classic “I don’t write that filth so it won’t affect me” to “It’s not censorship; PayPal have the freedom to choose who they do business with.”

The censorship argument is a tricky one. I’ve seen that bend back and forth. Eve McFadden provides a very good counterpoint here. A retailer is not obligated to stock items they don’t wish to sell. While I’m a little uncomfortable with the idea of a financial service company determining what their clients can sell, PayPal is also not obligated to provide services to a retailer selling items PayPal doesn’t wish to be associated with. Unfortunately, when a company has the reach and market dominance PayPal has, decisions of this nature can have a stifling effect on what items can be sold.

These books are not illegal. People are happy to write them, people are happy to sell them, and people are happy to buy them. If this is not happening then there are grounds for concern. It might not be censorship according to the classic definition of the word, but when the outcomes start to look the same we should start to get nervous.

I think it’s important to stress again these books are not illegal. While some might find themes of incest (including “pseudo-incest”), rape, barely-legal and bestiality in erotica objectionable, it’s only fiction. Contrary to what some people might think, Erotica writers don’t actually have to carry out these acts in order to write about them. We do have imaginations. And, at the end of the day, no one’s forcing anyone to read these books.

Although I write fairly explicit horror/erotica hybrids, I don’t think I’m affected by this unless PayPal shuts eXcessica down completely. Technically I could fall foul of restrictions on “Rape” and “Snuff”, but part of the nervousness about PayPal’s recent strong-arming is whole swathes of books could be taken off the shelves depending on how those are interpreted. Writing a thriller about a serial killer? No sir, someone could find that chapter where the killer strangles a prostitute during sexual intercourse titillating. This is the slippery slope Selena Kitt referred to. Is it just the nasty gang-bang stuff that’s off limits, or will someone use that as a foothold to start removing chunks of BDSM literature they don’t like?

When that paedophile manual surfaced on Amazon a while back I found myself in a conflicted position. Obviously I found the book repulsive, but I also knew it could be used as a lever to justify taking down other work. Sure enough, some of Selena’s titles featuring incest were taken down next. Now the category of objectionable material has widened to include sex between non-blood relatives and depictions of rape and violence. While the tide hasn’t reached me yet, it’s certainly lapping at my toes. I’m thinking maybe I should have spoke out sooner, even if it meant defending something I found personally objectionable.

Further behind me are the paranormal erotica writers. They don’t have anything to worry about now. It’s not bestiality if the were is in human form. It’s not necrophilia if the vampire is walking around. Then the tide moves further up until it starts lapping at their toes. New emails go around. No more of this yucky non-human erotica. All participants must be 100% human. Then the paranormal writer starts to think, Maybe I should have said something when they were banning all that icky incest and rape stuff.

Behind them is an erotic romance writer. They don’t have anything to worry about. Their stuff is strictly vanilla. Then the next round of emails arrive. There’s too much sex. Tone it down or it gets pulled. And the erotic romance writer starts to think maybe they should have said something.

And beyond them is the edgy thriller writer…

And it’s exactly what Niemöller was warning about, albeit on a considerably smaller scale. Freedoms do get eroded if people don’t speak out, even if speaking out means defending subject matter they might not agree with. Which segues nicely into the other classic quote I used in the last blog post:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Don’t give them an inch and don’t let them get a foothold.

PayPal is a business and is perfectly entitled to choose who they do business with and how…just as we’re perfectly entitled to choose whether or not we do business with them based on their decisions. If you don’t like the idea of PayPal policing what you can or can’t read, now would be a good time to let them know.

Sunday, March 06, 2011

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.