Ebook plans for 2019

After all the recent negativity over Patreon being a bunch of Orwellian cunts, here's me trying to be positive with plans for 2019.

2018 (and 2017) were a little weird.  In terms of word count I'm still producing a decent amount of content.  In total word count, "Escape Volumpula, the Pink Jelly" was about the same size as a large novella and "Escape the Arachne" wasn't much shorter.  The main problem with them is they're not something I can easily monetise on Amazon.  Patreon was a good fit... until they decided to shit the bed.  "Night of the Nude Succubus Orgy" was also very lengthy.  That I think could be expanded into a full novel.

The instability at Patreon has forced me to reassess priorities. Ebook royalties are a reliable portion of my income. It's been a while (2 years) since I've put any out and I want to rectify that in 2019.  This doesn't mean I'll be abandoning the CYOAs.  Given how chaotic my writing process is, there will no doubt be times when I want to tinker with game mechanics and programming rather than working on whatever ebook I'm supposed to be working on!

Here are some candidates to get done in 2019.  I'll probably expand them out into full posts later to discuss in more detail.

A new A Succubus for collection
While I haven't been as active on Literotica as I would like, I do now seem to have accumulated close to enough material for a new collection.  I don't have my stockpile of stories to use as collection (or even Patreon) exclusives.  About 4 or 5 brand new ones should be enough to finish a collection.

Succubus Summoning 301
This is probably the thing I need most to stabilise my royalty income.  While I am terrified of fucking it up, I think I might just sit down and let the story go where it wants to go rather than obsessing about not wanting to let people down.  (Please don't kill him, Rosa and co.  I have bills to pay!)

These two are my highest priority.  The collection because it's easy.  Succubus Summoning 301 because it's long overdue.

Tales from H-space
I've been trying to figure out what to do with the bestiary shorts for a while.  I think they could make a nice themed short story collection, possibly a regular ongoing series.  It would require rewriting and expanding the better ones into "proper" short stories as I don't think they are high enough quality in their current state (and I never really felt I got the accompanying "monster manual" file entries right).

This could be an easy win.  Or the rewrite process could be nightmarish.  The concept as a slightly more grimdark version of the Monster Girl Encyclopaedia was always a good one.

Sandwiched by
I've given up trying to chase my tail on hitting a regular monthly schedule with these novellas.  I want to relaunch them with new covers.  I think the best way to do that is to stealthily write them all in advance, then release them on a monthly basis over a year.  Another stealth project I'll keep quiet on until the whole thing is done and ready to release.

Okasare Kenny
Similar to Sandwiched by.  This is perfect as a novella serial released monthly over a year.  I already know I can't chase my tail in terms of deadlines, so the best thing would be to write it all out in advance.

Both have been screwed up by me in the past through a twitchy desire to rush something—anything—out.  I want to get away from that mentality and just focus on getting the proper groundwork done to be able to release them as I originally intended.

Then some speculative projects.  I'm not going to force myself to work on set things given that it made a mess of my productivity last year.  These will jump up and down my priority queue depending on how burning hot the desire to work on them is.

Night of the Nude Succubus Orgy
I think the short story could be expanded into a full novel.  It would likely be a strange mix of nasty period horror (the initial sacrifices and rituals) mixed with modern-day pornfest.  Could work.  Maybe…?

The Succubus Trap
The Nicole novel.  The first couple of chapters are really hot (Nicole and Madam Voluptula tag-teaming to fuck someone's brains out) and I think it would do really well as a novel, which makes my inability to get beyond chapter 3 incredibly frustrating.  Maybe I'll finally figure out how to bust through that block.

The Succubus Invasion
Another one I've already written multiple chapters for, but haven't quite got it to click.  It's also a strange mix of nasty sexual horror and goofy pornfest moments.

Jackson in HRPG-World
Less a novel than 8 short stories set in game-parody worlds.  I wrote the first four, hit a wall on the fifth and it's been stuck in development hell ever since.  Given I have nearly half the material written already, I should really focus on getting this done and published.

Then the really speculative stuff.  I don't think I'll get to these, but I might suddenly get a burning desire to work on them and I want to try and raise my productivity by letting enthusiasm dictate what projects to work on rather than trying to brute force specific ones.

Bubblelicious
Themed collection set around a soapland-style massage parlour.  Stemmed from a single short story idea.  This one is probably super-speculative,

Invading the Hive
A H-space novel, themed collection?  The bee girl entry for the H-space monster girl bestiary ended up getting a little long and complex.  I think it will likely be seven or so elaborate sex scenes featuring bee/wasp monster girls stitched together with some kind of underlying plot.  I've had a similar idea for a slime girl cave kicking around for years.  Maybe another series prospect?

There are others, but they're either far from ready or been left on hiatus long enough to require a degree of archaeology to dig up.  I might post them as glimpses into my ideas file for patrons.

My plan is to try and be more flexible in 2019.  Trying to force things out backfired far too often in 2018.  I'd rather have a 10-hour day working on some of the speculative stuff, than limping to a 2-hour day trying to brute force a more "important" project.

Anyway, that's a glimpse of my current ebook project plans.  Let's hope 2019 will be a lovely year filled with sexy succubus smut!

-manyeyedhydra

Updates for February

It's February.  I was hoping to kick off this weekend with a new H-space story and profile.  The story isn't quite ready, so I'm going to put that back to next week.  The reason it's not ready is I've found a nice novel idea to run with.  It was originally going to be a mini-series for another publishing platform, but I was never able to find time to write it last year.  The last couple of weeks I found some enthusiasm for that story and it seems to have legs at the moment.

I'm not going to give any more details as my enthusiasm on writing projects tends to wax and wane fairly randomly.  After a scratchy last year where I tried to push things when I didn't have enthusiasm for them, I'm going to embrace ChaosWriting a little harder this year.  Basically, if I have enthusiasm for a particular project, I hammer the hell out of it and try to get down as many words as possible as quickly as possible.

So nothing concrete there yet, but if it continues to be promising, expect introductions to some sexy new succubus characters in a few months time.

Because I saw some comments asking for it, here are the other things that are currently at the top of my writing TODO list.  Nothing is guaranteed here, you all know how sketchy I am at keeping to solid schedules by now.

Sandwiched by
This was supposed to be a monthly thing ran over a year.  I was thinking of restarting from January, but then decided the best was to get back to the monthly schedule (or rather get them done far enough in advance that I can keep to the monthly schedule).  Sandwiched by Stomachs was the planned fifth instalment, so May is the tentative target for that one.

The reason I want to get into habit of getting one out a month is because Okasare Kenny was originally intended to be a series of novellas spread over a year - but I ain't doing that unless I'm confident it won't stall and slip behind schedule.  If I finally sort my unreliability out, expect that for 2018.

Succubus Summoning 301
This is the second novel I want to get done this year.  I have a rough idea of the first couple of chapters and initial plot point to resolve (the one left dangling from 201), but not the rest as of yet.  The second half of this year is where I want to get this up and running again.  I haven't decided whether to post the chapters on Literotica, but given that 201 (and 101) is still selling quite well on Amazon, I don't think it hurts to post the series online first.

H-Space Monster Girl Bestiary
I still don't have a clue on how to get any money from these stories, but as long as the other books are selling well, that will keep me going until I figure out how to best convert these into a nice book form.  I missed my schedule for this weekend thanks to a lingering bit of winter illness crud and various other distractions.  I think my best strategy for these is to write them in bursts when I get the inspiration, but post them no frequently than every two weeks.  I was going to post a story that reveals some of Bate's background, but people seem to be enjoying coming up with theories to explain what's going on, so I'll hold on that for a little longer.  It also gives me more of a chance to get the story right.  And I really want to get this story right.

Next Short Story Collection
I'm about due to put out one of these.  The main problem is that short story collections sell abysmally and I haven't been writing 5K word short stories of late.  This is something I want to fix at some point if only to start getting a few contest entries up on Literotica again.

Also, once you go past Christmas, Valentine's Day and Halloween, it gets a little awkward to maintain the naming and have a story to match.

(I was thinking of having some fun and writing A Succubus for Social Justice and lampooning everyone's favourite online idiots.  Things are a little too heated now, though.  I'm a middle-of-the-road apolitical kind of guy, and I'd like to stay that way.)

There are other reasons why I want to get the collections moving again, and it also links up with the H-space bestiary.  This one will probably have to wait a while though.

Mystery Nicole Novel
aka the novel I thought I'd be writing for the first part of this year.  The idea is still good and as soon as I've got the enthusiasm back I'll be back to writing one of the hottest sex scenes I've ever thought off (Nicole + friend, one lucky guy).

Jackson in HRPG-World
I have half of a novel here.  I really should write the four other stories (and additional shorts) and make it into a book so I can make some lovely sweet cash.  That world is also decidedly less grimdark than H-space (so far...).  I don't know why I keep not getting around to writing Jackson in HRPG-World 5.  I'll probably bounce to this if everything else gets gummed up.

And that's sort of a rough plan of what I think I'm going to be writing this year.

I say rough plan.  I'm just as likely to suddenly have a really cool idea and suddenly hare off and write that for a month or so.  I'm not the most consistent on these things, but as long as new stories/chapters keep rolling off the production line I'm happy - and we could definitely do with a few more of those after a slow start to 2017!

Literotica Halloween Contest Recap and Nov 2015 Update

The voting period for Literotica's Halloween Contest is over and they've announced the winners.  I didn't place, but to be honest I wasn't expecting to.  Both my entrants, "Snuff/Skin Flick" and "Chad's Challenge", are Bad End stories and generally it's the longer (sometimes very long!) stories with heart-warming endings that finish in the top 3.

One thing that did disappoint me was that I only managed to enter two stories.  The story I had originally planned to be a third entrant had an ending that was fine for a horror tale, but wouldn't work for erotica.  I had an alternate planned, but was not able to finish that in time.

Overall I liked the idea of using October as a short story challenge month.  November is normally the month for NaNoWriMo - where aspiring (and some grizzled!) writers attempt to blast out a 50K novel in a single month.  NaNoWriMo doesn't work for me as I write out all my first drafts longhand and it's not easy to keep track of the word count that way.  What I might do for future years is to instead use Literotica's Halloween Contest as a challenge to see how many short stories I can blast out in that three week period.  At least I've set a low bar there with only two entrants to beat!

Update time.

Currently I'm finishing off the two stories that didn't make the deadline.  One will likely end up being a mini-serial going out this month or next.  The other will be posted as soon as it's done.  There's a chance that one will kick up an online shitstorm, which might be fun. :D

"Sandwiched by Scyllas" is moving again.  I did the usual thing I do with stories that have derailed - start typing up the 2nd drafts early until I pick the thread back up again.

I want get these out of the way ASAP, so I can get on with the major task of finishing Succubus Summoning 201 and preparing it as an ebook to go out as soon as eXcessica has a spare slot.  I have some novel and novella ideas I'm keen to get on with, but I need to really get the second arc of that serial wrapped up satisfactorily first.  (This year would have likely been far more productive if I'd got those last two chapters finished this time last year!)

Writing Updates: Oct 19th, 2015

Somebody highlighted this on my twitter feed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Updates and a (Maybe) Story Bonanza for Literotica's Upcoming Halloween Story Contest

By maybe, I think three stories...  Maybe.  Maybe more.  Whenever I try to be a bit more definite about these things something goes horribly wrong and scuppers all the plans.

Anyway.  Literotica's annual Halloween contest is on the way.  The details of which can be found here.

As an aside, if you're a budding writer that likes succubi/monster girls and is not afraid to get your hands dirty with a little bit of explicit smut, contests like this are a great way to cut your teeth and find readers.

As for me, currently some of my projects have stalled and trying to bludgeon through them isn't doing my productivity any good.  I think I'll use this contest as an excuse to let #ChaosWriting out of the cage and see how many short stories I can blast out during the three weeks of the contest.  With a bit of luck that might clear my head and get the production line moving again.

The first story is already submitted.  You should see that go up tomorrow when the contest officially kicks off.  After that I'm not sure what we'll get or how many.  That's the beauty of #ChaosWriting.

I'm not trying to win this time.  There's been a trend in recent competitions for some entrants to go long, and I mean 90K-word-novel long.  With the way Literotica's scoring system works, it's pretty much impossible for a good 5-10K short story to place over a good 90K+ novel, so I'm not going to worry about it.  This is more an exercise in clearing out some old ideas and trying to get back in touch with what made me so prolific in my early days writing for Literotica (being more carefree and less trying to brute-force stories at a guess).

There's another two stories where I'm nearly done with the first draft, so I reckon we might see three new stories in October and hopefully more if the juices really get flowing.

So where does this leave the other stuff?  Here are a few updates.

Sandwiched by Series
Sticking to a hard monthly schedule isn't working here.  I like the covers and concept, so it will continue, but with a more flexible release schedule. i.e. When the story is done and I'm happy it doesn't feel rushed.  The next one is "Sandwiched by Scyllas" and I'm about 60-odd% done with it.

Okasare Kenny Series
The original idea was for this to be the monthly serial for 2016. Then I tried to use it as crazy live-novel-writing challenge, which was a cool idea, but a bad thing to launch into with other stories (in particular Succubus Summoning) still incomplete.  The Sandwiched by series was a trial to see if I could keep to a regular monthly schedule for a series with more continuity.  I'm not confident I can do that at the moment, so I won't officially (re)launch Okasare Kenny until I have six months or so worth of chapters in the can and can be confident it won't stall like Succubus Summoning 201 did.

A Night With Ceptophthorié
Alas poor game-writing experiment.  This one got shoved to the back burner when I fell behind on first A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day, and then various other things.  It's something I want to do, but I have to get my other writing stuff sorted first.

Jackson in HRPG-World
This is tailor-made for putting up on the blog in small chapters.  I need to get other things done first (Succubus Summoning 201!) before I can get back to this.  And I will get back to it because I know how the story pans out and I'm very excited to see readers' reactions to it. ;)

Succubus Summoning 201
The big one.  The one I really should get done considering Succubus Summoning 101 outsells all my other books put together.  Why aren't I on it?  It didn't get done in November/December last year basically.  That was when I went through a rather drastic life change that involved losing my job and changing countries.  It got put to one side while I got back on my feet (and aside from not being as productive with my writing as I'd like, I am thankfully back on my feet) and now I'm having a little trouble picking up the threads again.  I should be able fix this once I get around to the editing process in assembling the previous chapters into a coherent ebook.  I'll be on that as soon as I've had my fun with Halloween.  The aim is still to get the ebook finished before the end of the year and out as soon as there's an opening in eXcessica's publication schedule.  The final two chapters (of 201) will be posted as soon as they're written though.  I'm not going to let readers wait for them longer than they have to.

Some updates anyway.  It's been a weird 12 months.  Hopefully the next 12 months won't feature quite as many missteps, fumbles and failed experiments.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy the free Halloween stories (however many of them there end up being).

Update on Okasare Kenny

It's going on hold.  Sorry about that.

This is only temporary.  It's being returned to its original place in the queue.  After seeing how well the Let's Play of Monmusu Quest: Paradox did for the blog numbers I got a little over-excited and jumped the queue on something I already had a very good plan for.  I'm going back to that original plan.  Next year I'm intending to put Okasare Kenny out as a monthly serial on Amazon (and others) spread over the year.  First of all I need to instil confidence that I can keep to a monthly schedule.  This is what the Sandwiched by series was intended to be (before I got sidetracked).

Currently I'm working on finishing up some projects that should have been completed in the first half of the year - the print version of A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day and other tales, the next instalments of Sandwiched by ("Sandwiched by Scyllas", "Sandwiched by Succubi"), and a long-awaited conclusion to the Succubus Summoning 201 arc.  Once these are done I'll have a more cleanish slate and can get back to Okasare Kenny and a novel idea featuring Nicole I've been tinkering with.

Because of the change in plans I'll be pulling the Okasare Kenny chapters posted on Lit and StoriesOnline.  The ones I posted here I'll leave here.

A live-written (sort of) novel posted daily on the blog in daily instalments is something I want to do at some point.  I did enjoy the bits I did on Okasare Kenny before realising I was neglecting other projects that should have been finished off sooner.

As a writer, metaphorically showing your underpants in public is a little embarrassing.  In future I'll try to rein in my excitement until a project is actually complete/near-complete.  As per my usual penance for screwing up I'll raid the short story stockpile and dig up something juicy to post for your reading pleasure - look out for it Monday.