This caught my attention in the Guardian a week or so ago. They describe it as the literary equivalent to cult movies, which piqued my attention as it brings back fond memories of staying up late to watch whatever weirdness was showing on Channel 4 or Alex Cox’s Moviedrome. Titles like ‘Shatnerquake’ and ‘Ass Goblins of Auschwitz’ are clearly not meant to be taken seriously, but are they not as bad as they sound, so bad they’re good or so bad they’re just terrible?
They have a nice website and I liked the two articles by Carlton Mellick III. Good storytelling is universal, no matter how weird the concept might be.
I noticed they also feature a few of Edward Lee’s books. I remember his “Mr. Torso” being far beyond anything else in Hot Blood IV for sheer deranged inventiveness.
Ah, is this where all the horror writers ran off to when their genre was overrun by sparkly vampires?
And yeah, the mercenary bastard in me was wondering if this was a market I could try and hawk my wares in. One of the book ideas I’m chipping away with at the moment does have the working title: “Porno Fighters from Planet Earth” :).
Also I see it as another challenge. Even though it’s fairly juvenile, I often write with the aim of trying to take on and beat the worst excesses of Japanese manga/anime for weird and freaky sex. It’s an impossible mission. Every time I think I’m getting close I run across another Apocalypse Zero and realise I’ve got a long way to go.
I hadn’t really thought about films/books from the west. I thought they were lacking that essence of WTF imagination. Only goes to show I wasn’t really looking hard enough... :)
Friday, August 06, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Answering Anonymous: 202
I try and answer most comments I get through email, which covers most questions (the ones I’m prepared to answer anyway). Same goes for the public comments left on stories posted on Literotica. This is for the anonymous questions I couldn’t respond to. Not sure if ‘anonymous’ will see this, but hey, I tried!
I covered the queries on Verdé last time round. The other common question was along the lines of “Where is this story going?” or, to borrow a Monty Python catchphrase, “GET ON WITH IT!”
I’m glad people are keen to read about Phil’s lessons at Wargsnouts. There is a plan and it will (may) make sense at the end. I took a slight detour because it seemed like a hot scene and to give myself some breathing room while I plan out how the arc is going to play out.
I was a little surprised at one comment wanting the story to move away from Phil’s constant harassment by deadly demons. It’s good that the story is holding up well enough to interest readers as well as the obvious sexual titillation, but I don’t want to let the plot start to crowd out the sex scenes. It’s still supposed to be erotica!
I don’t think Rosa would let me anyway.
There’s a reason behind everything anyway, even what might seem like a little filler scene with two smoking hot daemons. It will all become apparent.
203 is in progress, but will be delayed. I’m frantically trying to get a third anthology (with mostly new stories) finished for eXcessica and that’s running a little behind schedule. Normal (slow!) service to be resumed soon!
I covered the queries on Verdé last time round. The other common question was along the lines of “Where is this story going?” or, to borrow a Monty Python catchphrase, “GET ON WITH IT!”
I’m glad people are keen to read about Phil’s lessons at Wargsnouts. There is a plan and it will (may) make sense at the end. I took a slight detour because it seemed like a hot scene and to give myself some breathing room while I plan out how the arc is going to play out.
I was a little surprised at one comment wanting the story to move away from Phil’s constant harassment by deadly demons. It’s good that the story is holding up well enough to interest readers as well as the obvious sexual titillation, but I don’t want to let the plot start to crowd out the sex scenes. It’s still supposed to be erotica!
I don’t think Rosa would let me anyway.
There’s a reason behind everything anyway, even what might seem like a little filler scene with two smoking hot daemons. It will all become apparent.
203 is in progress, but will be delayed. I’m frantically trying to get a third anthology (with mostly new stories) finished for eXcessica and that’s running a little behind schedule. Normal (slow!) service to be resumed soon!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
The Dilemma with Verdé
She's sweet, nice, warm-hearted...and she kills people.
As a writer it creates a dilemma for me. Verdé is liked because she appears nice and good-natured, and seems to care for Phil rather than wanting to suck out his soul at the first opportunity. She isn’t a Nicole or Amanda though. She’s still a succubus, which means some of what she does is going to be unpalatable to most readers.
Now I could hide those aspects of her character off-screen, or try to justify them with plenty of they-had-it-coming’s, but that would feel like a lame cop-out. As much as I don’t want to prick the fantasy, I don’t want to shy away from what she is either.
The end of 202 was intended as a gentle reminder. She’s not quite as nice as you think.
If the lovely Verdé was on a bed in front of you in all her seductive glory and there was an open door behind you, the sensible thing – for a long and hearty life – might be to run for that door. Fast!
Maybe.
Maybe she might decide she likes you. Maybe she won’t kill you. She’s not Rosa after all. She’s capable of having some feelings towards her human ‘snacks’. It might be worth the risk...
It's those contradictions which I hope make her character complex, intriguing and appealing.
As a writer it creates a dilemma for me. Verdé is liked because she appears nice and good-natured, and seems to care for Phil rather than wanting to suck out his soul at the first opportunity. She isn’t a Nicole or Amanda though. She’s still a succubus, which means some of what she does is going to be unpalatable to most readers.
Now I could hide those aspects of her character off-screen, or try to justify them with plenty of they-had-it-coming’s, but that would feel like a lame cop-out. As much as I don’t want to prick the fantasy, I don’t want to shy away from what she is either.
The end of 202 was intended as a gentle reminder. She’s not quite as nice as you think.
If the lovely Verdé was on a bed in front of you in all her seductive glory and there was an open door behind you, the sensible thing – for a long and hearty life – might be to run for that door. Fast!
Maybe.
Maybe she might decide she likes you. Maybe she won’t kill you. She’s not Rosa after all. She’s capable of having some feelings towards her human ‘snacks’. It might be worth the risk...
It's those contradictions which I hope make her character complex, intriguing and appealing.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
I Write Like...
...James Joyce, apparently. Or is it Stephen King, or maybe Margaret Atwood, or possibly H.P. Lovecraft and maybe sometimes even a smidgeon like Anne Rice? Sometimes I even write like Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer.
Yes, it's the funky, hot-trending, salve-for-aspiring-writers-everywhere, IWriteLike tool!
It's all a bit of harmless fun really (or a sinister idea-harvesting machine of diabolic proportions). I'm not sure what's whirring away behind the screen, although a previous incarnation of me would postulate they're using some kind of vector space model with maybe some extra doodads to score other metrics such as sentence length, etc.
How useful? Probably not very. It's a nice boost to be compared to someone successful and famous, but ultimately the program is only returning whichever writer in their database (I believe there are 40) you happen to be closest to. Close in this case being relative. Even if they’re all clustered tightly together at a position in space marked ‘publishable and famous’ and you’re way off in the void of ‘never-to-be’, one of them is still going to be the closest to you.
What they needed to do was raid the slush piles of a big publishing house to create some more realistic reference points such as ‘rejected for lousy grammar’, ‘rejected for overly flowery language’, ‘rejected for unbearable dullness’, ‘rejected because it doesn’t contain any vampires’ and ‘rejected because our intern fell behind and couldn’t be bothered to read it’. In the absence of those points Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer appear to have been designated as the badges of shame. Not sure why really. Personally, I’d be quite happy to be told I write like people who’ve amassed bank balances large enough to capsize small islands. :)
Yes, it's the funky, hot-trending, salve-for-aspiring-writers-everywhere, IWriteLike tool!
It's all a bit of harmless fun really (or a sinister idea-harvesting machine of diabolic proportions). I'm not sure what's whirring away behind the screen, although a previous incarnation of me would postulate they're using some kind of vector space model with maybe some extra doodads to score other metrics such as sentence length, etc.
How useful? Probably not very. It's a nice boost to be compared to someone successful and famous, but ultimately the program is only returning whichever writer in their database (I believe there are 40) you happen to be closest to. Close in this case being relative. Even if they’re all clustered tightly together at a position in space marked ‘publishable and famous’ and you’re way off in the void of ‘never-to-be’, one of them is still going to be the closest to you.
What they needed to do was raid the slush piles of a big publishing house to create some more realistic reference points such as ‘rejected for lousy grammar’, ‘rejected for overly flowery language’, ‘rejected for unbearable dullness’, ‘rejected because it doesn’t contain any vampires’ and ‘rejected because our intern fell behind and couldn’t be bothered to read it’. In the absence of those points Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer appear to have been designated as the badges of shame. Not sure why really. Personally, I’d be quite happy to be told I write like people who’ve amassed bank balances large enough to capsize small islands. :)
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
You know I meant submit on the 13th...
Ugh, sigh.
I thought I'd make it. The first draft was done with days to spare. All I had to do was edit it and then submit around the 10th.
Then I hit a wrinkle.
I follow the same pattern for nearly all my stories. First draft, then a second draft, then final editing to clean up typos.
The second draft is necessary because my first drafts are, let's be honest, messy. A second pass cleans up some of those awkward passages, removes the stuff that isn't necessary for the story and hopefully makes the whole thing flow better.
In theory. Sometimes I wonder if I lose some of the raw heat with the second pass and introduce blandness. I know I was far too brutal in chopping Pussy-Wrapped down to what I thought should be the correct length and readers noticed the intro wasn't telling the whole story. As an exercise I might throw up two versions of the same story to see where I'm being a little over-zealous with the pruning shears. Something for another time.
Sometimes the second draft has sections that require a fresh rewrite and sometimes those sections end up being an obstacle. And yeah, I ended up posting the later Succubus Summoning chapter three days late.
I suppose you're all used to it by now.
Succubus Summoning 202 has been submitted though. It usually takes around three days for Literotica to post new stories so look out for it around Thursday/Friday.
Sadly, 203 might be even later as a deadline for my third anthology is looming. Perversely, that might even be a good thing. Knowing how my mind works I'll probably end up writing that instead of the short stories I should be writing... :D
I thought I'd make it. The first draft was done with days to spare. All I had to do was edit it and then submit around the 10th.
Then I hit a wrinkle.
I follow the same pattern for nearly all my stories. First draft, then a second draft, then final editing to clean up typos.
The second draft is necessary because my first drafts are, let's be honest, messy. A second pass cleans up some of those awkward passages, removes the stuff that isn't necessary for the story and hopefully makes the whole thing flow better.
In theory. Sometimes I wonder if I lose some of the raw heat with the second pass and introduce blandness. I know I was far too brutal in chopping Pussy-Wrapped down to what I thought should be the correct length and readers noticed the intro wasn't telling the whole story. As an exercise I might throw up two versions of the same story to see where I'm being a little over-zealous with the pruning shears. Something for another time.
Sometimes the second draft has sections that require a fresh rewrite and sometimes those sections end up being an obstacle. And yeah, I ended up posting the later Succubus Summoning chapter three days late.
I suppose you're all used to it by now.
Succubus Summoning 202 has been submitted though. It usually takes around three days for Literotica to post new stories so look out for it around Thursday/Friday.
Sadly, 203 might be even later as a deadline for my third anthology is looming. Perversely, that might even be a good thing. Knowing how my mind works I'll probably end up writing that instead of the short stories I should be writing... :D
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Anonymous expects...
Hehe, it's that time of the month again. I can usually tell when it's been around a month as I start getting the emails and comments telling me how much they like the Succubus Summoning series and when is the next damn chapter coming out!
I always feel a bit guilty at how slow I seem to write nowadays. After finishing 201 the idea for 202 came straight to me and I thought I'd be able to hammer it out in a few days. Unfortunately, for some reason, if I don't manage to get the story finished in those two days I go into this terribly scratchy writer mode where it feels more like each word is being chiselled out of granite rather than flowing smoothly from my fingers.
Very frustrating. I've had a couple of ideas that have come fresh (rather than the many many ideas I've got stored up and half-written in notebooks) and gone at them thinking I'd hammer out a 3,000 word story in a night, only to find the damn things have become 5,000 word monstrosities and dragged out for weeks instead.
Very ill-disciplined of me. I hate scratchy-writer me. The worst part is it's usually for silly paragraphs at the start of the story that end up getting cut anyway because the lead-in is too long.
Anyway. 202 is nearly done and features some new sexy characters I hope you'll all enjoy. Just cleaning out some grotty grammar and rewriting some of the more sloppier paragraphs. I'm aiming for a regular release date of the 13th of each month, guaranteed to no longer become regular when 203 overruns... :)
I always feel a bit guilty at how slow I seem to write nowadays. After finishing 201 the idea for 202 came straight to me and I thought I'd be able to hammer it out in a few days. Unfortunately, for some reason, if I don't manage to get the story finished in those two days I go into this terribly scratchy writer mode where it feels more like each word is being chiselled out of granite rather than flowing smoothly from my fingers.
Very frustrating. I've had a couple of ideas that have come fresh (rather than the many many ideas I've got stored up and half-written in notebooks) and gone at them thinking I'd hammer out a 3,000 word story in a night, only to find the damn things have become 5,000 word monstrosities and dragged out for weeks instead.
Very ill-disciplined of me. I hate scratchy-writer me. The worst part is it's usually for silly paragraphs at the start of the story that end up getting cut anyway because the lead-in is too long.
Anyway. 202 is nearly done and features some new sexy characters I hope you'll all enjoy. Just cleaning out some grotty grammar and rewriting some of the more sloppier paragraphs. I'm aiming for a regular release date of the 13th of each month, guaranteed to no longer become regular when 203 overruns... :)
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