Thursday, May 05, 2011

I’d like to vote to have less of a vote, please

Tomorrow (or most likely today when this goes up), Britain is holding a referendum on whether to change its voting system from a First Past The Post system to an Alternative Vote system. Now this is a complicated issue, with many politicians on all sides of the political spectrum weighing in with complex opinions.

Essentially though, it boils down to this:
  • A. Yes. I would like my vote to have more of a say in who governs me.
  • B. No. I don’t want my vote to have more of a say in who governs me.
You’d think it’d be an easy choice…

Monday, May 02, 2011

Locked in with a Succubus, part 7

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.


“Relax. There’s no escape now,” Nicole whispered in his ear. “Mmm, I like to let my victims melt with pleasure. Then I slurp them all up like delicious ice cream.”

George remembered why he should be afraid.

“Still frightened?” Nicole asked. “My my, you are a troublesome client.”

She slid an arm underneath his body, grabbed his arm and pulled, spinning George around until he lay on his back with Nicole on top of him. The waterbed sagged beneath him, comfortable but also a prison.

He saw again her horns and those empty black eyes.

Still frightened? You betcha.

“People will notice if I go missing,” he said. “They know I’m here.”

Nicole put an elegant hand to her mouth and laughed.

“I hope you don’t play cards for money,” she said. “You don’t bluff well.”

She pulled off her panties.

“Of course Miss Kitson knows you’re here,” Nicole said. “She did send you to me after all.”

George’s eyes widened. Why would Miss Kitson do that?

“Now shut up and soak in my pheromones for a while,” Nicole said.

She shifted position until she was crouched above his face and facing his feet. George got an extreme close-up view of the shaven lips of her pussy. George might not have had sex, but he’d still seen his share of porn films. Nicole’s labia seemed plusher and somehow more comfortable looking than the girls he’d seen in those films. They tugged at him with a primal urge and his cock twitched to life as the image of slipping it between those cushioned lips entered his thoughts.

“That’s more like it,” Nicole said as she bent down to caress his erection with her hand.

Her labia twitched, gaping hungrily to reveal a glistening red tunnel. George shivered. The girls in the films he’d watched had never been able to do that. No human was able to do that.

Nicole laughed at his fear. “Just wait, in a moment this lovely rock-hard cock is going to be inside there. Then my sweet little cunt will suck all that fear right out of you. As well as everything else,” she added with a wicked laugh.

George didn’t get a chance to protest. Nicole sat down, smothering his face in the soft flesh of her ass. The bed rocked and swayed beneath him as she ground her body against him. He felt the moist folds of her sex rub against his nose and mouth. Something slender and whip-like wound around his throat.

He couldn’t breathe. Her ass covered his face like a pillow, blocking off his airways. Her warm juices dribbled onto and between his lips. Each drip set off firecrackers of sensation across his nerve-endings. The opposite of a numbing agent, her fluids heightened the sensitivity of whatever skin they came into contact with. George’s lips and tongue fizzed with pleasure. Nicole laughed wickedly and wiggled her body on top of his face.

George still couldn’t breathe. Her tail tightened around his neck like a noose. His mouth and nose were smothered between her ass cheeks. He started to feel light-headed.

Nicole waited until he was on the verge of passing out—George had no idea how she knew; she just knew—and lifted up her ass. Grateful, George took a deep breath—

—and nearly choked on an overpowering, musky scent. It surrounded his head in a cloying cloud and—with his lungs starved for air—George was helpless as he drew the heady perfume into his body. His first instinct was to cough out the corrupted air, but he had no chance to do that as Nicole was already sitting back down on him, smothering him back between the luscious curves of her ass.

The scent was like a fine liqueur—the first taste abrasive, but after that becoming smooth, warm, pleasant; something to crave. Tendrils of perfume twined up his nostrils and wrapped his brain up in soft cotton wool. He felt like he was floating up in the clouds. The bed, so soft and comfortable beneath him, felt like a big fluffy cloud.

The next time Nicole raised her ass George was eager to inhale more of her sweet-smelling musk. He felt it rush down through his body like a head of steam. The pressure built up beneath his manhood and it swelled up even harder until it was throbbing with need.

“Mmm yes,” Nicole purred. “Drown in my lust.”

She folded her body down on him until her breasts were resting on his midriff. Long, skilful fingers touched, prodded and flicked his erection. They crawled down between his legs and tickled through the hairs on his testicles. George’s sigh of pleasure was cut off—smothered—in the descending folds of Nicole’s sex.

A soft hand wrapped around the base of George’s cock. Soft, full lips kissed the tip. Just a light peck for the first, second and third touch. For the fourth, the lips remained there, pressed against the swollen mushroom head of his dick. They slowly sucked, drawing the tip into her mouth like a strand of spaghetti. A quicksilver tongue lapped up the pre-cum drooling from the opening to his urethra.

George groaned into her smothering pussy. His body twitched.

“A-ha,” Nicole released his cock and scolded. “Not yet.”

She pursed her lips and blew on the tip of George’s cock. Something—it felt like a smoke ring or bubble of energy, yet tangible—rolled down the outside of George’s shaft. It settled at the root and cinched tight, choking off George’s premature orgasm before it even started. Dammed, the pleasure backed up and cascaded through George’s writhing body.

“You don’t come until I say you can come,” Nicole said, her voice as soft and as authoritative as an old-fashioned schoolmistress.

Her warm lips enclosed the head of his cock and gave another teasing suck.

“And I’m not letting you come until you’re buried deep inside my hungry vagina,” she released his cock to say.

Her warm breath flowed over and teased the throbbing head of his cock with maddening swirls. Nicole dipped her head forward and took another teasing suck, going deeper this time, letting the head of George’s cock rest on her moist, fleshy tongue. One hand pumped the base of his cock while the fingers of the other fondled and toyed with his balls.

George writhed and squirmed beneath her, battered by waves of sensation crashing through his body. He was helpless as she used her fingers and mouth to play him like a virtuoso musician. Unused to the touch of a woman, he felt the desire to come rise in him again and again, only to crash into and be repelled by the choke around the root of his penis.

Nicole shifted position, climbing off his face. George was finally able to take a breath untainted with the odour of her sex.

“My pussy is hungry,” Nicole said, letting her soft hand caress up the underside of George’s cock. “I think it’s time to let her feed.”


To be continued...

Friday, April 29, 2011

Riddles and Validations

A little bit of tubthumping I did over at The Self Publishing Revolution.

Riddle me this:

What’s the difference between a self-pubbed author who sells X copies and a trad-pubbed author who sells X copies?

(I haven’t, by the way, but if you’d like to help me achieve this goal and have a liking for weird, kinky horror, please feel free to mosey on over here…)

It’s easy to be insecure as a writer. There aren’t finishing lines to cross first, opponents to punch out or teams to score more points than. As with most creative endeavours, where quality is subjective, it’s hard to tell if you’re any good or not.

Acceptance with a publishing house gives validation, or so the argument goes (although Joe Konrath refers to it as an example of Stockholm Syndrome). It’s a stamp of approval. Get that deal—and the advance—and a writer can say with authority, “Yes, I am a real author!”

The problem with self-publishing is the ‘published’ part is always going to come with air quotes. If any old oik can shove their badly written mush up onto Amazon, then ‘being published’ no longer feels like an achievement. For that reason self-publishing is often pushed aside and treated as a special case. If the author had to do it themselves, they probably weren’t good enough to be published in the first place. I think many of us have held this view at some point and some almost certainly still do. Check the membership guidelines of professional writers' organisations like the HWA and SFWA and you’ll see very clear stipulations on what does or doesn’t count as a valid publication for obtaining active membership.

Now that the ebook explosion has burst the dam, how important is the traditional stamp of approval?

As validation goes, that stamp is only a proxy when you think about it. To use a simple fantasy analogy, it’s an entrance exam granting permission to go and slay the dragon. Congratulations! You passed. But you still have to go and kill that dragon…

If someone else decides to skip all those stupid trials, goes straight to the dragon and hacks its head right off, are they any less of a dragonslayer?

In this case the dragon—and true validation—is finding an audience, whether it is small and distinguished or massive and lucrative.

What happens when more and more writers choose to go it alone, not because they aren’t good enough, but because it makes more economic sense than signing away a huge chunk of their royalties? Clauses like this (from HWA’s active membership requirements)

With the sole exception of comic books, self-published work can not be used for qualification purposes. "Self-published work" is defined as written material disseminated by the author (for example, email or electronic publications, publication on the author's Web site, or printed publications sold on consignment or solely by the author), or written material whose basic publication costs are defrayed in whole or in part by the author.

will cease to make any sense. As will references to 5¢/word rates and minimum advances.

Riddle me this:

Person A gets a $5,000 advance from an accredited publisher, but only goes on to sell a couple of hundred copies. Person B makes $10,000 a month selling 99¢ self-published ebooks on Amazon. Which one is the professional author?

(I’m not trying to bash the HWA, by the way. I was a fresh-faced wannabe member a while back and I found them helpful in terms of market information and discovering new writers I hadn’t read before.)

Which leads us back to the original question:

What’s the difference between a self-pubbed author who sells X copies and a trad-pubbed author who sells X copies?

My gut says the answer is this:

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Locked in with a Succubus, part 6

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5.


“Then I’m sorry to disappoint you,” George said. “I only run that line to make the ladies think better of me. Do you honestly believe a man can get to thirty-four—in this day and age—without ever having sex?”

Nicole chuckled. She leant over him until his eyes were staring up into hers. Their emptiness was a hole that threatened to tug out his soul and reel it up into limitless black depths.

“Cute bluff,” she said. “Not very effective when I can see it clearly for myself.”

“How?” George said. “It’s not like I have a hymen or anything. What’s the difference between spunking my load into a woman’s vagina or the palm of my hand?”

“We know,” Nicole said.

She dipped her head and sniffed George’s chest. Her cheeks reddened and she sighed in pleasure.

“Here.” She took his hand and pressed the palm against her crotch. “Do you think this happens around every man?”

George’s eyes widened. The fabric of her panties was completely sodden. He felt the cleft of her sex beneath. He drew his hand back in alarm as he felt her vulva move independently against his hand. Like a mouth.

Unabashed hunger shone in Nicole’s eyes.

“I want so much to shove your hard cock in my pussy and suck and suck and suck,” she said, her supple lips coming together in a luscious pout.

As much as the prospect thrilled George, he knew it would be too much for him. She’d be too much for him. Her passion would incinerate him like a moth in a candle flame. He had to get away.

Nicole started to undress him, first peeling off his jumper and vest from his unresisting body. As she moved down to his trousers George felt flickers of life return to his limbs. The paralysis, or strange state of blissful enervation, was wearing off. He rolled over and kicked out blindly as Nicole tugged at his trousers and underwear. The bed rocked and swayed with violent motion as he struggled beneath her.

His trousers came away and with them Nicole. Naked now, George crawled across the wildly pitching surface of the bed. He reached out with a hand, found the hard rim of the bed, started to pull himself towards it.

A warm weight settled on his back. Nicole lay on top of him, her soft breasts squashed against his back. George stopped squirming.

“It’s really not possible for a man to fight a succubus from this position,” she whispered in his ear. “Not when he’s naked and she’s on top of him. Not when her naked flesh is pressed against his.”

George’s mouth gaped open and he released a little sigh. Her skin felt so good against him—warm and smooth like silk. He felt a pleasant buzz wherever she came into contact with him, a luxurious tingle which left the rest of his skin hungering to experience the same pleasure.

“It takes the fight right out of them.” Nicole dripped honeyed sin into his ear. “It’s pushed aside as all those illicit little desires come bubbling to the surface.”

George gave another soft little groan. His thoughts were submerged beneath a deluge of pornographic images. Full pouting red lips; eyes gleaming with lust; ripe, round breasts with perky erect nipples; glistening pink pussies—all calling out to him, hungry for him. George struggled to hold on as the torrent threatened to wash his mind away.

Nicole came closer. Her soft lips brushed against his ear. “I can satisfy all of them, every last filthy one of them,” she whispered in his ear.

George shivered beneath her.

She ran a claw lightly over the skin of his shoulder. “What? Doesn’t that appeal to you?”

It did, but his terror of the consequences more than outweighed the stirrings he felt in his balls. It was so unfair.

“Being a virgin at thirty-four is bad enough,” George said. “Now I get to be savoured as a delicacy by a devil because of it. Whatever happened to punishing the deserving sinners?”

Nicole’s finger tickled down between his ass cheeks.

“We wouldn’t be considered evil if we only targeted the bad people,” Nicole said. “Do you consider this to be punishment?”

She lightly kissed the back of his shoulder. Her hand cupped his balls and gently pumped. A warm burst of pleasure washed over George’s body.

“Oh, but you do,” Nicole said. “You tremble like prey. You smell of fear like prey. If I fuck you like this I’ll surely eat you all up like prey.”

She straddled the small of his back and sat up. Out of the corner of his eye George saw her tail loop around the handle of one of the exotic bottles sitting on a bedside shelf. Her tail lifted it up and brought it back to her.

“I think we’ll wear away all those fears with a sexy little massage,” Nicole said.

George heard her work the pump handle of the bottle. He felt a cool liquid splash across his back. It didn’t remain cool for long as her skilful hands started to rub and knead it into his flesh. She pushed her hands up either side of his spine and then across his shoulders, spreading a pleasant little buzz in her wake. They moved up to his neck and she used her long fingers to work out the knots in his muscles. The fragrant aroma of the massage oil tickled his nostrils.

“My, so much tension,” she said. “Have you ever been massaged before?”

“No,” George replied.

Nicole squirted more oil onto his back and danced along his spine with her thumbs. She pressed down with her palms and slid them out to George’s sides, smoothing out the flesh beneath them. A nice feeling of warmth permeated through the muscles of his back.

“You were never tempted to pay a visit to one of those naughty little massage parlours?” Nicole asked.

Her hands glided up to the back of his neck and rubbed behind his ears with soothing circular movements.

“I was always curious about what went on in those places,” George replied. “Miss Kitson suggested I go in and find out. We had a little joke about it.”

He paused.

“I thought about it,” he admitted, “a little, but it was never going to happen. You never know where the girls are from, whether they’re on drugs, crazy, under duress. Not worth the risk. Even if it went fine, I’d still feel like I cheated.”

George didn’t know why he was so forthcoming all of a sudden. He felt odd again. Fogged up. The scented oil smelt extremely pleasant and Nicole’s hands were supremely skilled at working out the kinks and knots in his muscles.

“Miss Kitson did book a masseuse for me one time,” he said. “Not this type,” he added hastily, “a sports masseuse.”

“Sports masseuse?” Nicole queried.

“Yeah. I hurt my knee and Miss Kitson sent a girl round to look at it. A pretty young oriental woman. Really pretty, actually. She had me strip down to nothing but a towel and I was really embarrassed she’d see I had an erection.”

Nicole paused. She chuckled at a joke only she understood.

“Of course she’d try Arisa first,” Nicole murmured. “The weaver and the serpent aren’t reliable enough and she definitely couldn’t send you to the Scottish village.”

“Arisa, yes, that was her name,” George said, surprised Nicole knew it also. “Lovely girl. Had a really nice smile. We never went through with the massage in the end. Something cropped up at the last minute and she had to leave in a hurry. Some kind of family emergency. At least that’s what she said. I think she took one look at my hairy back and legged it.”

Nicole laughed at another private joke.

“I think you have a very nice back,” she said, straightening her arms and rubbing her hands over his shoulder blades. Her sultry voice drifted over him like a warm quilt.

“We never did get round to making another appointment,” George said wistfully.

“A shame,” Nicole said. “I hear Arisa gives a very pleasant body-to-body massage. Truly enveloping.”

Her fingers kneaded the muscles of George’s neck and shoulders.

“And lucky,” Nicole added. “I hear she’s also quite the maneater.”

She bent down low, sniffed the back of George’s neck and murmured contently. George felt the wetness of her sex where it rubbed against the small of his back.

“I’m not without my own talents,” Nicole whispered in his ear.

She lay down on top of him. Her arms went around him, her thighs squeezed against his sides and she squashed her soft breasts against his back. The pleasant tingle of skin-to-skin contact was all around him. Ripples of pleasure ran out across his skin from where her nipples pressed against his flesh. Her heat—and lust—enfolded him. He soaked in it, drew it in through his skin in a form of osmosis. Nicole murmured. She held him tighter. The flow of pleasure increased. George felt trailers of fire race through his blood vessels. He moaned as he felt the heat settle in his balls. They felt bloated—overripe—and the desire to plunge his cock into a soft, snug orifice and relieve the pressure grew overwhelming, shouldering aside other thoughts.

“Relax. There’s no escape now,” Nicole whispered in his ear. “Mmm, I like to let my victims melt with pleasure. Then I slurp them all up like delicious ice cream.”

George remembered why he should be afraid.


To be continued...

Friday, April 22, 2011

Close, but no Earth Day goodies for me

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

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

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

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

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Locked in with a Succubus, part 5

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

The plot thickens...


“I’m a succubus. I guess Inari neglected to tell you that,” Nicole said. “And you appear...” she turned a key in the door, locking it with a click “...to be locked in with me.” She turned to George with a predatory smile on her face. She hung the key around her neck like a pendant and dropped it down into her bosom.

George flailed out with his arms and legs. His attempts to get away were hampered by the rocking motions of the bed beneath him.

“I love this bed,” Nicole said. “Aside from being extremely comfortable, it’s also quite difficult to get out of.” She smiled, showing off two long fangs. “Perfect for my more surprised guests.”

She crouched and jumped. A downward thrust of her bat wings boosted it into a graceful leap that took her right onto the bed and astride George’s body. The bed rocked and swayed with the force of her landing. George lashed out with his arms and legs and tried to buck her off him.

“So lively,” Nicole said. “You should save that energy for later. You’ll need it.”

She whispered words so alien they slipped from George’s ears before his brain could register them. She leaned over George’s struggling form, pursed full lips and exhaled a breath. It took form—a giant peach-coloured heart—and expanded to cover George’s face and upper body. He gasped as it sank into his body. Pleasant energy flowed into him in a wave. It felt like he’d been dipped in warm honey. His legs stopped kicking. His arms fell back against his sides. He felt relaxed. Languid.

“That’s better,” Nicole said. She settled down astride his stomach.

She noticed George’s gaze hovering in the vicinity of her exposed chest.

“Like what you see?” she said. She folded her arms beneath her breasts, pushing them up and accentuating her cleavage.

George hadn’t seen anything like them, at least not in the flesh. They were gorgeous—big, round, soft. They were better even than the perfectly sculpted examples he’d seen while surfing for porn on the internet. They didn’t need the elaborate tattoos to be eye-catching.

He couldn’t look away. He didn’t know why. He felt strange—clouded, horny.

“How about I give you a closer look,” Nicole said, her voice low and dirty.

She folded her body over George’s until he felt the soft pillows of her breasts against either side of his face. Nicole twisted her body, playfully buffeting him with the heavy, soft flesh of her boobs. George couldn’t think straight. Too fogged up. A strange desire came over him for Nicole to press down harder, to bury him in the soft valley of her cleavage, to smother him completely in her tits.

Nicole sat up. One arm was folded beneath her breasts. Her other hand rested on her chin.

“Hmm, I wonder,” she said.

She bent down again. This time she wrapped her arms around the back of his head and squashed his face tight up against her chest. The warm flesh of her boobs pressed tightly against his face. It felt good until George realised he couldn’t breathe. His nose and mouth were completely smothered by her flesh. He tried to squirm out. Nicole wrapped her arms more tightly around his head, keeping his face wedged up in the soft valley of her cleavage.

It should have been easy to throw her off. She was smaller, lighter than him.

He couldn’t. It wasn’t because she possessed excessive strength or anything like that, but rather his had deserted him. He didn’t have the energy to break her grip.

Nicole shifted position, relaxing her grip long enough to allow him a shallow breath, one filled with the spicy perfume of her body. Then she pressed back down again, smothering him in the warm space between her breasts while the waterbed rocked and undulated beneath them. She played the game for a while, each time seeming to take longer and longer between allowing George breaths, until he thought he must pass out for sure.

She stopped and sat upright. George opened his mouth and gasped in the air his lungs craved. Nicole straddled him, a contemplative expression on her face. She reached behind her and stroked a hand along the noticeable bulge in George’s trousers.

He was hard? Why was he hard?

“I thought so,” Nicole said. “I had a feeling I wasn’t too far off with the first room.”

The first room—that dungeon? What did she mean?

“Mmm, this is going to be fun,” Nicole said. “I really enjoy playing the wicked seductress. It’s been a while since I could really cut loose with all of my talents.”

“What do you want with me?” George asked.

Nicole gave him a predatory smile. “I’m a sex demon. Take a good guess.”

She bent over and ran the moist tip of her tongue up George’s cheek.

“Mmm, a truly delicious virgin and a well-matured one at that,” she said.

“What does my virginity have to do with anything?” George asked.

“Claiming a man’s virginity is a succubus’s greatest prize,” Nicole said. “The older the virgin, the greater the pleasure. At your age, you’re quite the hot commodity in the succubus world. I’m going to savour this.”

Nicole ran a long black fingernail down George’s chest. Her other hand gave his balls a teasing squeeze.

“Then I’m sorry to disappoint you,” George said. “I only run that line to make the ladies think better of me. Do you honestly believe a man can get to thirty-four—in this day and age—without ever having sex?”



To be continued...

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Encouragement for all Erotica Writers

Zowie! Go Selena Kitt! Or should that be $elena Kitt.

Selena Kitt started off eXcessica publishing and is now doing very very well out of erotica ebooks. Success well deserved, I'd say. Selena was ahead of the curve when she set up eXcessica. Back then it was to have the requisite stable of writers to get work up with Fictionwise. Of course, then Amazon came along with the Kindle and ebook publishing mushroomed into a huge market.

It's encouraging news and indicative of how much the ebook revolution has opened things out. I wonder how many more Amanda Hockings, Joe Konraths, Selena Kitts and M.E. Hydras will emerge in the new world of epublishing.

Okay, maybe not that last dude. Should be locked up in the nuthouse if you ask me. Writes those horrible stories...