Covers Lie

I love this cover. It’s so deceptive. I think my publisher has a perverse sense of humour. Look at the cute little demon on the pumpkin—so naughty and so sweet. No one would guess the horrors lurking within these pages…




It’s a perfect fit, especially for the nameless succubus from the succubus tablet. She’s cute, she lures you in and then…snap!

I suppose technically it’s the kind of cover that’s more in keeping with an urban fantasy book—maybe a tale of modern-day sexy witches or vampires fighting crime, or the perils of buying fashionable shoes. These stories are much darker and weirder than that. A reader expecting another collection of run-of-the-mill urban fantasy stories is going to have their mind…opened.

Maybe I could have asked for something different, but I like this cover. It’s deceptive. It’s going to draw in unsuspecting readers. Boring marketing theory be damned. It’s Halloween—a time for devils to play. I’m going to have some fun and what can be more fun for a horror-erotica writer than shocking some unsuspecting readers.

This is my trap. Open it on October 21. I dare you…

A Succubus for Halloween: Excerpt I

Here's an excerpt from "Oil Wrestling a Succubus", one of the new stories from a Succubus for Halloween. Spot the recurring character. ;)

* * * *

What kind of ring was this? Janssen thought as he walked into the arena. There were no ropes and the floor was sunken. If anything, it looked like a large inflatable paddling pool covered in a blue plastic tarpaulin. The wall didn’t rise much higher than his thighs. Janssen stepped over it onto a surface that rocked and swayed beneath him.

It was a damn inflatable paddling pool.

Janssen looked up into the rows of seats. There wasn’t much of an audience, maybe twenty people or so. He saw Rodríguez sitting with a grotesquely overweight man. He guessed that must be the big boss.

What was he supposed to do?

Janssen’s confusion deepened as he watched a statuesque girl step into the pool. Her short black hair was swept up like flames.

Surely they didn’t expect her to fight him?

The girl took off her fine black silk robe and tossed it aside.

Oh man, what a body.

She looked like one of those porn star angels he’d seen on DVDs while over at one of the other guy’s apartments. Fresher though. Without the worn out and used up look some of those girls had. And fit as well. In the athletic sense. Sure, she had the big bouncy boobs he liked to see in those dirty films, but the rest of her body was trim and lithe. Her titties were contained in a black bikini top the same colour and sheen as a pool of black oil. It was stretched taut to hold them in place.

He wouldn’t mind getting his hands on those. Or pinning her and...

He felt the phantom thwack of his grandmamma’s stick as a series of lurid thoughts ran through his head. But hot damn, a body like that sure was distracting.

The girl walked forwards, no trace of fear in her clear blue eyes. There was an easy grace to her movements. She looked like she knew how to handle herself.

But she was a girl. Tall, well-toned and lean, but still a girl. Janssen had maybe a hundred pounds on her. She couldn’t seriously expect to beat him.

“Welcome, treasured guests.” A sultry female voice came over the PA. “Tonight, for your pleasure, we have a very special bout.”

The voice lacked the typical bombast of a fight announcer, instead oozing the quiet sensuality of a late night radio host.

“Another brave challenger has come to take on the exotic wiles of the Ebony Succubus. A round of applause, please.”

What did he do? Janssen wanted to look good for Rodríguez and the Ojos de Oro, but he didn’t want to hurt her. His grandmamma had brought him up well. He didn’t hit girls.

An object hit him in the chest and landed at his feet. It was a clear plastic squeezy bottle.

He looked to where it had come from and saw the blonde girl.

“Have fun.” She winked at him.

Over on the other side of the ring the black-haired girl was squirting clear liquid—oil—all over her body and rubbing it in until her pale skin glistened under the lights. She gave Janssen a grin that looked exactly like one of the girls from the guys’ dirty DVDs.

Oh, so it was that kind of wrestling.

* * * *

A Succubus for Halloween and Other Tales of Terrifying Temptresses, available in print and ebook from Friday, October 21st.

New manyeyedhydra stories: Halloween 2011!

It's time to crank the hype handle. My third collection of short stories, A Succubus for Halloween and other tales of Terrifying Temptresses, is coming out in a month's time.

Here's the full story rundown:

1. A Succubus for Halloween
2. The Orgy of the Pink Flesh
3. Naga Special Massage
4. Pearls of the Mediterranean
5. Halloween Nÿte
6.The Big Black Bed
7. Succubus vs. Cleric
8. Oil Wrestling a Succubus
9. Shrimp and the Crab Centaur Girls
10. Welcome to the City
11. Capramendes, the Milkmaid
12. Serving the Earth Mother
13. A Halloween Party with a Succubus

Some of those titles will be familiar, some not. Even the titles that seem familiar will be a little different to what might be expected ("Naga Special Massage" - unless you caught the version in Divine Matches).

What to expect. Succubi. Lots of hot sexy succubi. It's Halloween and the sex demons are out to ensnare their victims in webs of seductive pleasures.

There's also weirdness and—because I can’t keep horrorhead under control—some blood-curdling squick. Exactly what a good anthology devoted to both horror and sex needs.

One month to go and I'll be giving out excerpts to whet the appetite over the coming weeks. In the meantime I'll lead off with the obvious:

"They'll give you pleasures beyond your wildest dreams, and terrors beyond your darkest nightmares..."

Song for the Week: Mar De Grises - A Sea of Dead Comets

This is the last track (okay next to last if you include the bonus) from Chilean doom metal band Mar de Grises's last album, Streams Inwards. The ending puts me in mind of a world collapsing into a black hole. Haunting.



Great album.

Night of the (Predictable) Demons

Two reasons to see Night of the Demons:


Ugh. Sorry. I don’t know what came over me there. The sixties maybe. Or a strong urge to put on a flat cap and take t’whippet for a walk.

Anyway. The attractive lady is Bobbi Sue Luther, who also happens to be the face of St. Pauli Girl beer. Not that I make a habit of stalking attractive scream queen’s Wikipedia pages or anything. Um…

Sadly, the film is rather disappointing. No fault of the gorgeous Ms Luther. It's all a bit too predictable—place a cast of attractive plastic people in a spooky house and kill them off in gory fashion over the course of ninety minutes or so. Nothing new there. Bobbie Sue Luther plays the one-who-drinks-too-much-and-must-die; Diora Baird plays her friend, the slutty-one-who-has-sex-and-must-die; and Monica Keena rounds out the trio as the goody-two-shoes-who-obviously-survives.

*gnashes teeth at predictable, crude, clunking horror movie morality*

There’s an interesting scene that hints at what the movie could have been. Diora Baird’s character, fresh after being converted to demonhood, pushes a lipstick into her breast, which then travels down her body and exits in a puddle of blood presumably from her intimate nether regions. It’s kinky and perverse and it would have been a far more interesting film if the makers had taken that theme of demonic perversity and dialled it up to eleven. Instead the film falls back onto the safe old clichés of snarling, fright-show mask demons jumping out of the darkness and pulling out their victim’s entrails. It’s fun, but it’s been done before and much better in countless other horror films.

I’ve been disappointed with most of the spate of recent horror remakes. Compared to the inventiveness and craziness shown in some of the recent Japanese gore movies, the US films look staid and straitjacketed. Where’s the sense of fun that was around back in the days when Sam Raimi was running around with a camera strapped to a plank?

Song for the Week: Shining (NOR) - Fisheye

Some more musical craziness from Norway. This is Shining (NOR - there's also a Swedish black metal band with the same name just to confuse matters) with "Fisheye" from their recent Blackjazz album. Bonkers.

Monster Girl Quest: Chapter 2 Demo Out

Hmm. Hits are down. Need to drum up some interest to get the publicity for Succubus for Halloween rolling. Let's blog about Monster Girl Quest! :)

Torotoro resistance has put up a trial version for Chapter 2 of Monster Girl Quest (or Monster Girl Assault or whatever is the best translation in English). You can check that out here. And if you want a version you can read, the ever-resourceful IchigoGyuunyuu/RogueTranslator has already done a translated version, which is...uh...not there, because Hongfire is moving to a new datacentre. Awkward.

I'll post that link when it resurfaces again.

The demo is set in a succubus village—Yum!—and features some amusing comments from the ever-snarky Alice as to the real reasons why heroes from all over the land have arrived there to “defend” the village from succubus attack. The trial fight is with a freshly converted succubus and she sports a new level drain attack. I’d have preferred a different fight being trialled as she’s a bit too ‘fresh’ compared to the more classic succubus, Arumaeruma, from the first chapter, but this is to be expected in a game where the creator has gone out of their way to try and encompass as many different tastes (perversions? :)) as they can.

Something to whet the appetite, and hopefully it means chapter two is not far from completion.