A Big Erotica Freeze Is A-Coming...

This isn't the best of news.

In a nutshell, the morality police have deployed the banhammers and no one has the slightest idea where the line of acceptability is anymore. I don’t know where this leaves my publisher, eXcessica, or the status of my own titles. Without Paypal (someone—Google, Bitcoin, anyone not Apple—please put these jokers out of business) I’m probably not going to be able to sell directly through the excessica.com store, as it won’t exist unless Selena Kitt can find another payment processor. On top of that there’s the uncertainty of not knowing what the other book retailers will accept.

Bestiality, Necrophilia and Paedophilia have always been big no-no’s for erotica. Incest was heading there, and now it looks like Pseudo-Incest (where the participants are not blood relations) and Rape are about to join them.

Personally, Incest isn’t something that appeals to me. It’s an enormously popular category on Literotica, but I’ve never felt the desire to write about or read it. Doesn’t matter. If other people want to read or write about it, that’s their business and fine by me.

As for Rape, what the hell does that cover? That can range from ugly stuff where dudes fantasize about gang-banging the uppity cheerleader with their homies, to non-consent fantasies written and enjoyed by women about pure and sexually-frustrated maidens being ravished by hunks of studliness. Where does that leave my stories? Does it count if it’s female-on-male? I have no fucking clue. Selena tried to clarify with Paypal on BDSM—a category with sometimes dubious consent—and was told to yank the lot. Last I heard, BDSM is a hefty chunk of erotica and mostly features consenting adults. How do you stay within a line when there is no fucking line?

You might think this doesn’t matter to you, that it’s only the muckiest of mucky stuff that’s affected. It does. Same for all the paranormal erotica writers that let out a sigh of relief when bestiality was clarified to not include werewolves and other shape-shifters. Don’t get too comfortable. They WILL come for you next. It’s what they do.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" – Evelyn Beatrice Hall (often misattributed to Voltaire)

Maybe we should just ban the people that try to ban things.

Valentine's Day Promotion for A Succubus for Valentine's Day

As I'm a bitter, twisted, possibly certifiable individual with a spider-infested lump of black coal for a heart, Valentine's Day is the worst day of all. All that saccharine schmaltz and pink froth—Ugh!

To help fellow warped malfeasants through this most trying of days I’m dropping the price on my A Succubus for Valentine’s Day collection (ebook) to 99 cents for this week. This was the collection I put out this time last year. If you haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet, you have until Sunday (19th) to take advantage of my irrational hostility to February the 14th and get it on the cheap.



The new price is already updated in the eXcessica store, but it usually takes a little longer (about 12 hours) for amazon, B & N and others to update.

Guaranteed to take away that sickly sweet aftertaste of too much Valentine's Day confection. Enjoy!

HWA sucks in debate for Vampire Novel of the Century

The Horror Writer's Association is marking the centenary of Bram Stoker's death by adding an award for Vampire Book of the Century to this year's Bram Stoker Awards. By century they mean 1912 to 2011, not the 20th century as I discovered after making a tit of myself on the comment boards of a major British newspaper.

The nominees are:

The Soft Whisper of the Dead by Charles L. Grant
Salem's Lot by Stephen King
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

It's a selection that leaves me conflicted between the book I'd like to see win (Anno Dracula) and the book I think should win (Interview with the Vampire).

Kim Newman is probably better known today as Empire's goto man for reviewing B-movies of questionable quality. He's also a bloody good horror writer. The first thing I used to do on purchasing the latest Year's Best Horror or other similar anthology was flick straight to the Kim Newman story.

Anno Dracula takes Dracula as a starting point and plays What If! the heroes lost and Dracula won. What we get is an alternate history with a blood-bloated Count on the throne of the British Empire, Queen Victoria on a leash, and vampirism spread throughout England. It's a lot of fun and, as with all of Kim Newman's work, part of the entertainment is spotting all the references to the historical figures and fictional characters of the time.

Of the other books, I Am Legend might seem like an odd choice on a vampire novel shortlist. Isn't that a zombie apocalypse book? you might think, especially if you've only seen the film adaptations. While it might be hard to believe in these sparkly, post-Twilight days, vampires were once used as a metaphor for contagion and plague, a role which has largely been stolen by zombies in more recent times. This is also the reason, despite being an excellent book, it shouldn't win. A true thoroughbred, but someone changed the track midrace and now it’s charging down the wrong path.

As good as the other books are, I don’t think any of them come close to having the same cultural impact as Interview with the Vampire. You only have to look at the shelves clogged up with vampire fiction at your local bookstore (if it hasn’t already closed down) to see the enormous influence of Anne Rice’s work. Without Interview would we have had the vampire-craze of Twilight, or most of Urban Fantasy in general? As much as horror purists might hate how vampires have changed from badass and evil to emo and whiny, it’s really hard to argue against Interview with the Vampire being the defining vampire novel of the last century in the way Dracula was the defining vampire novel of the one before.

I’m still going to put up a link to Newman’s Anno Dracula, as he’s basically awesome and definitely worth checking out if you haven’t read his work before.



I would have liked to have seen Brian Lumley’s Necroscope on the list, but as I haven’t read either the Grant or Yarbro books I can’t legitimately argue it should be on there at their expense.

Anyway, vampires are so last century. I think it’s time for the sexy, soul-sucking succubi to claim the darkness… ;)

Succubus Summoning 101 is out! (as a novel)

It's Friday. There have been a few minor teething problems, but Succubus Summoning 101, the novel, is now out and available to buy in both eBook and print form.




Apologies to anyone trying to buy from the eXcessica site today. It should now be available to buy instead of displaying as coming soon. You can get it here, and the print version from CreateSpace is also available here.

It's also available from the major online ebook stores such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, and in a variety of formats.

This is sort of my donation button if you enjoyed reading the series. Thanks for the support and I hope you like the little extras in the novel.

Succubus Summoning 201 should be out later this year. That's a release to get more excited about... ;)

Succubus Summoning 101: Excerpt

Succubus Summoning 101 is coming out this Friday. While I can't really hype it up to the same degree as A Succubus for Halloween, I couldn't pass the opportunity to post a little excerpt. Take flight with Rosa...

(warning: things get a little hot and steamy from here. If you're easily offended, or not 18, and got here by accident, now would be a safe time to leave :) )
Don't warn them, it takes away the surprise.

* * * *

Phil dashed for the door.

Five succubi in heat. There was no way he’d survive that. He had to get out of the castle and take his chances in the forest.

He got halfway across the courtyard before Rosa swooped down out of the sky and gathered him up in her embrace.

“Fleeing prey, my favourite,” Rosa laughed as she carried him up into the lurid pink sky.

Phil struggled, but Rosa wrapped her arms and legs tightly around him. She crushed her soft lips against his and kissed him until the fight left his body. His body went limp in her embrace.

“We’ve never fucked while flying, have we fledgling?” Rosa laughed as her broad wings held them motionless in the sky. “This is going to be fun.”

Phil’s thoughts were clouded and his limbs felt weak. Rosa’s hot kiss had drained all the resistance from him. Her powerful thighs wrapped around his waist and he shivered in pleasurable surprise as his erection slid into her moist vagina.

Hot.

Hot and tight.

Rosa’s body boiled with lust. Her heat enfolded his body and overwhelmed his senses. Still flapping her wings to keep them airborne, she thrust her hips against him. Her lust was contagious. Phil pushed back against her, feeling his cock slide against the hot walls of her pussy.

Rosa laughed with wild abandon and swooped around the black stone minarets of the castle. The horizon and the sky became one dizzying blur to Phil as he span in Rosa’s embrace. Faster and faster she flew, until Phil felt the wind streaming through his hair and down the naked skin of his back. Higher she took them, until the castle became toy-sized beneath them. They were suspended in the sky, their bodies slamming together in passion.

She planted another fiery kiss on Phil’s lips as their bodies slowly turned and ascent changed into a steep dive. Rosa cried with passion as the wind whistled past them. Phil’s heart thudded in his throat as they hurtled downwards. He saw the dark stone walls of the castle rushing up to meet them.

Did Rosa know? Did she care? Her wings were folded back against her body as they continued their steep dive.

The black walls and spiky towers filled Phil’s vision now, and still Rosa showed no signs of slowing down. Too fast. She wasn’t going to be able to pull up in time. They were going to be dashed against the walls. They were going to die.

They were going to…

They didn’t hit.

Phil opened his eyes and almost wished he hadn’t as narrow stone walls whizzed by in a blur. They were plunging through some kind of chimney system inside the castle. Rosa navigated the turns and sudden forks with a speed that left Phil breathless. Mere inches separated his naked flesh from the hard stone as it zipped past.

They fell deeper through the castle until the walls opened out into a cavernous pentagonal room. Phil saw a floor covered in blood-red sheets and scattered with pastel cushions rushing up to meet them before his view changed with a lurch. Rosa had flipped him mid-air and he was now looking up at a ceiling covered in swathes of plush velvet and embedded with large mirrors.

Their descent abruptly slowed as Rosa opened her great red wings above him. Not enough, Phil thought. They were still falling too quickly. He was still going to hit the ground har—

They hit the floor with a soft whumpf. Sheets and pillows were thrown up in the air by the impact. The floor gave beneath him and he realised he’d landed on a gigantic bed, luxuriously soft and very deep. He sank into the surface with Rosa’s hot body riding on top of him, the impact driving his cock deeper into her tight pussy.

Their downward momentum was halted and then reversed as the bed sprang back. Phil was bounced upwards and into Rosa’s embrace. Her pussy squeezed around his cock and Phil groaned as he exploded within her, the head of his cock wedged deep into her hot flesh. At the same time Rosa’s vagina shuddered and shivered around his member as she too was claimed by a violent orgasm.

She rode him as the bed swayed and undulated beneath them, her hot pussy fluttering around his cock. Phil bucked and thrashed in helpless pleasure as she stretched out his orgasm until the ecstasy became almost unbearable. His balls convulsed as her dripping vagina hungrily sucked the seed from his body.

Phil thought he might expire from the pleasure, but gradually the wild pitching motions of the bed died down and his orgasm slowly petered out with it. He gasped great lungfuls of air as his jangling body recovered from the release.

“Whew, that was good,” Rosa said. Beads of sweat spilled from her forehead and formed on her full breasts.

Once Phil got his breath back, he took a look around at his surroundings. He was in a large pentagonal room with stone walls. The entire floor seemed to be taken up with this gigantic bed. Soft cushions and pillows were piled high all around him.

“Well done, Rosa. I see you’ve captured our little plaything.”

* * * *

Succubus Summoning 101. Out (finally!) as a novel this Friday.

As for the long-awaited Succubus Summoning 201, coming soon... ;)

There is no self-epublishing bubble (but you might not find gold…)

GuardianBooks announced on twitter “Two epublishing doom-sayers on @guardianbooks today.” I’m not sure I’d trust either with a crystal ball to be honest. In particular, I think Ewan Morrison’s argument that self-epublishing is a bubble is spectacularly off.

At the risk of sounding like a bargain-basement Joe Konrath, ebooks aren’t going away. It’s a technology shift. Ebooks are a bubble in the same way music CD’s, then .mp3 downloads are a bubble, or movies are a bubble, as in they’re not a bubble at all. There are people who still like vinyl records and theatre, but neither has the cultural significance they once had.

I can see why Morrison is trying to make an analogy between bubbles and self-epublishing, but I suspect Gold Rush is a better analogy. Fuelled by the success stories of writers like Amanda Hocking and John Locke, a bunch of folks have decided there’s gold in them thar hills, grabbed a shovel and charged off to make their fortunes. A rare few will strike a motherlode, some will eke out an existence panning dust and a whole lot of folks will return empty handed and disappointed.

This is what we’ll see with self-epublishing. There’s a lot of interest and excitement now, but that will fade once the Get-Rich-Quick merchants realise how much work is involved for little guarantee of success. The current glut of self-published ebooks will subside, but it won’t pop and collapse completely. People have put quill to parchment, or whatever equivalent, for a very long time now, mostly without any promise of riches and rewards, and there’s no reason to think the future is going to be any different.

As always with articles like this I get a slight whiff of Writer vs. writer snobbery. Writers are big, important people who write big, important words. They must receive cheques to support them writing their big, important words otherwise the whole of culture as we know it will collapse into the sewer. writers are hobbyists who scratch words out in their spare time after they’ve finished their shift and popped the kids off to bed. While what they do is nice and commendable, they’re not really important and, besides, they already have the financial support of their day job, or their partner.

When I read articles like this complaining about future hardships for publishing, I tend to substitute writer with Writer, because that’s what they really mean—the few deemed worthy enough to pass through the sanctified gates. Morrison talks about how bad it is when a newly self-epublished writer puts their book out and earns only £99 in a year. Um, the vast majority of writers never make anything, not a single penny. They spend six months, a year, whatever, writing a book and it doesn’t get published. THE END. Oh that’s right, I forget, those folks don’t count because they’re writers not Writers.

And Morrison thinks writers are going to suddenly stop overnight even though a century or more of receiving nothing failed to deter them in the past. Oh wait, my bad, he means those other Writers.

For the majority of writers, the old publishing paradigm was terrible. They couldn’t get published and no one read their work. Yes, this benefitted the reader by protecting them from an awful lot of crap, but it also atrophied choice, especially in marginal areas where publishers were afraid to take risks. Now it’s much better for the majority of writers—they get a chance to be read. These next few years will see more books available to read than at any previous point in human history. If there aren’t a few future classics amongst that lot we should give up as a species and all go and drown ourselves in the Atlantic.

The argument against that is the good books will all drown in the swamp of badly-written dreck. It’s bullcrap. If a book is good it will be found by someone, because it’s out there, to be read, forever. It’s available to be found, as opposed to being locked in a drawer somewhere, never to see the light of day, because it didn’t fit what the publishers of the time thought would make them money.

Morrison’s apocalyptic crash scenario is one where the competition between all the desperate self-pubbers creates a whirlpool of ever-lowering prices, which sucks in the major publishers and leaves no one able to make any money at all apart from Amazon. This could happen. As I mentioned earlier, over a century of receiving—on average—nothing has not deterred writers from writing. This would leave writing as the province of only eager amateurs. Purists would argue it should be done for the ‘art’ rather than money anyway, but they probably haven’t read a book written after 1870 either.

It could happen, but I don’t think it will. There is a bottom. Both Selena Kitt and Joe Konrath have experimented with pricing and come to similar conclusions. The 99c thing was fun for a while, but readers are prepared to pay more for better quality books, although probably not the crazy-high prices set by most mainstream publishers.

More likely, rather than crashing, self-epublishing will stabilise and mature. Readers will get savvier at both avoiding the crap and finding the books they want to read, and will ultimately benefit from greater choice. Despite this, it won’t be that different from traditional publishing in that a few lucky/talented writers will earn huge while the rest won’t make enough income to quit their day jobs.

The majority of writers are still better off. They make some money, whereas before they made none. They’ll find some readers, whereas before it was only friends and family. As for the Writers, they’ll have to prove they are Writers by being popular enough to sell enough books to support themselves, or by being good enough to win the awards/garner the reviews that will generate enough book sales to support themselves. If they can’t do this, then maybe they weren't that different from the rest of us writers in the first place.

If self-epublishing creates a stable ecosystem where writers that wouldn't have been published are able to supply readers whose tastes wouldn't have catered for, and allows those writers to make a profit, then it will be performing its role quite admirably.

Coming Soon... Succubus Summoning 101: The Novel

Out Friday 3rd Feb

“Is this where you tell me, ‘Yer a wizard’,” Phil said.

The man laughed. “No, not a wizard,” he said. “A warlock.”

“What’s the difference?” Phil manhandled a big bin liner full of crap into the skip.

“One’s make-believe while the other is very much real.”

So are daemons…

Phil Rowling, a normal eighteen-year-old, discovers this when he is plucked from a dead-end life of fast-food service and enrolled into Wargsnouts College for Warlocks. At the college students are taught how to summon and control daemons from hell.

Everyone at Wargsnouts knows what a succubus is, and why warlocks summon them. It’s a dirty joke shared in sniggers amongst the students. Succubi are female sex daemons, famed for their mastery of the arts of pleasure. Eager to experience this pleasure first-hand, Phil and his friend, Jake Pulman, take the Daemonica Malefique from the library and use it to summon a pair of succubi for a night of sexy fun. After all, succubi are sex daemons, used only for sex, how dangerous can it be…

Phil finds out exactly how dangerous when the ritual goes wrong and he is taken prisoner by a harem of hot succubi. Trapped in a perverse corner of hell, can he escape before the erotic wiles of the succubi claim his life and soul…?

Yes, I finally got around to collecting my Succubus Summoning 101 series together into a novel. If you ever wanted the complete story in a nicely formatted ebook, or even an actual paper-print book, you'll get your chance in a week's time.

So what's new? As you may have noticed already from the little excerpt in the blurb above, I've included some extra pages to give more of Phil's background--how he came to be recruited, who he met on enrolment, and so on. Nothing major, I don't want to dilute all those sinful succubus sex scenes after all, but enough to add more flesh to the world. I also spent some time cleaning up the chapters, fixing some iffy grammar, correcting typos; basically all the boring editing stuff required to bring the novel to as close to a professional standard as I could manage.

One thing I haven't cleaned up is the sex. Some authors tone their work down before putting it up on sites like amazon. In true John Carpenter style, I cut nothing. No need to worry there. Verdé and company are just as sexually uninhibited (depraved?) as before.

In case you're wondering, I'm not going to pull the existing chapters from Literotica and the other places I posted them. While I intend publishing the follow-up, Succubus Summoning 201, as an ebook first, I will continue to serialise the chapters on Literotica. All I ask is if you read the series and enjoy it, please support my writing by buying the ebook.

If you haven't read it yet, whoo boy are you in for a treat!

Next Friday...