Cover for "Sandwiched by Slimes"

You know that "Sandwiched by Slimes" short story . . .

It is on the way, honest.

The last week has been crazy hectic with sorting things out for the move as well as trying to make sure the next collection, A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day, is ready for . . . well . . . Saint Patrick's Day.  The hold up for "Sandwiched by Slimes" was trying to get a cover done.  I finally had a quiet moment today and:

Originally I wanted to vary the designs and have the "Slimes" and slime girls done in the traditional translucent blue.  Unfortunately my art skills are fairly mediocre and as it's already three weeks late, I went with the silhouettes instead.

I'm just on the final formatting and then the book will be uploaded to Amazon and other ebook retailers.  Check back here in a day or so and I'll have the full details.

Looks like Monmusu Quest: Paradox is coming out in April

Preview page on DLSite, in case anyone hasn't already seen it:

http://www.dlsite.com/maniax/announce/=/product_id/RJ150726

 Guess I'd better get everything else cleared out of the way by the time April rolls around...

Uh oh. Blogger have dropped the Prudehammer

Blogger have changed their Adult Content policy.  I (and many like me judging from the displeased mutterings on Twitter) received an email last night informing me of the changes.  Here they are . . .

https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/6170671?p=policy_update&hl=en&rd=1

. . . and yeah, they're not good, not good at all.  It looks like I'll have to pack my bags and find a new (online) home come March 23rd.

In theory I could comply, but it would mean deleting nearly every screenshot of every game I've written about and as I know a lot of you out there enjoy those posts, that's unacceptable to me.  Also in theory I could mark this blog as private going forward, but as the primary purpose of this blog is to publicise my books, it wouldn't be doing a good job of that if no bugger can find it.

With discussions like these it's impossible not to invoke the dreaded 'C' word.  Personally I think anyone using the hur derp, "It's only censorship if the government is involved," argument is a moron that isn't aware the world has moved on in the last century and a half.  I've argued before that if the end result is the same, people are going to use the closest word that fits.

Of course, against that we have to weigh up that Blogger is Google's platform and they are fully entitled to decide who or what goes on it.  It's disappointing that Google have taken this line, but it would also be churlish of me not to be grateful to them for giving me a nice set of tools to get my voice online essentially for free for the past five years.

I'd put this in the mild censorshit bracket - a damn nuisance, but not an oppressive gag as there are plenty of other alternatives.

Last night I purchased the manyeyedhydra.com domain.  It's about time.  I have a nice author page on Amazon, I might as well get a proper web address.  Currently it should redirect to this blog.  Next month I'll look at migrating to a new, more tolerant, online home.

I'd like to think we're moving to a future where companies will stop doing this as it will generate more bad publicity than good.  Sadly, until then, those of us working with adult material are a soft target and will have to continue to expect and work around arbitrary chilling effects.

Sandwiched by Slimes: You Choose the Ending

Yep, I totally got carried away on this one.  I blame it on the two slime girls having far too much fun playing with their food.  I'm currently over 8K words with possibly another 1-2K to go.  Other than the story being later than planned I'm happy with it going long rather than short.  You, the reader, will definitely get your 99c worth from this one (more so if you like slime girls and enjoyed stories like "Jackson in HRPG-World 3" and "A Real-Life Goo Girl").

Anyway, I'm coming up to the end and interestingly there are two paths I can take.  I could follow the route of a happy ending where the protagonist escapes or is let go from their sticky clutches (after being given many happy endings of the other kind).  Or I could take the other path to a sexy-but-terminal Bad End where the protagonist has their life and soul slurped out.  Oddly, I have no real preference.  When I first came up with the idea I leaned one way, but as I was writing the story I thought the other option might also work.

Then I had a mischievous idea.  Why not open it up to a little bit of audience participation?  So let's have some fun.  Let me know in the comments below if you'd rather this story had a Happy Ending or a Bad End.

Interestingly, this decision will likely have further ramifications.  I'm very flexible when it comes to planning my longer story arcs.  I think of characters as game pieces placed on a board.  I remember the status and position of the pieces at the end of each story and that often acts as inspiration for future stories.  "Sandwiched by Slimes" is set in one of my existing universes.  The characters from here will likely pop up again, but I haven't yet locked in their roles.  They could be antagonists or allies.  The path taken here will likely have a say in determining how I use them in the future.

Maybe.

Sometimes it's the metaphorical act of tossing a coin that determines the decision rather than the outcome of that coin toss.  If the coin comes up tails and you wished it had come up heads then you know the heads decision was the one you wanted to take all along.  For this reason I reserve the right to completely ignore all results and go with the path I think is right.

This also has the happy side effect of avoiding any spoilers.  Sure, the vote might go for Happy Ending, but you won't know for sure I acted on it until you read the story.

As it is kind of dickish to give readers a choice and then completely ignore it, I will penalize myself if I take this option.  I'll make one of the stories in my current stockpile available to read for free on Literotica.  (This will also have the happy side effect of forcing me to write more new stories to ensure my collections have the requisite mix of exclusive material).

So let's embrace some true #ChaosWriting.  Thumbs up or thumbs down.  Happy Ending or Bad End.  Let me know in the comments below.

UPDATE
After 24 hours we have:
Happy Ending - 9
Bad End - 4
(and a few I wasn't sure on, but was going to use as a tiebreaker in favour of happy in the event of a tie.)

The public have spoken and it's a thumbs up.  However, Caesar is capricious and cruel and may not necessarily follow the will of the people.

I'll see if I can get the completed story out next week.

New Trial for Mon-musu Quest: Paradox out

Update here.

I haven't had a chance to look at it.  It sounds like the content is the same as before but the game is now stable enough that players will be able to transfer save games over to the finished game when released.  This sounds very encouraging.  From とろとろレジスタンス's (torotoro resistance) blog it sounds like they're deep into testing.  Maybe we'll see the completed game in a couple of months.

I'm currently deep in a deadline crunch and buying a house.  Once I've got that all out of the way I'll start looking at how to tackle a Let's Play of this enormous sexy beast.

"Why don't you post your Let's Plays of Violated Hero and such on a site like XVideos?"

This question came up in the comments for the last blog post (thanks, anonymous!).  I was going to answer it there and then thought of a whole bunch of other stuff while I was writing and decided to splurge them out in a full post instead.

The short answer is I have absolutely no experience or knowledge on how to put together videos, edit them and upload them to sites like Youtube, Twitch, etc.  This is not a particularly good excuse as I could probably read up on these things and figure them out.  I even have the free time to attempt this if so inclined.

The bigger question is: Would it work?

One of the more interesting things I've learned from following #GamerGate over the last few months is just how popular youtubers like TotalBiscuit and Boogie2988 are.  I knew this kind of videogames coverage was out there, but I hadn't realised just how huge it was.  In fact, one of the more interesting narrative frames that can be applied to #GamerGate is that it's about one form of media (traditional blogging/journalism producing written articles for gaming websites) being supplanted by another form of media (new youtubers/twitchers producing gameplay videos for Youtube, etc) and raging at their own oncoming obsolescence.

(It is by no means the only narrative frame that can be applied to #GamerGate, but we're not going there.  Nope, definitely not going there.)

Let's Play videos are a big thing now.  Unfortunately, doing them for the type of monster girl hentai games I like runs into problems with hosting venues and audience expectation.  Youtube and Twitch have fairly strict anti-lewd rules which rule out a lot of explicit content.  There are Let's Plays of Monster Girl Quest that get around the problem by sticking black squares (or more humorous censors) over the lewd bits, but MGQ is a weird case in that the story and characters are still entertaining even without the lewdness.  It's still less than ideal though.  After all, what's the point of Let's Playing an eroge if you can't show off a nice pair of giant round tits.

Cap'n, we don't have a black square big enough!

The other option, as suggested, would be to go to one of the porn youtube clones like XVideos.  I don't think this would work because of audience expectation.  People go to Youtube for entertainment.  Person providing commentary while playing through something like Monster Girl Quest could be entertaining.  People go to porn youtube clones to fap.  Random British guy wittering over monster girl hentai game - not fap material.

I think Let's Play videos of various monster girl hentai games could be highly entertaining, I just don't think there's a good place to showcase them at the moment.  For that type of Let's Play video anyway.

While I was thinking of ideas, one thing I thought would work is to have a voice actress with a sexy voice play through the game and read out the dialogue of the female characters.  I think that could work very well on the porn youtube clones, but it does rely on the Let's Player being female, having a sexy voice, and not giving two fucks about weird smutty material.

Sexy voice + Alma Elma RP = profit?

 
As a lumpen Brit with a lumpen voice, this isn't really an option for me.

Could be a good opportunity for the right person though...

Update on "Sandwiched by Slime Girls"

I was hoping this would be a post announcing "Sandwiched by Slime Girls" is out.  Predictably, I'm running late again.

There's a couple of reasons for this.  The first is that I'm in the middle of buying a house in rainy old England.  This tends to throw up a lot of nuisance paperwork and errands that drag me away from the computer.  I'm also currently living on a mattress in my mother's front room while waiting for everything to go through.  Writing red-hot sexy-weird smut in this environment is a little awkward as you can imagine.  Once the house is done I'll have a personal office set up and start hitting proper 8-hour-a-day+ writing shifts.

The second is that the story wandered off the path a little in the middle.  I'm currently whacking it back into shape with the editing hammer.  Originally I was hoping to hit a regular date each month, so it's a little annoying to be already running behind.  Quality is always my primary concern though.  I'd rather put a good story out a week late than a bad story on time.