More for the Bookshelf No One Can Read

My print copies finally wound their way to my remote abode.  I always look forward to seeing the finished book. (and that the covers are the right colour, in the right place and not wrong in the many ways printing can sometimes go wrong).

It's a little chunkier than my other collections (although obviously slimline in relation to the average George R. R. Martin epic).  I ran out of the short short stories and got too carried away writing all the sex in the new ones.

You can pick up a copy of your own from Amazon here, or here if you live in the UK.  One day it would be nice to have a mass-market paperback printing to make the price a little more acceptable, but that would mean I'd have to write something more mainstream and who'd want to do a boring thing like that . . . ;)

DaBigBoom in HRPG-World: 2-4 Exploding Kiwis in the Nether Regions

The posting schedule is a little wonky at the moment as I've had a couple of hectic weeks with cars grinding to a halt and other real-life nuisances.  This chapter/series has also proven to be a little chaotic, descending fully into farce and parody.  I'm not sure where it will end up, but I'll stick with it just to get the damn thing out of my system.  Fans of my darker work fear not, there should be a story more to your liking appearing fairly soon in Literotica's Halloween contest.  (Maybe, it does feature a succubus-possessed sex doll after all)

Anyway.  Without further ado, here's:


DaBigBoom in HRPG-World 2-4: Exploding Kiwis in the Nether Regions

“Tubby isn’t the problem,” OldFart said.  “He’s big and he’s got a lot of hit points, but none of his attacks does much damage.  No, the real problem is her . . . the succubus.”

OldFart pointed down to a pathway that ran off to the right of the bridge.  It wound between dead trees and under a broken archway.  At the end of the path was—

DaBigBoom’s mouth dropped open.

Wow.

That was a hottie.  A real, blazing hot, totally fuckable hottie.  She looked like a porn star or glamour model in a Halloween Devil costume, what little of it there was.  She looked a little like another Pihanga, but a Pihanga DaBigBoom didn’t want to throttle.  There was a whole bunch of other things DaBigBoom would like to do to her instead, most of which were unprintable.  Like Pihanga, the succubus had horns, wings and a tail, but unlike Pihanga everything was filled out and looked more . . . mature.

18-rated.

Especially her chest.  She was amply filled out in the chest department.

Were those real?  They couldn’t be real.

If he’d seen breasts like that on a real-life girl with a similarly slender figure, DaBigBoom would have snap-called them as artificial.  The succubus was wearing a low-cut baroque bikini top that barely contained them.  Her boobs had . . . bounce.  She hovered a few inches off the ground, supported by languid flaps of her great bat wings.  Her breasts bobbed with each down sweep.

“That’s how she gets you, mate,” OldFart said.  “Hypnotises you with those puppies, and then . . .”

“She does things to you,” Looserbait said.  He stared at the floor.  “Naughty things.”

“Uh huh.”  DaBigBoom wasn’t listening.  His attention was focused on the way the shiny globes of her tits bounced and jiggled as she floated a few inches off the ground.

“Okay, listen up,” Pihanga ordered.  “This is the plan.  KwinnyBomb, you come with me.  We’ll take out the guards to the left of the bridge.  Schreck and the rest of the k’winny mob will charge the main gate and beat up Waldorf.”

That was the plan?  Charge?  All that drawing in the dirt and that was the best she could come up with.  That was a stupid fucking plan, DaBigBoom thought.

“What about the succubus?” Bob asked.

“DaBigBoom will take care of that,” Pihanga said, again with the crafty gleam in her eye.

DaBigBoom looked at the succubus again.  Or more particularly, at the way her breasts bounced up and down as she floated a few inches above the ground.  He was down with that part of the plan.

“His is the second most important role,” Pihanga said.

“Because if the succubus gets out of that path she’ll cream us all,” Bob whispered to DaBigBoom.

“Fiore will go with him,” Pihanga continued.

DaBigBoom was still looking at the succubus’s bobbing boobs.

“Okay, go!” Pihanga ordered.

She entered the chequerboard at a glowing orange square and moved towards the gate.  The guards watched her scamper towards them with bored expressions.  They didn’t move out of the squares they were standing in.  KwinnyBomb, cartwheels spinning, trundled after her.  They moved four squares and stopped.  Schreck followed next, with the rest of the k’winny mob fanning out behind him.

“This way,” Fiore said, making sure DaBigBoom entered the board through the orange square and then pulling him to the right.

She also walked four squares before stopping abruptly.  DaBigBoom was about to walk past when she held out an arm and stopped him.

“Wait.  We have to wait for our turn to come back around.”

Damn stupid computer game rules.

DaBigBoom looked at the succubus.  She was really hot.  And practically naked.  Her hopelessly-skimpy frayed leather bra was matched by an equally skimpy pair of black panties.  The tan expanse of her flat stomach was exposed as were most of her luscious thighs.  In a perverse attempt to compensate for the acres of skin on display she wore long black gloves that went past her elbows and an equally long pair of kinky black boots that went up past her knees.  DaBigBoom supposed baroque stiletto heels were less of an impracticality if the wearer never had to actually walk in them.

The succubus saw them coming and gave DaBigBoom a sultry smile.  He smiled back and tipped her a saucy wink.  The succubus pouted her full lips and blew DaBigBoom a steamy kiss.  She placed hands underneath her considerable breasts and smooshed them together.  DaBigBoom gulped.

Take care of her?  Yes please.

“Stop flirting with the succubus,” Fiore said.

“Why?  She’s not a hermaphrodite too, is she?” DaBigBoom asked.  He looked down at the floating girl’s crotch for signs of a tell-tale bulge.  All he saw was a rather obvious camel toe that reddened his cheeks.

“No, they’re just really . . . skanky,” Fiore said.

DaBigBoom was fine with skanky.  He looked at the succubus’s teasing smile and bouncing tits.  Especially this kind of skanky.  The succubus stared at him, tossed back her flowing black hair and pulled a series of glamour model poses.

“True love must be pure,” Fiore said, “just like my love for Ruhara.”

She pulled out a scrap of paper and unfolded it to reveal a picture of a demon boy with a long flowing black cape.  Other than the cape the boy was completely naked above the waist and his bare chest was totally exposed.  He carried a sword that was bigger than him.

He also looked about twelve years old.

“He’s post game content for sure,” Fiore said.  “We’ll defeat him, then he’ll join us, then he’ll be mine.”

She clutched the paper to her flat bosom and her face lit up in a way DaBigBoom thought was slightly disturbing.

“Pervert,” he muttered, before turning back to stare at the succubus’s bouncing titties.

“It’s us again,” Fiore said.

She took DaBigBoom’s arm and took them four squares closer to the broken archway at the head of the path.  Another turn and they’d pass under it and be right before the waiting she-demon.  That thought triggered a pleasant little throb in DaBigBoom’s groin.

“Launch k’winnies!” Pihanga yelled.

What the?

DaBigBoom turned around in time to see KwinnyBomb flying through the air in the direction of the guards to the left of the bridge.

“Mateeeeeeee!” KwinnyBomb yelled.

He landed on a square between two guards—skinny looking emo kids with pointed ears—and exploded.

The guards held up arms and grimaced.  Thirty-four in white numbers floated up above their heads.  When the cloud dissipated there was no sign of KwinnyBomb at all.  He’d exploded.  Like a grenade.  Like . . .

. . . a KwinnyBomb.

DaBigBoom thought about the name Pihanga had given him.

He had a bad feeling about this.

Fiore had the build of a slim little teenage girl.  Not the build of someone DaBigBoom would have thought capable of plucking him up off the ground and lifting him right above their head.

“Hey wait,” he said.

Fiore didn’t.  She stretched her arms back and launched him the direction of the succubus with all the force she could muster.

Fuuuuck, DaBigBoom thought as he flew over the broken archway.  The succubus already had her hands up in front of her face.  Fiore had her eyes screwed shut and fingers in her ears.

DaBigBoom hit the ground at the feet of the succubus with a krump.

He didn’t explode.

This seemed to take everyone by surprise.

DaBigBoom awkwardly picked himself back up.  The succubus floated in front of him.  Her smile and the seductive gleam in her eyes—more lustful even than Fiore’s for her underage pin-up—had returned to her face.

“Um . . . hi,” DaBigBoom said.


DaBigBoom in HRPG-World 2 will continue next week, where I imagine things will get a lot more steamy.  She has been waiting for four chapters after all . . .

DaBigBoom in HRPG-World: 2-3 Exploding Kiwis in the Nether Regions

After a slight pause where I was away last week, here's the third part of Jackson DaBigBoom in HRPG-World 2.  Chaos rules.  Attempting to parody something that was already a fairly wicked parody in the first place might not have been my best idea.  Oh well, let's see where it goes.  Hopefully sombody sexy will show up at some point to make up for the anarchy and weirdness at the beginning.


DaBigBoom in HRPG-World 2-3: Exploding Kiwis in the Nether Regions

The blonde looked at him.  A puzzled expression was back on her face.

“Hey wait!” she said.  “You’re the—”

Too late.  DaBigBoom had already stepped into the portal.

They warped to a rocky location that somehow managed to look cheerful despite being largely desolate.  The only plants DaBigBoom saw were the twisted remnants of dead trees.

Not quite dead, as it happened, but not exactly alive in any way DaBigBoom expected.  He watched as one of the dead stumps grew spindly arms out of its top and began to shuffle around.  Pihanga absent-mindedly booted it into a nearby pool of bright green acid.  She took out a telescope and surveyed their objective from behind a boulder.

Before them a wide bridge led to an enormous gate at the entrance of a cartoon-scary castle carved into the high stone wall of a cliff.  The gate looked like an enormous mouth and two openings above it looked like burning eyes.  It still looked about as scary as a Scooby Doo cartoon.

The oddest thing to DaBigBoom was the ground.  It was marked out with squares like a giant chessboard.  The pattern covered most of the grounds leading up to the bridge and continued right into the fort.  Some of the squares glowed with a strange light and that same glow lit up odd pyramid sculptures scattered throughout the grounds.  DaBigBoom thought they must serve some purpose within the game although he didn’t have the slightest idea what.

There were guards—more of the strange pointy-eared inhabitants he’d seen walking around back at the castle.  They grumbled and fidgeted, but didn’t leave the squares they were standing in, even though most of the positions they occupied seemed to serve no strategic purpose.

“Okay, equipment,” Pihanga said.

From somewhere, DaBigBoom had no idea where, she pulled out a sack of gear that was bigger than her, Schreck and Fiore combined.

Computer RPG physics, no point in being surprised, DaBigBoom thought.

“You.”  She beckoned to DaBigBoom.  “Time to equip you.  The high HP gear I think.”  There was a gleam in Pihanga’s eye DaBigBoom didn’t like at all.

She threw him a flak jacket that looked more suited to a cop game.  DaBigBoom had no idea what it was doing in a fantasy RPG, but it was armour and DaBigBoom would take any kind of protection.  He put it on.

It also wasn’t the only jacket as Pihanga passed him a second and then a third jacket largely identical to the first.

“Um, I already have a jacket,” DaBigBoom said.

Pihanga ignored him.  So did the world.  Before he even realised it, he was wearing all three jackets on top of each other.  They were uncomfortably warm and DaBigBoom could barely move his arms.  How was he supposed to fight like this?

“Perfect,” Pihanga said.  “Lots of HP.”

Once again, DaBigBoom really didn’t like the gleam in Pihanga’s eye whenever she mentioned ‘HP’.

DaBigBoom felt something rather important had been neglected in the equipping process.

“Aren’t I supposed to have something to fight with?” he asked.

“Fight?”  Pihanga seemed surprised by the question, as if it wasn’t really relevant.  “Oh, take this.”

She rummaged through the sack and came back with a bow so tiny it’d struggle to make even a child’s toy.  DaBigBoom held the undersized bow in his hands.  Now what the fuck was he supposed to do with this?

Pihanga turned her back and went back to observing the fort.  She turned around and began to draw lines in the ground.  She studied them with wrinkled-brow concentration while Schreck watched and gave the occasional nod of his head.  Fiore crouched down and watched Pihanga draw her plans, but didn’t contribute anything other than the occasional giggle.

“You got a bum assignment, mate,” one of the k’winnies, a real battered specimen, said to DaBigBoom.  “She doesn’t have the first clue about tactics.  She should have hired a warrior, mage and cleric by now.  Instead she just keeps throwing us k’winnies into the fray as if it’s still the first level.  It’s hopeless, mate.  I’m OldFart,” the beat-up k’winnie introduced itself.

“DaBigBoom,” DaBigBoom replied and then grimaced as he realised that stupid name had slipped out of his mouth again instead of his real name.

OldFart nodded sympathetically.

He introduced the other k’winnines.  “This is Assploder, KwinnyBomb, ShitBlast, Bob—”

“Bob?” DaBigBoom interrupted.

“She hit Enter too quickly on the naming screen, mate,” Bob explained, “and she hasn’t figured out yet how to rename characters.”

“LooserBait,” OldFart finished the introductions, pointing to the last k’winny, who was missing an eye.

“So what’s the objective?” DaBigBoom asked.  If they could complete the mission maybe he could get the fuck out of here.

“Waldorf, mate,” OldFart said.  “The big pile of blubber over there.”

DaBigBoom followed OldFart’s malformed limb and saw a gigantic blue thing just inside the entrance.  It was a big pile of blubber—Jabba the Hut with a pair of tusks.  The thing looked so cumbersome DaBigBoom had no idea how it even moved until he noticed the cord around its midriff that led up to a large balloon with a cartoon cat face on the side of it.  DaBigBoom raised an eyebrow.

“What, the walrus?” he said.

“Leopard seal,” Fiore corrected.  Bored with Pihanga’s battle planning, she’d come over to join them.  “It’s a leopard seal, not a walrus.”  She grinned.

“So the objective is to storm a fortress and kill a wal . . . leopard seal with a giant balloon tied to its arse?” DaBigBoom queried.

Fiore nodded.  “Exciting, isn’t it.”

DaBigBoom wanted out of this stupid game.

“And you guys are happy with this?” DaBigBoom asked.

“Fuck yeah,” Assploder said.

“Waldorf’s a cunt,” Bob said.

“We want the bastard dead,” KwinnyBomb said.

“He kidnaps k’winnies and sells them as toys to children in the human world,” LooserBait said.

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Fiore said.

The k’winnies stared at the angel with stunned expressions.  They obviously regarded being sold to children as a fate worse than death.

“Human children are sweet and adorable,” Fiore said.  “Especially the boys.”  She stared off into space.  “Delicious, scrumptious, cute young boys.”  There was a gleam in her eyes that was most un-angelic.

The k’winnies shook their heads.  “Pervert,” Bob muttered under his breath.

“Tubby isn’t the problem,” OldFart said.  “He’s big and he’s got a lot of hit points, but none of his attacks does much damage.  No, the real problem is her . . . the succubus.”

OldFart pointed down to a pathway that ran off to the right of the bridge.  It wound between dead trees and under a broken archway.  At the end of the path was—

DaBigBoom’s mouth dropped open.

Wow.


Oh hello, somebody sexy.  Come back next week to see if she gets a chance to strut her stuff as I try and get this anarchic beastie back under control.

Print Version of A Succubus for Freedom Out & Other Anthology News

The print version of A Succubus for Freedom and other tales of Obscene Orgies is finally out. You can grab it on Amazon here, or from eXcessica directly here. I live in hope one day I might actually get both the print version and ebook version out on the same day. Sorry for keeping you print lovers waiting. My own copies are winging their way towards me to be added to my Shelf of Books Guests Must Not Read...

I also have a few new stories coming out in eXcessica's fundraising anthologies.

The first, Colors, is out now.


It's an anthology of interracial erotica. I submitted a story about two lovers skinning each other and having sex.

Sometimes I wonder why the good folks of eXcessica put up with me...

The next is back to more familiar territory for me: an anthology of erotic horror tales to chill the bones in time for Halloween.


My story for that one is titled "Crabs" and I believe the anthology will be available on the 12th October.

Warning: Will Make Readers Wince.

Jackson in HRPG-World: 2-2 Exploding Kiwis in the Nether Regions

And a little later than initially planned (the real-life 9-to-5 clobbered me with some things that needed fixing over the weekend), here is the second part of Jackson in HRPG-World 2:


Jackson in HRPG-World 2-2: Exploding Kiwis in the Nether Regions

“Come with me, k’winny,” the stroppy little devil girl ordered.

“Fuck off,” Jackson retorted.

Pihanga pulled out a gun and shot him in the face.

From his position on the floor of the factory Jackson looked up and saw a white number—forty-four—floating up into the darkness beneath the roof. Oh yeah, computer game physics. Boy was he glad for those stupid role-playing game physics. It meant he could be shot right in the face with a gun and it do nothing so long as the damage was less than his total hit points.

He wondered how many hit points he had. Normally he was able to see his full status. Not here for some reason. Maybe this was some kind of intro and the game hadn’t actually started yet.

He got back up to his feet.

Schreck stared at him with his blank fish eyes opened wide. The angel girl had hands on her cheeks. Pihanga was turning her gun over in her hands with a puzzled expression on her face.

“One shot is normally enough to kill a level one k’winny,” she said, looking at her gun suspiciously.

“He doeth theem rather hardy for a k’winny, mithtreth,” Schreck said. “Are you thure—”

“He’s an uber k’winny!” the angel said. She bounced with excitement like a tween standing in line for a Justin Bieber signing. “I told you they had a sixth rank.”

Schreck looked up at the numbers floating away into the darkness of the ceiling. “It doeth theem to potheth an unusually high number of hit pointh.”

At the mention of ‘unusually high number of hit points,’ Pihanga’s pointed ears pricked up and she switched her attentions from the gun to Jackson. Her eyes lit up and her lips curled up in a crafty smile. “High hit points . . .”

She skipped forwards.

“I’m Pihanga, Empress of Elegance and Overlord-to-be of all the Nether Regions. You’ll be a perfect addition to my k’winny mob.”

“Uh . . . okay,” Jackson said.

He didn’t want to test if he had enough hit points to survive a second shot from her gun.

“Good.” Pihanga turned to the side and a giant ghostly blue keypad appeared before her out of thin air. “Now to name you.”

“Um. Actually, I already have a name,” Jackson said.

Pihanga ignored him and tapped keys on the ghostly floating blue keypad. D, a, B, i, g, B . . . Jackson saw letters appear above the keypad.

“There. Perfect,” Pihanga said.

DaBigBoom? What kind of stupid name was DaBigBoom? Only an eight-year-old could come up with a character name as stupid as that.

“Hey. I have a name. I’m—”

Pihanga moved her hand to the bottom right of the screen and tapped the enter button.

“—DaBigBoom,” DaBigBoom finished.

He paused. Wait, that wasn’t right. His name was DaBigBoom not DaBigBoom.

Huh?

No. His. Name. Was. DaBigBoom.

DaBigBoom tried again, but every time he thought of his name, DaBigBoom came up instead of DaBigBoom.

This sucks, DaBigBoom thought.

“Come along, DaBigBoom,” Pihanga said. “We have the Nether Regions to conquer.”

“And then it’s the Post Game content,” the angel said, jumping up and down with girlish excitement.

DaBigBoom looked at them—the trashy devil girl, the blue-haired angel, and the cartoon Nosferatu caricature. What kind of insane game had he fallen into? Shaking his head, he followed them out of the factory.

He walked out onto a landscape somewhere between Burton and Bosch. A spooky castle with spires sticking out at odd angles pierced the sky. Scattered around them were vast lakes of molten orange lava.

“Where are we?” DaBigBoom asked.

“These are the Nether Regions, home to demons, monsters and k’winnies containing the souls of mortals that sinned during their lives in the Living World,” the angel said.

“So hell, basically,” DaBigBoom said. “Hey, what was that about k’winnies?”

“Anyone who sinned during their life is reincarnated in the form of a k’winny. They must work off the debt their sinning incurred during their life before they can be reincarnated back to the Living World. In heaven we set them all kinds of boring tasks to do. In the Nether Regions it’s much better. They get to fight for the glory of the Overlord!” The angel finished with a rousing flourish.

DaBigBoom looked at her fluffy white wings and white robes. “Heaven? Are you an angel?”

“Trainee,” the girl said. “I’m Angel Student Fiore. Or was,” she said, her nose wrinkling into a grimace. “They kicked me out for downloading shota porn.”

Her breezy smile returned.

“I don’t mind. It’s far more exciting down here. We get to go on missions and kill people.”

DaBigBoom didn’t know what to say to that.

They walked into the castle and DaBigBoom was surrounded by a motley collection of monsters—rotting zombies, hunched over dragons shuffling on their hind legs, lions with scorpion tails and even girls standing inside giant roses. It was odd, weird, but not very scary. More Jim Henson than Nightmare on Elm Street.

The girls in the roses were also kinda hot and not wearing much more than a few strategically positioned bits of foliage. One of them winked at DaBigBoom and blew him a kiss.

“They’re hermaphrodites,” Fiore whispered in his ear.

DaBigBoom’s hand froze mid-wave.

“I’m not sure what they’re doing here either. They’re not supposed to appear until the sequels,” Fiore continued, making absolutely no sense again.

Pihanga made her way to the main hall. A spear stood in the centre of room. At first DaBigBoom thought there was a severed, moustachioed head impaled on the spear. Impaled so hard the point came right out of the top of the skull. The head seemed surprisingly well preserved. Then Pihanga picked the spear up, the head’s eyes flicked open and DaBigBoom realised the head was actually part of the spear itself.

“Hey, unhand me!” the spear complained in a prissy voice.

Piihanga ignored it and tapped the shaft loudly on the stone floor. “Subjects!” she called out. “The throne of the Overlord will soon be mine. Join me and share in the glory!”

The weird inhabitants ignored her and carried on with what they were doing.

“Join me for a share of the loot?” Pihanga tried again.

That got the attention of some of the inhabitants, but only briefly before they waved their hands dismissively at her and walked away laughing.

Pihanga’s nostrils flared. She looked like a teenage girl in a strop because her parents wouldn’t let her go to the party.

“K’WINNY MOB!” she bellowed, banging the butt of the spear so hard onto the ground the moustachioed head complained in a camp whine.

A motley crew of yellow bird-doll-things emerged, grumbling, from the shadows. They looked even worse for wear than the Frankenstein’s abominations DaBigBoom had seen on the factory conveyer belt. They looked like they’d been repeatedly torn apart and then stitched back up again by someone with only a passing familiarity with what they’d originally looked like.

“We’re going to take on Cook Canyon again, and this time I want 150 percent.”

The k’winnies collectively groaned.

“We need more soldiers, mate,” one of them griped.

“We have more soldiers,” Pihanga said. “This is Private DaBigBoom.”

The k’winnies looked at DaBigBoom and for a moment their grumbling was silenced.

“Is he a player?” one whispered.

“What was that!” Pihanga said.

The offending k’winny gave an eep. They all shuffled backwards.

“I’m the player,” Pihanga said. “I’m the main character. This is my game. I’m the star. Me. Me alone. Pihanga, the Empress of Elegance and Overlord-to-be.”

She swung the spear like a golf club and the quavering k’winny vanished up over one of the balconies with a plaintive wail.

“Now we’re back down to the same number of soldiers as before, mate,” another of the k’winnies muttered, this time quiet enough for Pihanga not to hear.

“Follow me!” Pihanga ordered. “This time we will beat that level.”

“She’s not really the main character,” Fiore whispered to DaBigBoom after Pihanga had marched in the direction of one of the side exits. “It’s me.” She gave a girlish giggle and followed Pihanga.

Madhouse, DaBigBoom thought, shaking his head as he followed the others.

They walked through a crazy marketplace. Skinny kids with anime-spiky hair sold swords that were far too large and impractical for any normal—or even large—person to wield. DaBigBoom saw the entrance to a tent with a bleeding red cross stitched above the opening. Moans and groans emanated from within. A cute girl in some kind of traditional Japanese dress stood in the entrance and smiled at DaBigBoom. As he walked by he saw she was holding a hacksaw with clumps of hair and flesh stuck to the serrated blade.

They reached a short staircase that led up to a bright blue swirl of light about as big as a door. More computer game physics. DaBigBoom assumed it was some kind of portal that led somewhere else. Standing next to the portal was a gorgeous blonde girl with elf ears sticking out of her long hair. She held a gnarled wooden staff and wore flowing green robes. She looked bored.

Pihanga walked up to the foot of the steps. “Cook Canyon,” she said.

“Again?” the blonde girl said.

“We’re going to defeat Waldorf this time,” Pihanga said.

“You said that last time,” the blonde said, “and the time before that, and the time before that, and the thirteen other times before that.”

“My k’winny mob has increased in experience,” Pihanga said.

“Your k’winny mob is falling to bits,” the blonde said.

Pihanga gave her a crafty smile. “Ah, but this time I have a secret weapon,” she motioned to DaBigBoom.

The blonde peered at DaBigBoom. For a moment her brow furrowed as though she wasn’t quite sure of what she was looking at, and then she spotted the yellow hat and gave a disappointed sigh.

“It’s just another k’winny,” she said. “You need to recruit some proper monsters with classes. You can’t expect to beat the middle levels with only k’winnies.”

“K’winnies are cheap and easy to maintain,” Pihanga said.

“K’winnies are useless.”

The k’winnies quarked and harrumphed their disapproval.

“Do as you’re ordered and send us to Cook Canyon,” Pihanga said.

The blonde sighed. She waved her staff and the portal flared a brighter blue colour. “As you command, oh great and powerful Overlord . . .” Pihanga walked up the steps and jumped into the swirling blue vortex. “. . . to-never-be,” the blonde finished as Pihanga vanished from view.

Fiore and the vampire, Schreck, went next, followed by the battered k’winnies. DaBigBoom considered running off in the opposite direction, but that might mean he’d be stuck in this lunatic role-playing game forever . . . as DaBigBoom.

Fuck it. The quicker he completed it, the quicker he could get the fuck out of here. He walked up the steps.

The blonde looked at him. A puzzled expression was back on her face.

“Hey wait!” she said. “You’re the—”

Too late. DaBigBoom had already stepped into the portal.


I knew I should have left that game alone. What's happening? They've usurped my main character and changed his name. Isn't there supposed to be some pr0n somewhere?

Come back next week for part 3 (there may be some sex somewhere - I hope!)

Some game succubi require little pornification...

The Jackson in HRPG-World series is my affectionate little poke at some of the more risque inclusions in some computer games. Most of those games (not including the outright hentai games like Monster Girl Quest and Violated Hero) are harmless enough and require a truly filthy imagination to push their naughtier elements to their salacious extremes.

And then there are others...



(full link here. jump to 8:30 or so if you're bored of the fighting)

Am I even needed here? :)

The game is Vindictus or Maginobi Heroes and produced by Korean studio, Nexon. I don't know much about it other than it's an MMO based upon the Mabinogion, a collection of very old Welsh stories/myths.

It's a lovely interpretation of a succubus battle.

Given the sexism landmines that keep going off in the games industry after the Lara Croft rape thing, the Hitman sexy nuns thing, the Anita Sarkeesian thing, I wonder how long we'll get to enjoy little bits of offbeat titillation like this in computer games before the PC (political correctness, not personal computer) mafia shuts it down completely. I would be sad to see this happen. Games are fantasy. That fantasy can be ultra-violent and even include comicbook-representations of anatomy for titillating purposes, but it's still fantasy - a confection whipped up for pure entertainment. It might not appeal to everyone, but to stomp on something someone else derives innocent (largely!) pleasure from because it disagrees with your worldview is a particularly mean-minded attitude in my opinion.

There should always be a place for sexy succubi in games. And ludicrously over the top execution scenes a la Manhunt. It's. Not. Real.

The real world is grey enough without shoving that greyness into fantasy as well.

Enough ranting from me anyway. Will Jackson be paying a visit to a Vindictusian "Naughty Room" at some point in his future? Possibly. ;)

Edit: Here's the full intro as it's cut off on the first vid (yes, she doesn't care whether her visitors are male or female):

Jackson in HRPG-World: 2-1 Exploding Kiwis in the Nether Regions

Time to kick off another mini-serial to run here over the next few weeks. I think we'll corrupt a few more innocent childhood gaming memories and continue Jackson's adventures in HRPG-World.

Jackson in HRPG-World: 2-1 Exploding Kiwis in the Nether Regions

Where was he now? Ian Jackson thought.

He was standing on a giant conveyer belt running through some kind of madhouse factory. Giant gears clanked and clacked amongst puffs of steam. A lunatic carousel tune played in the background.

This didn’t look like the usual hackneyed, sub-Tolkienesque setting he expected for a fantasy role-playing computer game. It was a cavernous factory, more suited to a first-person-shooter or horror game, although the crazy organ-grinder music playing in the background seemed a poor fit for either.

Jackson wasn’t alone on the conveyer belt. He might have been tempted to describe them as toys. They were yellow and looked like a plushy doll of a cartoon character—some kind of flightless bird with a long bill. A kiwi?

The dolls were hideous. They looked as though they’d been put together by demented lab assistants working under Doctor Frankenstein. The stitching was crude, visible, and looked more like scars. None of the dolls had legs or feet. Instead, a pair of miniature cartwheels was attached to the sides of their bodies. Jackson doubted they were toys. Children were more likely to run screaming than play with these.

They were also alive.

Jackson watched as one of the bird-doll-things sat up and blinked oversized cartoon eyes. It was maybe about three-foot in height. The thing turned a head and looked around. In animation it looked like a real-life cartoon gone horribly wrong.

More bird-doll-things stirred as the conveyer belt reached an end illuminated with purple and red spotlights. More of the bird-doll-things waited for them, but they were brown in colour rather than yellow and directed the new arrivals with the scowling efficiency of airport security personnel. Jackson watched as the bird-doll-thing ahead of him hopped off the end of the belt. It was given a leather bum bag and pointed in the direction of a growing queue.

Then it was Jackson’s turn. He stepped off the end of the belt. The brown bird-doll-thing was halfway through the motion of giving Jackson a bum bag when it paused.

Jackson was about average height by human standards, which meant he towered over the three-foot-high bird-doll-thing. The brown attendant turned and found its bill level with Jackson’s crotch. It tilted its head up a little, then a little more, and then tilted it up a lot more until it could actually see Jackson’s face. It blinked slowly, as if aware something wasn’t quite right with the picture but not exactly sure what.

“Um, where is this place?” Jackson asked.

Crazy oompah carousel music continued to blare away in the background.

“You’re in the Nether Regions, mate,” the bird-doll-thing said.

Nether Regions? Must be the setting for this game.

“What am I supposed to do?” Jackson asked.

He wanted to ask, ‘What is my objective in this game?’ but most characters he came across, even the obvious designated game tutors, rarely gave any indication they knew this was really a computer game.

“Work for the masters, pay off your debt, get reincarnated back to the living world, mate.”

“Living world?”

“You’re dead, mate,” the bird-doll-thing said. “These are the Nether Regions. Souls are reincarnated here in the form of k’winnies and must work to pay off the debts their sinning accrued during their life, mate.”

“Dead? No no no,” Jackson said, shaking a finger.

He wasn’t dead. It was just a computer game. He was trapped inside until . . . well, he wasn’t sure exactly. He’d thought it was until he completed the game, but the rules—and the game—kept changing.

“Mate, they all say that,” the brown bird-doll-thing—k’winny?—said.

“Look at me,” Jackson said. “Do I look like I belong here?”

The k’winny peered at him. It frowned. Or rather Jackson assumed the expression was a frown given that it had a cartoon bird face rather than a human face. It blinked. Then it turned around and fetched a novelty yellow baseball cap that resembled the top half of one of the k’winny’s heads. The bill had a slender beak stitched into the fabric and there were a pair of large googly eyes glued to the front. The k’winny motioned for Jackson to duck down and then it reached up to place the k’winny cap on his head. It looked up and smiled. All was right in its world again.

Jackson glanced up at the cap on his head and shook his head.

The k’winny bent down, retrieved the greyish-brown bum bag it had put aside and handed it to Jackson.

“This is to hold your tāra, mate,” it said.

That meant nothing to Jackson. He held the bag up and looked at it in bafflement.

Something bumped against his leg. Jackson turned and saw another blearily blinking k’winny had come off the belt.

“Move along, mate,” the brown k’winny said. “You’re holding things up. Move along. Move along, mate.” He directed Jackson with a limb that was somewhere between a wing and an arm and looked fit for neither purpose.

Jackson walked away shaking his head. Maybe it was one of those games where he had to do a bunch of everyday shit for a couple of hours before the real plot became apparent. JRPGs never seemed in any hurry to actually start.

He joined a line of yellow k’winnies. Two of them looked back at him in surprise. At least until they saw the yellow cap on his head, at which point they went back to grumbling amongst themselves as if nothing at all was out of place.

“K’winnies!”

A shrill voice ripped through the factory. The voice was high-pitched, as though the owner was small, but it blasted through the air as if expelled by the lungs of a giant.

“Oh k’winnies,” the voice warbled.

“Shit. It’s Pihanga.”

Jackson turned his head. All the brown k’winnies had suddenly vanished. When he turned his head back the yellow k’winnies had vanished as well. Jackson was left alone to face the small party walking towards him.

Not quite alone. The k’winnies were still there, but hidden behind the barrels and crates littering the floor of the factory. Jackson saw a yellow head poke up from behind a barrel.

“K’WINNIES!”

The head hastily ducked back down. Jackson wondered if he should be joining it, but by then it was already too late. The party, a strange trio of individuals, had reached him.

At the front was a girl. Sort of. She had the dainty body of an adolescent girl or gymnast, but she also had horns, a tail and a pair of vestigial bat wings that looked too small to be anything other than ornamental. A devil girl, in miniature. Her eyes were the colour of raspberry juice. She gave off the air of a stroppy and spoilt teen and dressed as though she hadn’t yet learned the difference between party girl and streetwalker. Spiky black air erupted in defiance of gravity from two pigtails and her pointed ears were adorned with gaudy, lizard-skull earrings. Her red gloves and boots—long enough to reach her elbows and thighs respectively—covered more flesh than the rest of her clothes combined. Shorts that were little more than panties hid her crotch while a band of red leather was all that covered her chest. Not that there was much to cover—she was as flat as an ironing board.

“Aha, here’s one,” she said, looking at Jackson.

Behind her stood a pale-faced man in evening wear that had seen better days. Jackson assumed he was a vampire—one of the old school Nosferatu, not one of those stupid twinkly fairies from Twilight. He was hunched, had a hook for a nose, wide staring eyes and fangs so long they made him talk funny. Jackson supposed he should be scared of him, but he couldn’t quite muster fear in the face of what appeared to be a walking cartoon caricature.

“Are you sure Mithtreth Pihanga? It lookth a little large and . . . awkward for a k’winny,” the vampire said with a reedy lisp.

“Of course it’s a k’winny, Schreck,” the little devil girl said. “See,” she pointed at the yellow cap on Jackson’s head.

Jackson looked up at the bill of the baseball cap. They couldn’t be fucking serious.

The third figure giggled. Jackson had no clue what she was doing here. She looked like an angel—in the cartoon sense. Fluffy white wings too small for flight stuck out from her back. A white ribbon was tied in her long blue hair. She had a similar flat-chested figure to the devil girl, Pihanga, but less of it was visible beneath her sensible white robes. Was it Halloween in the madhouse or something?

“Come with me, k’winny,” the stroppy little devil girl ordered.

“Fuck off,” Jackson retorted.

Pihanga pulled out a gun and shot him in the face.


Given the source material, I may have trouble keeping this one under control . . .

A Succubus for Freedom: Excerpt 6

There are six brand new stories in my new collection, A Succubus for Freedom. I've already run excerpts of five of them. Here's an excerpt from the sixth. It's the twisted homage to Robert E. Howard I talked about back here. This time it's "Barbarian vs. Succubus".

* * * *

Even exaggerated with wine-soaked bravado, none of the tales of the Seraglio of Neeb matched up to the reality. It truly was a temple to the worship of sensual pleasures. The rooms beyond were more sumptuous than even the King’s own chambers. Nanok saw pools of crystal-clear water with fragrant flower petals sprinkled on the surface. Mountains of soft silk cushions were piled upon lush, exotic furs. And the girls . . .

Nanok had never before seen such a collection of comely beauties. If willing wenches were as plentiful as apples on the ground then these maidens must be the sweetest, most succulent fruits of the Gods’ own orchard. Nanok saw sapphire-eyed willowy blondes from Fe’berg; flame-haired temptresses from wild Zeminolia; olive-skinned beauties from the islands of Oran; a dark-skinned Buronthian with her black hair twined together in long braids; girls from every corner of the map he’d travelled to and some from regions he’d only heard of in campfire tales. Their supple bodies were naked save for swathes of fine silk around their shapely hips. All were adorned with delicate golden chains and glittering precious stones. A king’s treasure in metal, stone and flesh, was Nanok’s thought.

This temple even had its own idol. At the far end of the long room, with its legs astride a walkway between two pools, stood an enormous statue of the same horned devil woman Nanok had seen on both the chains of office and capstone above the entrance. Clouds of incense wafted around the statue’s legs.

All civilised men made a worship of hedonism and pleasure, in Nanok’s opinion. At least in Neeb they were honest about it.

The girls remained queerly composed. Nanok would have expected some to flee screaming at the arrival of ten bloodstained and battle-weary men, and wouldn’t have begrudged them. He’d sacked his fair share of cities. He knew full well men with their blood up from battle, even the most noble, often committed terrible atrocities in the moments following a city’s fall. These girls seemed so unafraid Nanok wondered if they might be ensorcelled or lost in dreams of the lotus. The same enchantment seemed to have spread to Nanok’s men. Rather than charging in like lusty sailors finding port after a long voyage, they were stricken with a kind of awe. They entered quietly and respectfully, more like men on their way to worship at a temple than men looking to spend coin and seed at a bordello.

Two veiled maidens—one dusky, the other as pale as a snowfield—approached Nanok and bowed.

“Esqeta told us King Lyoncar is dead and we are to serve you as we served him,” the dusky maiden said.

“We are yours as we were his,” the pale-skinned girl said.

“What is your wish, King Nanok?” the dusky-skinned girl asked.

Nanok smiled. “I have some battle-weary dogs in need of the light touch of a woman’s hand to pick up their flesh and spirits.”

As with the veiled Esqeta, if the women balked at the presence of the sweaty, bloodstained soldiers, they hid it well. They seemed well-versed in that peculiar civilised art of quelling the fires of the heart that Nanok so often found infuriating when dealing with the sophisticated elites. The slippery sons of snakes never let on what they were really thinking. By Dhom, the battle had been hard enough as it was. He was in no mood for thawing the loins of frosty dancing wenches.

He didn’t have to worry. The two veiled maidens led him to a soft pile of silk cushions. Both ran soft hands over the iron-hard muscles of his biceps and thighs while cooing like lovebirds. Nanok grinned. As usual, the daughters of civilisation were only too eager to let in the wolf prowling outside their gates.

Nanok lay back on soft cushions. It was a welcome change from cold earth and hard pallets. Around him the atmosphere grew more raucous as his men stripped off their armour and cavorted with the harem girls. Music—an exotic caterwauling of unearthly pipes, cat-screech strings and beating drums—played in the background. Plentiful food and fine wines were brought in—a coronation feast befitting a new king. And by Dhom, why shouldn’t he enjoy it. He’d earned it through blood and steel, as was the right of all men.

“Ha ha,” Vroo guffawed. “These wenches have been starved of real men for too long. The sagging sceptre of a fat old king is no substitute for the sword of a virile fighting man.” He took a bite out of a large leg of ham and rubbed his face between the breasts of the voluptuous maiden lying next to him.

Over on a plush divan Dranitreb was attempting to woo his maiden like a yellow-bellied Kosskootan—a kiss to her hand, a kiss to her wrist, a kiss to her arm, a kiss to—

“You’re supposed to make love to her, lad, not send her to sleep,” Nanok called out. “Forgive the pup,” he said to Dranitreb’s partner. “He became a man only today.”

Dranitreb blushed. Understanding flashed in the girl’s eye. With one quick motion she had Dranitreb on his back and was astride him. Nanok smiled. The Zeminolians were renowned horse riders. The young pup was likely to find himself broken in like a stallion if he didn’t watch himself.

The corded steel of Nanok’s neck and shoulders softened as he relaxed on the cushions. The battle was won; time to enjoy the spoils. The pale-skinned maiden brought a platter of sweet grapes and fed them to him while her companion caressed his muscles with first her hands and then her lips.

Scented smoke was filling the room like a fog. He watched it spill out of the nipples and sex of the giant idol and roll across the floor like mists across the northern lakes of Abyleen. Nanok snorted, trying to clear his nostrils of the cloying perfume. The scent was pleasant, but too thick. It overpowered his senses and left him feeling diminished in the way a blindfold over his eyes would take away his sight.

A fiery ache blossomed in his body and surged down to his loins. Sensing his arousal, the dusky maiden took off his loincloth and Nanok’s cock rose with the mists. The air must be drugged. Nanok had heard of such things. Plenty of peddlers in the flesh pits of Po-Teat promised all kinds of unguents, potions and scents to help a man’s rod stay straight and true. Undoubtedly King Lyoncar had required a little something of that magic to help him fully appreciate his treasures. Nanok thought it feeble. If a man had a willing wench beside him, he needed no help.

A gong sounded. The music paused.

“Lady Esqeta will now dance for your pleasure,” the dusky-skinned maiden whispered in his ear, close enough for him to feel the soft pressure of her full lips.

Nanok’s interest pricked up. He was curious to see what the mistress of the seraglio was hiding beneath her robes. A great cloud of smoke billowed from between the legs of the giant idol. Like the breath of a dragon, Nanok thought with a small sliver of disquiet. Two slender girls—golden-skinned beauties from far-off Kallahia, waved fans as they fluttered before the cloud like exotic butterflies. The smoke faded and revealed Lady Esqeta.

* * * *

This was the last story to finish for the collection. Originally it was a simple prospect - take musclebound-but-dim stereotypical barbarian and have a succubus turn the tables on them. Then I reread all of Howard's stories and remembered his Conan, the archetypal and Ur-barbarian, is far more clever and cunning than the fantasy stereotypes that followed.

There's a little black joke at Howard's expense buried in the story. It wasn't deliberate, just a combination of words that could be taken to mean something else. I only noticed it was there when I was editing. I thought about editing it out, but that would mean acknowledging I have something other than a lump of black coal for a heart, which patently isn't true. Apologies anyway, Mr Howard, you stupid daft bugger for killing yourself so young. His genius is available to read here, and well worth checking out to see how good the early pulp masters were.

My humble effort, A Succubus for Freedom, is available now as an ebook from here, here, here, and even B&N here, although no one seems to go there anymore.

For the people waiting for a print version, I do have the full coverflat artwork now and I'm just waiting for the print manuscript to go through. I'll post here with details as soon as the print version of the book is available to buy. Sorry for the delay on that.

I'm not sure which fantasy stereotype is up next for "vs. Succubus". I have Rogue and Samurai (with a guest appearance from another of my characters) pencilled in. Any others you'd like to see?

Hentai Game Review: Violated Hero 2

Yay, another monster girl hentai game came out. Yay, another opportunity to lure fresh readers here and pimp books to them under the guise of a game review. As this is a hentai game, if you’re under 18 or likely to be offended by such things, now is the time to steer the mouse cursor up to the top left and hit the back button.

I blogged about the original Violated Hero back here. It was a game with some nicely executed H-scenes, but some rather lacklustre gameplay and a few iffy quirks. Well, it has a sequel out now from Dieselmine and the good news is they’ve managed to iron out a lot of the annoying wrinkles of the original.

They're not kidding around when they say violated...

It’s pricey at $34, but it’s a really chunky file at 1.5GB, so you do get a lot of content. Gameplay-wise it’s similar to the first one—the player wanders around two Dungeon Master-esque mazes, defeating enemies with either sword or magic. Lose (or sometimes win!) to certain enemies and you get a gorgeously rendered Game Over hentai scene where the monster girl performs a variety of different sex acts on the lucky/luckless hero.

The first maze is set in a forest and the second is set in the demon queen’s castle, both with nicely drawn backgrounds. As with the first game there isn’t a lot of strategy other than hit either the sword attack or magic attack button. The player also has the option of a special strong sword/magic attack, but each has a limited number of usages and is best saved for the bosses.

In the original the player levelled up by picking up a stat boost for each monster they killed, which meant an awful lot of tedious grinding against boring silhouette monsters to be able to beat the monster girl ‘bosses’ in order to proceed. This is mostly gone apart from six special conventional monsters (this time with full artwork rather than plain black silhouettes) hidden in each maze that give a stat bonus when defeated. Aside from them, the player levels up each time they defeat one of the main monster girl characters.

Milfy. Cute, bouncy, adorable...and general of an army focused on exterminating humanity.

The mazes are divided into five regions, each containing one of the main monster girl characters locked off behind a mystical barrier. The random encounters in each region are smaller versions of the main monster girl with lower quality artwork. Yes, the idiosyncratic pixelated artwork is back, but at least the main characters are all drawn with detailed artwork. Defeat three random encounters and the barrier pops open. Most of the time the player will do this before they even get to the barrier, so it’s not really a chore.

There are five monster girls in each maze as well as four generals and the demon queen herself, making fifteen characters in total. Common types such as harpies, lamia, slime girls (Milfy is adorable), mermaids and succubi are all present, and even some more unusual creations as well. Each has their own Game Over H-scene, which is the real reason you’re here, let’s face it. In that respect VH2 doesn’t disappoint. As with the first game, the artwork is consistent and well-drawn, and each scene is fully voiced. There’s a reason for that huge file size. Most of the monster girls have at least two scenes and the generals also have a third bonus epilogue scene after defeating you as well. These range from the sexy to the…um…yeah…weird.

Insector. I'm not sure I want to unlock her H-scenes...

Dieselmine clearly had one eye on Monster Girl Quest while developing this, and there’s more of a story this time around rather than a straight dungeon crawl to the Big Bad at the bottom. In particular there are plenty of cutaway scenes building up the characters of the demon queen and her generals.

Overall it’s still a collection of sumptuously-rendered hentai scenes in search of a game, but at least the game elements are less annoying this time around. It can be bought from here and the Dieselmine website is here. If you don’t fancy all the mucking around with AGTH and locales in order to play the Japanese version, this fella is working on an English translation, so it might be worth bookmarking their site.

And finally the inevitable plug. If you like this sort of game may I also humbly suggest giving my books a try, as I’m sure you’ll enjoy them too. Sample stories can be found here.

The difference between censorship and censorship

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is running at the moment and has thrown up some interesting articles. Patrick Ness put out this brilliant polemic on censorship and in particular how social media can cause problems of self-censorship for writers worried about their words being taken out of context and misunderstood. In the latter article China Miéville made the point it's only really censorship when the police show up.

This is a familiar argument and a problem with how censorship is defined. Selena Kitt brought it up here after the problems with paypal and online retailers banning some of eXcessica’s books. The articles around the time generated some debate with other people making the point that it wasn’t true censorship—no government body was actively banning the books; the booksellers were simply refusing to stock the books, which they had every right to do. I argued back then that the semantics of whether or not it was technically censorship were moot if they resulted in the same outcome. It might not be censorship in the pedantic sense, but the end result is still a writer being unable to get their work out for readers to read. There isn’t really a word to fit this ‘soft’ form of censorship, so we tend to use censorship even though it’s not strictly accurate.

This ‘soft’ censorship is especially appropriate to social media and I think Ness has it spot on. A writer either has to censor themselves and avoid trigger topics completely, or risk something being interpreted the wrong way and then have a baying online mob (most of whom probably didn’t even read the original work in the first place) stomp all over their reputation and career.

Ness raised the example of Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was not banned or censored by Western governments to my knowledge, but after seeing what happened to Rushdie, only an incredibly brave or reckless writer would attempt to tackle the same topics now. Again, this isn’t censorship in the pedantic sense, but the end result is the same—certain work will not be available for the public to read. It’s a kind of censorship by the mob.

And irony of ironies, this is the week when the Save the Pearls and Weird Tales controversy erupted on the internet, a situation that exemplifies Ness’s argument (although I don’t think he’d thank me for drawing the line from A to B).

I don’t want to talk about Victoria Foyt's book too much. I’ll be charitable and assume Foyt was aiming for an anti-racist message, but rather than hit the target, managed to spin around 180° and fire the arrow right through her foot. As a result plenty of people found it racist and were offended by it. They were also offended that Weird Tales (a fiction magazine with a long history) planned to run an extract. Further exacerbating the situation, Weird Tales had recently undergone some kind of editorial coup, with the popular Ann VanderMeer turfed out by the new owners.

This is where being one of those staunch Free Speech Warriors sucks. I fear and loathe all forms of censorship, which by extension means I also fear and loathe Political Correctness, as it’s another form of censorship, albeit by people with more honourable intentions. The moment you start to think certain things should be banned, for the “good”, is the moment you start opening the door to allow other people to ban other things, for their “good”, which might be vastly different and far more narrow-minded than your own “good”. That door should be kept shut and firmly locked. Unfortunately that sometimes means ending up on the side of the river you’d rather not be. As the famous quote goes: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Of course, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism. If someone writes something bone-headed and stupid, someone else has the right to call them out for writing something bone-headed and stupid. There is, however, a fine line between honest and deserved criticism, and hounding a writer off the internet and leaving a smouldering crater where a magazine once stood.

I fear the chilling effects Ness talked about in his polemic. Culture is poorly served if writers are grinding their work down to tasteless gruel for fear of the PC police lurking at their shoulder. Free speech should mean exactly that, not “You can write what you like, but if you write things we don’t like it’s back to rounding up trolleys at Tesco for you.” Our culture shouldn’t be ruled by fear.

Given a choice between a world where people have the freedom to write what they want and occasionally fuck it up completely, and a world where people don't write because they're scared of an online lynch mob coming after them if they do fuck it up, I'll take the former. If that means the existence of the occasional disagreeable—even bigoted—book, it’s a price worth paying.

During the rather lively discussion beneath The Guardian article someone made the point freedom to be published is not the same as the right to be published. Ultimately that decision lies with the publisher or magazine. They’re not obligated to provide a platform to writers whose work they find disagreeable, same as readers are not obligated to support businesses they find disagreeable.

I agree with that, but this is not what happened in this case. Rightly or wrongly, Weird Tales had already taken the decision to publish an extract of Foyt’s work. Then—rightly or wrongly—a pitchfork-wielding mob turned up at the gates and forced the publisher into a U-turn. In doing so they denied other readers the chance to make up their own minds on whether or not to support the magazine’s decision. That choice was taken away.

This is censorship by the mob.

No matter the provocation, we should aspire to be better than this.

A Succubus for Freedom: Excerpt 5

Continuing the excerpts from A Succubus for Freedom, here's a tasty chunk from the other new Hell-space story, "Onychophoral Dreams (The Soul Worm II)":

* * * *

It was quiet. I didn’t notice it until it was almost right on top of me and by then I was too surprised to react. She—

That’s the weird part. It’s so easy to focus on the human-like parts and forget their other . . . bits. I know I should think of it as an it, but it’s always a she.

She was right in front of me, not more than a couple of paces and as naked as the day she was born. Cute as well. She had a smile like the girls you always wanted to talk to at school, but never had the courage to ask. Those naked titties of hers were something to behold. Big, round, firm, and with the sweetest pink nipples you ever saw right in the middle of them. Pink like her hair, if it was hair.

I didn’t move. Ever since Beth . . . since Beth . . .

. . .

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a girl’s titties in the flesh. The other guys’ll go to their strip clubs, maybe get more if it’s offered, but not me. That ain’t me. Now there was this gorgeous naked girl standing right in front of me and I was so shocked I didn’t have the first idea what to do.

Except she wasn’t a girl. You only had to look down to past her waist to see that. Where a normal girl would have a cute little ass and maybe long sexy legs if you’re lucky, this girl had . . .

It’s hard to describe. Hey, you know what a velvet worm is? Proper name is peripati or puripatus or something like that.

Nephew of mine likes keeping weird little bugs for pets and that was one of them. They call it a worm, but it walks. Has these stumpy little legs—not like a millipede, more like a caterpillar.

Anyway, that’s what the girl’s lower body looked like—long, worm-like and dark pink in colour, but with rows of stumpy little triangular legs running down each side. She’d reared up so it looked like she was standing upright like a normal girl, but with that long, moist-looking worm body below the waist and fleshy little pyramid legs waving around in front of her. Even if you couldn’t see that lower peripati-whatever body, you’d still know she wasn’t a human girl. She had antennae. They grew out of her temples like the eyestalks of a slug. There was a second, bigger pair, growing out of her hips on either side of her pussy.

Ah, her pussy. It’s going to sound weird, like I’m the biggest goddamn pervert in the world, but I swear to you it was the sweetest damn little cunny you’re ever likely to see. So clean-shaven, as if it had been plucked, and with all her intimate folds tucked up so nice and tidy within her.

I know how I sound—a fucking deviant lusting after freaky demon poonang—but there was something about her exposed vagina. It drew the gaze, grabbed the eye and held it there like it had been harpooned. I don’t know how to explain it. I’m a good man, a god-fearing man. Heck, there hasn’t been anyone since Beth. Yet I was staring and gawping like I was back at puberty with my first porn mag beneath trembling fingers.

And while I was standing there and gawping like a deer in headlights those weird stalks sticking out of where her hips should be opened out into fleshy tubes and sprayed gunk all over me.

The gunk left her tubes as a jet of liquid, but it was already solidifying by the time it reached me—setting like glue or maybe some kind of stretchy rubber. The first sticky line hitting me in the chest knocked me out of my trance. I tried to struggle free, but it was already too late. She stood there and squirted more sticky threads over me until I was totally gunked up.

At that point I noticed the sticky gunk was eating right through my clothes like acid and I really started panicking. I thought for sure I was going to be melted in freaky alien slime. I thrashed around like a berserker.

Not that it did me any good. The thick threads stretched, but they were strong like thick rubber and stickier than glue. The girl thought it was funny. She stood there with her arms under those perfect pink titties and her shoulders moving up and down like she was giggling.

I was a crazed animal at this point. I was dreading the moment when the slime finished eating through my uniform and started to cut into my flesh.

It didn’t happen. As corrosive as the gunk seemed to be to clothes—and hair—I didn’t feel any pain or loss of sensation when it reached my skin. It felt warm, sticky and kind of pervy. Yeah, a weird description, I know, but that’s how it was. The stuff covered me and I felt all dirty and excited at the same time, like I was about to have illicit sex with that girl at school everyone warns you to steer clear of.

I kept pulling at the sticky, stretchy filaments, but my motions were slower now, like a punch drunk boxer on the ropes in the tenth round. I was stuck fast and knew it.

“Have you quite finished?”

Yeah, she spoke perfect English. It was a shock to me too. I stopped struggling and stared at her like I was an inbred redneck.

Her voice was high and sweet, kind of like a young woman being all teasy and girlish. She had that kind of face as well, if you ignored her weird antennae things.

“You won’t break loose, no matter how hard you struggle,” she said.

She was right. I was all trussed up in her sticky white ropes. What unnerved me was part of me seemed perfectly happy with this.

“What do you want?” I asked.

She didn’t miss a beat. She reached down and hooked a finger right up between the folds of her pussy. I swear that sweet little face went and gave me a smile dirtier than the filthiest jezebel.

* * * *

Out now on Amazon, B & N, Smashwords and other ebook websites.

A Succubus for Freedom: Excerpt 4

A Succubus for Freedom is already out as you might have seen. I don't have exact details on when the print version will appear - hoping to have more information on that soon. In the meantime here's another excerpt from one of the new stories, "Come on the Candle". (Sorry about the repetition for the people who've already picked up a copy - I'll make it up with a new Jackson in HRPG World mini-serial starting here after I'm done with the ASfF promotion season.)


* * * *

“She looks like a devil,” Vince said.

The candle looked like the kind of prop you’d expect to see in an old Hammer film about Satan worshippers.

“That’s because she is,” Annette said. “She is Arpella, spirit of lust and temptation. The ritual is a rite of cleansing. By spraying his seed onto the candle, a man is—in essence—telling her: ‘Take this. It has no hold on me.’ It’s a way of demonstrating he has transcended the pleasures and desires of the flesh.”

“Arpella?” Vince queried. “Not Lilith?”

The sculpture looked like a Lilith, or one of those succubus demons from a computer fantasy role-playing game.

Annette laughed. “That’s a Christian invention,” she said. “They took their stories from the Romans and modified them, just as the Romans took theirs from the Greeks, and the Greeks took theirs from sources long forgotten in the dust of history.”

Vince looked at the candle. “This ritual. All I have to do is light the candle and masturbate over it?”

As genuine as Annette sounded, he couldn’t quite shake the fear the attractive shopkeeper was having a joke at his expense.

“That’s right,” she said.

“Sorry. I’m picturing this in my head and it looks . . . well . . . a little ridiculous to be honest.”

“Smell the wax,” Annette said.

Vince put the sculpture to his nose and took a cautious sniff. Oh. That smelt kind of nice. Exotic. Like perfume or incense, but with a hint of something else. His previous mental image of him jerking away in front of the candle was swished off screen and replaced by a picture of a dusky desert maiden belly-dancing in a cloud of scented smoke.

“That’s the real magic,” Annette explained. “The wax is impregnated with a special blend of aromatic compounds and essential oils. As the wax melts they’re released into the air and inhaled by the user.”

“Oh. It’s a kind of aromatherapy,” Vince said, understanding.

“Yes,” Annette said. “The smoke will help you relax and achieve the perfect state of mind for flushing all the tensions from your body.”

That was good to hear. Vince was a little apprehensive about the ‘flushing’ part.

“Actually,” Annette lowered her voice, “one of those compounds is quite a potent aphrodisiac. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the force and strength of your release.”

The shop owner might have the voice of a prim and proper schoolmarm, but right there and then she gave him a look as filthy as any of the nymphs from the naughty films Carolyn had forbade Vince from seeing.

* * * *


It's Annette Brite up to more mischief. This one is best described as like "Bubble Bath", but with smoke. I haven't forgotten about that foam succubus minion either. I'll be catching up with her in the next collection.

And yeah, I know, Vince is a bit of a strawman. . .

A Succubus for Freedom: Out Now!

You can’t escape . . . You won’t want to escape . . .

Succubi and other monstrous femme fatales abound in M.E. Hydra’s fourth collection of wild, warped and wickedly dark erotica. Lie back and enjoy as alluring sirens ensnare helpless prey in thirteen weird tales of sex and horror. They'll give you pleasures beyond your wildest dreams, and terrors beyond your darkest nightmares . . .



Here's the full list of the stories:

A Succubus for Freedom
Exile
Guard Duty
Don't Fuck the Flowers
The Biggest Tits in the World
A Night at McHooligans
Barbarian vs. Succubus
Onychophoral Dreams (The Soul Worm II)
Naga Massage Review
Come on the Candle
What Bad Boys Get For Christmas
Riding the Medusa
Locked in with a Succubus

Some of the titles will be familiar, but I managed to boost the original story content up to nearly half. Six of the stories are brand new and only appear in this book. I also modified a couple. "Locked in with a Succubus" should now have an ending that makes more sense. "The Biggest Tits in the World" is actually my lowest rated Lit story, partly because of some scale issues in what happens. No problem - Lovecraftian Geometry to the rescue!

The six brand new stories feature the stone tablet succubus being thoroughly evil in a hefty 11K word novella (if you like your demon girls BAD, you'll really enjoy this), the Robert E Howard 'Conan' homage I mentioned in previous posts, something a little experimental with some lush descriptions of hell, an odd succubus summoning rite with candles and smoke, and two Hell-space stories featuring some bizarre (and sexy) monster girls.

Why are the chapters for "Locked in with a Succubus" alternating with the other stories instead of in one place?
Originally it was a weekly serial and I wanted to preserve that feeling of having a 'pause' between each chapter. It's one of those things that might work or could suck. It wouldn't be any fun being independent if I couldn't do the odd bit of experimental craziness now and again...

The book can be found on amazon, and in amazon UK (where no one actually reads me, which is ironic considering they're the only people that might understand some of my more obscurer references! :) ). It's also on B&N, smashwords and also directly from eXcessica's own site. I even put it on various romance fiction sites, because that's where we upload books, although I pity the poor person downloading it in search of fuzzy paranormal romance.

I hope everyone enjoys it anyway. Sorry it was so late coming out. It does mean I can now finally get back to Succubus Summoning 201, another project I've fallen a little (okay a lot!) behind on. I would love for people to leave reviews, but appreciate that amazon's insistence on real names might make that unappealing for some people. Please feel free to let me know what you think in the comments below or even email me directly at manyeyedhydraATgooglemail.com. The same for any suggestions. I can't guarantee I can satisfy all of them, but I don't mind tweaking scenarios to cater to specific fetishes (especially ones I haven't got around to covering yet) or even tweaking character descriptions if there's someone/thing you'd like to see in a story.

A Succubus for Freedom: Out this Friday!

Yep, that's right. A slot opened up and so it will be out August 3rd after all. It means I'll have to compress my book plugging, but hey, who wants to read book plugs when you could be reading the actual book.

Here's an extract from the title story, "A Succubus for Freedom", to celebrate:

* * * *

Andy thought the girl from his dream was just that—a dream. Then he saw her in the flesh a few nights later while they were playing a gig at The Wyld Hart.

The Wyld Hart was an odd sort of pub. It was too far off the beaten track to be absorbed into the bland franchise chain conglomerates and it didn’t have the history and character to be one of those defiant locals’ haunts. It wasn’t really the town’s rock pub either—that was The Drunken Choir out on Newcastle Street, where the bikers hung out—but it had been colonized by the metal and emo kids from the town’s schools and college. They had nowhere else to go, so they fetched up at The Wyld Hart because it had a jukebox that wasn’t full of R’n’B and Landfill Indie.

The landlord didn’t mind. The kids brought custom and even if they were ‘funny looking’, they were a lot less bother than their peers, who normally required scraping off the vomit-sodden streets every Saturday night.

Scott Battersby was normally around anyway, and no one messed with Scott Battersby.

Most people assumed Scott was the landlord even though this wasn’t the case. He did rent rooms up on the first floor and spent most of his time either behind the bar or manning the door, but he didn’t own the pub. Scott looked intimidating—bald and squat like someone had taken a seven-foot person and squashed them down to six—but he was a decent enough bloke in Andy’s opinion. Unless he was in a mosh pit. Then you stayed the fuck out of his way. Andy and the band had gone with him to a Megadeth gig. Scott had been quiet for most of the night, and then “Hangar 18” came on and a neat hole formed in the crowd around him as Scott started moshing. Scott was old school.

Scott read the board they’d chalked the band’s name on as they were setting up their gear.

“Perverts In Satan’s Service?” he said, doubtfully.

“Our new band name,” Stidolph said. “Cool, isn’t it.”

“You do know what it spells out?” Scott said.

Both Andy and Chris gave him the dejected ‘yeah, we know’ look.

Chuckling, Scott shook his head and walked away to tend the bar.

Confusion fluttered across Stidolph’s face. “What’s the problem? Is there something wrong with the band name?”

Andy put a hand on his face.

Stidolph wasn’t exactly the brightest spark, but he was still a decent frontman. The gig kicked off and straightaway he was snarling out lyrics and prowling the front of their makeshift stage as if possessed by the spirit of Ozzy himself. Of course, it would have looked more impressive had he been, you know, taller than five-foot-four.

They were halfway through a cover of Dimmu Borgir’s “Succubus in Rapture” when Andy saw the girl from his dream amongst the collection of onlookers that might loosely be termed the crowd. It was impossible to miss her. She wore a lurid red corset that accentuated her cleavage, an indecently short miniskirt and kinky red fishnet tights. Goth-wear with the kinkiness dialled up to eleven. Andy was so surprised to see her he fucked up and missed a few beats. It didn’t matter as Chris did the same. The only one who didn’t fuck up was Daniel, and that was because he was staring at the floor.

The girl watched them all the way through the set. She leant against a pillar in the centre of the room and looked so hot Andy wouldn’t have been surprised had the old oak timber caught fire. Both Stidolph and Chris were convinced they were the ones she had eyes for and showed off accordingly. Andy was a little unnerved. She looked exactly like the girl he’d dreamt about a couple of nights ago.

She wasn’t the only unexpected onlooker. As Andy was packing away his kit at the end of the gig he noticed Richard speaking with Scott over by the bar. No, more than speaking, laughing and joking as if the two men were old friends. Whatever could a boring fart like Richard have in common with an old-school thrash-head like Scott?

He didn’t get a chance to ponder it further. The hot girl, her eyes smouldering, was walking towards them. Both Stidolph and Chris stepped up to introduce themselves. She walked straight past them without a sideways glance. Her burning eyes were on him. They had been all night.

“Um . . . hi . . .” he started.

The girl shushed him with a finger on his lips. Her other hand grabbed a twist of the T-shirt covering his chest and formed a fist. Both Stidolph and Chris gaped at him in surprise as the girl shoved him in the direction of the toilets.

Yes, for the first time in rock history, the hot chick ignored the singer and lead guitarist and went straight for the drummer.

* * * *

Hey, someone found the succubus tablet . . .

It'll end in tears. (But there'll be some hot sex along the way).

Here's the nice coming soon link on eXcessica's site. It'll also be out on Amazon, B & N, Smashwords and the other usual places. I'll put the links up on Friday. There will be a print version, but it will probably be a week or so later. Given that I've never managed to successfully synch an ebook release with a print release in my entire (short) writing history, this will not exactly come as a surprise.

A Succubus for Freedom and other tales of Obscene Orgies, out Friday!

A Succubus for Freedom: Excerpt 2

Okay, so the 3rd was a smidgeon optimistic. The 17th is looking more likely now. Sorry about that.

By way of an apology here's another excerpt. This is from "Riding the Medusa", one of two previously unseen H-space stories in the collection.

* * * *

When Gossow had first heard about Riding the Medusa he’d thought the guys were yanking his chain.

“So you let her wrap her tentacles around you and reel you right up . . . and then you fuck her . . . ?”

Gossow might look like a hick and speak like a hick, but that didn’t mean he had nothing but straw between his ears. He recognised a game of wind-up-the-new-guy when he saw it.

Of course this was early on, before he’d heard all the other rumours. Turned out H-space was a really fucked-up place, with the emphasis on fuck. The eggheads had managed to open up a doorway to super-porno-rapo world.

Erlandsson’s theory was they hadn’t left Earth at all. He reckoned their brains had been fried by some kind of failed military experiment. Here was some kind of hallucination or dream; they were really drooling vegetables back on Earth.

He could be a morose little fucker sometimes.

Gossow had stabbed him in the thigh with his knife. Not hard, just a little prick. See. No dream.

“Yeah. You let one catch you and pull you right up to her. You don’t have to do anything. Just lie back and she’ll do the rest.”

Gossow wasn’t convinced.

“It’s a jellyfish. Won’t it be cold and squishy?”

“No man. It’s fucking awesome. It’s like fucking an ass and pussy and getting a blowjob all at the same time.”

* * * *

And that was how Gossow came to be standing on a rock at dawn, as naked as the day he was born, stubby erection between his legs, with the great black expanse of Lake Latex stretching out before him. He trembled with excitement as he saw a jellyfish girl glide down out of the roiling clouds towards him.

Come and get me, babe.

“You’re fucking crazy,” Erlandsson hissed from his hiding place in the rocks.

Gossow motioned for him to be quiet.

Erlandsson was there as his wingman. A man going off to Ride the Medusa needed to have a good wingman, if he wanted to live. As good as sex with a jellyfish girl was supposed to be, it would kill a man if it went on for too long.

Initially Gossow was sceptical on that point. He didn’t know much biology, had spent those lessons drawing smiley-faced sperm in the textbooks, but he was fairly sure it was physically impossible for a man to come himself to death.

That was until he was part of the team that had found Private Wiberg.

They reckoned Private Wiberg had gotten a little too excited after hearing the stories and gone off to try Riding the Medusa without first finding a wingman. Private Wiberg had been eighteen. The body they’d found looked like it belonged to an eighty-year-old.

Riding the Medusa needed a wingman. Their job was to wait until the man had had his fun and then put a bullet through the balloon-like bell. Then pfft, the man would float gently back to earth as the balloon deflated. Technically the men had strict orders to avoid the jellyfish girls, but as the girls’ bodies always evaporated to nothingness after hitting the ground, no one would ever find out. As long as a man brought along a wingman, Riding the Medusa was easily the best recreational activity to be found at FOB Rigg.

* * * *

You just know it's all going to go horribly wrong . . . ;)

I'm still waiting on eXcessica for an ISBN number. I'll post the coming soon link as soon as it's ready and hopefully A Succubus for Freedom will hit the amazon store and everywhere else on the 17th August.

A Succubus for Freedom: We have a cover!

Tentatively, I also have a date, which is next Friday (August 3rd). I'm just waiting for confirmation on that. It will either be that or the 17th. These vagaries happen when writers write too slowly and miss their scheduled slots. :)

I'll post a more detailed follow-up including the full story list as soon as I have confirmation.

A Succubus for Freedom: Excerpt I

It's a little (lot!) overdue, but I'm down to the final editing and formatting for my 4th collection of short stories, A Succubus for Freedom and other tales of Obscene Orgies. There will be thirteen stories in total, with six of them being brand new, never-before-seen. Here’s an excerpt from one, “Exile”, to whet the appetite.

* * * *

I don’t know who They are, but I know They exist. They left me with that even as They gouged out everything else. They left me with the knowledge this is my punishment, but not what I’m being punished for.

They left me a reminder of what I’ve lost.

If I close my eyes I can see it. Somewhere else. A world of fire and passion. It’s there in my memories, a far-off tunnel I walk down until I emerge into a maelstrom of flames and screams. Countless voices soar and swoop in a crescendo of pain and fear. An orchestra of agony, playing the most sublime symphony of suffering, its instruments countless tortured souls.

It is beautiful.

Pure.

Leaping flames twist and sway across the midnight-black sky. They dance like exotic birds with long plumes of brilliant yellow, red and orange. Their partners for the dance are souls pinned on long blackened iron spikes. Ten feet high the flames reach, caressing feet, ankles, hands, sexes with long flickering tongues. The flames’ lascivious touch scorches hair, chars skin and melts fat. There are pauses in the dance, when the flames die down to flickering red embers. It’s a respite to allow fingers and toes to regrow, molten fat to solidify back into tissue, and skin to creep back over scorched muscle.

The souls scream loudest then.

Looming beyond the fires are the great iron windmills. Powered by great sails of living human skin, black cogs and gears turn ceaselessly, a constant metronome to the unending orchestra of agony. There are people caught in the gears. Caught between the teeth of unyielding metal, their bodies stretch and twist but never tear. The cogs turn and turn, contorting individuals into stretched tubes of skin and meat with a core of splintered bone.

Nothing truly lives here, so death has no dominion. There is only sensation.

Eternal sensation.

I walk down a path paved in mewling babies, their bodies compacted into living blocks. They stare up at me with eyes like glossy marbles and cry through tiny mouths lined with teeth as white as precious pearls. Their wails buoy me up like a feather in a breeze. Up ahead is the palace where she awaits me.

I enter her chambers and walk through into a room where she sits on a throne upholstered in human skin. The still-living heads of the skins’ owners are positioned at the end of each armrest. They chatter and gibber nonsensically to each other while she ruffles a hand through each head’s hair.

She. My vision of perfection. My avatar of passion.

My succubus.

I drink in the vision of her sitting on the throne, one lithe leg crossed over the other, like a starving vampire in the presence of a virginal beauty.

No virgin is my succubus. No trace of innocence clouds her eyes. They burn with lust and passion, fires to turn all her human prey into moths eager to cast their pitiful mortal forms into the burning sun of her desire. I feel that black hole attraction and she mine.

More than simple hunger burns in her eyes as she uncrosses her legs and stands up on obsidian black hooves. A moist tongue dabs around exquisite full lips. I take her hand and together we exit her throne chamber.

Her bed is covered in the still-living skins of a hundred virgin women. Their owners sigh and moan, and the bed undulates as they thrust their sexes at me, begging me to fill them with my prick. I ignore them. Only one sex interests me.

I throw my succubus onto the shifting bed and get on top of her. There is no need for delay or patient build-up. Our passion is a conflagration needing no spark to ignite. The close presence of our bodies is enough. Her legs wrap around me, hooves crossing behind my back as I drive my prick into her boiling sex.

* * * *

A Succubus for Freedom, coming soon. I’ll the post the exact details here as soon as I have them.