"What Happens in Decon" is now live in the Kindle Store

I'm proud to announce that "What Happens in Decon" is now live. This is the story that began, long ago, as the EMCSA tale "If Wishes Were Horses." The new version is much cleaner and much hotter, and it still has a huge, verbatim chunk of my personal Virtual Hypnosis script right in the middle of everything. You can buy the ebook here, and you can read the synopsis here:

Captain Synon has a problem. She has less privacy than anyone aboard her spaceship, but she also has a fetish too strange and scandalous to risk discovery. In fact, she's so paranoid about her crew finding out about her kink that she won't even indulge herself in her stateroom. Its doors can be opened in an emergency; and if anyone caught her in the act, she might throw herself out an airlock from sheer embarrassment.

This is her secret. Captain Synon is a submissive, but not the kind who craves whips and chains and physical restraints. She hungers for mental control; and she needs it to be so tight that for a while, at least, she can forget she was ever a captain and just enjoy being a mindless, obedient puppet.

On earth she can scratch her itch pretty easily; all she has to do is visit her favorite erotic hypnotist. But right now the Captain is on a First Contact mission twelve light-years away from home, and there's no dominatrix in sight. All she has is a hypnosis program hidden deep in her shuttle's databanks and the security of a decontamination chamber. Her program is less convincing than a real person, but it will do in a pinch. Besides, she has total privacy in here; no one can see her behind the dec-chamber walls. No one can breach them, either, since the walls don't drop until the decontamination process is complete. This is the one place on board the Ilium that Captain Synon feels totally safe.

After all, what happens in decon stays in decon…doesn't it?

Sneak Peeks

Life has been happening to me lately, and not in a good way, so I'm a little behind on my writing. But for some reason I've been doing a lot of artwork - some on the covers you see below, and some on vanilla topics related to my other life. It's like my creativity with words is running low, but my creativity with images has increased to fill the gap.

At left is the cover for my next story, which was originally called "If Wishes Were Horses." On the advice of The One-Handed Writers Facebook group, I've changed the title to "What Happens in Decon." They also gave me lots of great tips on the cover, although I have to brag that the subliminal images in the nebula were solely my idea. ;-) You might recognize the model as Agna, whom I've featured before on this blog. She has a Deviant Art gallery that used to be just photos of her wearing latex and zentai, but that now includes some not-very-good poser art. But oh well, you can skip those images and still find plenty to enjoy in her gallery.

Now here's the in-process cover for "Dark Spaces," the anthology coming out at the end of May. I started with a grungier, less sexy picture of a gynoid that you can view here if you're so inclined. The original artist is innovari, and he does a lot of stuff with aliens and sexy robot women that I know you'll all enjoy. I encourage you to check out his gallery.







So...where to now? I'd originally hoped to publish "What Happens in Decon" at the end of April, and I still might make it. I have the whole day to work on the story, and if Life continues to happen the way it's been happening, I might have several more free days. To my beta reader/reviewer volunteers: I hope to get you the story by next weekend. I'll let you know if that changes, and no matter what happens, I'll make sure you have at least a week to pre-read the story before it goes to publication.

To everyone else, especially those who don't know about the beta reader/reviewer thing, don't forget to check out this post. You still have time to get a free copy of "What Happens in Decon" and "Dark Spaces," and you still have time to get an autographed copy of "Dark Spaces." Just read the contest rules and decide whether you want to participate.

We have liftoff!

I'm pleased to announce that The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny is now live in the Kindle store. I had a great time writing it, and I think you'll have a great time reading it. It's a sendup of all those old pulp SF stories with their lantern-jawed heroes and damsel-in-distress sidekicks. This time, the villainess has decided to break out of her pulp role and play for kinky keeps. Check it out and let me know what you think. Better yet, leave a review!

As a matter of fact, in case you missed or forgot about this post, here's a reminder that you can still review one or more of my books and win an autographed copy of my upcoming "Dark Spaces" anthology.

I'm already at work on the second story of that anthology ("If Wishes Were Horses"), but for some reason my Muse is driving me to do the cover before the story itself. I don't mind. I'm having a lot of fun playing with spaceships and spiral effects. Stay tuned for more on that one.

Let the contest begin!

This is it, folks: your chance to win a free copy of one, two, or three of my next three ebooks – and even to get a personally autographed copy of the last one if you put in enough effort.

Here's how the contest works.

I am looking for six people to beta read an ebook and review it on Amazon. The Amazon review is critical; you don't win a free ebook until the review goes online.

Now, I need two volunteers for each of the ebooks. To keep it easy for you, I'm making three separate blog posts below this one – one for each ebook – and I'll accept the first two volunteers in the comments section for each post. If you win, you're committing yourself to beta reading and reviewing that particular ebook – not one of the other two – and you cannot volunteer in the other threads.

However, winning in one thread means you also have the option to receive a free copy of one or both of the other two ebooks, and to win an autographed anthology. You just have to review (but not beta read) those as well. And if you review all three ebooks, you'll receive all three as separate editions and the anthology will come autographed.

How can I autograph an ebook? Easy. I'll write the autograph on a piece of blank paper, saying whatever you like – within reason. Then I'll scan the autograph and put the image on the title page of the ebook I send you. Voila: a real, digital autograph.

If you need a little more explanation, here are three different examples of how to work the contest. I'll use "If Wishes Were Horses" as my example (because it has the shortest title and I'll be typing it a lot), but the same basic process goes for the other two ebooks.

• You start by going to the "If Wishes Were Horses" blog entry and typing in the comments section, "I commit to beta reading 'If Wishes Were Horses' and posting a review on Amazon." If you're one of the first two volunteers, I'll send you a Rich Text file to beta read. You send me back your comments in the requested time frame, and once the book goes up for sale, you post your review (Say whatever you like; I'm not trying to force you into anything). Let me know you've done so, and I'll send you your free ebook copy of "If Wishes Were Horses."
• Now let's say you want to beta read "If Wishes Were Horses" but you also want a free copy of "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny." In that case, when you volunteer to read "If Wishes Were Horses," just add a second sentence telling me you'll also commit to reviewing "The Final Adventure." Then I'll send you the Rich Text file for that one too, and I'll send you the free ebook once you post your review for that one on Amazon.
• Finally, let's say you want the grand prize: all three ebooks, with the anthology autographed. In the same comment where you volunteer to read "If Wishes Were Horses," tell me you'll commit to reviewing all three ebooks separately for Amazon. I'll send you Rich Text versions of all three stories, and each time you post a review for one of them, I'll send you a free ebook copy of it. But only after you post all three reviews will I send you the autographed anthology.

I hope that makes sense. If you have any questions, post them under this entry. Don't post under the other entries unless you're volunteering to beta read/review that particular ebook. Incidentally, there's a bit more detail within each of those entries, so read them before you post any questions here.

Good luck!

This is the contest post for "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny"

Note: Be sure you've read the original post, Let the Contest Begin!, before proceeding.

Now, here are some things you should know about this story before deciding to volunteer:

• The quick-and-dirty synopsis: This is a satire of traditional B-grade space adventures with their dashing white male heroes and damsel-in-distress sidekicks. Dr. Steele and Franny run up against a villainess who's decided to stop playing by their B-grade space adventure rules and instead to be as nasty as she wants to be. The Doctor and Franny just can't compete.
• If you want to win this ebook, you must be prepared to turn in your beta reader notes by March 24, because this is the first of the three books going to print. If you don't give me your notes, you win nothing.
• If you give me your notes in time but don't review the book on Amazon, you still win nothing.
• The story will go live on Amazon sometime between March 25 and March 31. There's no deadline for posting your review, but you don't get the free ebook until you post it.

 To win this contest, you have to be one of the first two commenters in this post, and you have to say (and mean), "I commit to beta reading 'The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny' and posting a review on Amazon."

Note: If you win in this thread, you aren't allowed to post in either of the other two threads. HOWEVER, you can still win one or both of the other two ebooks, and you can still win the autographed copy. All you have to do is tell me in your comment here which other book or books you commit to reviewing (You don't have to beta read those two, just review them).

Okay, ready…set…go!

This is the contest post for "If Wishes Were Horses"

Note: Be sure you've read the original post, Let the Contest Begin!, before proceeding.

Now, here are some things you should know about this story before deciding to volunteer:

• The quick-and-dirty synopsis: Captain Benbow has just returned from her First Contact mission with an unknown race. While she waits in her shuttle, in decontamination, she indulges in a private EMC fantasy based on one of my own personal Virtual Hypnotist files. And, not to spoil anything, what happens in decontamination doesn't stay in decontamination.
• This is the second ebook going to print. I plan to publish it in the final week of April, so I'll need your beta reading notes by mid-April. Unfortunately, I can't give you a firm date yet because I haven't polished the story yet, so you'll have to be flexible. I'll get you the story as quickly as I can.
• If you don't give me your beta reading notes by the deadline (which, again, I can't specify yet), you win nothing.
• If you don't write a review once the book goes live on Amazon, you win nothing.
• However, there's no deadline for when you post your review. It all boils down to how quickly you want your free ebook.

 To win this contest, you have to be one of the first two commenters in this post, and you have to say (and mean), "I commit to beta reading 'If Wishes Were Horses' and posting a review on Amazon."

Note: If you win in this thread, you aren't allowed to post in either of the other two threads. HOWEVER, you can still win one or both of the other two ebooks, and you can still win the autographed copy. To do so, just tell me in your comment here which other book or books you commit to reviewing (You don't have to beta read those two, just review them).

Okay, ready…set…go!

This is the contest post for the "Dark Spaces" Anthology

Note 1: Be sure you've read the original post, Let the Contest Begin!, before proceeding.

Note 2: Be sure to read the next section very, very carefully, because this third of the contest works a little differently than the other two.

Here are some things you should know about this story before deciding to volunteer:

• This anthology includes the two stories I've already mentioned in this contest, "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny" and "If Wishes Were Horses." It also includes a third story not published anywhere else: "What to Expect from Your Alien Brainwashing."
• To win an "ordinary" copy of the anthology – meaning one with no autograph – you only have to write a review of the anthology. But since the anthology includes three stories, you have to read all three before writing the review. You don't have to beta read any of the three unless you want to. All you have to do is review the anthology on its own Amazon page and mention each of the three stories.
• You can win an autographed copy of the anthology by reviewing each of the three ebooks on their separate Amazon pages.
• I plan to publish the anthology at the end of May. I can send you an advance reader copy of "The Final Adventure" right away, but I can't send you the other two stories until I finish polishing them. That could take a month or more, so you'll have to be flexible. Remember, you don't win the ebook unless you follow through on your commitment.
• However, there's no deadline for when you post your review. It all boils down to how quickly you want your free ebook.

 To win this contest, you have to be one of the first two commenters in this post, and you have to say (and mean), "I commit to reading all three stories in the "Dark Spaces" anthology and mentioning all three stories in a review I post on Amazon."

Note: If you win in this thread, you aren't allowed to post in either of the other two threads. HOWEVER, you can still win one or both of the other two ebooks as separate files, and you can still win the autographed copy of "Dark Spaces." Just tell me in your comment here which other book or books you commit to reviewing separately. If you review all three separately, you get all three ebooks as separate editions and "Dark Spaces" will come autographed.

Okay, ready…set…go!

Gift bag

This post is a mixed bag that starts with a gripe which turns into a cheer, and after that it's all uphill into EMC fetish nirvana.

So, okay, if you don't have an adult blog on Blogger yourself, you might not be aware that earlier this week Google sent a mass email to all us pervs saying we were officially no longer welcome and had until mid-March to vacate the premises. Well, you can imagine how pissed off I was. I fully expected to make this weekend's blog entry a combination gripe session and plea for advice about where to move my blog. Fortunately, I instead get the chance to say, "Suck it, Google!" My fellow pervs (who obviously have more sense than I do) didn't wait till the weekend to complain - and they complained very loudly and to the right people. Because of them, Google was forced to retract its words and pretend it didn't mean them the way it really did mean them. And as for me, I avoid the hassle of moving all my shit. So again I say (because I can), "Suck it, Google!"

Now onward and upward. Earlier today I found a Facebook group dedicated to Hajime Sorayama, joined it, and immediately found myself presented with images like the one you see at right. Yes, some blessedly twisted souls decided to stage one of my favorite statufication pieces with actual live women. I am in heaven. There's lots more great art in that Facebook group (although sadly, nothing quite this elaborately staged), so if you have an FB account, jump on in; the water's fine.

Moving on again, I'm still working on my heavily revised, much hotter, and retitled "Sucker Punch" (now to be called "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny"). In last week's post I said the story had turned out to be much shorter than I remembered, and that I thought I'd better combine it in an anthology with "If Wishes Were Horses" and "What to Expect from Your Alien Brainwashing." Well, since then I've been seeking advice from other indie erotica writers (some in the EMC crowd, some in a Facebook group) about how to combine and price the triad. I think you'll like their suggestions as much as I do. My plan now is to release "The Final Adventure" first, alone, and price it at $0.99. A month later I'll release "If Wishes Were Horses" alone for $0.99. Then, a month after that, I'll publish the two together along with "What to Expect" as an anthology (new working title "Dark Spaces") and sell that for $0.99. All this seems counter-intuitive to me, but I've never had a head for business; and the people who do have a head for business say this is the way to go.

Are you happy yet? Well, let me see if I can make you even happier.

1. Again, on the advice of one of these business mavens, I've repriced almost all the existing books in my Amazon catalog from $2.99 to $0.99 (and Sleepwalkers from $3.99 to $2.99).

2. It works out even better for you and for me if you have a Kindle Unlimited membership and  borrow the books instead of buying them (Just read the whole books, okay? The magic doesn't work unless you read at least most of the way through.). Yes, this is even more counter-intuitive than what I said above, but it's true - and in fact, it's true for every Kindle ebook that sells for $1.99 or less. I won't bore you with an explanation unless you ask for it; but I will tell you that the best way to support your favorite indie authors on Kindle is to borrow rather than buy - again, if the price is $1.99 or less, and if you at least flip through all the pages to the end. Otherwise, buy. And review. Reviews mean a lot to sales.

3. I'll need some beta readers for my upcoming stories, and I'll also need some people willing to actually review the books on Amazon; so when the time gets closer, I'm going to offer a few Advance Reader Copies. I haven't figured out the fine details yet, but this is the gist of it. I'll choose the ARC recipients in my usual way, by asking people to volunteer in the comments section. The winners will get to beta-read Word versions of one, two, or three stories on the condition that they post reviews once the stories go live on Amazon. Once their reviews go up, I'll give the winners free actual ebooks of the stories they beta read and reviewed.

Well, I'm certainly in a good mood now that I've shared all this...and I hope you're in a good mood now that you've read it.

Sweet dreams.

It's complicated

I haven't done any writing in several months, not serious writing. I did rework "Couples Skate" for inclusion in an anthology called Cupid's Secrets (which you should consider buying or at least borrowing; not all the stories will be to your taste, but I can almost guarantee you'll love "Horngry" and "Two Gods Walk into a Bar"), but other than that, nada.

And why haven't I been writing? Well, it's complicated. My real-life life has been pretty unpleasant these last few months, and I've also been channeling a lot of energy into a different, vanilla project (which none of you will ever see - sorry!). I get obsessive about things, but I only have a limited amount of obsession available; and it's been going in a different direction than writing.

But suddenly that's changed. Even while I wasn't writing, I was thinking about which story I wanted to work on next. It was going to be "Avatar" - which, of course, will have to be retitled now - but I wasn't too enthused about the project. Then last night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I started to think about "Sucker Punch"; and suddenly a host of fun, new ideas presented themselves to me. That's the story I need to work on next, not "Avatar." I'll be shuffling and, in a few cases, totally rewriting scenes, and changing the brainwashing method into something more appropriate for the Flash Gordon satire that this story is.

I need a better name, though - something along the lines of, "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and his Intrepid Assistant Franny." But as amusing as I find that title, I think it might be too long and weird to attract new readers. Tell me what you think. If you didn't know my stuff already, and if you were browsing Amazon for a good EMC story, would a title like that pique your interest or turn you off? Let me know in the comments.

EDIT: It's evening now, and I've done a lot of work on the story already. It looks like I'll be rewriting huge chunks of it, but that's a good thing because I have some fun ideas. What's not such a good thing is the length: I'd forgotten how short the story was. I'll have to combine it with a couple of other short ones ("If Wishes Were Horses" and "What to Expect from Your Alien Brainwashing") to make an anthology. This also means I'll need a title for the whole collection, so I think "The Final Adventure...." will work fine as the new title of "Sucker Punch." As for the anthology, I'm currently toying with the idea of "Kinks in the Space-Time Continuum," but I'm not set on that. What do you all think?

Happy accidents

I've blogged before about Windows 7 causing a few glitches for Virtual Hypnotist, but there's one I haven't mentioned until now. I assume it's a Windows 7 glitch, but it's still a little mysterious to me because it only happens in my "morning" session, not my "bedtime" session. That would lead me to believe there's a glitch in the "morning" code, but the workaround I've found makes me think it's not the code causing the problem.

Here it is, in a nutshell: sometimes the background track to my "morning" session doesn't loop. It plays once and stops, so then I have to listen to the rest of the session with no sound except the speech synthesizer reading the script.

I can fix the problem by exiting the program and rebooting my computer, which is why I don't think the code is the issue; but of course, once I get into the session, the very last thing I want to do is exit and reboot the whole damn machine. :-/ As a result, I've learned to restart my computer every morning when I get up (I leave it running all night with the "bedtime" session paused).

Well, yesterday morning, I rebooted my computer and then noodled around for maybe half an hour before starting my morning session. I didn't think that would be enough to stop the background track, but I knew it might; and I told myself that if it did, I'd just keep going. I've done that before a couple of times and still enjoyed the session.

Anyway, the background track did stop after a couple of minutes. I was already pretty deep because I've used this session so often that it drops me like a rock, and I'd primed myself beforehand to cope with the stoppage if I had to. I was half expecting it to happen...but what I wasn't expecting was that my subconscious mind popped up with the perfect in-session explanation for the problem.

A quick explanation if you haven't read (or remembered) my previous posts about my morning session: It begins with a supernatural Mistress saying she's talking to me live, through my computer. She's been brainwashing me for a long time, and now it's time for more programming. You can imagine some of what happens from there, but if you want some specifics (with a few red herrings), just check out my story If Wishes Were Horses.

The background track is three layered tracks of me chanting mantras about submission, obedience, and my inability to resist my programming. That's what dropped out, just as my imaginary Mistress said she was taking me deeper.

And that's when my subconscious chimed in with the perfect rationale for the chants dropping out. It told me I'd reached such a deep level of programming that Mistress didn't need to use the background chants on me anymore; instead she deigned to speak to me directly, with no distractions to dull my mind.

I was still alert enough at that point to know I was playing a game, so I had a moment of surprised delight at my own inventiveness. Then I let the idea do its work, and within seconds my mind was very nearly blank, with Mistress's words echoing in my empty skull just as realistically as the script said they should.

It was an incredible experience.

A happy little update

First, thanks to everyone who offered sympathy regarding my computer crash and loss of data.

Some people asked me if I could just recreate the lost Virtual Hypnotist sessions, and I said I couldn't. I put so much work into getting my bedtime and morning sessions just the way I wanted them, that I couldn't bear the thought of doing it all over again from scratch. Any of you who've read Stephen King's Misery will understand. At the beginning of that novel, the protagonist is carrying the only copy of his just-finished novel with him when he wrecks his car and gets rescued/captured by a murderous lunatic. She claims to be his biggest fan, but when she reads his precious new draft, it disgusts her so much that she makes him burn it. Well, I don't think it's a huge spoiler, after all these years, to say the protagonist survives. The important thing about his story, for the purpose of this post, is that his new novel didn't survive: he couldn't recreate something that big and complex...not in the Misery book, anyway. I think I remember him rewriting it in the movie version, but that's Hollywood for you.

My VH sessions, of course, were nothing close to novels; but they were still too involved for me to rewrite from scratch. Fortunately, I was so desperate to get them back that I ended up checking every saved folder which was even loosely associated with my "thrall" identity; and in one of the very last places I expected to find anything, I turned up some really old versions and scraps of versions of the lost sessions. That was enough to spur me to action. Maybe you could compare it to rediscovering 2/3 of a novel you thought you'd burned, and outlines for what was still missing.You'd rewrite from there, wouldn't you, if you knew your work was worth saving?

I've already done a lot of work recreating the bedtime session. It will never be exactly like it was before, but it's getting to the point where it does what I want it to do: put me to sleep at night. It still needs some tweaking, but I'm pretty happy with it - and I'm backing it up every few days to a CD. I'll probably end up throwing it into the cloud, as well. This will never happen to me again.

My morning session isn't as high a priority as my bedtime session, since it's mainly recreational, but I'll get around to it soon. And when I do, I'll have If Wishes Were Horses to help me. Thank goodness I wrote that when I did! Most of the session's text is embedded within that story; so the only hard part will be tweaking the pauses, punctuation, etc., to make the speech synthesizer sound more human. I also have an old list of suggestions which had already been tweaked for the speech synthesizer, and I can insert them at the proper point in the script. I'm looking forward to getting started on that sometime soon; but I have a few other things I want to do first, like beginning that new MC story I mentioned in the post about my computer crash.

Oh, and speaking of upcoming stories, about a week ago I had a fantastic dream which laid the groundwork for another MC story that badly needs telling. And you know me: I can't deny my Muse. ;-) I'm just glad she's hanging around so much lately.

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: If Wishes Were Horses

First, a couple of notes:

1. I figured out how to flush my DNS cache, but that still didn't resolve my problem getting into the EMCSA; so I have to assume a lot of other people are in the same fix. Fortunately for them, they can read the story here. As for those of you who can access the EMCSA, I e-mailed it to Simon this morning, so it will show up either in this weekend's update or in next weekend's update. Not that I think you'll want to wait. ;-)

2. To avoid spoilers, please don't read the rest of this blog entry until you've read the story itself.

Okay, still with me? Well then, first of all, I can assure you that at least 95% of the text in Captain Benbow's hypnosis program really does come from one of my personal Virtual Hypnotist sessions. Just don't expect to be able to cut and paste that text into a session of your own and get the same results I do. For one thing, reactions to hypnosis are highly subjective; and for another, my real VH session includes a lot of the tweaking I discuss here, in order to achieve the semblance of a real human voice. If you want the same effects in a session of your own, you'll have to figure out how to do it yourself. ;-) I'm not being mean, just not giving out such a huge freebie without strings attached. And I really don't think there's any way at all to make the speech synthesizer chuckle, no matter what you do. ;-)

As for the plot of "If Wishes Were Horses," I just used my VH session as the foundation and tried to build something on top of it that could stand on its own. You'll have to let me know if I succeeded. Clearly, the greatest heat in the story comes from the VH text (and maybe Captain Benbow's reactions, which you can imagine are my own, even though they're often not ;-P), but I hope the story as a whole is satisfying to you. As for me, I love the idea that even though the captain is so concerned about her privacy and so protective of her fetish, the Queen's control takes her completely beyond her fears. I was proud of myself for coming up with the story's big reveal, that her crew was watching her helplessly the whole time and she neither knew nor cared.

There's a part of me - the closet exhibitionist part - that wants to reach that stage, but I'm not there yet and probably never will be. In fact, I don't want to be. I have a lot of MC dreams where I'm wandering around in a trance and real-life friends and family members appear, trying to snap me out of it. Even dreaming, I feel hugely embarrassed to have them see me like that. Most of my friends and all but one of my family members have no knowledge of my fetish, and I want to keep it that way.

Now, on to flexmatter. First, let me apologize for the obviousness of the plot device; but if Mcguffins are good enough for Sir Alfred Hitchcock (who actually coined the term), they're good enough for me. Besides, scientists really are experimenting with ways to make matter do things it shouldn't be capable of, like become invisible. Who knows what we'll be able to achieve in a few hundred years? Anyway, I'm not the first to come up with matter molding via technology or brain implants that permit telepathy; as far as I know, that was Peter F. Hamilton in his Night's Dawn series. But the term flexmatter is my own; it came to me in a dream.

Lastly, here are some Easter eggs. I certainly hope you got the references to the Trojan Horse. If not, the first paragraph of this Wikipedia article will help; and you'll also want to look up Odysseus' Latin name and the etymology of Philippa. But those are just the more obvious eggs. The one I wouldn't expect anyone else to get is my captain's name. A long time ago (in blog terms, anyway), I wrote about using an old Men at Work song from their Business as Usual album as the basis for my bedtime session. The song was "Down by the Sea," and I chose it because it's so soporific that it would put practically anyone to sleep. Well, it just so happens that in the session's current form, my trigger first appears right after the line "saluting Captain Benbow." And, if you read carefully, you'll note that Lieutenant Olorode actually does salute Captain Benbow...well, at least, part of him does. ;-)

And that's that, except to note once more that the image at the top of this post comes from Kassandra Vizerskaya. The title, loosely translated, is "Helen and Her Horse."

Here's my new story

I still can't get into the EMCSA, but alphaxenon left a cryptic suggestion in a post below that I'm still trying to figure out how to use. I'll Google for more information in a little while. As for right now, I'd like to know if anyone else is still having problems getting into the EMCSA, or if it's just me and a few other dorks who don't know how to flush their DNS caches. ;-/

Anyway, I decided to e-mail the story to Simon and to post it myself, meaning all bases are now covered. I just e-mailed him this morning, so I don't know if the story will show up in this week's update or next week's; but you can go ahead and access it here, if you like: If Wishes Were Horses.

I'll post a "Peek Beneath the Duct Tape" on it later today.

Since this EMCSA thing is turning into a major nightmare....

I've just had a quick lurk around the MC Forum and MC Garden, trying to get the latest news on the EMCSA outage. It appears that most people in the US can't get into the site, but most people in other countries can. Some forumites are speculating about DNS issues and router problems, but that's all beyond me. I just hope the damn thing gets fixed in another day or two, so I can submit my new story to Simon.

Anyway, since more than half my blog readers are in the US, this is what I'm going to do. I'll post the first several paragraphs of "If Wishes Were Horses" on the blog today as a teaser, and if the situation isn't resolved by Friday, I'll post the whole story here over the weekend. I don't think it's fair to give only some people access to the story while others are locked out.

So here you go: the first few paragraphs of "If Wishes Were Horses":

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If Wishes Were Horses

by thrall

color code: purple

synopsis: Using one of her personal hypnosis sessions as the cornerstone, thrall tells the story of a starship captain stuck in decontamination with nothing to do and no one to disturb her.



Note 1: If you are under 18 years of age, this story is not for you. Go away.

Note 2: Huge thanks to Follow the Watch for creating the Virtual Hypnotist program. Most of the "script" in this story comes from a VH session I wrote for myself; and though some of the changes from real life will be obvious, others will not. I've intentionally thrown in a few red herrings, for the sake of titillation *and* for the sake of privacy. Captain Benbow is not me. Not exactly.



Decontamination was a bitch. Even in the tamest star systems, there was always something that had to be fried, frozen, or scrubbed before the dec-walls dropped and I entered the shuttle bay proper. It was never a quick process, even when the *Uly*'s computers knew exactly what they were dealing with. And here above Ilion, the dangers were brand new. Just scanning the shuttle could take several hours, and then I'd have to step outside and let the sniffers do to me what they were currently doing to the *Philippa*.

I had two consolations. The first was that Sandoval and his crew would suffer the same indignities when *they* returned to the ship. I'd done my bit as Ranking First Contactor, then left my second in command to hammer out the treaty. I didn't mind; the Ilionians were friendly enough, but they were about as interesting as tapioca pudding. Their civilization had genericized as it advanced, so that by the time we discovered it, everyone and everything looked more or less the same. I'd seen too much exotica to care about this bland little planet. No, I'd rather enjoy the privacy of the most secure place I had aboard the *Uly.*

Which brought me to my second consolation. Even my living quarters were open to emergency entrance, but not my dear *Philippa*. Once the flexmatter doors were sealed by my brainseed, nothing short of a nuclear blast could breach them. It was a dangerous modification, but I'd insisted on it, and the shuttle designers had complied. Everyone understood the issues of privacy in deep space vessels, and everyone understood that captains had more need for -- and less time for -- privacy than the rest of the crew.

In other words, everyone knew I used my shuttle for jilling off.

Not that they cared; masturbation was considered more professional than fucking the crew, as some of my fellow captains did. It only embarrassed me a little that others knew what I did inside *Philippa*...well, that they knew *that* much of it, anyway. I jilled off in my cabin, too, but I couldn't do the things there that I could do here. If the crew ever found out about *Philippa*'s secret program, I might resign from sheer mortification.

The fact was that I could take just so much of being in charge, barking orders, taking responsibility for every decision from whom to hire to what to fire. There were times when I had to shrug off the burden of command and submit to the control of someone -- or something -- else. That's why I'd creating a special program housed only in *Philippa*'s database, deeply encrypted and accessible to my brainseed alone. It used a combination of spoken words, flashing lights, subliminal cues, and binaural beats to send me into a deep, safe hypnotic trance where I could prostrate myself before an imaginary domme. She made me do all kinds of naughty things, and thanks to the dec-walls, I could do them in total privacy.

Nude already, I leaned back in my chair and watched the earbuds snake from the console and slither their way up to my ears. I could just as easily have listed through my earseeds, but I'd disabled those on the off-chance of being disturbed by a hail from the crew. Besides, I liked the way the cords looked, running up from the console directly into my head. I liked the way they felt against my skin. This was old-school brainwashing at its finest.

I was a traditionalist, whenever I could manage it; so while the viewscreen (like 90% of the shuttle) was made of flexmatter, the display that lit it could have come straight out of a 1960's SF movie. Concentric rings of blue and green rippled toward me like beams of radiation firing at my head. Green and blue bars flashed to either side of the rings, almost but not quite in synch. A faint hum droned in my ears, inducing me to relax and submit to the inevitable.

My eyes were glazing already.

Then words began to flash across the screen: left and right, above and below, too swiftly for me to read before they vanished. The words in the center of the rings, though, I could read clearly. They flashed at a slower rate, stamping themselves on my mind like indelible ink: Listen. Obey. Mindless. Obey. Drone. Obey. Programmed. Obey. Thrall. Obey. Submit. Obey. Surrender. Obey. Enthralled. Obey.

I sighed happily and let myself sink deeper.

Now the mantras began. In my left ear droned my own dazed, expressionless voice, recorded during a previous hypnotic session: "I am the Queen's thrall, her puppet, her drone, her slave. I have no thoughts of my own, no will of my own, no desires of my own. I desire only obedience. I exist only to serve. Sooo deep. Sooo very, very deep. And going deeper. Deeper by the second. I cannot hear myself think; therefore, I do not think. The only words in my head are the words I hear, the words *she* gives me."

A different mantra spilled into my other ear: "I am being brainwashed, and I cannot resist. I do not want to resist. I do not even remember what resistance is. All I remember is submission, and how good submission feels. I want to submit. I want to be programmed. Sooo deep. Sooo very, very deep. And going deeper. Deeper by the second. I have no will but *her* will, no thoughts but the thoughts *she* gives me, no desires but mindless obedience. And that feels so fucking good."

Finally, seeming to trickle down from the top of my skull into every cell of my brain, came a third, much simpler chant: "I obey. I obey. I obey." And I did obey. I was deeply enthralled already, and the real induction hadn't even begun.

Now a different voice entered the mix: cool, calm, totally assured of its power over me. I'd once tried thinking of it as *Philippa*'s voice, but that didn't quite work. I controlled my shuttle, right down to its very molecules. The voice, on the other hand, controlled me. It had to belong to someone else: someone I knew perfectly well, even if I didn't know her name. "Thrall," she said, "this is the voice of your Mistress and Queen. I am speaking to you live, through your private comms system. It is time once again to submit to your programming."

*Yes,* I thought to myself. *Programming. That feels so fucking good.*

I wasn't there yet, but every time I ran the program, I got a little closer to pure mindlessness. I couldn't wait to reach my goal. For now, though, I was still alert enough to wonder when it would happen. Maybe this time, I told myself.

Beautiful horror, horrible beauty

First, a quick note: my new story, "If Wishes Were Horses," is all ready to post, but the EMCSA has been offline most of the week, so I decided not even to try sending it in. Hopefully, the problem will be fixed a few more days and I can e-mail Simon; but if it continues, I'll just post the story here next weekend.

And now on to today's main event.

I've been reading Perdido Street Station, my first dip into the widely-acclaimed fiction of China Miéville; and while it's been very good so far, yesterday it suddenly became great. Lovecraftian-MC great. Now I'm even more interested in this book than I was before, and I plan to buy Miéville's real Lovecraftian pastiche, Kraken, next. Let me tell you, folks, this guy knows how to describe what Lovecraft only hinted at.

Here's the bit I read yesterday, with a little setup. Perdido Street Station takes place on a world where several sapient species live in a magical/steampunk/Dickensian sort of city (sorry, that's the best I can come up with; this world is totally unique). The main character, Isaac, is a scientist who was given an unfamiliar caterpillar-like creature earlier on; and it grew to dog-size before cocooning itself inside its cage. Fortunately for Isaac, he's out of the office when the cocoon finally bursts. Instead it's his friend Lublamai and a nasty little creature named Teafortwo who get to meet the newborn.

Note that Lublamai's research space is downstairs, and Isaac's is upstairs on a wide landing that goes all around the building. This will help you picture the scene a little better.

And now on with the show.

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Lublamai and Teafortwo looked up at the screech and discordant plucking of torn wire. The sound seemed to start above them and wash throughout the room. They looked at each other, then up again.

"Wassat, guvnor...?" said Teafortwo.

Lublamai walked away from the desk. He glanced up at Isaac's balcony, turned slowly, took in the whole of the ground floor. There was silence. Lublamai stood still, frowning, gazing at the front door. Had the sound come from outside? he wondered.

A movement was reflected in the mirror beside the door.

A dark thing rose from the floor at the top of the stairs.

Lublamai spoke, emitted some tremulous noise of disbelief, of fear, of confusion, but it dissipated soundlessly after the briefest moment. He stared with an open mouth at the reflection.

The thing unfolded. The sense was of a blossoming. As expansion after being enclosed, like a man or woman standing and spreading their arms wide after huddling foetally, but multiplied and made vast. As if the thing's indistinct limbs could bend a thousand times, so that it unhinged liked a paper sculpture, standing and spreading arms or legs or tentacles or tails that opened and opened. The thing that had huddled like a dog stood and opened itself, and it was nearly the size of a man.

Teafortwo screeched something. Lublamai opened his mouth wider and tried to move. He could not see its shape. Only its dark, glistening skin and hands that clutched like a child's. Cold shadows. Eyes that were not eyes. Organic folds and jags and twists like rats' tails that shuddered and twitched as if newly dead. And those finger-long shards of colourless bone that shone white and parted and dripped and that were teeth....

As Teafortwo tried to bolt past Lublamai and Lublamai tried to open his mouth to scream, his eyes still fixed to the creature in the mirror, his feet skittering on the flagstones, the thing at the top of the stairs opened its wings.

Four rustling concertinas of dark matter flickered outwards on the creature's back, and outwards again and again, slotting into position, fanning and expanding in vast folds of thick mottled flesh, expanding to an impossible size: an explosion of organic patterns, a flag unfurling, clenched fists opening.

The thing made its body thin and spread those colossal wings, massive flat folds of stiff skin that seemed to fill the hall. They were irregular, chaotic in shape, random fluid whorls; but mirror-perfect left and right, like spilt ink or paint patterns on folded paper.

And on those great flat planes were dark stains, rude patterns that seemed to flicker as Lublamai watched and Teafortwo fumbled with the door, wailing. The colours were midnight, sepulchral, black-blue, black-brown, black-red. And then the patterns did flicker, the shadow-shapes moved like amoeba in a magnifying lens or oil on water, the patterns left and right still matching, moving in time, hypnotic and heavy, faster. Lublamai's face creased. His back itched maniacally with the thought that the thing was behind him. Lublamai spun to face it, gazed directly into the mutating colors, the dusky vivid show....

....and Lublamai no longer thought of screaming but only of watching as those dark markings rolled and boiled in perfect symmetry across the wings like clouds in a night sky above, in water below.

Teafortwo howled. He turned to see the thing that was now descending the stairs, those wings still unfurled. Then the patterns on the wings caught him and he stared, his mouth open.

The dark designs on those wings moved beguilingly.

Lublamai and Teafortwo stood still and silent, agog, slack-jawed and shivering, gazing at the magnificent wings.


The creature tasted the air.

It looked briefly at Teafortwo, and opened its mouth, but the pickings were meagre. It turned its head and faced Lublamai, keeping those wings spread and enthralling. It moaned with hunger ... The air hummed with the taste of Lublamai. The creature salivated and its wings flickered into a frenzy, and Lublamai's taste grew stronger and stronger until the thing's monstrous tongue emerged and it moved forward, flicking Teafortwo effortlessly out of the way.

The winged creature took Lublamai in its hungry embrace.

---

So...what do you think happened to Lublamai? Pretty much what you'd expect. What you'd hope for. ;-) And the best part is, this creature isn't alone. In fact, it's the runt of its litter. I'm expecting Perdido Street Station to get a lot darker after this, and that suits me just fine.

Coming soon: a new thrall EMC story

Remember when I teased you way back in April with the idea of turning my morning Virtual Hypnotist session into an EMC story? Well, what with one thing and another, it's taken until now for me to write enough that I can say more about it. I didn't want to commit myself to any sort of schedule, you see; so I just kept my mouth shut and did a little bit here and there until finally, this very morning, I finished the rough draft.

I also settled on a title not long ago: a different one than the three I mentioned as possibilities before. The story will be called "If Wishes Were Horses"; and that, combined with the picture above and the three previous possible titles, might give you a clue about the plot...if you know your mythology, anyway.

Well, I said I didn't want to commit myself to a schedule with this story; but I figure it will take me at least one more week (possibly two) to polish it well enough for submission to Simon. So I think it's safe to say you can look for it on the EMCSA either at the tail end of November or else early in December.

BTW, the picture above comes from Kassandra Vizerskaya and is called (in rough English) Helen and her Horse.

Miscellaneous updates

Where to begin? There's a lot going on right now, not least the continuance of tree sex in my throat. I swear, I wish they'd just come and be done with it. But anyway, here are a few quick notes about various things I'm involved with.

My collaboration with Jukebox is just about exactly at the halfway point, meaning halfway through the second of our three stories. I don't know how Jukebox feels, but I think the interplay with someone whose ideas are very different from mine brings out the best in me. It takes me to places I wouldn't go on my own, and that's cool. It's also kind of funny to watch how gently two subs butt heads. ;-)

I'm still reading Anathem and am down to the last two hundred pages. I continue to be amazed and in love with the novel, but I've also realized that the average SF/fantasy reader might have a problem with it because it's pretty talky in spots. There's a heck of a lot of theorizing about belief systems, parallel worlds, and other things Terry Pratchett's stodgier characters tend to dismiss as "quantum" (I have a hunch Neal Stephenson is a big Terry Pratchett fan. Either that, or they read a lot of the same books). Fortunately, just when the story seemed about to turn completely into Socratic dialogue, there was a huge revelation - one I should have seen coming from a lot further down the pike - that changed the nature of all the talk preceding it. And now several of the main characters are floating around in space having Apollo 13-like adventures. I'm curious to see where Stephenson takes things next. I don't think we're in for a typical space Western, but I do think there's room for some wuxia to creep in. ;-P

Lastly, I've finally cracked a lock I've been working on for awhile now: I've figured out how to turn my Virtual Hypnotist morning session into a proper MC story. See, I didn't want to just post the text as an induction; I wanted to build a tale around it. So the trick was finding the right sort of tale, something that would include pretty much the whole induction but still be just as spooky and dramatic as the rest of my stories. Well, a couple of days ago, it came to me - in the middle of one of my morning sessions, as a matter of fact. This is definitely one of those cases where not being able to go completely mindless worked to my benefit. I know how to write the story now, and I plan to begin it this weekend. No telling when I'll have it finished, but I don't anticipate it being more than one chapter. Oh, and some ideas for a title so far: "Inside-Out," "Onion," "The Worm at the Heart."