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?

Double Peek, Part Deux

Okay, so there's a little more to the story of how I developed Sucker Punch: a little more that's both personal and cringe-inducing, but in a more lighthearted way than what I revealed in the last post.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite Saturday morning shows was a superheroine puff piece called Electra-Woman and Dyna Girl. I'm sure some of you remember it, but if you're like me, your memories of the show are a lot better than the show itself. Believe me: I know, because I spent some time earlier today tracking down a clip from the episode that helped me develop "Sucker Punch." In it, sidekick Dyna Girl gets turned evil - and really revels in her own depravity.

I had intended to embed that clip in my Peek Beneath the Duct Tape below, but once I found it, I decided that it was just too awful to inflict on you. If you really want to experience the horror for yourself, you can find it on YouTube with very little effort; but I'll spare those of you who aren't into the "M" part of S&M and leave it off this blog.

On the other hand, I will share some other amusing tidbits I found during my search for that clip, like Cyndi Lauper singing the theme song while dressed as a slightly vampier version of a villain from the show:



And I'll also share the two halves of a 2001 pilot that didn't get picked up but absolutely should have: a starry-eyed college girl who was saved by Electra Woman as a kid tracks her down, only to find that her heroine has now become a boozy skank. It's much funnier than it sounds - and to my warped mind, it sounded pretty funny to begin with. Best lines:

Electra-Woman: Do you think your roommate would mind if I borrowed some of her underwear?
Judy II: Oh, I think she'd want you to keep them.

Here, have a look:





And now, for those of you who can't get enough of Electra-Woman and Dyna Girl (and/or who do have a masochistic streak) let's go back to the original show. In my adventures this morning, I discovered that almost every episode of the '70's show included some kind of mind control (No, I didn't watch them all, all over again; I just read some plot summaries. Stop giggling). Here are a couple of links to a couple of clips that are slightly less unwatchable than the "Evil Dyna Girl" episode:

Here's a scene, lovingly extended by someone who's obviously a fellow MC fetishist, of Electra-Woman being hypnotized.

And here's one of both gals getting hypnotized by a green-haired Electric Company reject.

A Double Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: "Sucker Punch" and "Avatar"

Warning: Here be spoilers.

A few weeks ago I was browsing around on the EMCSA and decided to reread a couple of my older stories, Sucker Punch and Avatar. I do tend to reread my own stuff every now and then; but it's usually the pieces I consider my best, like Willing Subject or Solitaire. It had been a very long time since I reread "Sucker Punch" or "Avatar," because I've been less happy with how those two turned out. On rereading, however, I decided that the only real problem with "Sucker Punch" was the title; and that the biggest problem with "Avatar" was the typos. I'll fix both, somewhere down the line when I have time; but meanwhile I'll go ahead and give you a double Peek on the two of them.

Let's start with Avatar," since I have less to say about that one. Both these stories date to my thought-I-was-straight days, but I never developed the original "Avatar" fantasy very thoroughly. It was basically just a squicky-plant piece, probably based on vague memories of The Day of the Triffids. In the original version of the fantasy, a male lover of the Livy character watched helplessly through a locked spaceship door as she was taken over by an alien plant she'd acquired. On the rare occasions when I took the story beyond that scene (rare because the "male watching helplessly" bit was what excited me most, even when I thought I was straight), I imagined the transformed woman coming out and seducing him afterwards, then the two of them taking over the rest of the ship.

I'm not entirely happy with the changes I made in adapting the fantasy for the EMCSA. I've said before that sometimes certain endings seem "required," even when they don't really push my buttons; and this is the best example of that phenomenon. The more I think about it, the more I really hate the thought of Cassie being parted from Livy again - for centuries no less (You didn't really think it was the downfall of humanity that made me sorry, did you? ;-P). Whenever I go back and rework that story, I might very well change the ending. My Muse might not like it, but this is one case where I think I can change Her mind. ;-)

And now on to "Sucker Punch." I don't attempt comedy in my writing much (aside from a handful of parodies in another online life), and I didn't really think the attempt was successful here until I reread it after a long period away from the piece. Looking at it with fresh eyes, I've decided that I did pull off what I was attempting, which was to show a stereotypical supervillain breaking out of her stereotypical mold; then turning back to mock the conventions of her genre, beating the stereotypical hero because she's broken away from convention, and finally allowing the stereotypical sidekick to break away as well...in one sense, anyway. Heh.

But I was actually drawn to write this story more for the twist than for the challenge of doing comedy. The twist, of course, is what gave me the name for the piece: Ursula sucker punched Steele, and I sucker punched my readers (I hope). However, I quickly realized that the story would have been better served with a long, ridiculous title like, "The Last Adventure of Doctor Steele and His Intrepid Sidekick Franny against Ursula Major, the Evil Mistress of Domina." Again, one of these days I'm going to go back and change that.

But back to the twist. I've complained before about the fact that some supposed EMC writers don't get the difference between mind control and body control, and this is the one story where I used that difference to my advantage. But where did I get the idea? This next bit is both personal and sordid, but it's not as sordid as you're going to think when you first hear that the story originally involved a father and his daughter.

No, my father never abused me, physically, verbally, or sexually. He was just a coldhearted jackass - a coldhearted fundamentalist jackass. So when I originally imagined myself as a girl being brainwashed by a father whose will was secretly intact, and who was tortured by what he was doing to her, it gave me a double jolt of satisfaction. The characters in this fantasy were never really me and my father...but then again, they were. I was flaunting my fetish in my dad's face, forcing him to participate in it against his will, and enjoying my own guilt-free subversion - all while imposing the guilt on him that I really wanted him to feel, but he didn't.

See, pretty sordid, eh? But I hope that won't diminish your enjoyment of the story, if you choose to go back and read it now. I certainly enjoyed my reread. ;-P

A Pinch of This, a Dash of That

Just a few random, disconnected notes tonight; it's been a long two weeks.

First, one friend has already asked me about my use of the name Marina in my new story, and I'm sure there are plenty more of you out there wondering, so I'll just go ahead and answer you all now. No, I didn't name the character in the story after Marina St. Mark, at least not consciously. The fact is that I see that first name on a file at work from time to time, coupled with a Hispanic last name that flows from it quite beautifully. My Marina's surname was originally going to be Italian, but I changed my mind and found another nice combination of Hispanic syllables to gift her with, as you'll see once the whole story is posted.

Speaking of which, I finished the rough draft last night and will have some time to start polishing over the weekend. It usually takes me about two weeks or so to work and rework things to my perfectionist satisfaction, so you can probably expect to see "Mirrored in Your Eyes" on the EMCSA sometime in mid-to-late July.

Now let's stir a new ingredient into the blog mix. Evil Dolly recently sent me an e-mail inviting me to read one of her stories. Okay, first, let me be very clear about this: I normally cringe at such requests, because as a former English teacher, I have very high standards when it comes to writing; yet at the same time, I hate to be cruel. So most of the time I end up taking a quick look at the first paragraph of a story; come away cringing even harder; and then respond to the writer as briefly and politely as I can. You are hereby warned: don't ask me to look at your stuff unless a) you know it's hot shit, or b) you know it needs a lot of work and are looking for advice. Anyway, Evil Dolly gave me a pleasant surprise by delivering a really hot, well-written robot fetish story with MC undertones called "Ex Machina," which you can find here, if you're so inclined.

I haven't read anything else on Evil Dolly's site, but I do recall her sending me another piece a year or so ago which made me cringe even more at the outset, yet still left me smiling in the end. She took it upon herself to write a brief sequel to A Tenpack of Trixies. Now, please, folks, do not mess with my stuff - or if you do, for crying out loud, have the courtesy not to wave it in my face. I still shudder to think of the absolutely repulsive addition to Sucker Punch that a certain buffoon once posted on the old MC Forum. Evil Dolly did a nice job, though. I wouldn't suggest she do it again (;-)), but she got away with it that time, and actually came up with a scenario I could approve of. As for the rest of you, don't go there.

Heh, just for a second there, I felt a wee bit Dommish. ;-) Must be that story I'm working on.

Anyway, back to the shelf for a new ingredient. I owe a belated thanks to Andre Marchandise for offering up his own fetish photography site for viewing in a comment under my "Free Fetish Stuff" post. Niiice pics of Kumi Monster in lace and spikes. :-) Unfortunately, I didn't see his comment until several days after he posted it, and then I couldn't find an e-mail address to send him a thank-you. So here you go, Andre: merci beaucoup, and may your site find much business.

And now for the icing on the cake. I've just stopped by the Hypnopics Collective to find that Tabico has posted some scrumptious new photomanips. I'd link you directly to her page, but URL's on the Collective have a strange way of migrating, so I'll just let you find your own way to her album. Don't worry; I'm sure you'll have fun getting there.