"Dark Spaces" is now live on Amazon

Now you can get four of my stories for the price of one. :-) Here's the link, and here's the book description:

Dark Spaces is composed of four stories (including one never published before) of erotic science fiction ranging from dark, humorously dark, to pitch black - sometimes all within the same story:

Love in a Silver Socket – A slave awakens bound in silver cords and dotted with mysterious sockets. She has no will or memory, just a burning love for her inhuman Mistress; but her old life might still keep her from enjoying her new one.

The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny – In this send-up of classic pulp science fiction, a stalwart adventurer and his sidekick meet their match when they take on a villain who has decided to stop playing by the pulp fiction rules.

What Happens in Decon – 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. The only place she can indulge herself is during decontamination, when she's locked tight inside her shuttle. After all, what happens in decon stays in decon…right?

What to Expect from Your Alien Brainwashing – While you’re relaxing in the processing chamber, why not take a moment to learn what your alien overlords have in store for you next? 

Finally, here's an easy favor you can do for me or any other Kindle Unlimited author you want to support. If you have a Kindle Prime account, please borrow our books before you buy them. If you borrow them and read at least 10% while still just borrowing, we get a magical "borrow" sale which is often more than we'd get from a straight-up sale. Of course, feel free to buy the book after borrowing and reading 10%, because then we get two sales off that one book. You'll make an author's day if you do that. Remember, most of us have so-called "real jobs" that don't satisfy us, while using our fun little "hobbies" to supplement our incomes.

Thanks, as always, to my friendly, loyal blog followers - and thanks also to my beta readers and reviewers! 

10...9...8...

It's that time again! Monday morning, June 1, I'll be sending in the "Dark Spaces" anthology for publication by Amazon. Originally I was going to publish three stories in this ebook ("The Final Adventure...," "What Happens in Decon," and "What to Expect from Your Alien Brainwashing"), but late in the game I decided to add in "Love in a Silver Socket" too. Once the anthology goes live, it will sell for $2.99; but as usual I'm giving my blog readers a chance to pre-order for $0.99. Here's the link.

In the meantime, please take a moment to admire the cover art. You might remember that the image below is what I had to work with. ;-)


Finally, here's an easy favor you can do for me or any other Kindle Unlimited author you want to support. If you have a Kindle Prime account, please borrow our books before you buy them. If you borrow them and read at least 10% while still just borrowing, we get a magical "borrow" sale which is often more than we'd get from a straight-up sale. Of course, feel free to buy the book after borrowing and reading 10%, because then we get two sales off that one book. You'll make an author's day if you do that. Remember, most of us have so-called "real jobs" that don't satisfy us, while using our fun little "hobbies" to supplement our incomes.

Thanks, as always, to my friendly, loyal blog followers - and thanks also to my beta readers and reviewers!

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?

A Peek Beneath the Duct Tape: What to Expect from Your Alien Brainwashing

So now you see why, in a previous post, I said the picture at left had influenced a part of my latest story. ;-) I think I'm going to have to create a new tag for gas masks. Yes, I really will. I know a lot of people fetishize about gas masks, and to a certain extent, I'm one of them. For me, they have to have an organic quality and/or a hood and goggles that hide the entire face. As always, it's the robotization, depersonalization and voicelessness that most appeals to me.

So anyway, about What to Expect from your Alien Brainwashing. The first bit that occurred to me (in a dream, as is often the case), was the title. And the first title that occurred to me was, "What to Expect from Your Alien Overlords." I liked the idea because it had an inherent humor based on the popular meme, and I could tweak it to be more MC-specific while still keeping some of the humor. Of course, the first tweak had to come with the title.

The idea developed gradually, with the part I'm proudest of - Tinker Toy sex lattices - coming to me again in a dream. Gah, I love my subconscious!

I wasn't sure what my aliens would look like until I found the picture above (all credit to Kimatica). Then, of course, they had to be Greys so I could fit in the huge eyes and pointy faces. Sorry if that's a let-down for anyone expecting more exotic aliens, but it's been my experience in reading SF that it's really, really hard to come up with truly alien species. Vernor Vinge did a great job in A Fire Upon the Deep, of course, but I still fault him for not making the most of the MC possibilities. ;-) As for me, I knew my audience was more interested in the MC than whether my aliens had fur or scales, so I decided to take a pass.

When it comes to the wall installations, I was probably subconsciously influenced by all those weird '80's videos that had people running along corridors where human hands or heads stuck out of the walls. Funnily enough, though, I stumbled across this just yesterday, via Oddee.

Another funny thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that I chose this story out of the three percolating in my brain because I thought it was the lightest; and yet it turned out pretty grim in the end. I hope you still find some humor in it (I do; I always find it funny when MC victims blather earnestly about the favors they're doing their recruits), but the story as a whole got pretty dark. It seemed that with each successive polish, I came up with creepy new ideas that slotted in just perfectly with the plot.

For instance, the idea of elites creating a presentation for their processees was originally just a joke: that's their notion of waiting room reading material. And I had to make my processee desperate enough to read it, so I came up with "wait times might be longer than usual" - a common recorded message Americans hear when they dial toll-free numbers for any sort of assistance. It was only later that I realized why the wait times would be longer than usual: the new architectural craze was sucking up more slaves than ever. That added a whole new layer of horror to the ending. Our poor processee will probably end up a mindless bit of X-rated wall decoration.

Is it just me, or does anyone else now have Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" running through their heads?