If you build it, they will come

Eventually, I promise, I will get around to sharing that hot-as-fuck vintage EMC story with you. But in the meantime, how could I possibly resist posting this?

Glorious, glorious tentacle porn

art by Ramiro Roman

For the past several weeks I've been binge-reading stories from the Lovecraft eZine, an amazing (and free!) collection of Cthulhu mythos tributes from some really first-rate authors you've probably never heard of. I've already shared one treasure with you, a ghoulish gem called "The Secret of Ventriloquism," and here's another. I plucked this beauty straight from the ocean floor, and it's still dripping with lovely, phosphorescent slime.

Most of the stories in the Lovecraft eZine would qualify for a rating PG-13 or R if they were movies, but this one is very definitely rated X. And what else could it be, considering the topic? Some of you might have heard of the self-proclaimed "Stripper for God." Well, DreamShock gives us a stripper for Cthulhu, and wow is she good at making converts. She's also pansexual, so the fact that our narrator is female won't cause any problems when the "wave" rolls in. (I didn't make that up. It really is a wave.)

I hope you're not squeamish, because are lot of different sexual experiences in here, and some of them might squick you out. But don't worry; if you don't like what's happening in one sentence, the next sentence will probably set you back on track.

However, if "Dreamshock" doesn't sound like your kind of thing, just wait for next week. I have some more vintage EMC from the author who wrote "Shambleau," and it's hot as hell and not squicky at all.

For your viewing pleasure

A few days ago I had the extreme pleasure of watching The Handmaiden, the latest movie from Oldboy director Park Chan-Wook. Now, I haven't seen Oldboy (I've read the spoiler, and now I don't want to see it), but I know Park has a reputation for shocks and cinematic gore. Well, this movie is light on the gore, but it is beautifully filmed and there are plenty of shocks - plus an octopus, for those of you who like that sort of thing.

The basic plot is is. A conman selects a pretty young pickpocket to help him separate an heiress from her money.The heiress has been raised by a cruel and kinky uncle who trains her to read BDSM porn to groups of horny businessmen for profit. His profit. He plans to marry her later and take all her money. But the pickpocket's job is to convince the heiress that she should elope with the conman instead. After that, he says, he'll have her committed to a madhouse and give the pickpocket a cut of the money. But this movie is based on the English novel Fingersmith, written by the author of Tipping the Velvet, so you know the heiress won't fall for the conman. She'll fall for the pickpocket, and that will lead to all kinds of interesting developments. Lovely sex scenes, too. Lovely, lovely sex scenes.

I'll say no more about the plot, because it's too full of surprises to spoil. But I will say that the movie is available on Netflix. ;-)

Pictures to make your mind wander

In between bouts of writing, I've been binging on Cthulhu mythos stories - which in turn, got me rummaging around Deviant Art in search of Old Ones pictures and and whatever else happened to grab my attention. Here's a fraction of the result.

Some of the pictures below became part of the Call of Cthulhu game, and some just stuck in my head because they're hot. But I'm going to refrain, very intentionally, from giving you any context in this blog post. You can imagine whatever scenario fits your fetish; and if you want to know what the artist really intended, you can click the author links at the bottom of this post. The author above left is Dave Palumbo. In the middle, left-to-right, the artists are Jowie Lim, Felicia Cano, and Thaldir.

 I need to say a bit more about the painting at right, by Donato Giancola. He's not a fetishist (although he does like robots and all the other SF/F tropes most of us enjoy); he's just an excellent artist whom I follow because I love his work. I'm including this picture because it perfectly feeds my fetish without even trying. But in fact, Giancola says in his description of the piece that it was inspired by a George R. R. Martin short story called "The Glass Flower." That intrigued me enough to make me buy the e-book (It's just $1.99); and I'm happy report that the story is excellent, it involves possession (I know some of you are into that), and Giancola's picture really is just "inspired by" the story. It doesn't spoil the plot at all. But ohh, does it makes me think of other ways the story could have gone!

Follow these links to find the pictures on Deviant Art:
Dave Palumbo (picture at the top of this post)
Jowie Lim (first of the three pictures in a row)
Felicia Cano (second of the three pictures in a row)
Thaldir (third of the three pictures in a row)
Donato Giancola (final picture)

New cover, free book

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What's in store

On Friday I made a brief post just to let you know that Callidus was going to interview me for a podcast. Here's a little update on how that went. It was fantastic: two long-time friends riffing on all the subjects we both love - and that you love too. I don't want to spoil everything, but here are some of the topics we discussed, in no particular order: mind control in The Avengers, Agent Carter, and Agents of SHIELD; a collaboration that the two of us have been plotting; how to work mind control into the Matrix storyverse; the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer, which is soon to become a movie starring just the right actress; and our own, better version of Alien 3, which I hinted about way back here.

I can't wait for the podcast to go live. We had so much fun recording it, and I think you'll have a lot of fun listening to it.

They're real, and they're spectacular

I'm still working on my "Choose Your Own Adventure" story, of course (I expect to be working on that for months, but I also plan to publish "Hoarder" in the meantime). One of the places you'll be able to tour is a garden which the aliens are terraforming. Now, since the story is set in the Seychelles, I Googled the flora and fauna of the region so I'd have a realistic starting point. Imagine my astonishment when I came across the images you see in this post.

At left is a seed of the coco de mer tree. This species produces the largest seeds in the world, but as you can tell, they're not exceptional just because of their size.

But wait! There's more! The stamens of the male trees look just as suggestive as the seeds of the female trees - and they're just as large. The whole thing kind of reminds me of the Babel Fish joke from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the fish is such an obvious clue to the existence of God that it actually negates God's existence.

Then there's the jellyfish tree. If ever a plant was designed to feature in a tentacle sex story, it's this one. Sadly, it's an endangered species, but at least in my story the aliens have a way to give it an edge on survival.

Finally, here's a clue that you might want to tuck away in your memory until the story gets published: the garden is an interesting place to visit, and depending on where you go, you might have a life-changing experience there...but what's behind the garden could be even more important.

Of MILFs and Mind Control

I've just finished uploading "Union, Reunion: A Tale of MILFs and Mind Control" to Smashwords and Amazon. As usual, the Amazon link won't go live for about 12 hours; and my blog readers are better off purchasing from Smashwords anyway because here's a coupon code to get you 25% off, good for one month: BM25V.

And here's a synopsis:

Back in her college days, Allie was a goody-two-shoes; but now she’s a lesbian who writes mind control erotica and fantasizes about her old friend Becky, the girl who got away. When Allie is invited to a reunion with her ex-sorority sisters, she tries to hide her secrets; but “trying” isn’t good enough when she’s faced with an entity right out of her darkest fantasies. Despite herself, Allie will show her sisters how much she’s changed. Then she’ll change them.

It all begins at Hunt’s Peak, where, more than a hundred years ago, Mama Gilman and her cult called forth a creature from beyond the stars. Now that creature is back, looking to reclaim the ground it lost and make further gains; and in Allie it’s found the perfect vessel. With her combination of lusts and imagination, she might be able to deliver the whole world into the Mother’s lap.

 “Union, Reunion” is Lovecraftian erotica about mind control, MILFs, and magic of the darkest kind.

I had a lot of fun creating this cover.  Be sure to notice the smirk I put on Venus. Also, if you look closely, you might notice that everything that isn't Venus is octopod. I found a bunch of great public domain art here. It's a fun site to browse.

Where you gonna go? Where you gonna hide?

Thanks to Tim Hansen for reminding me of the greatness that is the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Most people remember it for the terrifying ending, and that certainly is worth remembering. But for my money, the scariest thing in the movie is Brooke Adams as a pod person. Remember this?



I saw another version of the story in 1993. It can't match the '78 version for scares, but it does have an insanely creepy performance by Meg Tilly (first up below), plus a bathtub tentacle scene and a really lovely pair of natural breasts (both in the bottom clip).

I know none of this is really mind control; it's squick plus cloning. But can you really fault me for posting these videos? I think not.

Time out for an EMC story recommendation

It's been ages since I stopped by the EMCSA long enough to read anyone else's stuff, or stopped by the two EMCSA-related forums to see if I had any messages. You can chalk that up to my spending every free moment writing "Sleepwalkers." Anyway, last night I checked into the forums and found a PM from fembotheather, inviting me to read her story Inglorious 2. She said it was squicky, so right away I knew I had to read it.

Now, it's dangerous to ask me to read your work. I'm very picky. If it's full of grammar errors, poorly written, or just not up my alley, I'll stop reading and (if you're lucky and I'm not too embarrassed to write back) give you a polite "Thanks, but no thanks." But I didn't have to do that with fembotheather because "Inglorious 2" is very well written and dead center up my alley. It plays out like a science fiction action movie, maybe a mashup of Alien and Total Recall with a huge dose of EMC.

I don't want to say much about the plot because part of the fun for me was figuring out where Wilson's true loyalties were and whether her interpretation of her state of mind was correct. But I'll try to say enough to pique your interest. The story starts out with an escape from a prison run by mind controllers, turns briefly into Con Air, then into Pitch Black, and finally into something I don't have a reference for. fembotheather is intentionally riffing on the SF classics (count the in-jokes, if you can), but she's come up with something that's all her own. Wilson isn't quite like anyone else I can think of. She's a fantastic, extremely likeable anti-hero with a weakness that's so huge you won't know whose side she's on until nearly the end. I love that about her, and I'd love to know more of her backstory, too. I wonder if fembotheather has any prequels or sequels planned. "Inglorious 2", huh? Where's "Inglorious 1" (other than in Tarantino-land)? ;-)

I love Wilson, but of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the MC side of the story. It's so hot and so tempting that I don't see how the characters would even want to resist it. I certainly wouldn't. The Sundarans have a lot more fun than anyone else in the story. I don't blame them for wanting to share their bliss. ;-)

Vell, Zaphod's just zis guy, you know?

Callidus and Mrs. Callidus are fantastic people (though he does look more than a little like the Techno Viking. Don't make him angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.), and we had a fantastic visit. I am sooo glad I got to meet this online friend in person after years of emails, and I look forward to meeting him again in the future. We could have talked all through the night - and probably for several more days - if time had allowed. I wish I could tell you all about everything, but a) I have to leave some things for him to blog about, and b) we'll both want to keep other things to ourselves.

So let's see, where should I begin?

We had lunch at a nice local restaurant where I got so exciting telling Callidus about my next story that I sat for five minutes with a forkful of salmon in my hand and never brought it to my mouth. He asked a lot of incisive questions and gave me all kinds of great ideas to flesh out one of the character's arcs. It was great having the chance to share my ideas with him at such an early stage of the process. This story is going to be huge, probably six chapters and maybe more, and more complex than anything else I've attempted for the EMCSA. Having Callidus' input was fantastic. (BTW, because it is so huge and complex, it's going to take an extra long time to complete. I'll post updates from time to time, but it might take me a year to finish the thing. I just don't know yet.)

Anyway, back to the current narrative. I gave the Calliduses a tour of the city, including some quirky shops where I dropped tentacle in-jokes that made Callidus snigger. Mr. and Mrs. C. found some nice souvenirs and we all had a great conversation about the Coen Brothers' movies with a store clerk who heard me quoting the "Her womb was a rocky place in which my seed could find no purchase" line from Raising Arizona. We also toured some local landmarks, took pictures, talked about ghosts and UFO's, got rained on hard, and ended up back at my place for Round 2 of the epic Meeting of the MC Minds.

Somewhere in the middle of that discussion, Callidus suggested we make a Top Ten list of the best MC scenes in mainstream media. One of the ideas he offered was this scene from the otherwise execrable 1998 Avengers movie starring Uma Thurman and Rafe Fiennes. Prepare to pause and start screen grabbing in earnest at 0:53. ;-)

We brainstormed our list for awhile and came to instant, enthusiastic agreement about #1 and #2, then did a lot of forehead-smacking as we tried to remember other scenes that should have been right at the forefront of our brains. One of my ideas, James Spader's hypnosis scene from the mostly forgotten Jack's Back, turned out to be harder to track down than I thought. Last night it looked like we'd found the whole movie on YouTube and I started downloading it while we talked about other things; but when I tried to watch it after the Calliduses left, I realized I'd just captured some damn kids' movie with the same title. :-/ Apparently, the Spader Jack's Back isn't online anywhere safe and you can only buy it in VHS format unless you live in the UK, where it's available in PAL. If any of my readers can give me that one scene (just not via a link to a sketchy torrent site, please), I'd be eternally grateful. I'm almost positive that that clip would still push my buttons. Plus, Spader was a steaming hot young thing at the time. If you don't believe me, just follow this link.

Besides our Top Ten list, Callidus and I talked about real life friends and adventures, online friends and adventures (Tabico's ears must have been burning like crazy, but don't worry, Tabs: it was all good. :-)), and our continuing amazement at internet culture in general. It was such a great conversation, like we'd been friends all our lives and were just catching up after a year or two apart. I'm sure it will be the same when we meet again, which we almost certainly will.

And that's all for the moment, I think. Again, if anyone out there can find me a clip of the Jack's Back hypnosis scene, you'll have my undying gratitude. And if anyone out there has suggestions for our Top Ten list, just post them below. We are still smacking our foreheads to remember some of them.

You had me at "Lovecraftian"

I just found this trailer over at Ain't It Cool News, by following the headline "The French Get Lovecraftian." I suppose this is yet another cool-looking film that will never find its way into wide release, but at least I can enjoy the tentacular, spidery squick of the trailer:

Would China Mieville really destroy the world?

That's the question I kept asking myself as I made my way through Kraken (If you missed my earlier post on the topic, here it is).On the one hand, the three previous Mieville novels I'd read were pretty grim; but on the other, Kraken started off funny and got even funnier as it went along. Really, would an author who gives his protagonist access to a working Star Trek phaser let that protagonist (not to mention everyone else on the planet) die a fiery death? Well, this is China Mieville we're talking about, so I just wasn't sure.

Now I have my answer, so the only remaining question is how much to tell you. I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, but some of you might feel like Lady K. She read Perdido Street Station at my recommendation and hated the ending so much that she was ready to swear off Mieville completely unless I told her Kraken was a safe read. So, Lady K, here's your answer: YES. By all means, check out this book.

When I blogged about the novel at the halfway point, I said it reminded me a lot of Neil Gaiman, especially Neverwhere and American Gods. I left Anansi Boys out of that post only because it seemed a little redundant to mention when I'd already name-checked American Gods. Now I feel like I have to include it, because Kraken ended up being more like Anansi Boys than American Gods. I say that for a number of reasons, but most of them involve spoilers, so all I'll tell you here is this: a) AB is funnier than AG, while still retaining plenty of horror; and b) Billy Harrow is a lot like Fat Charlie, both in personality and in character arc.

Hmm, I wonder if Gaiman has read much Mieville (I don't have to wonder the opposite, because it's just so clearly true). Maybe they even know each other. Wouldn't it be interesting to have dinner with the two of them together?

I know some hardcore Mieville fans look down on Kraken because it's more lightweight than his Bas-lag novels, so I guess that means I'm not a hardcore fan. But I'm okay with that because it means I got to enjoy a fun novel with real emotional weight, fantastic characters, terrifying villains, hundreds of geeky in-jokes, and "confirmation" of a personal theory I've always held about Star Trek's transporter technology. ;) So what if the ending didn't make me want to stick my head in the oven? Is that a bad thing?

P.S.: The picture at the top of this post doesn't really have anything to do with Kraken, but you didn't really want to see that boring old book cover again, did you? ;) I thought you'd appreciate a bit of stuntkid art instead.

Not quite the right kraken apocalypse

Well, I finally got the chance to buy China Mieville's latest, Kraken, over the weekend. I've been devouring it ever since, and I'm about halfway through right now (I'd probably go faster if I weren't still polishing my next EMC story).

Folks, this is a very different kind of Mieville novel. For one thing, it's not what I was expecting, which was a modern spin on H.P. Lovecraft. This isn't a Cthulhu mythos tale at all, although there's been one joking reference to the Elder God so far.

Actually, there are a lot of jokes in this novel, and that surprises me as much as anything else. Who knew China Mieville had a sense of humor? The biggest source of wisecracks is Collingswood, a constable assigned to an under-the-radar paranormal division of the London police. She looks like a blonde Amy Winehouse, dresses like someone posing as a police officer for a costume ball, and has a seriously bad attitude. I love her.

But about the plot (Funny how that's never the first thing I talk about, eh?). It revolves around a stereotypically impossible crime: the theft of a giant squid, still in its case, from the depths of the Natural History Museum. The squid and the museum are real, but I doubt that Billy Harrow, the protagonist of Kraken, was involved in the preservation of the actual beast. Anyway, he's the one who discovers it missing, and for some reason that makes him very important to a bunch of scary and not-so-scary denizens of what Neil Gaiman would call "London Below."

Actually, I see a lot of Gaiman influence in Kraken (mostly from Neverwhere and American Gods) - and a lot of Clive Barker influence, too (mostly Weaveworld). Mieville has come up with some seriously freaky villains so far, and I don't even know who the real squid thief is yet. It might be someone I've already met, or it might not.

All I know right now is that the squid's disappearance seems to herald the end of the world...but not the right end of the world, according to a cult that actually worships giant squids. Thus the quote at the top of this blog entry. Yes, it is a quote. Like I said, who knew China Mieville had a sense of humor?

I have no idea whether that humor will carry through to the end of the novel or not, but I hope it will. And I hope Collingswood survives, too. She could use a novel of her own. ;)

Fishy, fishy, in the nude

More from the amazing Kassandra Vizerskaya, this time with an oceanic theme (and a first picture that would make a fantastic MC story!).

I'm so happy to have discovered Eastern European artists like her and Jacek Yerka. Their work is entirely different from what I've grown up with, and yet it strikes a chord with me that most Western art doesn't.

I wish I could meet Vizerskaya in person. I'll bet she's a great conversationalist.

Vizerskaya gets in on the tentacle action, too

Her latest blog post is called Animal KamaSutra. This is just the first of five images she shares, and IMO it's not the freakiest (That would be the snails). But since my own last post was about tentacle sex, I thought I should continue the theme. ;-)

Those wacky tentacle fetishists

This post started with an e-mail from Asudem Latex, who'd found a picture she thought I might enjoy (see right). I certainly did, so I traced it via Tumblr first to here and then to photographer Daikichi Amano. I don't see this picture on Amano's actual website, but you'll find plenty of other weirdness there, if you decide to have a look.

Anyway, Amano's tentacle pic put me in mind of the famous painting at right below, Dream of the Fisherman's Wife by Hokusai. I wouldn't be surprised if some of you already have that one as your desktop image. ;-) Or if you prefer something else along the same lines, just plug "tentacle sex" into Google Image Search to see dozens of other choices. That's how I found the third pic in this post, by sculptor Rune Olsen. It's so rare to see a man getting in on the hot tentacle sex that I couldn't resist sharing it. ;-P

A different kind of Lovecraft artist

Alice Duke, a.k.a. Melora on Deviant Art, does a lot of different kinds of work: some creepy, some cutesy, some Cthulhian. I featured another of her tentacular-type pieces in this previous post, and there's plenty more where those came from.

You can check out her Deviant Art gallery for an assortment of oddities; or if you want to cut right to the good stuff, visit her blog and try clicking on tags like "creepy," "demon" "extra-dimensional," "gods" and "monster."

P.S.: Be sure to click on this thumbnail to see all the subtleties of the full-sized image. I wonder what those teeny little people at the bottom think they're going to do with whatever-it-is they've conjured. I don't think they stand a chance, especially since they seem to be armed only with string. ;-)

Holy crap, how could I not post this?

In the "write your own MC story" category, here's a recent find from Deviant Art: Sister Sinister, photographed by JenHell.

Lovecraftian musings...and art

Recently the students at the Rhode Island School of Design were issued a challenge, to illustrate some of H.P. Lovecraft's scariest scenes and monsters. At left is what I consider to be the best of their efforts, a Shoggoth painted by Craig J. Spearing that IMO is just begging to become a book cover. But there are lots of other goodies at this website, which it's only fair to say I found through io9. Dagon looks pretty awesome, too; as does a creature I feel sure the judge misidentified when he guessed it was a ghast (IMO, it's clearly a denizen of Innsmouth).

Anyway, looking at these images makes me think of the difficulty in turning creatures this squicky into subjects of mind control erotica. You can go the route Tabico and I did in The Icky-Squicky Spider, intentionally using the horror to illustrate the depth of the MC; or you can go the route I tried in Octopus Vulgaris, trying to find something beautiful amidst the squick. I doubt Lovecraft ever found anything beautiful in his creatures, and I have no idea if I succeeded or not. But I do know it's easier to make these things beautiful with words rather than images. Some of the student art I linked to above is funny, but the only one I'd call beautiful (Chun Lo's Dhole) looks more like something from an SF novel than anything from Lovecraft's mythology.

No, let's face it: if you ever saw one of Lovecraft's monstrosities in real life, it would be squicky, not beautiful at all. That's part of what I hinted at in Union, Reunion, when Allie has a moment, after submitting to the lake monster, where's she's hurting and horrified and thinks, "It's not supposed to be like this." That bit actually came from a dream of mine: a dream in which I submitted to a Lovecraftian monster and it was cold and slimy and painful, not pleasurable at all. The pleasure only came after I was "converted," which brings me back to the motivation of "The Icky-Squicky Spider."

I don't know; maybe you have to turn to Clark Ashton Smith if you want beautiful MC-monsters. I still recommend The Maze of Maal-Dweb, for all its overwrought prose. In fact, I recommend almost anything by Smith - and you can find it online at The Eldritch Dark.

But this was meant to be a post about Lovecraft, so I guess I've strayed a bit. I hope you don't mind. ;-) And I hope some of you will respond to these musings. Do you find anything beautiful, anything erotic, in any of Lovecraft's monstrosities? Do you have to reconfigure them in your mind, in order to do so? Or do you just separate your horror from your erotica entirely?