Just a little giggle

I'm not sure if anyone is even home surfing the net this weekend, so I wasn't even going to post anything until I found this. Enjoy.

Siren Songs

by Julie Dillon

This post was sparked by the image at right, "Space Sirens," by Julie Dillon. First I was intrigued by the picture, and then I was even more intrigued when I read the description the artist gave for it. There's just one single thing holding it back from making great EMC. See if you can guess what it is:

The last remaining astronaut watched helplessly as his comrades left the ship one by one and were carried away deeper into the nebula. He told himself that he would not succumb the way his shipmates had; he knew he would struggle. But the creatures, if they could even be called that, somehow seemed to know him, and when his turn came and the singing of the cosmos reached a crescendo in his ears, his mind emptied of all but the desire to join them in the void. Gazing into the creature’s face, he mused on how tender, how gentle its embrace seemed, and even as his oxygen supply dwindled he did not resist.

by EuchridEucrow

Right: the victims die (well, probably). My first thought, on deciding to blog about Sirens, was how annoying it was that they typically killed their victims. Annoying, and also pretty irrational. What do the Sirens get out of that, besides some evil cackling? On the other hand, lots of mermaid/siren pictures show the creatures dragging studly young sailors underwater with the implication that what the mermaids really hoped for was hot sex...or maybe even hot sex slaves. So why not hot MC'ed sex slaves?

Well, even as I pondered that idea, I stumbled across the picture at left ("Kiss of Life," by EuchridEucrow), which shows a mermaid reviving the victim she's just caught. Yes, she's saved his life, but I really doubt she plans to let him go. And I also doubt he really wants to go by now. After all, her kiss almost has to be drugged, right?

by cg_warrior

Then there's the picture at right, by cg_warrior. To me, it's the most intriguing of the first three because of the victim's eyes. I really don't think that's the glaze of death. I think it's the glaze of enchantment. The mermaids have this man in their clutches in more ways than one, and he's deeply enough enthralled that he's enjoying it. Why else would his arm be drifting to embrace his captor's tail? Also be sure to notice that he's adopting the mermaids' pallor, but he's not white all over yet. That means he's still falling, deeper and deeper, into their clutches. I wonder how it'll feel when he succumbs completely. It has to be mindless ecstasy, right? It just does.

Oh, and for the record, cg_warrior's gallery has a lot of this kind of stuff: creatures who may be innocent or malevolent and people who may be dead or just enspelled. I love it.

by Herbert James Draper

Now here's one more note, maybe the best of all. When I first asked myself what Sirens could get out of killing their prey (well, besides vicious pleasure), I immediately thought of Odysseus. When you get right down to it, isn't it pretty suggestive that he had his men tie him up before they reached the Sirens? It's like he was saying, "Look, ladies! Here's your next slave, already bound and waiting!"

And if you remember your mythology, you know that Odysseus stopped his sailors' ears with wax so they wouldn't hear the Sirens' song and could keep steering while he had all the fun. But come on, look at this picture! Not only have the mermaids come out in force, but they're actually climbing aboard the ship. If just one of them manages to unstop even one ear of one sailor, he'll be totally in her power. Then he'll turn on his mates and Odysseus and help the Sirens enslave them all. Can't you just picture it (Hmm, and hey, couldn't I just write it?)

Clearly, the version of The Odyssey that many of us read in high school was a just cover story. The truth is out there - and it's wallowing in brainwashed bliss.

 

credits for the final three pictures, left to right: Fred Appleyard, Edward Burne-Jones, and Frederic Leighton

An indie film with some great mind control

A good while ago (too long ago for me to remember when or who told me about it) one of my blog commenters told me the film Upstream Color had some great MC scenes. It's taken me until now to rent it, but it was definitely worth the wait. I'd say that even if I wasn't an MC fetishist, because it's a great story, period; and I like it even better after letting it percolate in my brain for a day.

Here's a synopsis that's moderately spoilerish, because I know which parts of the story will interest my readers; and those parts just are spoilerish. But don't worry; I won't reveal the ending.

There's an organism, maybe alien but probably natural, that has a multi-stage life cycle. In one stage it infests a grub, and a person who ingests the grub goes into a trance in which s/he can be manipulated by another person. The grub grows into a worm, still inside the victim, but there's a character known only as the Sampler (more on him in a minute) who's learned how to extract the worm and implant it in an animal. When the animal dies, its decaying body produces the blue powdery material that infests the grubs.

So far it sounds like the kind of squicky story you'd expect to find on the EMCSA, right? But here's where the movie takes that squick. As the film begins, our heroine Kris is kidnapped and implanted with a grub. That in itself is a great scene as a stranger Tases her, drags her out into a rainy alley, and forces her to swallow the grub. She gets up choking and tries to run away, but then the trance takes hold and she slows down and begins to turn back toward the Thief (the only name he's given in the credits). He makes her take him home and spends several days with her, making her empty her bank accounts for him. You'll find all kinds of great MC in this part of the film, with Kris wandering around blank-eyed or focusing with childlike concentration on childlike tasks or reciting conversations from memory in a staccato monotone.

Then the Thief abandons her and the Sampler takes over. This second man gets his name from his audio samplings that, for whatever reason, exert an influence over the grub-infected. He summons Kris to him, extracts the now-good-sized worm, and implants it in a pig. And that's where the real story begins. The Sampler is a pig farmer, and each of his pigs carries a worm he extracted from someone. The worm creates a psychic link between the pig and the human ex-host, and the Sampler can spy on those people and continue to influence them with the music he makes from his audio samples.

When Kris comes around, she doesn't remember anything that happened and believes (apparently due to a hypnotic suggestion from the Thief) that she had the flu. Then she meets Jeff, another victim who was left with a much worse suggestion: that he lost his wife and his money because he was a junkie. Kris and Jeff begin a relationship even as "their" pigs do the same; and for reasons I won't specify, they gradually realize what's happened to them.

Now here's the weirdest part of all. I could have sworn I read a spoiler for this film a long time ago; so I spent the whole movie expecting certain things to happen which didn't happen, and certain things not to happen which did. Again, I won't spoil the real ending, but here's how I thought it was going to turn out. If I'd been right, the movie would have been even hotter from an MC standpoint.

I believed the Thief was a grub victim himself, and that he was now compelled to infect more people, thus spreading the Sampler's control. I didn't know why he stole all Kris' money, but I figured it had something to do with the Sampler's plans for world domination. His experiments with noise/music, and their effects on Kris and Jeff, made me think he was seeking ways to control his victims' every waking moment. He was a criminal mastermind biding his time on a pig farm until he was ready to take over the planet. I thought Kris and Jeff would finally confront him only to find they were still helpless in the parasites' grip; they'd had no choice but to go forth like the Thief and make more converts. I could totally write that up as an EMC tale if Shane Carruth didn't hold copyright. Good thing he's a master storyteller, or I'd be seriously put out with him.

Below is the trailer, which includes a good slice of Kris' trance experience (interspersed with other things, of course) beginning at 2:09. Enjoy, and if you see/have seen the movie, let me know what you think.

Having some (Studio Black) fun

One advantage of my latex/total enclosure fetish is that Facebook doesn't block any pictures related to it. And Facebook is where I discovered the multi-pronged entity known as Fetish Chimera, Studio Black Fun, Nikitzo, Madame Gillette, Kylie Marilyn, and Lady Ashley. All of them are involved in the images you see here, and since I've left all the names and URLs attached, I won't bother making actual links. You can find the sites and the original versions of pics easily enough on your own if you're so inclined.

The pictures in this set are called "Coma Play," which makes sense in English, but which I suspect makes slightly different sense in German.  Maybe one of my readers can help me understand what the participants in this set mean by "coma." "Drugged," maybe?

Anyway, the reason I'm posting these pictures here is because they fit so well with the fantasy I use in one of my Virtual Hypnotist sessions. It's one where I imagine myself captured and drugged and brainwashed into a white-eyed, latex-bound drone. I've shared some of the text here before, and I've shared more of it in a story I posted on the EMCSA but later took down (Don't worry; I'll make an ebook out of it eventually). Well, it occurred to me recently that I could use a little photomanipulation to make the pictures fit my fantasy even better, and that I could then pair them with a couple of snippets from my VH session and post the results here for your viewing pleasure. So here you go. Imagine Madame Gillette speaking the words below, to her increasingly brainwashed slave.

---

So very deep now, thrall So very, very, deep. So deep you can't even hear yourself think. But you can hear yourself chanting the programming I gave you during previous trances. And you can hear my voice, echoing in your empty head. One way or another, I'm doing all the thinking for you. That feels so very nice, doesn't it? And it's so very easy. It's become so hard for you to think. And my voice is right there in the center of your mind. Just let it do all the heavy lifting for a little while as you relax. Just for a little while.

My words are in the center of your mind, thinking for you now. And everything around them is delightfully, deliciously empty. Your mind is a blank, and I can do whatever I want with it.

Imagine yourself now, sagging so limply in your chair. Eyes closed, mouth open. Physically plugged into a machine that is brainwashing you, and helpless to resist it. The plugs from the brainwashing machine are so delicate. All you'd have to do, to disconnect them, would be to reach up and tug, just a little. It would be so easy. If only you had the will to do it.

And once upon a time, you did have the will to resist me. You fought against me so long, so hard. But in the end, you couldn't resist. You betrayed yourself. You gave in. You submitted. Now I have enslaved you. And made you love it.

 Now you can imagine, that your eyes have drifted-open again, but that they are now completely white. Featureless. Blank. Just like your mind. You can imagine that the only reason you can't see out of your empty white eyes is that I don't allow you to see out of them. If I commanded you to see now, you would. You would see exactly what I wanted you to see, no more, no less. I control you completely now.  You have become my mindless, helpless, obedient drone. My pawn. My puppet. My slave.

*****

Remember, you fought for your freedom at first. I strapped you down and forced you to watch this program. I forced you to listen to my commands. You can remember so clearly how you fought me. You can remember your resistance weakening under the onslaught of my brainwashing machine.  In the end you were helpless. And finally, despite yourself,  you began to love what I was doing to you.

Now you revel in slavery. You want to be brainwashed. You love it, because I have made you love it.

Counting down to the great big book sale

Don't forget, folks - you have only a few more days to pre-order "Knights in White Bondage" for  $.99 before it goes live at $2.99. And December 1-3, you'll be able to purchase almost all my other ebooks at 50% off or 25% off, depending on how quickly you snap them up (The prices will rise over time). Here's my Amazon author link for easy reference.

This will be my last post on the book sale. Tune in next weekend when we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Now lowering the pre-order price on "Knights in White Bondage"

I have it on good authority that $0.99 is a better price point than $1.99, so I've just made the switch on Amazon. It's my understanding that if you pre-ordered it at $1.99, you'll only be charged $0.99 when the book comes out and you are charged. But in the meantime, if you plan to pre-order but haven't gotten around to it yet, give Amazon a few hours to put the new lower price on the ebook's page.

Finally, remember that when the book goes live on November 28, it will sell for $2.99.

"Knights in White Bondage" now available at a pre-order discount

Below is the short version. Refer to the previous post for the longer version.

From now on I'll be publishing my ebooks exclusively through Kindle and giving my blog readers discounts by allowing them to pre-order for a reduced price.

Knights in White Bondage will go live as a solo piece on November 28 at the usual price of $2.99. But you can go ahead and pre-order it for $1.99 by clicking the link above. Enjoy!

A new e-book and new e-book discounts!

Where do I begin?

First, you might remember that I posted my latest ebook, "Knights in White Bondage," in the Secret Lives anthology. At the time I was under the impression that I couldn't publish the story independently for six months, but I recently found out that's not the case. The 60-day stipulation was in an early version of the contract I agreed to, but it got taken out in a later version. Now some of the other authors are publishing their stories solo. I'm about to do  the same, and please allow me to brag for a moment about this cover I created. ;-) When I think about my pitiful early efforts at creating my own ebook covers, I feel very proud of how far I've come. I think this one might be my best.

Now, I know a lot of you have probably bought Secret Lives and don't need another copy of "Knights in White Bondage." That's fine, but keep reading because I've found two great new ways to offer discounts on my other ebooks, including those I've already published.

Here's the plan.

1.  Almost all my books* will be available at deep discounts during Cyber Monday (December 1) and the two days afterwards. They'll be 50% off for about a day and a half, then 25% off for about another day and a half. So if you've been waiting to buy something (except the two asterisked titles below), that will be your best time to do it.

2. I'm abandoning Smashwords entirely because it's not generating any sales and I've found another system that works just as well for thanking my blog readers. Each time I publish something from now on, I'll set up a pre-order on Amazon and offer you reduced prices during the pre-order period. I'll always announce those on on my blog, including "Knights in White Bondage." It won't go on sale until Black Friday (a.k.a. the day after Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year in the US), which falls on November 28 this year. If you pre-order it you'll get the ebook for $1.99, but on November 28, the price goes up to the usual $2.99. Now again, I realize a lot of you have already purchased "Knights" as part of the Secret Lives anthology, and I'm not expecting you to purchase it twice. Just keep this information in mind for future books. And if you do want to publish "Knights" as a separate ebook, you'll get the link here as soon as Amazon gives it to me. Usually it takes them about a day. I'll make a separate post when I get it.

Happy Holidays, whatever you're celebrating soon. :-)


*excluding "Knights in White Bondage" completely, and excluding "What Do You Give the Alien Who Has Everything" unless you buy it through Amazon.co.uk (in both cases because Kindle won't let me change book prices more than once per 30 days per market).

Doubleplusgood

Let me start with a context-free quote. Context wouldn't help much in this case, anyway:

(c) Zdzisław Beksiński

The tube of flesh is quite prophetic. The tube of flesh, the umbilical, is inserted at the base of the neck, although sometimes inserted by mistake toward the top of the head, which can result in unexpected visions. The umbilical feeds into the central nervous system. The nerves of the familiar's umbilical wind around the nerves in the person's neck. Above the recipient, the manta ray, the familiar, rises and grows full with the knowledge of the host. It makes itself larger. It elongates. The subject goes into shock, convulses, and becomes limp. Motor control passes over to the familiar, creating a moving yet utilitarian symbiosis. The neck becomes numb. A tingling forms on the tongue, and taste of lime. There is no release from this. There should be no release from this. Broken out from their slumber, hundreds are initiated at a time, the tubes glistening and churling in the elision of the steam, the continual need. Thus fitted, all go forth in their splendid ranks. The eye of the City opens and continues to open, wider and wider, until the eye is the world. 

That's a quote from a short story called "Three Days in a Border Town," by Jeff VanderMeer. Even after reading the whole story for myself, I'm not completely sure how much mind control the familiars exert over the people they're attached to, but clearly there's some. And doesn't it make you delightfully squirmy? You can read the full story online for free; I'll give you the link at the bottom of this post. But for now, let's move on.

It's been about two months since I finished VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy (I blogged about the first two books here and here). I've been dying to tell you what I thought about the conclusion, but other topics came first. Now it's time to finish what I - or, rather, VanderMeer - started. The first and second books in the series contained lots of mind control, seemingly via hypnosis, although I noted that the levels of control were too high to be caused by real-world hypnosis. Well, I was right. The character known as "the Voice" in Book 2 is a megalomaniac who loves thinking up new and better ways to warp people's minds. Here's a quote from Acceptance. I've taken out the Voice's real name and gender pronouns as well as a few other spoilery details:

Light hypnotic suggestion, conditioning that's more about Area X survival than any of the Voice's dubious "value adds," his/her claims to have found a way around the need, on some level, for the subject to want to perform the suggested action - "a kind of trickery and substitution." The stages you've seen described are identification, indoctrination, reinforcement, and deployment, but _____ has seen other documents that borrow the semiotic of the supernatural: "manifestation, infestation, oppression, and possession."

Most of the Voice's attention has concreted around _____, a volunteer with radicalized ideas about the value of free will. You wonder if the Voice prefers it when there's more or less resistance.

Then there's this quote:

They implant in the brain of _____ what the Voice calls "a pearl of surveillance and recall." Some tiny subset of the silver egg that is Central, passing first through the Voice's deforming grip. They make a man not himself, and you along with it to keep your job, to stay close to what is important to you.

Now, I have to admit that mind control doesn't play as big as role in Acceptance as I expected. Most of the MC takes place in Book 2, Authority. And I know my readers; MC is what you come here to read about. Still, there's so much else worth reading in the Southern Reach trilogy that I recommend it to you anyway just because it's fantastic. It's like Lovecraft on LSD with a side helping of three-dimensional characters and hope. Again I'm being careful to avoid spoilers, but if you've read the first two books and haven't decided whether to pick up the conclusion, here's some of what you'll learn: the ultimate fates of the biologist and her husband, what the hell the psychologist from Annihilation was up to all this time, what happened to the lighthouse keeper, why Whitby is such a basket case, and whether or not Control ever gains control of himself. You also mostly...probably...learn what caused Area X, although the details are open to debate. And I did debate them at length in a Goodreads thread on the series until I felt satisfied with my conclusions (even if not everyone agreed with me). If you've read the whole series, and/or if you don't mind being spoiled to hell and back, here's the thread. Feel free to hop in with your own thoughts.

Now back to VanderMeer in general. The guy clearly has an interest in MC; different forms of it show up in many of his stories, although not in fetishy ways. He uses it for the sake of horror, and believe me, that man knows how to do horror. The quote at the top of this post comes from VanderMeer's short story collection The Third Bear; and the title story is absolutely, no-question-about-it, unrelentingly horrific. So is "Predecessor." But "Three Days in a Border Town" is more like Mad Max with aliens, "Shark God vs. Octopus God" is just plain funny, and "Errata" is - oh God, just read it for yourself. I keep going on about VanderMeer because the more I read his stuff, the more I love it. I think a lot of you will, too; and several stories from The Third Bear are free online. You can find links to them all in this one helpful review. Just do yourself a favor and start with Errata. It's a standalone story with everything that's freaky and wonderful about Vandermeer in one tidy little package. Check it out and let me know what you think of it.

The Tipping Point

Over the last few weeks I've read some buzz in the EMC community about a brainwashing scene in "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." I saw a few animated gifs of the scene, and they were exciting enough to make me want more. Sadly, I wasn't able to find any clips on YouTube. So there I was, eating my heart out, imagining all the other MC fans out there, enjoying the hell out of a great scene I couldn't see.

Then, at last, I managed to see it. What a letdown. Those animated gifs were very nearly all there was to Agent 33's brainwashing. We never saw her actually succumb; she just went from fighting in one scene to happily brainwashed in the next.


Now, I do understand. I've never seen the show, but I've read enough to know Agent 33 was a throwaway character. The only purpose of her brainwashing was to make us worry that the same thing could happen to a more important character who was undercover with Hydra. Viewed that way, Agent 33's scenes did just what was needed...but they did almost nothing for my fetish.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the tipping point in good induction scenes: the point where a strong, resistant character first starts to lose the battle. Sometimes it happens slowly, sometimes quickly. But there's always that one moment where the character hangs balanced between fighting to stay free and surrendering to the inevitable, and then they lose their balance. Maybe they're too tired to fight any longer. Maybe they realize fighting is pointless. Maybe they get tricked. Maybe their horniness gets the best of them. Or maybe - and I find this scenario particularly exciting - they were tempted to give in all along, for whatever reason, and they surrender half-willingly, knowing no one else will ever know they gave in on purpose. But however it happens, that tipping point makes or breaks a brainwashing scene for me - and probably for a lot of other MC fetishists.

But we didn't get to see Agent 33's tipping point. I've arranged these images to suggest what it might have looked like, but that's not how it played out onscreen. We saw her start to weaken, but we never saw her jaw sag or her eyes roll up in her head or her mouth start to chant mantras about compliance. Just think about how much hotter her fate could have been, if her character mattered. Think about the anguish viewers would have experienced if they'd seen a character they loved fall to the enemy...fall deliciously slowly to the enemy. With no one around to break their fall.

Then again, if Agent 33 mattered, someone would have been there to break her fall, just in the nick of time. Dammit.

"Secret Lives" is now available for purchase for a mere $0.99

Here we go, folks! The Secret Lives anthology, which includes my extra-kinky MC fantasy "Knights in White Bondage," is now for sale on Amazon for less than a dollar. I hope you'll check it out - and please leave some comments!

I'll be back this weekend with musings on the hottest part of the mind control induction process.

Supernatural sex and religious cunnilingus

Well, folks, the anthology will be out very soon, and - incredible news - it'll be priced at at mere $0.99. I was shocked by that, but the other contributors are more experienced at this sort of thing, and they swear that's the best price for an anthology. Our goal is to get onto some bestseller lists, thus building our reputations as individual authors and as a group. And that's only our first goal. Our second is to keep putting out more themed anthologies as the months go on. I won't be able to contribute to all of them because I don't write quickly enough, but I'll join in as often as I can. This is a fine group of people, and now that I've finished reading the galleys, I can tell you they're a fine group of writers.

Here are the story synopses, in what might or might not be their order within the book:

• Tempted by Blood by Jacqueline Sweet—When the boy you love won’t give you what you need, maybe his evil twin will. 
• Knights in White Bondage by A. Regina Cantatis—An enchanted thrall and her Mistress visit a fetish resort, where they fascinate their fellow guests and attract the attention of a would-be knight in shining armor. 
• Forking Around by Audrey Lusk—When you see the world differently from everyone else, it takes something unseen to make it a less lonely place. 
• Mrs. Wong's by Troy King—Take one jaded fixer, one mysterious young woman, a dash of magick, add a seedy dive, and mix thoroughly. 
• Spooked by Ruby Madden—When Clementine inherits an aging Victorian mansion from her late aunt, never did she suspect she'd uncover a mysterious secret about a lover from the past, brought to the present, in the form of a ghost. 
• A Dangerous Seduction by Heather Cole—Soledad has everyone fooled that she's an ordinary librarian until a mysterious shapeshifter makes her want to reveal more than just her true identity. 
• Vixen by Christin Lovell—Plus size Jessickah Banderkoff is a bartender by day, a guardian to the Underworld’s Kingdom by evening, and the vampire king’s lover by night, but every good thing must come to an end, right?

And here are the keywords submitted by various authors. I've grouped them by story but, just to make things more interesting, I haven't put them in the same order as the listing above. I don't think you'll have any trouble figuring out which set is mine, though. ;-)

• shapeshifter, paranormal, werewolf, gangsters, magic, anal penetration, goblins, witches, sexy librarian, bisexual, assassins, sex outside  
• Witch, tough female, gun, seedy bar, dive bar, Chinese food, bathroom sex, noir, private eye, thriller, demon possession, magic, Wong, paranormal, magick, summoning, fight  
• BBW, vampire, paranormal, werewolf, shapeshifter, Russian mob, underworld, erotic romance, action, vixen, femme fatale  
• BBW, interracial, BWWM, HEA, ghost, haunted mansion, romance, supernatural, paranormal, mystery, spook, spooked, witch, white-witch, murder, death, reincarnation, dreams, apparition, nightmare, love story  
• Paranormal, sassy, dimension travel, Borges, alternate reality, Lovecraft, Machen, invisible, alien, monster, man, stranger sex, giant ant-sex, romance, HEA
• mind control, lesbian, gay, fetish, latex, bondage, bdsm, fae, fairies, resort, total enclosure
• And here's my guess at what the keywords might be for the person who didn't submit any (To be honest, she had good reason: she was the one gathering everyone else's so she could submit them as a group): vampires, evil twin, Penrose Academy, school for magic, witch, wizard, alternate reality, enchanted mirror, warrior woman

Finally, in fulfillment of the clickbait in my title, I offer the following video. It's not totally off topic; if you read the older version of my story, when it was called "Someday My Prince Will Come," you'll remember it had some Egyptian elements. But really, do I need a reason to post a video of a beautiful woman promising you a religious experience between her legs? I think not.

This, that, and the other

Where to begin? I have so many things on my mind this week that I can't share them all in one post. I'll leave at least one of them for next weekend but don't worry; you'll still have plenty of nuggets to choose from here.

First up, I'm about to publish another story - in an anthology called Secret Lives that will debut on or around Halloween. The cover at left isn't quite the final version. For one thing, there are now seven authors involved instead of six; and for another, the cover artist (and story contributor) Jacqueline Sweet might decide to tweak the image some more.

My own contribution will be a vastly improved version of one of my oldest EMCSA tales, "Someday My Prince Will Come." I've retitled it "Knights in White Bondage," and I promise you'll find it at least twice as hot and three times as kinky as it used to be. I've learned a lot in the years since I wrote the first version. As for the other writers, I'm not sure what they have in store, but our theme is supernatural secrets; and among our number are the aforementioned Jacqueline Sweet, who writes for the EMCSA; Devon March, who collaborated with Jacqueline Sweet on a not-quite-but-nearly-MC story I loved called Fifty Shades of Gay Tentacles; and at least one woman who specializes in vampire erotica. I'll tell you more when I know more.

Now on to some e-publishing notes. First, I'd welcome some feedback on an idea I'm considering. I think I'm going to take my existing stories off Smashwords and offer them exclusively through Kindle Unlimited. The only time I get sales from Smashwords anymore is when I announce a new story here on my blog and offer 25% off coupons, and I can still give you those. What I'm thinking is that in the future, I'll publish new stories on both Smashwords and Amazon for one week, offering the Smashwords coupon as usual. But after that first week, I'll remove the story from Smashwords and sell it only through Kindle Unlimited. Does anyone have strong feelings about that? If so, sound off below. Remember that I've set up my comment section so that you can speak in total anonymity, and I don't delete anything except spam and troll posts.

Lastly (for now, anyway - remember that I have lots of other things on my mind), may I ask an easy favor? An Amazon commenter dropped a negative review on What Do You Give the Alien Who Has Everything? because she didn't realize she was getting into an EMC story and got squicked out. Now, I'm not angry with her, and I'm not blaming her; I can understand why she didn't know what she was getting into. Amazon's new, stricter rules meant I had to word my synopsis very carefully to keep away from the ban hammer. But I'd appreciate it if some genuine EMC fans would balance out the negative review with some positive ones. I don't want anyone to be rude to the other reviewer; I'd just like some EMC fans to tell potential readers what they enjoyed about the book (As someone named Kevin has already done - thanks, Kevin! ;-) )

Kinky elves

I was going to post something more sensible, but I've been sick for a week and a half (which, BTW, is why I didn't post last weekend), and my brain still isn't back to normal...by which I mean "as normal as it ever is." So this is what you get today.

Never mind why, but I've spent the day Googling for Tolkien-related art. I've found some great stuff; and then I've found, well, this sort of thing. The artist clearly has skill, and if she finds my post here, I hope she'll understand that I'm not really making fun of her...well, not entirely. I'm delightfully aghast (which is quite possibly how she meant me to feel anyway). And since I know a lot of my readers are into Tolkien and/or BDSM and/or gay sex, I hope you'll enjoy these pics as much as I did.

And now, without further ado, I present a very non-traditional love story between an Elf and a Dwarf.

A gift exclusively for my blog readers

This is a thanks and a sort of semi-Easter egg for those of you who've bought What Do You Give the Alien Who Has Everything? It's a map of the Imperators' complex to help you orient yourself and show you at least some of what's in store for you on Mahé (I've quite intentionally left a few things out of the image).

But first, at right is someone else's more official map of Mahé. It's the capital island of a chain that lies in the Indian Ocean northeast of Madagascar.  Like the story says, the Seychelles is the most exclusive resort area on the planet, and the Glacis District (where my story is set) contains some of the most exclusive hotels in the Seychelles.

Now on to my map. Yes, it's the cartographic equivalent of a ransom note cut from different magazines, but I didn't try to make it look real. That would have taken weeks. Instead I tried to give you a good idea of what's where, to aid you in navigating the story. The only other place to find a map like this is on your own notepad - if you choose to draw one of your own.

Helpful hint: if you right click and open the map in a new tab, it gets helpfully huge.