England Goes Boom! -- Honey Trap #2 Now on Smashwords and Amazon

 He'res story number 2 in the Honey Trapp Snappy Stories  series, "England Goes Boom!" This time she's spying on English oil oligarchs who are definitely up to No Good, being oil oligarchs. As one of them says, "It’s the money that counts you know, and by that measure my true allegiance is to Panama, not England."

I'm taking a pulp aesthetic into my Honey Trapp stories, and having fun with it. "Pulp" and "erotica" used to exist quite comfortably together, only it was called "porn" in those days and it was marketed primarily toward men. It would be really interesting to study whether or not the primary readership of those old porn novels was male or female. I strongly suspect there were a LOT more female readers than male readers. 

Now, I could definitely be wrong here. Back in the 50s and 60s, censorship was an overwhelming fact of life in America -- there just wasn't a lot of sexy stuff around for average folks to consume if they wanted to, and to judge from the demand for porn novels, they definitely wanted to.  So guys could have gone for written porn just because there was no visual porn for them to buy. I mean, this was a time when weak-ass European art porn like "I am Curious Yellow" was a success in America.

Unfortunately, a quick dig on Google turned up nothing useful in the way of data on sixties porn-buying demographics.  The hits included lots and lots of modern stuff, lots and lots of old-timey anti-porn censorship stuff and very little else. The best I could do is this excellent description of what it was like to be a porn writer in those days by Robert Silverberg, who wrote 150 of those old porn novels. Unfortunately, it contains little or nothing in the way of useful information about the market for porn novels in those days, other than that there was a strong demand for them.

The reason I think it COULD be that the 60s market wisdom was wrong about who was buying/reading the porn novels is the Gor novels. The publishers of the Gor novels related at one point that they were amazed to discover that the bulk of the readers of the Gor novels were primarily women. (The first Gor novel was published in 1964, so it's more or less a contemporary, though the Gor novels extended right into the present.)

The Gor novels were a brilliant concept (softcore bondage porn involving slavegirls could seamlessly mix with interplanetary sword and sandal adventures if you make the slavegirls major characters and focus on their relationship with the protagonist along with the sword and sandal adventures) that was badly executed (way too much to go into here) but not badly executed enough to keep Norman's work from being more popular than all the other DAW fantasy novelists combined.  

If you're familiar with what was going on in romance writing of the time, you know EXACTLY why Norman's Gor novels were popular. The modern prohibitions about storylines involving rape did not exist back in the 60s and 70s. The rapes were never graphic, because trad romance publishers of the time didn't allow graphic sex scenes, period, or in some cases, no sex scenes at all, just implied sex scenes. And since there was virtually no self-publishing and not much indie publishing, the gatekeepers had full control. But there were PLENTY of storylines in romances in which the heroines are captured and raped by the Usual Suspects (pirates, Arab slavers, pirates, robbers, pirates, wealthy lords and of course pirates). In fact they were a genre, called "bodice rippers." A very popular genre.

Meanwhile, the Gor novels were being sold as science fiction and fantasy. They featured what would be mild sex scenes by modern standards, but they were very clear on what went on in the sex scenes. For example, in "Dancer of Gor" the titular dancer's virginity is auctioned off by the tavern she is dancing in, and sold to 17 lucky winners. And all 17 have sex with her in succession over one long night where she's chained in a tavern alcove and hooded as well (so she won't fall for her virginity-taker(s).) They don't give any detailed descriptions of throbbing swords of lusting thrusting into honeyed chambers of love, though I do believe that it the position Our Heroine was initially chained up in and the fact that others chained her up in different ways was mentioned, and that she was exhausted by the end of the night, and also very relaxed.

That sort of thing is pure-D high-grade fantasy fuel for anybody who likes bodice-rippers, much more powerful than anything that was allowed in bodice-rippers of the time. Of COURSE bodice-ripper romance readers flocked to the Gor novels, so of COURSE Norman was DAW's top-selling fantasy author by far. He was getting fantasy readers who liked his kinky storylines AND romance readers who liked them.

And that is why I think there might have been a lot more female readership for pulp porn/erotica stories than we know of. But ... I could be wrong.

And it's worth noting that things have gone full circle over the last few years. Recently I discovered this fascinating discussion thread on Goodreads attempting to list bodice-ripper authors who have and have not neutered their rape scenes when publishing them as ebooks on Amazon. Because some bodice-ripper authors from the 1960s and 70s and god-knows-when are doing just that -- editing out the rapes that were part of the story, for fear that Amazon or maybe feminists or whomever will get on their case. Let that sink in -- written erotica from the 1960s is TOO RAUNCHY for Amazon nowadays, in a time when porn videos are FULL of rape scenarios.

Never fear, Honey Trapp #2 contains no rape, noncon or dubcon, just enthusiastic happy sexual bondage fucking. If it did contain rape, I'd just publish on Smashwords alone, as I have with many other stories. Although THAT may be ending soon as well, which I'll save for another post.

And speaking of censorship, I've had to create two separate covers for this book. Amazon has ridiculous censorship standards, Smashwords is much more generous. I'll post the two covers here. See if you can guess what Amazon rules make the Amazon version acceptable, and the Smashwords version acceptable.

Amazon cover:

Smashwords cover:

Ok, here are the Amazon rules that are violated by the Smashwords cover:

1) There shall be no visible butt crack!

2) There shall be no bondage, even crappy totally mild bondage!

There are a LOT of other rules for Amazon erotica covers (other genres are not subject to the same stringent rules). But we won't go into that here. You may be wondering what sort of cover I might have come up with if I had the freedom to make any kind of cover I like. I gotcha covered: (sorry, couldn't resist)

(Image Credit: "Athletic MILF Fuck Toy Cherie Deville Punished in Bondage and Sybian!!" for Kink.com.)

You may be thinking this image is powerful just because it's hard core porn, but it's also powerful because it's a very dramatic image in its own right. It would definitely attract readers. But for now, the game is what it is, as they say, and this cover shall not grace my story, dammit.

Finally, here's the blurb for the story:

After the successful conclusion of her assignment in Las Miserabils (see: “The Naked Jungle”) Honey turns down an assignment with the Saudis (even the Bascom Agency won’t send her there). Honey winds up on another Bascom job in England. The oily English oligarchs are up to their usual no good and it’s up to Honey to eavesdrop the hell out of them for the Initiative, the secret organization trying to save Earth from climate change. She’ll eavesdrop on them no matter what she’s suspended from or tied to, and no matter how tied up she is and no matter what kind of kinky sexual position she’s in. She’s just that kind of spy.

And the results for the oligarchs just might be explosive!

This novelette is over 10,000 words long and is number 2 in the Honey Trapp Adventures series.

Here's the Amazon link for the novelette.

Here's the Smashwords link for the novelette.

 Now what are you waiting for? Get buying and get reading! You know you want to.

"The Naked Jungle" Now Available on Smashwords

 

Click here to get the novel on Smashwords in Kindle, Nook and other formats!

Honey Trapp is a natural born submissive, a beautiful party girl who loves doing every kinky, sexy thing that sexy dominant men, including the world’s richest and most powerful men, want her to do. She’s also an agent of the Initiative, a shadowy worldwide secret organization devoted to forcing the world’s governments to combat climate change before it destroys human civilization.

The Initiative offers Honey a long-term assignment that involves three months’ training in the slave kennels of the Bascom Agency, the world’s finest supplier of slavegirls-for-hire to the wealthy and powerful. Honey jumps at the chance to be trained in the closest thing there is to a real slave training school, because it’s sexy fun and great cover for any female spy.

But Bascom’s training regimen is rigorous. The lessons are long and hard and thrust deep into Honey’s psyche and elsewhere The bondage is strict and the sex is raunchy. Can Honey survive and enjoy the many and varied, often arousing training sessions she endures in the Bascom slave training pens? And will Honey survive her first assignment as the personal love slave of the Generalissimo, the dictator of the tiny nation of Las Miserabil in South America? The mighty fossil energy giant Globoil, Inc., is the major source of income for Las Miserabil, and hence, the major source of power for the Generalissimo. And when Globoil’s drill rig wastes pollute the water source of the Arapunga tribe that lives in Las Miserabil’s interior, leaving them sick and dying, no one in power cares – but the Initiative cares.

As an agent of the Initiative Honey will do every sexy submissive thing she can do to help put an end to Globoil’s pollution -- but will it be enough?

This novel is over 40,000 words long.