tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7316409424062478602024-03-12T20:28:41.196-04:00Politics and SexYou know, it's pretty obvious that my posts run far afield of the original blog description. Let's face it, I'm going to write whatever the hell I feel like writing. Deal.Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.comBlogger1220125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-3622969409011673132024-02-08T19:44:00.001-05:002024-02-08T19:44:22.973-05:00Club Rape Is My Filthiest Sexual Bondage Rape Fest<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicSona_UCw6CCuWx3XOYQDMb4vhyphenhyphenhJxYbMGv3-LxuyfZfao3kpwuhYHBY-X7pHeTW9JNUYbcxov67f5glMeFGJlT2Ff43AV56uVbx2ttELaeFqrr0JVp4ZPQXBWZNuVacsEc2__axclDEQW9m69Z0E11ToR1H2jB62npUEoi3TqBq8LBUYfwfPGHtYW8M/s504/Photoreal-ai-foot-hand-7x7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="504" data-original-width="488" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicSona_UCw6CCuWx3XOYQDMb4vhyphenhyphenhJxYbMGv3-LxuyfZfao3kpwuhYHBY-X7pHeTW9JNUYbcxov67f5glMeFGJlT2Ff43AV56uVbx2ttELaeFqrr0JVp4ZPQXBWZNuVacsEc2__axclDEQW9m69Z0E11ToR1H2jB62npUEoi3TqBq8LBUYfwfPGHtYW8M/s320/Photoreal-ai-foot-hand-7x7.jpg" width="310" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1518999" target="_blank">You can get your very own copy of Prison Bitch 2: Club Rape right here!</a></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="wp-block-template-part" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 17.4208px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-block: 1.5rem 0px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer" style="clear: both; height: 0px;"></div><div class="has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: var(--wp--preset--spacing--70); padding-left: var(--wp--style--root--padding-left); padding-right: var(--wp--style--root--padding-right);"></div></div></div><p></p><div class="has-global-padding is-layout-constrained entry-content wp-block-post-content" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 17.4208px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-block: 1.5rem 0px; orphans: 2; padding-left: var(--wp--style--root--padding-left); padding-right: var(--wp--style--root--padding-right); text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><p style="font-style: normal; margin-block: 1.5rem 0px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);"><em>Rich Bitch, Prison Bitch,</em><span> </span>the first book in the<span> </span><em>Prison Bitch</em><span> </span>series, had too much plot for an erotica novel. I had to get fancy with the timelines to keep the story sexy, bringing the sexual bondage and rape elements forward and running them in counterpoint to the story of a rich girl who’s set up to take a very public fall for a bank’s pump and dump scheme and goes to jail for it.</p><p style="font-style: normal; margin-block: 1.5rem 0px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">But at the start of<span> </span><em>Prison Bitch 2</em>, our protagonist Kimberly Halstead is fully ensconced in Brookhaven Prison, and she’s already a sex slave in Club Rape. And she remains a sex slave in Club Rape’s harem for the entire length of the novel, giving me the opportunity to write about the goings-on at Club Rape at length. I detail not just all the sexual bondage and rape that Kim experiences, but also the sexual bondage and rape that the other sex slave inmates experienced in Club Rape.</p><p style="font-style: normal; margin-block: 1.5rem 0px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">That’s a LOT of sex scenes. Which is exactly what I wanted. I used two main techniques to keep them fresh and evolving over the course of the story. 1) I put Kim through some emotional and sexual changes over the course of the novel and 2) I used the fact that the guard’s sex harem dungeon had to be easily and quickly convertible to an institutional employee break lounge in case there was a surprise inspection of the facilities by some high-up prison official or politician, or even worse, some goody-two-shoes organization. Fortunately the guards have had years to come up with imaginative ways to turn innocent-looking prison furniture and fixtures into very naughty sexual bondage toys. Some of them were as simple as ornate curves and curlicues and holes carved into the furniture that served as excellent tying-off points for various bondage sex positions. Others were things like ceiling-mounted fixtures that looked like garage door openers, and functioned a lot like garage door openers, but were not being used as garage door openers. (Cue ominous sexy music.)</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-style: normal; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtvQRCWRs77NY78pKeocq2jNECtXSjyz6Btkk92oAIpxtJymrGViM8x3I8v6waVtm4ZTMv0xCI8OJHZzkq_eGOn9LX2mu-Dxn0lwd_YmaHHr2ncTAiwK0m7fYjsdKmdf6Q4ZLW8onE08yemL9y2RDPzsLZqSKlefgHBzhBsnZCb24M_EQYyWsXSQ9BmT0/s648/0prison-bitch2-cover-promo-6x9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtvQRCWRs77NY78pKeocq2jNECtXSjyz6Btkk92oAIpxtJymrGViM8x3I8v6waVtm4ZTMv0xCI8OJHZzkq_eGOn9LX2mu-Dxn0lwd_YmaHHr2ncTAiwK0m7fYjsdKmdf6Q4ZLW8onE08yemL9y2RDPzsLZqSKlefgHBzhBsnZCb24M_EQYyWsXSQ9BmT0/s16000/0prison-bitch2-cover-promo-6x9.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 17.4208px;"><i>The cover art, for those who like that sort of thing.</i></span></div><p style="font-style: normal; margin-block: 1.5rem 0px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">With that kind of set-up I was able to write an awful lot of sexual bondage rape scenes. That provided plenty of taboo erotica content, but it also served more writerly purposes. When mainstream writers have a character who’s a captive or a slave the sexual elements are either ignored or glossed over. The most famous example being Slave Leia from Star Wars, captured by a gangster and forced to wear a slave collar and chain and the infamous metal bikini before Jabba and his henchmen, but otherwise unmolested, so far as we know.</p><p style="font-style: normal; margin-block: 1.5rem 0px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">(Fans of both sexes had a field day with “so far as we know” of course. Google “slave leia porn” and watch out for the avalanche!)</p><p style="font-style: normal; margin-block: 1.5rem 0px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">I, being an erotica writer, have carte blanche to write about the sex as much as I want, which gives me the ability to really convey just how much sex Kim experiences, and how intense that sex is. Readers get a much clearer idea of just how thoroughly and frequently fucked Kim and the other inmate sex slaves are. The drama and intensity and raunchiness of sex slavery isn’t watered down or ignored entirely, and that, IMHO, makes for a dramatically better story, no matter how over the top raunchy and frequent all the sex scenes are.</p><p style="font-style: normal; margin-block: 1.5rem 0px; margin-left: auto !important; margin-right: auto !important; max-width: var(--wp--style--global--content-size);">What I’m saying is that I had a lot of imaginative fun writing<span> </span><em>Club Rape</em><span> </span>but that I also think I wrote a pretty good story. And that I hope and believe that readers will have a lot of fun reading it.</p></div>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-5936712827695707612023-11-01T23:53:00.001-04:002023-11-01T23:53:47.570-04:00"Rich Bitch, Prison Bitch" -- A Fractured Fucking Tale<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQplPt-bTzzHGEdIinpObWW3QIq4A9U4iuHwrS0ibYGXWhG1q3sKohdupinGlsSKX447YXYGZ3hBnpwvTcclrZ9YvtD3Uhop8uGXx7Xsfb8PKK5HkXVrpwykRqGnhEky00SMoRxlsQuHZl9H3M_V7wNDLONfXfsVay3CtLMm_goyX82HB8Q_WxUtMyEDQ/s648/prison-bitch-pulp-2go-6x9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="403" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQplPt-bTzzHGEdIinpObWW3QIq4A9U4iuHwrS0ibYGXWhG1q3sKohdupinGlsSKX447YXYGZ3hBnpwvTcclrZ9YvtD3Uhop8uGXx7Xsfb8PKK5HkXVrpwykRqGnhEky00SMoRxlsQuHZl9H3M_V7wNDLONfXfsVay3CtLMm_goyX82HB8Q_WxUtMyEDQ/w398-h640/prison-bitch-pulp-2go-6x9.jpg" width="398" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1473763" target="_blank">Click on this text to get my rapiest book evah!</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I am really
pleased and proud of my latest novella, “Rich Bitch, Prison Bitch.”
I hope readers will feel the same way about it.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It’s full-on
taboo erotica this time. Rape is the taboo that is being violated
here, and it’s being thoroughly violated indeed. There’s M/f
rape. There’s F/f rape. And there’s FFFFFFF/f rape. At no point
does consensuality raise its ugly head.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But it’s not
simple porn, of course. It’s another shot at the effects capitalism
has on human beings, particularly in its worst manifestation, the
American prison system. I use the form of a standard erotica trope:
the fall from grace. My protagonist, Kim Halstead is beautiful young
woman from a family worth millions. She comes from “good New
England stock,” i.e., her parents are well-to-do Protestants who’ve
been around since the earliest days of the New England colonies.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In college
(University of Connecticut, majoring in Finance) she joins a sorority
filled with wealthy elite women like herself and mocks the ‘losers’
who aren’t part of her sorority. She dates wealthy elite frat bros
and has a generally wonderful time of it.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When she graduates
from college, she gets a job offer from a prestigious Wall Street
firm, Bluestone Investment Group (aka BIG money) and happily
continues dating a lot of wealthy, handsome men in search of the one
with the right moves and the right money.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But there’s a
snake in the verdant garden that is Kim’s life, and what makes her
vulnerable to it is the values she has unknowingly picked up from her
elite family and friends. For her the world is made up of winners and
losers, and most are losers, and Kim’s goal in life is to continue
to be a winner. And having lots of money is a key to being a winner,
and it doesn’t really matter how you get it.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">And when you are
an elite winner, you’re practically invulnerable, no bad
consequences will happen to you, no matter what you do.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">All this is subtly
ingrained in Kim’s worldview, she isn’t even aware of it, and
would probably renounce such views if they were stated so baldly to
her.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Thus when she is
accused of defrauding her clients via a pump-and-dump scheme (which
she is definitely doing, but so is everyone at her bank) she’s
totally unprepared when she winds up convicted and imprisoned.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The media fall all
over themselves to find salacious pictures of the beautiful blond
banker with the very curvy body during the trial, and thanks to Kim’s
frequent clubbing and beach partying, there are plenty to find
online.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But when she goes
to prison, she discovers that the beauty that made her golden path
through life even more golden, now makes her a target for prison
rapists. She’s raped by guards, other prisoners, prison gangs and
always while tied up and often while gagged, sometimes while hooded.
She’s raped inside her cell and outside her cell. She is brutalized
until she fears for her very life, and as a result she becomes the
lowest of the low in prison, everyone’s sex toy, a prison bitch.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Never a fighter,
more of a lover, she becomes prey in prison, where you’re either a
predator or prey and the predators are expert at sniffing out prey.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The guards in
prison are the worst predators. They’ve built a hidden playroom
where they can rape the inmates in comfort and privacy with plenty of
toys.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Now I tried to
keep this story within the bounds of what’s reasonable. But I did
want to provide the rape fantasies readers enjoy, and I know they
like them hardcore. I had thought this might requires me to greatly
stretch the limits of the prison genre, surely this sort of thing
never happens.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But
noooooooo… it happens a lot. Not just the sexual abuse of prisoners
which is rampant and happens at the hands of guards more often than
other inmates.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_of_women_in_the_United_States#Sexual_abuse_in_correctional_facilities">Here’s
a Wikipedia summary on the topic.</a> I did not have to go outside
the bounds of the real world at all here, unfortunately.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Even the sexual
playroom, while there are no known equivalents in the prison system,
does have a non-sexual equivalent in <a href="https://youtu.be/r2qegBP-o4w?si=mjnfD6Or34lrA4N2">the
secret luxury lounge that prison staff built at Riker’s Island.</a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If such a lounge
had been built at a place like FCI Dublin federal women’s prison in
California, where because of the rampant sexual abuse, inmates and
staff had named it <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/fci-dublin-womens-prison-sexual-abuse-class-action-lawsuit-filed-bureau-of-prisons/">“The
Rape Club,”</a> I think there would have been an exact equivalent.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I personally would
be a LOT happier my story were a LOT more fictional. Like, dinosaurs
chasing cavemen around fictional. Something that never happens in
real life. But no, our crap-ass excuse for prison system has made my
story all too realistic.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The crime aspects
of my story are not all that fictional, either. There are a LOT of
parallels between what happened to Martha Stewart amid the Wall
Street insider trading scandal and what happens to Kim. It’s not
exactly the same, but if I wanted to describe my story as “ripped
from the headlines!” for a promo piece, I could do it with a clear
conscience.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> The “fixers”
in my story who get nefarious things done for the wealthy and
powerful, whether they’re wealthy oligarchs or political bigwigs,
are kind of made up, but not really. Fixers are a fairly common
phenomenon in politics, but they tend to operate mostly in the realm
of legally gray spaces, doing things like conducting oppo research
via sleazy means and initiating sleazy campaigns against political
opponents, like Karl Rove, who’s probably the prime example.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">And whoever killed
Jeffrey Epstein was undoubtedly given the assignment by a more
illegal sort of fixer, the sort that shows up in my story.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I also
experimented with a different approach to the narrative in my story.
In most of my stories the narrative is simple and straightforward,
with the timeline being a simple unbroken arrow. In this story we
start about two thirds into the story with a prolonged lesbian rape
scene that’s punctuated by flashbacks to her earlier life that help
us learn who she is and how she wound up in prison. The result is a
sort of parallel progression in the story, with the nonstop raping of
Kim by people and groups of people, occurring alongside our discovery
of Kim’s backstory. The idea is that readers are never far from a
rape scene as they read.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Otherwise, the
story would have long sections of non-rape content early on with the
rape content mostly in the last half of the story.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I think the
fractured storyline worked out very well, but then, I’m the author
so I may have a wee bit of bias. See what you think for yourself.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p></div><p></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-49081536052322311152023-08-15T17:14:00.003-04:002023-08-15T18:15:28.246-04:00Pantisoka Thongo & The Slavers of Alsoran Now on Sale on Smashwords<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1437175" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" height="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg1-wCMY5Uda49xVF8GbcELe7PHRF_U4kqWJ2SEIACAW7htHRaaP3jBynwkOIdX4ccekeFDczYxu_XG0ddrPrRuG-5Sj14lLf6m3KQBW1WF-wJ1wFpqR3vDlGvrARLDTstt9HP9b4ed_IM2xIlK_rY08lZY3_lVvI5Pj8ihAnUDS9Zv5NMZ3-CWANW3Pc/s600/pantisoka-cover-final2-6x9.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Book is available on Smashwords <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1437175" target="_blank">right here.</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><span face="Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-size: 14.4px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">“Slavers of Alsoran” is probably the most self-important erotic parody of St@r W@rs ever written. But it also ruins other important science fiction franchises such as Foundation, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Superman, the Culture, Ringworld, Dune, Barbarella, UFO, and Avatar. It also also ruins some REALLY weird things like A Mighty Wind, Support Your Local Gunfighter, A Prairie Home Companion and your childhood. It’s got something to offend EVERYONE. In fact, it was named 2023’s Most Legally Actionable Novella by the Shyster Chamber of Commerce.
In “Slavers of Alsoran” Pantisoka “Panti” Thongo, a secret agent for Bela Orgazmo, is home on Planet Alsoran from a tough mission. All she wants to do is go to her favorite kinky club and get her brains Mastered out. And sure enough, Panti’s sub friends at the club point out a handsome Master with crinkly brown eyes and a chin you could pound nails with, who really knows his way around a dungeon.
But Gai Nwar is a little TOO smooth in Panti’s opinion. He COULD just be a guy with a thing for Rootugas. Such men weren’t rare, since Rootuga females were the only humanoid species known to have evolved the oral clit. </span></div><div><span face="Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-size: 14.4px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">
But Gai might also be a lureman with a shopping list. Evil harem owners on the crapsack worlds that fringed the Galactic Umpire also had a thing for Rootugas. </span></div><div><span face="Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-size: 14.4px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">
The voluntary slavegirls (as sexual submissives were called on crapsack worlds) didn’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming into their lairs, making them prizes for slavers. And that made Rootuga voluntary slavegirls like Panti super ultimate mega grand supreme prizes for slavers.</span></div><div><span face="Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-size: 14.4px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">
Gai might even be an agent for the evil shith lord Dearth Bother, a charred piece of bacon that had once been a juicy hamhock of a man, now bent on destroying all former Jiggli knights.
The evening promises a night of sweet sex and submission with handsome, dominant Gai, or perhaps it will be a night of carving up slavers and shith lords with her twin light scimitars. Panti is ready for anything, because she’s just that kind of heroic slavegirl!
Read this 33,000 word novella now and enjoy the filth and the fun that has made BDSM sci-fi erotic parody America’s most beloved sub genre!</span></div><div><br /></div>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-51499845039231546062023-06-29T15:22:00.002-04:002023-06-29T15:22:59.184-04:00"Empire of Love" Is Now On Amazon!<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9K795CW" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="423" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikvwdXUfoqv0Wh6ycnEtKEN0j9KpyC0w57j2NZBGcu0g6mt6lFQ1uJAHEu_hg8T2yJZHStiS3vS_gr7Wm6dRuBWrKAA8_MYvhaH2Q5BVn1rxFFaQAbnRlgNOquX-isG-w_MhAGBvRSK54XsgL207MOUEZjMQWVsZGGB1xqHodDWfCXmiugO4rygaazZVM/w418-h640/empireoflovecover-final-3-6x9.jpg" width="418" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9K795CW" target="_blank">Click here or on the cover art to get whisked away to Amazon</a>, where you can get the book free if you have Kindle Unlimited. Just $2.99 if not. </i><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Writing as Barry Anderson, I've written a third book in the Collar World series which includes The Visitor from Incel World and The Love Invasion. Like the other two novels, it's not erotica (no explicit sex scenes) it's adult SF adventure. However, I have taken the lessons of John Norman to heart and placed plenty of fantasy fuel in the story. Hopefully everyone will lurve it. Or at least love it!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Here's the blurberino!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">When Collar World’s time monitors discover a new timeline, they quickly realize they need out-of-the-box thinking and they need it fast. A brutal Old West theocracy on the alternate timeline, the Empire of Luvala, is hanging slaves for little or no reason, and with horrifying frequency.</span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">So naturally the call goes out to the Laguna Beach Ladies’ Investigation Bureau, i.e., Nitro Wilde and Moxie Maven. After all, they helped head off a crosstime war between Incel World and Collar World when their timelines intermingled. And all they’re asked to do is sit in a conference room in Collar World and help come up with ideas to end the murderous reign of the Luvalans on Earth 4 (the newly discovered timeline) as quickly and with as little violence as possible.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Given enough time, the Collar Worlders could probably end the hangings with no violence at all. But every day’s delay means more innocent slaves will be brutalized and hanged. The clock is ticking and the sound is the fall of bodies through a gallows door.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Unfortunately, there was more going on on Earth 4 than meets the eye, and soon Moxie is struggling for her life while the leadership on Collar World may decide to abandon Earth 4 and everyone on it in the face of the possible destruction of Collar World itself!</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">It’s another exciting alternate world adventure that will keep you riveted as lives and the fates of worlds hang in the balance, as well as the fate of one innocent native American.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">This 75,000 word novel is part of the Incel World series that began with “The Visitor from Incel World” and continues with “The Love Invasion” and this novel.</span></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div></td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-90419754332624296912023-02-09T15:54:00.006-05:002023-02-09T23:01:58.170-05:00"Bound for Bebop City" Is Now on Sale on Amazon and Smashwords<p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid3_7-yxiNRVXVCtKDTmYDt8RZXS9JmZqvDuRbKjMeAcarUiN7P6trrB3eAgoIhh7W1HJUmyPAt17rtOqwPRYAf-VPjXydKHnEp8xJwwoy7vy_DdLA96n9YDBPq-rMMahzYvJWGXgwTakKxFV9RbjrNRGC5Wl2DNNx6eO_-bicb2Vkg71KpXjgztkb/s648/bound-for-bebop-city-final-5x9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="363" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid3_7-yxiNRVXVCtKDTmYDt8RZXS9JmZqvDuRbKjMeAcarUiN7P6trrB3eAgoIhh7W1HJUmyPAt17rtOqwPRYAf-VPjXydKHnEp8xJwwoy7vy_DdLA96n9YDBPq-rMMahzYvJWGXgwTakKxFV9RbjrNRGC5Wl2DNNx6eO_-bicb2Vkg71KpXjgztkb/w358-h640/bound-for-bebop-city-final-5x9.jpg" width="358" /></a></p><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV8VRHZV" target="_blank">Click here to get the book on Amazon.</a></i></div></i><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1338997" target="_blank">Click here to get the book on Smashwords.</a></i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Here's the short blurb:</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>Sweet, virginal Mincy lives in alternate timeline in the 1950s where everyone’s into sexual bondage and a drug called nersha renders teens uninterested in sex. But when they're taken off nersha after their 18th birthdays, the teens turn into frenzied sex maniacs, filled with animal need. How will Mincy cope with the mad passion driving her to submit sexually to a Master? Who will that Master be?</i></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The
1950s was a profoundly weird period in American history. Supposedly
it </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">is
the era that is nearest and dearest to the hearts of American
cultural conservatives. It predated women’s liberation, the civil
rights movement and the hippie movement, all of which they still
de</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">s</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">pise.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Women
were still mostly homemakers – even though many of them had had the
experience of working in industrial and corporate jobs during World
War II when so many American men were busy being machine gun fodder.
</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">And
black people were out of sight and out of mind. </span></span></span></span>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The
role of women was so constrained that there’s a subniche of BDSM</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">
</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">called
“</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">1950s</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">
domestic discipline” that </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">exists,
though I don’t think it’s huge. (I don’t think it’s huge
because </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">when
I checked keywords on Amazon for “retro domestic discipline” I
only got </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">eight
hits. When I searched for “1950s domestic discipline” I only got
34 hits: better but not exactly a landslide. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">However,
the keywords “domestic discipline” (which I think is just code
for spanking) got over 10,000 hits on Amazon. But I think that covers
spankings from all time periods, within the context of a husband/wife
relationship.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">In
any event, here’s <a href="https://les3sex.com/en/news/1415/article-understand-1950-s-household-kink">a
scholarly paper on 1950s domestic discipline</a> which covers the
topic well. </span></span></span></span>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">A
lot was going on under the hood of the 1950s that would lead to all
the things conservatives hate. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">This
was most especially true in the areas of music and dance. While the
older adults in the 1950s were still hung up on standards and
leftover big band music </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">the
young kids were getting with the “race music” the early rocknroll
songs that would soon rule the popular music scene. (It was called
“race music” by some because it was a genre created mostly by
black musicians. First jazz, now rocknroll… it drove the racists
nuts.)</span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">That’s
part of the point of the dance hall scene at Pop’s Sodium Shoppe,
to show rocknroll creeping in as the Bloomed (those who </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">have
gone off nersha and had their sexuality restored) dirty danced to the
early rocknroll while the unbloomed shuffle danced to modern electro
rock.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I
chose modern shuffle dancing because I find it a joyful and
expressive dance but not particularly sexual – an asexual sort of
dance, still full of emotion and pleasure, though. <a href="https://youtu.be/gPxjgSK08lc">Here’s
a video of a great shuffle dance</a> to “Lost in the Rhythm,” an
electro-swing hit. (If you just search for “shuffle dance” you’ll
find a lot of dances that incorporate sexy moves like twerking into
the dance. They’re dances but not really shuffle dances.)</span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">A</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">s
for the Bloomed dancing, I was thinking of something like <a href="https://youtu.be/ijK0WTB_-RY">this
scene from Dirty Dancing</a> only with more acrobatics, lots of
nudity and some actual fucking.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Much
of my portrayal of the aesthetics of the 50s is informed </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">various
books on the topic, but you can easily get a feel for the imagery of
the era by doing an image search for “Fifties Aesthetic.”</span></span></span></span></p><p>
</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">My
initial idea </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">for
the story was to put a new spin on first time stories by having
puberty delayed until age 18 but then have it hit like a runaway
freight train, </span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">and
how does a society cope with that?</span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">
Everything else spun off from that central idea. I hope you enjoy it…
I enjoyed writing it, though it was tough.</span></span></span></span></p><p></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-51793952864330074572022-12-22T22:12:00.003-05:002022-12-22T22:12:37.533-05:00"Virgin Slave Girls of Parados" Is Now on Smashwords<div class="separator"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNSJdPPMq9eIqyOruGF_2o_yYH59qNMMBZCAKz4MoOara9NLIITji-IQgy6HxFACFKPsDQ8mNT8oGGb3V59cYRTg5R-HPD4dWHrIAEKQJR56ma0yFbwoRO9MfX8g0RYCOAyU3SnqksgqwmusJA_u_x_LPxTz_7w59x6clEfryWpoVyzkMLMZPc3KM3/s648/parados-cover-final-6x9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNSJdPPMq9eIqyOruGF_2o_yYH59qNMMBZCAKz4MoOara9NLIITji-IQgy6HxFACFKPsDQ8mNT8oGGb3V59cYRTg5R-HPD4dWHrIAEKQJR56ma0yFbwoRO9MfX8g0RYCOAyU3SnqksgqwmusJA_u_x_LPxTz_7w59x6clEfryWpoVyzkMLMZPc3KM3/w400-h640/parados-cover-final-6x9.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1299050" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Click here to be whisked away to Smashwords to buy the book!</a></p>
</figure></div><p> My latest work is a novella, a steampunkish (steam power isn't widely in use just yet though it is being used for large industrial purposes, like pumping water out of mines) variation of the Old West. However, technology is advancing FAST, faster than anyone knows, in the Union, which is what the nascent United States is called in this timeline. Yes, it's an alternate world SF steampunkish sexual bondage erotic romance set in a variation of the Old West. Now, that's a NICHE!</p>
<p><!--/wp:paragraph--></p>
<p><!--wp:paragraph--></p>
<p>(Actually, I'll call it historical erotica since that's an ACTUAL niche that really exists.)</p>
<p><!--/wp:paragraph--></p>
<p><!--wp:paragraph--></p>
<p>The basic story is two friends who have just turned 18 go out for a night on the town in Parados in the Republic of Geronimo (think west Texas). Being adult women in a society where religion is pretty much just reverence for nature (and hence sex guilt tripping does not exist) and there's something called "slave medicine" that is a safe, sure, easy and effective method of birth control, they're both looking to get themselves collared and fucked.</p>
<p><!--/wp:paragraph--></p>
<p><!--wp:paragraph--></p>
<p>Because of course in this alternative world everyone is also into maledom/femsub, basically master/slave sex.</p>
<p><!--/wp:paragraph--></p>
<p><!--wp:paragraph--></p>
<p>I had so much fun fitting all this into a traditional Old West story. The best part was where I lifted a character from a classic Western comedy movie and put her in my story as is, though in a slightly different situation. (A hint: the movie is not "Blazing Saddles" but it is also a very funny movie that satirizes Western tropes very effectively.)</p>
<p><!--/wp:paragraph--></p>
<p><!--wp:paragraph--></p>
<p>I also had fun inventing some bordello tech in a world without steam power.</p>
<p><!--/wp:paragraph--></p>
<p><!--wp:paragraph--></p>
<p>I'm also very pleased at how the cover came out. It's basically two images that have been merged to form one. I spent hours looking for the right stuff on the commercial art site I use and found these gems. It wasn't luck, really, I took some deep dives into some rabbit holes on the site to find just the art I was looking for.</p>
<p><!--/wp:paragraph--></p>
<p><!--wp:paragraph--></p>
<p>And the sex scenes were fun, too. I built toward the big sex scenes by including short sexy scenes in which Matty and Arlene meet various friends in town, including one in punishment stocks who's getting vigorously "punished" at the time (she's basically free use while in the stocks) one who's a pony girl, and one who's a slave whore with a tale to tell about how she became one. By the time Matty and Arlene get tied up and have their big sex scenes with their hunky Masters, they are, well, "hot and bothered" barely describes it!</p>
<p><!--/wp:paragraph--></p>
<p><!--wp:paragraph--></p>
<p>Of course, I could be lying about all this. But I'm not. Read the book and find out... I dare you!</p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-68029358058349798542022-12-09T14:57:00.003-05:002022-12-09T15:28:09.207-05:00I Have A Website!<p> <a href="http://patpowerswrites.com">patpowerswrites.com</a> is now online!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://patpowerswrites.com" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj64N1Kmq6vDkqjos3Y4ObK5lR8GkeSl8f5xEUfDlgSqs4sFnc_ezwGPcDpEAvf56j2Zkwkw0ZqKHFajYUCuYq1fLt3_fgRczr4BNxyvk4fq2ae5oyeoJADCnTbcaus1-SvVcjVvijuEJqlTB_WC_sa_DgP5QwFwFy-80y8RonzVV2HE4xDWOFrdCpG/w400-h225/6926_Alanah-Rae-purchased-hot-and-curvy-bondage-writer.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I've been hitting the old keyboard HARD I tells ya! Click on the pic to be transported to my new website. Vidcap from Kink.com video 6926.</i></div><p>So, I feel like a tree lost in the forest of social media of late. I need a lair from which to operate, and this blog ain't it, mainly because its age gate is absolutely fucked up. I can't even gain access to this blog sometimes, and I'm the freaking blogger! So I built a Wordpress site, <a href="https://patpowerswrites.com">https://patpowerswrites.com</a> </p><p>There's also the fact that on the website, I can divide up my posts to better suit visitor's interest. </p><p>My site has a <a href="https://patpowerswrites.com/books-and-stories/" target="_blank">filthy bookstore</a> where you can find ALL of my books, whether published on Amazon or Smashwords. Neither Amazon nor Smashwords would allow me to link to my books published on other sites, so this is a win. And unlike my old International Bookstore, the contents of this bookstore are scalable and can be viewed on tablets and phones as well as desktop computers. (This is true of all the pages on my site.)</p><p>I also have a <a href="https://patpowerswrites.com/gallery/" target="_blank">gallery</a> where I put up whatever images interest me or inspire a funny caption. </p><p>My site has <a href="https://patpowerswrites.com/pat-powers-blogs/" target="_blank">a blog</a>, of course, where you will find some very familiar posts, with new stuff to come. You won't find promotional posts for my books there, however, I have a separate<a href="https://patpowerswrites.com/pat-powers-book-promotions/" target="_blank"> page for those.</a></p><p>I've also got a page for <a href="https://patpowerswrites.com/barbarian-queen-one-of-the-two-best-gorean-bondage-films-ever/" target="_blank">movie and media reviews</a>, pulling up reviews from Bondagerotica and Jolly Roper that seem particular cogent, funny or otherwise worthwhile.</p><p>I've also got a page titled <a href="https://patpowerswrites.com/barbarian-queen-one-of-the-two-best-gorean-bondage-films-ever/" target="_blank">"Why I'm OK With Writing Rape Fantasies"</a> which is exactly what it says on the tin. For all the people who have trouble with that notion.</p><p>There will undoubtedly be other pages, other changes to the website, it's a work in progress. I'm gonna replace all the outdated drivel on the side of this blog with just a link to the website. If you want to find my books, you can find them there.</p><p>Bon appetit!</p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-61842402919153645322022-11-08T00:45:00.001-05:002022-11-08T00:46:10.989-05:00Carissa Montgomery Feeling The Changes Coming<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfRySmbMP3O9Gr3YmufrBuW1E4qGTErMhJCqWiuIbYT5cTEdS7TZtvYcacruwOLhQtUezIZj7ybqy-mS8UtlE_LhcVY0y-oYnJmxlg3r9oUEgY2LjouVPzhFJGQ1TXvt6nth2nbCFdi6cfqDRs6NYDWiE6kC6RGUBZ9Y3bOUSCB6BQ70Dty2trvR5w/s960/35037_carissa_montgomery_hi_Moment(30).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfRySmbMP3O9Gr3YmufrBuW1E4qGTErMhJCqWiuIbYT5cTEdS7TZtvYcacruwOLhQtUezIZj7ybqy-mS8UtlE_LhcVY0y-oYnJmxlg3r9oUEgY2LjouVPzhFJGQ1TXvt6nth2nbCFdi6cfqDRs6NYDWiE6kC6RGUBZ9Y3bOUSCB6BQ70Dty2trvR5w/w400-h225/35037_carissa_montgomery_hi_Moment(30).jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>I made this vidcap from Kink.com video number 35037, featuring Carissa Montgomery and The Pope doing a little sweaty wrasslin. It's amazing how often beautiful images show up in well made bondage videos. Just thought I'd share this one with you.</p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-59082590784199464012022-11-01T15:12:00.001-04:002022-11-01T15:12:57.259-04:00"Abducted, Roped & Raped: Enemies to Lovers" Now Available on Smashwords<p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh06RS_5bZr11eFK1RADF0VdEuE4O91Wf34xAe_QKulVcVXBKOFsLzgvaXrzpb2PoN8WEwJ4rDk_PZfj_oh8w9Kr828AnUxf7gTN2QEFsWZTy7blLwMha1CO95lotstA-V_1Dxnt6ail6U9pu8FApO9FLF1N8y7PWZ92eqMCegnovti-VyfyQE-jKVu/s648/abducted-roped-final-6x9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh06RS_5bZr11eFK1RADF0VdEuE4O91Wf34xAe_QKulVcVXBKOFsLzgvaXrzpb2PoN8WEwJ4rDk_PZfj_oh8w9Kr828AnUxf7gTN2QEFsWZTy7blLwMha1CO95lotstA-V_1Dxnt6ail6U9pu8FApO9FLF1N8y7PWZ92eqMCegnovti-VyfyQE-jKVu/s16000/abducted-roped-final-6x9.jpg" /></a></p><i>Click on the pic to be whisked to Smashwords and get the novella!</i><p></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">"Abducted, Roped and Raped: Enemies to Lovers" was
originally going to be titled “The Modern Bodice Ripper” because
that’s what it is, a modern take on the bodice ripper theme in a contemporary taboo erotica setting.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">(For those who
don’t know, a bodice ripper is a subgenre of old-time romances that
were essentially rape fantasies. They passed muster because they were
not at all explicit, in fact, you could read a bodice ripper and
never even know that a rape had occurred. They way it worked is, say
an 18<sup>th</sup> century pirate captain captured a comely woman of
good breeding after a sea battle. He drags her into his cabin and
rips off her bodice (it’s some kind of undergarment they used to
wear on the outside). She shrieks. Cut to some time later. They’re
both fully dressed again. He’s all smirky and happy and she’s all
shy and timid, as was the custom of the times. That’s how you knew
a rape had occurred. That was about as explicit as it got in those
days.)</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Then I realized
that the title would show up in alphabetical listings a lot better if
it was just “Bodice Ripper.” So “Bodice Ripper” it was.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Then I did a
little keyword research and discovered that “bodice ripper” isn’t
exactly a popular keyword nowadays. I might be at the top of a pile
of relatively rarely-searched-for titles, which means low sales
because not many customers.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">So I tried a
different subgenre that fits the storyline along with some terms that
describe what happens in the story. The title I came up with is
“Abducted, Roped & Raped: Enemies To Lovers.”</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">That worked a lot
better in the search engines. I’m on the second page of search
results for “Enemies to Lovers” which is a term that gets over
10,000 hits on Smashwords. That’s MUCH improved.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Now as to the
matter of updating the “Enemies to Lovers” trope, that has proven
difficult for me. Since rapes were not only not explicit but could
just barely be inferred in the old days, it was fairly easy for
authors to sidestep the moral and ethical issues of rape just to
slide a little fantasy fuel in there. (In fact, there’s a thread on
Goodreads about 80s authors having to rewrite their books to
eliminate even the INFERRED rape scenes in order to get published on
Amazon, which has disappointed their fans who LIKED the original
version.)
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">But I wrote an
explicit bodice ripper: the male lead (Cal) repeatedly rapes the
female lead (Melody) and it’s described in long, explicit detail,
“rape for titillation” as the Smashwords form describes it.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Now I’m
personally fine with writing “rape for titillation” fiction.
Basically it’s because fiction isn’t real, and publishing rape
fantasy fiction doesn’t make rape more commonplace (or
“normalized”). I wrote a blog post explaining why with cites and
everything. <a href="https://politicallysexy.blogspot.com/2020/06/in-defense-of-taboo-erotica-especially.html" target="_blank">Click here to read it.</a></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Clearly, my morality is
not the basis on which censorship exists. Censorship exists on the
basis of “I’m in power, I make the rules, f&&k you,
writer.” In the case of Amazon I’m sure it’s a matter of
balancing on the edge between profitability (they don’t care really
about the morality of what they publish) and how much shit the prudes
are shoveling over this and that. (“Prude” being my term for
whoever advocates censoring sexuality in fiction, whatever their
declared rationale might be.)
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">But the problem
was, I had to figure out a way to write characters who might
reasonably behave as bodice ripper characters do, in the modern day.
And that was tough. Frankly, it was unreasonable behavior for the
historical times it was supposed to be in.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">So what I did was
look for a character who was well outside traditional morality. And I
feel I created one in Melody Chastain. Is she your average girl next
door? Of course not, nor should she be. But I feel that a character
like the one I created might conceivably have done what my character
did under the same circumstances.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">You’ll just have
to read the novella to find out what she did and why and decide for yourself on that point. Bwahaha! as they say...</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-70401040677971872222022-09-24T16:33:00.001-04:002022-09-24T16:33:48.014-04:00Rape Erotica Novelette “Your Body Or Your Life” Now Available on Smashwords<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxWxbyWloR2kLQcN0NH7NfuWAZhicUFs83Rf50m2oQ6grRvWSnfHCGBRNQRtepj-r578HgbdfjbgywWv6fJy0pof119y55WlZwUAdUI03p3vx0jwrhrsKZS_MQHtE1r8jIBif6Ymy6Ow0hru5qO0a5vzarZPM6xaoBW6GwVEX4yoILrTgL9gQSHww6/s648/your-body-or-your-life-cover-6x9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="429" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxWxbyWloR2kLQcN0NH7NfuWAZhicUFs83Rf50m2oQ6grRvWSnfHCGBRNQRtepj-r578HgbdfjbgywWv6fJy0pof119y55WlZwUAdUI03p3vx0jwrhrsKZS_MQHtE1r8jIBif6Ymy6Ow0hru5qO0a5vzarZPM6xaoBW6GwVEX4yoILrTgL9gQSHww6/s16000/your-body-or-your-life-cover-6x9.jpg" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1167201" target="_blank">You can get the book on Smashwords by clicking on this link.</a> No links to Amazon, they don't do taboo erotica.</i></div></i><p></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Here’s the short blurb for you blurb fiends:</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Penny Paxton’s peaceful life
among the Free Foragers of the Forest is rudely interrupted when the
Patriarchal Raiders raid her village and capture her. She winds up
tied to a bed deep in the passion pits of the Maledom Dominion, a sex
slave. What is the ultimate secret that will allow her to escape her
life of endless forced sexual bondage and rape? Read this 15,000 word
novelette and find out!</span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.25in;">OK, here’s the straight skinny
on this story. My previous short story, <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1163908" target="_blank">Butterfly</a> went over a
freaking cliff, that’s the story. It went over a cliff on Amazon.
It went over a cliff on Smashwords. I’m not going to report the
numbers, they’re embarrassing even to me. He’ll they’d be
embarrassing to my goldfish if I had one.</span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Thing is, “Butterfly” was a
pretty clean story. Clean, hell, it was WHOLESOME for being a kinky
erotic romance. Tons of explicit maledom/femsub sex with lots of
sexual bondage of course, but everybody in the story was totally
onboard with what was going on and having a wonderful time. Dancing,
eating out (the restaurant kind!) and tons of fun, exciting
consensual sex.</span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">And that’s how I marketed it,
as a fun, clean, wholesome sexual bondage romance. And it went over a
cliff on Amazon. And it went over a cliff on Smashwords. I mean,
publishing that story was like dropping a penny down a well and never
hearing the “splash.” If it weren’t for the fact that I have
considerable backmatter built up, I might not have had any sales at
all. Jeebus.</span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">And that’s why “Your Body Or
Your Life” is such a rapefest. It starts off with sex slave rape
and proceeds to a mass capture and kidnapping with a public mass
virgin gang rape. Consensuality? The characters in my story never
experience it. Hell, they never HEARD OF it.</span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">And
me being me I added an ending that will Ruin… er, Change…
Everything and force readers to re-evaluate the entire structure of
modern society, something not normally found in hardcore
nonconsensual rape erotica, but lemme tell ya… it works!</span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The
rape erotica takes place in part of a mythical (because I just made
it up) 1990s B movie that’s like most of those B-movies where the
Peaceful Forest Dwellers’ village gets attacked by Grubby Raiders.
We’ve all seen them, the Peaceful Forest Dwellers are all standing
around in filmy togas grooving on how sweet they’ve got it hanging
around in the forest, then the Grubby Raiders ride in, generally on
horses, sometimes in SUVs or jeeps or motorcycles (curiously, almost
never on bicycles) and they start beating, killing, robbing, kidnapping and raping everyone, as Grubby Raiders do.</span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I don’t have any brief for or
against consensuality per se. Some stories consensuality works in,
others it doesn’t. Some stories demand both nonconsensuality and
consensuality (such as all the trad romances where the pirate rapes
the main character and then falls in love with her, i.e., bodice
rippers). I kind of hate that publishers push so hard to keep things
consensual. What, do they think that the generally female readers who
enjoy rape fantasies constitute some kind of danger to the public?
It’s insane. Fantasy is fantasy, reality is reality. Readers can
tell; most women who enjoy rape fantasy stories have NO interest in
being raped in reality. Why can’t prudes and publishers tell? </span>
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Anway, we’ll see how this one
does. It’s 15,000 words long and about 10,000 of those words is
kidnapping and rape scenes with bondage throughout. Woo-hoo!</span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The only downside here is that
trying to promote a story like this is like walking a minefield. On
this blog I can write frankly about what the story is about, but on
other media I have to tiptoe carefully lest prudes take offense and
get whatever promotional effort I’m making censored. The social
media providers are not at all concerned abut what’s fair or
reasonable, what’s fantasy and what’s not. They just stomp
reflexively if anyone complains, fair or not.</span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Still this is the sort of story
that should attract readers all by its lonesome. We shall see.</span></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
(Note: in its first day of sales, "Your Body Or Your Life" has doubled the sales of "Butterfly" in the three weeks since its release. And the backmatter sales have been great. I think I have my answer as to which sort of story sells better.)</p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-70237421886693988352022-09-02T13:08:00.000-04:002022-09-02T13:08:05.175-04:00"Butterfly: A Day In The Park" Now Available for Labor Day!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOLAKgpUw7FLIp55a-r_fYT2oaxLAwEFDcc2orje0-tH7LmWBdKYx9MsIDqTgZZbSHsyImSnRv0qHR6q5VpLjAZuJFFLH3E7rTzg42w_RG-vOj8Lw_fPj-2HyhcDehjLA2_uc8qZPy9tH3KGuFfwckqZ3eFTOiJHV6mOPTlgX5tcE7UWYWJa9nor0Y/s648/butterfly-dancer-smaswords-cover-final-6x9-lightened.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOLAKgpUw7FLIp55a-r_fYT2oaxLAwEFDcc2orje0-tH7LmWBdKYx9MsIDqTgZZbSHsyImSnRv0qHR6q5VpLjAZuJFFLH3E7rTzg42w_RG-vOj8Lw_fPj-2HyhcDehjLA2_uc8qZPy9tH3KGuFfwckqZ3eFTOiJHV6mOPTlgX5tcE7UWYWJa9nor0Y/s16000/butterfly-dancer-smaswords-cover-final-6x9-lightened.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1163908" target="_blank">Just click here to be whisked away to Smashwords and get the story!</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio3Lz7Eaf4eKKmfkYMkKdFY-kgmSx4EvfnTh7Etvdmz7vjQf09MocpPCeQt8CvCvlLbsxjD1QrfGfI8IVYAg4Apc0_yXQR47XlZwBkjSaeB-SCWdE_Wjj3t-h-dStKAheGU2eMOJQTMUWsMUXOP37M-KhNLoO_tJl8U3BIZVixNNquOX58O-9jkGEt/s648/butterfly-dancer-amazon-cover-final-6x9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="381" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio3Lz7Eaf4eKKmfkYMkKdFY-kgmSx4EvfnTh7Etvdmz7vjQf09MocpPCeQt8CvCvlLbsxjD1QrfGfI8IVYAg4Apc0_yXQR47XlZwBkjSaeB-SCWdE_Wjj3t-h-dStKAheGU2eMOJQTMUWsMUXOP37M-KhNLoO_tJl8U3BIZVixNNquOX58O-9jkGEt/s16000/butterfly-dancer-amazon-cover-final-6x9.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BCX75PRV" target="_blank">Or just click here to be whisked away to Amazon to get the story! </a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So here ya go friends, another light-hearted kinky erotic romance. But one appropriate for Labor Day. In this story I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a society where no one is insecure about having food, shelter and clothing and no one is required to work, and the work that is available is four six hour days out of an eight day week: in short, a four day work week and a four day weekend. (We could do this right now if we wanted to.) They have plenty of time for love.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Also in that world, BDSM is considered the normal way to have sex. It is, in short, a fun world. The story is about two people who go to the park, dance, have lunch and go to a sex dungeon and have all sort of sexy dungeon fun. That is literally all there is to the novella, though they have a LOT of sexy dungeon fun.</div><div><br /></div>We don't live in a society like that, but Labor Day IS a three day vacation, so here's hoping you all have a wonderful time this Labor Day. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p><br /></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-83203966223484747072022-08-24T20:35:00.003-04:002022-08-24T20:43:55.027-04:00Why I Had To Kneecap The Promo Video for My New Novelette "Butterfly" (Capitalism Is The Villain)<p> OK, so I created a new promo video for my upcoming novelette (we're talking Labor Day!) "Butterfly." Here is the original video I shot, with the music I originally used:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='523' height='434' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzR9U6NzOGMxcxlNtZ4UejFwpORMFyodmH4yo4U1dudiydSIHMQzpWEItcwOHU5RCFhedM9S_2O0eMAw_nmeg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div><br /></div>Pretty cool, eh? I think so. Went beyond my expectations for such a simple video. There was just one problem: the music is owned by the band Swingrowers, and copyright issues being what they are, I couldn't use the video as is. I had to kneecap it, strictly for legal reasons. (<a href="https://youtu.be/xh67VWfRQU0" target="_blank">Here's a link to the original Swingrowers song</a>, it's great, definitely check it out.) I went through Microsoft's catalog of public domain music for videos on its video player, and it was a HORRIBLE experience. The Microsoft public domain stuff was the sort of thing you might hear in an elevator going to hell. I finally chose the least bad of the options because I didn't have weeks to spend looking for something good in the public domain. (And because there was a very good chance that there was nothing good for my purposes anywhere in the public domain.)<div><br /></div><div>And I came up with this video:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='507' height='421' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dz_F-faQME0ok4_j1D4B-nnqsBcKhFH1puDBhMtB_3cdmHx8_QYhCI3FFumzYF64aWhDNxbE-MgYYWfoyfYjg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /><div>It's not nearly the video that my original was. The public domain music is barely tolerable, and it was FAR better than the rest. And that cheeses me off. Because I feel that my video of the naked dancing fairy added value to the song. It created something different and new that people might enjoy. I finally wound up having to link to the Swingrowers videos (same link seen earlier in this post) and recommending that viewers play the video at no volume while listening to the Youtube video. Which works after a fashion, but jeeze, what a kludge.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course having created the song "Butterfly" Swingrowers has every right to profit from it. And I have no right to profit from it. And I'm not profiting from it. The most you can say is that the video might have eventually led people to my book site, but let's face it, nobody buys a book because of the music that accompanied a promotional video for it. Or to put it in financial terms, if there was a way to fairly compensate Swingrowers for every sale of my book that was based on the fact that people liked their song in my promo video, I might at the end of the year owe then a nickel. Or not.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course the Swingrowers could give permission for me to run my video with their music for free. But that isn't the way capitalism works, is it? Capitalism works to make it very difficult for people to get permission to use music, and very easy to pay royalties to companies to use music if you've got lots of money. In fact, capitalism creates enforcement arms to track down people who use music/art without permission (think RIAA). And those royalties are expensive! <a href="https://louisebyrnemusic.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-use-a-famous-song-in-your-content/" target="_blank">Here is a link showing what an expensive, pain in the ass process it is to license a song, particularly a popular song.</a></div><div><br /></div><div>At the very least you might think there could be an easy, cheap alternative way to get good music for videos, etc., that aren't making money. There is not. You can make a cover of a popular song if you're a musician, and you won't owe anybody a penny, so long as you clearly credit the originators of the song you are covering. But I am not a cover band. I am a self-published erotica writer, and the message we self-published erotica writers get from the music industry (as well as the publishing industry, a lot of other industries and the government, frankly) is a loud and enthusiastic "FUCK OFF!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Contrast that with the art industry. There are all sorts of ways of obtaining permission to use art for commercial use, some of them affordable even to low-lifes like me. As I've said, I use Depositphotos.com art for my book covers all the time. They have a huge selection of artwork and you can buy commercial rights to use them even when your sales are as low as mine. Frankly, you could afford to use Depositphotos.com stuff on a hobbyist's budget. And DepositPhotos.com is not the only organization out there that distributes art at reasonable prices. It has several competitors.</div><div><br /></div><div>The reason Internet has affordable artwork for publishers is a matter of the way the industry works. Photographers take many photos in a commercial shoot but only a tiny fraction of them get bought by the customer. Most of the unsold images just go into the photographer's portfolio. When commercial sites started offering art to customers on a pay-per-use basis, it didn't take photographers and artists long to realize that if they dumped the contents of their portfolios on said sites, they might actually make money off some of those unused photos after all. Not nearly as much as they normally did, perhaps, but so what? They weren't making ANY money off the images before that. The photographer makes money off of the images he couldn't sell the client, the distributor gets a wide selection of photos to offer to customers (and takes a cut off each sale, I presume) and marginal publishers or self-publishers get a lot of great photos and artwork to use for their covers at reasonable prices. Win-win-win! </div><div><br /></div><div>(I assume that the exact same logic applies for commercial art as well, which is why DepositPhotos and others have so much good art in their inventories.)</div><div><br /></div><div>There are also distributors of free public domain images out there. Most of the legit ones tend to have very small or very outdated selections of images. There are some with large selections of public domain images out there, but publisher beware: a couple of the public domain sites I've browsed have had images that clearly were NOT legally allowable for commercial use. For example, on one such site I found a very nice vector graphic of the Enterprise from Star Trek, very realistic right down to the NCC-1701 on the hull. I'm pretty sure nobody at Paramount Studios authorized that artwork for public domain use. And even if the artwork was created by an artist not associated with Paramount Studios, I'm pretty sure Paramount has the Enterprises' image trademarked.</div><div><br /></div><div>So copyright works pretty well in the art world, but not at all well in the music world. It prevents creators from creating original works that people might enjoy. And that's a damned shame. I'm glad there's no barriers like that in book publishing (there certainly used to be). It was a much sadder and sorrier profession when the big publishers were able to gatekeep all but a select few out of the industry.</div><div><br /></div><div>Like the music business is now. </div>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-80244346360698050682022-08-22T13:46:00.004-04:002022-08-22T13:50:00.735-04:00Whitney Cummings, Porn Fans and a 14th Century Saint's Philosophy<p> Is
every step on the road to heaven really heaven?</p>
<p>I have long believed this to be the case. The phrase "All the
way to heaven is heaven, for Jesus said 'I am the way'" is
attributed to Saint Catherine of Siena, a 14th Century saint noted
for her devout faith and her organizational skills. (She wasn't martyred, she just got sainted because she got the Catholic
Church's act together organizationally at a time when counting
chickens after they hatched was considered a feat of mathematical
genius. There is also talk of magically uncorrupted loaves of bread.
Wooooo!)</p>
<p> Being a lifelong atheist, I have never taken St. Catherine's
maxim literally and I skip over the Jesus part because who cares, but
I still believe it holds great wisdom. The central idea is that if
you have some goal or purpose you want to achieve, every step on the
road to achieving that goal is the goal. </p>
<p>Let's take an example. Suppose you want to be a famous pop singer.
You've got a good voice, you like singing, you did well in music
class at school, and you feel you've got some done some good covers
of classics. But so do a million other people. You don't have any
contacts in the music industry, haven't been engaged in musical
activity since school because everybody told you it was stupid to go
for a career in music. Impossible dream, yadda yadda yadda.</p>
<p>So what do you do? Anything you can, that's what. You form a band
with other buddies from school who like music. You play in a garage.
You look for gigs. You play for friends. You make demo tapes. You
make Youtube vids. Probably you have to work a crappy job to keep a
roof over your head while you do this because you're making no money
at it. </p>
<p>But you are singing. You are doing your thing. And whether or not
the music industry likes it, you are part of the music industry, even
if you are widely considered an awful part of it. You may not be
where you want to be in the music industry... yet. But you're making
progress. You are taking steps that will get you somewhere in the
music industry that will make you happy, even if you can't be the
famous rock singer you wanted to be when you started out. </p>
<p>And that progress may bring you happiness, i.e., you may arrive in
heaven. You have the hope of heaven, you believe it is there, and
that IS heaven.</p>
<p>Think of it in another way. Heaven, or musical stardom or whatever
is not a place or a job, it's a process. You start out as you at
Point A and you move toward Point Z, your goal. And as is the norm in
most worthy goals, you encounter a lot of obstacles and detours that
make things difficult for you. </p>
<p>And sometimes you discover that what you thought was a detour was
actually your destination. Like, you discover that you aren't really
interested in being a famous rocknroll singer, but that you really
like doing jazz vocals as part of a group. Or that you like doing
mixing on sound boards. Or you like promoting and helping other
musicians find their place in the industry. Or whatever. The point
is, heaven isn't always where you think it is when you are just
starting out. You have to find it. But eventually you find it, or
something like it, and you're happy, and you realize that you had fun
at every stop along the way. Because every step on the way to heaven,
is heaven.</p>
<p>Now let's get to the porn fans. I read a lot of stuff online about
sex. I read the comments on pornsites, among other things. One of the
things you quickly notice when you read the comments of fans on
pornsites is that it's very clear that some porn fans have, in their
minds, a personal relationship of some kind with the pornstars they
follow. The dead giveaway for this, to my mind, is the sense of
betrayal you get in the comments about pornstars who have changed
their looks, most often by inflating the size of their breasts,
followed closely by inflating the size of their lips.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivblyKGkkEqKpdyQTVL9RdED-6UaTS1JE6M0ukvoYux26YhaVfPrh-KDpKZ1y4qG06WOPAF6yisRMQqnqlhWkku18MGx9YpchjUtAWl61fw070KEvJcMmSPe5sUw4e_tRpF3ApLveeXGCH8kqzIryupdXu6EUhZJ0Wqfu85Kq5LXEcXiqNF_674Q9a/s600/whitney-bad-boob-job.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivblyKGkkEqKpdyQTVL9RdED-6UaTS1JE6M0ukvoYux26YhaVfPrh-KDpKZ1y4qG06WOPAF6yisRMQqnqlhWkku18MGx9YpchjUtAWl61fw070KEvJcMmSPe5sUw4e_tRpF3ApLveeXGCH8kqzIryupdXu6EUhZJ0Wqfu85Kq5LXEcXiqNF_674Q9a/w300-h400/whitney-bad-boob-job.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Not always an improvement. At least she left her lips alone. Because, like many porn stars, Christie Stevens is freaking beautiful.</i></div></i><p>I
generally find that when pornstars do this sort of thing it rarely
works out well for them in terms of improving their looks (though it
sometimes does). But I never feel any sense of personal anger or
betrayal about it, because I never feel that I have a personal
relationship with any pornstars, probably because I DON'T have a
personal relationship with any pornstars. I may like the way they
perform in various porn videos, but I don't feel any sense of
personal connection with them. They are performing for an audience,
and that's not a personal relationship, gratifying as their
performances may be in so many respects.</p><p>Some porn fans clearly do not get that. Their posts reflect a
clear sense of hurt and betrayal when a porn star blows up her tits
or lips or whatever. They vow never to watch her videos again. She
has forever damaged something precious in their minds and very
possibly, hearts. Also maybe other parts. It's a fairly common
problem that's just not confined to porn fans. Lots of people mistake
performances for the real thing in politics, in auto and real estates
sales, in media and in the arts. They’ve mistaken the persona the
performer projects in her performances for the real thing.</p><p>
</p><p>Which gets us to the comedian Whitney Cummings. Whitney is an
actress and standup comedian who did a really clever thing in her
standup special "Can I Touch It?" She paid a company called
RealBotix to make a sex doll that looked exactly like her, and she
included the Whitney sex doll in her standup. I was very interested,
of course. I was hoping she would use the Whitney sex doll to play
with the differences between her the person and her the media
persona. She didn't do a lot of that unfortunately, she concentrated
mostly on the differences between her as a human being and the robot
as a construct that just happened to look very much like her.</p><p>Granted, it looked very much like her:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOtI_OZR1n_x901JBc9EvutkBb8TWCxSP4Soxm8Ht86fnUfzVpv2d9G8DVPK6bFY8xEeoWV9SD-OAifymyIwm2LUnZwc5fpkkDDHN5XnLa61ywLet6F3FNTu-98ZMFMyDFs0k_Wh5Q2MQi_MdvYWahwVNWVqf4GRGK3gvt2UlxIS1_7wpBzCrdBzQZ/s615/whitney-cummings-1696264.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="615" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOtI_OZR1n_x901JBc9EvutkBb8TWCxSP4Soxm8Ht86fnUfzVpv2d9G8DVPK6bFY8xEeoWV9SD-OAifymyIwm2LUnZwc5fpkkDDHN5XnLa61ywLet6F3FNTu-98ZMFMyDFs0k_Wh5Q2MQi_MdvYWahwVNWVqf4GRGK3gvt2UlxIS1_7wpBzCrdBzQZ/w400-h266/whitney-cummings-1696264.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The joke is clearly on robot Whitney.</i></div><p></p><p>And it
could speak and move its eyes and jaws a bit to make its speaking
more lifelike, though its robotic voice was nothing like Whitney's.
And as the photo illustrates, the doll looks very dead and doll-like
next to a very lively and animated Whitney Cummings. And despite the
fact that Cummings went for the obvious, basic material that was
inherent in the Whitney sex doll, she did it in a smart, funny and
hilarious way that sometimes did have elements of the routine I had
envisioned.</p>
<p>Then from somewhere out of the whirling nebulousities of my
subconscious mind came the question: “Well what if some guy were a
total Whitney Cummings fan and his idea of heaven would be to be
Whitney Cummings’ boyfriend/husband/whatever? And suppose that guy
managed to buy a Whitney Cummings lookalike sex doll? Would he be
closer to his heaven if he had a doll that looked just exactly
Whitney Cummings, that he could fuck? I mean, he wouldn’t be THERE,
not by a long shot, but wouldn’t be closer to being Whitney
Cummings-adjacent?”</p>
<p>That’s a much tougher question than it looks like, because
neither “no” nor “yes” are easy answers to arrive at
honestly.</p>
<p>“No” is difficult because central to my idea about “all the
way to heaven, is heaven” is that any move toward a goal is a good
one in the sense that it gets you on the path of achieving that goal,
even if it’s completely in the wrong direction. The important thing
is to get moving. As you move toward your goal (or away from it, if
you start out in the completely wrong direction) you’ll develop a
clearer idea of what direction you need to move in, make the
necessary adjustments, and eventually, bob’s your uncle or to be
more precise, Whitney’s your girlfriend.</p>
<p>Let’s take the Whitney Cummings sex doll case, because it’s a
tough one. (And to get back to the pornstar fans who feel a personal
relationship with pornstars, an almost identical situation exists
with pornstars. They even sell latex casts of their genitals for fans
to fuck.)
</p><p>Not kidding!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtDHhL04DaLK_Q5zk9UKO5DY-Ux3-BPCNtgpTq1u32E-lK2zy98iOPpMY3WR0LmIE-4nLx6c5VYuiUw4D53QRneGZ5NOEeZqrVMgCrbWlvt_TUHd58k70Gh_6EKxJ4kGmALNlIKwKuVqlMNg4rrKPlwoyaz3DEjsiB0bLk0jfBCvT5V2Si60kGJ9qq/s800/kissa-sins-fleshlight-ad.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="800" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtDHhL04DaLK_Q5zk9UKO5DY-Ux3-BPCNtgpTq1u32E-lK2zy98iOPpMY3WR0LmIE-4nLx6c5VYuiUw4D53QRneGZ5NOEeZqrVMgCrbWlvt_TUHd58k70Gh_6EKxJ4kGmALNlIKwKuVqlMNg4rrKPlwoyaz3DEjsiB0bLk0jfBCvT5V2Si60kGJ9qq/w400-h234/kissa-sins-fleshlight-ad.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<p>The problem is, the world supply of Whitney Cummings is very
limited. There’s only one of her. There’s a huge amount of
Whitney Cummings media properties available that have created a media
persona of Whitney Cummings, but there’s only one real, actual
Whitney Cummings.</p>
<p>Now suppose you gather some money and buy yourself a Whitney
Cummings-like sex doll. (While doing research for this essay I read
an article that said there were many eager would-be buyers for
Whitney lookalike sex dolls after her Neflix special came out, but
that the company couldn’t make it because Whitney Cummings’
likeness and image are legally protected, as is normal for
celebrities. I mean, can you imagine all the products and services
celebrities would seem to be endorsing if their images didn’t have
legal protection? But the demand certainly proves that a lot of
people would certainly buy a Whitney sex doll if they could.)
</p>
<p>And so that fan can have a sexual experience that is a lot more
like fucking Whitney Cummings than just imagining it. He can fuck
something that looks very much like Whitney Cummings, that kinda
feels like Whitney Cummings (I understand that the vaginas on many
sex dolls are very well done) and (if he’s the obsessive type who
tracks down what kind of perfume Whitney wears and buys some) kinda
smells like Whitney Cummings. He could also edit tapes of Whitney’s
comments from the many, many hours of speech available from her
podcasts and have the experience of hearing Whitney Cummings moan and
cry out and so forth while he fucks the Whitney sex doll.</p>
<p>And my answer long-term would have to be “Yes” a man who has
bought a Whitney sex doll is closer to Whitney heaven than one who
has not. Because where does he go from there? He may not be all that
close to marrying Whitney, but that was never a high probability
event, given the scarcity of Whitney Cummings. (And the exact same
thing is true of all the porn fans who buy those latex casts.) But
it’s reasonable to suppose that the fan will have learned a few
things about himself once he has slaked his lust on the Whitney
Cummings sex doll.</p>
<p>He might for example realize that he’s not all that attracted to
Whitney in particular, he just likes fit brunettes with merry smiles
and so he eventually starts dating fit brunettes with merry smiles
and eventually finds one who fits him to a T. Or that he was
attracted to her for her humor, not her body, and so eventually he
finds a short, chubby blonde who cracks him up for the rest of his
life. Etc., etc. Or he could discover that he’s perfectly happy
with the Whitney sex doll, so much so that he loses interest in the
real Whitney and is very happy living alone with his doll.</p>
<p>There are a lot of ways the story can go, and so long as it leads
to more happiness and personal fulfillment, it’s the way to heaven.
</p>
<p>But the Whitney sex doll could lead to the fan realizing that the
Whitney sex doll just doesn’t get it for him, that only the real
thing will do, and so he concocts a plan to kidnap Whitney and
botches it (because plans like that never work out well for anybody)
and he spends the next 30 years in prison writing letters to Whitney
which are read only by the prison psychiatrist. This is not the way
to happiness or personal fulfillment. Not the way to heaven. That’s
one way, an extreme way, that the answer might be “No.” It’s a
very rare thing but famous people have been kidnapped or murdered by
fans in the past.
</p>
<p>The more common way the answer would be “no” would be that the
sex doll experience alienates the fan from his own and others’
sexuality. That is, his sexual experience with the doll leads him to
think of women as animated sex dolls to a certain extent. Even worse,
women reject him because they sense that about him. He loses the
ability to connect with women as human beings and becomes something
like an incel, perhaps an incel, period, unable to form a
relationship with a woman that involves give and take. He has gone
far from heaven.</p>
<p>Of course, this technology will evolve. Whitney Cummings discussed
that in an interview with Joe Rogan (she brought her sex doll along
for the interview so it could truly be an pen discussion). Joe didn’t
like the doll at all. He found it creepy. But Whitney pointed out,
and Joe agreed, that the technology on the dolls would evolve. That
one day sex dolls that look human and move like humans and talk like
humans would exist.</p>
<p>Whitney said she and other human women will destroy the sex dolls
at the point. “I will be a savage about it,” she said. “I will
wait until you fall in love with it, and I will destroy it.”</p>
<p>But I don’t think Whitney and Joe thought this through. Why
would you stop perfecting your sex dolls when they reached par for
human women? Why not make sex dolls that were better in every respect
than human women? Better conversationalists, able to move like the
best dancer ever, smelling like she’s horny all the time, BEING
horny whenever you want her to (because she’s programmed to) and
looking like the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. Plus all
the sexual skills you ever wanted and no inhibitions. And an innate
desire to clean house when not having sex? Better yet, an innate
desire to suck cock for hours.</p>
<p>The technical problems in creating such a doll are difficult and
we’re a few years from surmounting them, maybe a couple of decades,
maybe a century. But there’s no reason to suppose any of these
hurdles are insurmountable. They all seem well within the scope of
human achievement if climate change doesn’t kill us all off.</p>
<p>And I think the man who had a sex doll like that would be in a
very happy place. Except, you know… no children.
</p>
<p>I think at that point, the population problem for the human race
might become maintaining a population of human beings. Those last few
generations of human men would be very happy, though. Human women,
much less so.</p>
<p>So there you have it. A Whitney Cummings sex doll might indeed
lead some people to heaven, meaning St. Catherine’s saying still
holds true. But a truly advanced Whitney Cummings sex doll might also portend the
end of the human race. That’s what you call “problematical.”</p><p></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-49329581542914439842022-08-04T14:30:00.004-04:002022-08-04T14:31:20.455-04:00"The Slave Girl Diet" Now Available on Smashwords<p> <b style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1158794" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;"> <span>You can buy “The Slave Girl Diet” here.</span></span></a></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOzpIOQLR59lAFVMpkCuLAAQlaoIS9Hm46lT3KGH-0YnZyG8KB3dE57JIpRUGKlmxh_BQTXDctf8jlKV2OUg52kLHKnAd3cClqRvBpOQGNjZra4W1viJOgEziDaClaHNPrg1gSEoSDQk0cuTLaPXGz3kl2ZO3xvnR3SD8m4LJXRG_cx45yXvZAkB5s/s648/slave-girl-diet-cover-final-6x9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOzpIOQLR59lAFVMpkCuLAAQlaoIS9Hm46lT3KGH-0YnZyG8KB3dE57JIpRUGKlmxh_BQTXDctf8jlKV2OUg52kLHKnAd3cClqRvBpOQGNjZra4W1viJOgEziDaClaHNPrg1gSEoSDQk0cuTLaPXGz3kl2ZO3xvnR3SD8m4LJXRG_cx45yXvZAkB5s/s16000/slave-girl-diet-cover-final-6x9.jpg" /></a></div><p style="line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;">First off, let me give you the blurb for my new book, “The Slave Girl Diet.” Then I want to do some bragging. I came up with some neat ideas for this book, and I want to brag about them, and where better than my blog, and, well, all over social media?</span></p><p style="line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“<span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span>Earth business tycoon and renowned chef Chloe goes through a crosstime gate to take the slave girl diet in a Collar World kennel. Will the constant public nudity, bondage and sex turn her into just another submissive, mindless slave girl drooling for sexual bondage use? More importantly, will it get the weight off and keep it off? Read this 66,000 word erotic SF novel and find out!”</span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">OK, you’ve got the picture. But what you don’t have is the fiendish plot hook I came up with to compel Chloe to go to Collar World to diet. I first proposed that in the future, Earth and Collar World come up with medical tech that allows people to de-age their bodies: that is, their 70 year old bodies can transform back into 20 year old bodies, leaving all the infirmaries and illnesses of old age behind. Wonderful!</span></span></p><p style="line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>But there is one fiendish catch. Any weight you may have picked up on your journey through life </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>doesn’t go away. It stays with you. If you are overweight when you take the de-aging treatment, you are young, vital and... overweight. And since the de-aging tech can be used repeatedly, you face the prospect of hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of life being overweight.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">This would, I believe, create some very, very motivated dieters. And is, if I may say so myself, is a deliciously imaginative use of SF tropes. Because the old de-aging tech has been used again and again, but never in this way. Bwahahahahahaha!</span></span></p><p style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">(Not giving away any spoilers here, you find all this out in the first chapter.)</span></span></p><p style="line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>And it just so happens that Collar World has developed </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>a dieting technique that gets the weight off and keeps it off. For years… possibly forever. No one knows, as de-aging tech is as new to Collar World as it is to Earth. But every woman who’s gone through the diet </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>has kept the weight off since returning to Earth.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>And of course the diet involves lots and lots and lots of bondage and sex and maledom/femsub behavior. The slave girl diet kennels are full of fit Masters determined to help those slave girls reach those weight goals – like it or not!</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span> And hence there is a ton of erotica.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>I wan</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>ted people to see Chloe as a person, not as an instance of “overweight” so I did two things. First, I wrote the story entirely in first person perspective… Chloe’s perspective. So the </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>reader</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span> is not looking at Chloe from the outside, they are </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>looking out at</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>the world through her eyes. </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>And Chloe, while she is aware that she is overweight, does not see herself as overweight. And so the reader hopefully will see her as a person and not just an instance of “overweight.”</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>Along those same lines, in Collar World obese people are rare. Collar World natives lead a much healthier lifestyle than Earth people do, and effective dieting techniques have been developed to help the relatively few obese people lose weight and keep it off. As a result, the</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>y don’t do fat shaming. The concept wouldn’t occur to them, it’s not part of their culture. They would feel that a person who is overweight has a health problem, like having </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;"><span><span><span>the measles or psoriasis or whatever. They know an overweight person has a problem, but they don’t assume it’s because of a moral failure on the overweight person’s part.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 18.4px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal;"><span style="color: #212529;">It makes for an interesting story, combined with the other plot twists. At least that’s my hope. Buy the novel and find out for yourself.</span></span></span></span></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-17825540832774454672022-08-03T18:20:00.002-04:002022-08-03T18:20:23.041-04:00How the Cover for "The Slave Girl Diet" Was Designed, or "Hire an ARTIST!"<p></p><p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Do you live in a city, a
county, or a state that has an official seal? You know, that bit of
artwork set in a circle that serves as the official image of that
community? Often you’ll find the seal on envelopes mailed out to
you, the citizen, or on letterhead from said city or county informing
of you such inviting events as Ogdenville Salutes Soybeans Days.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Have
you ever looked at one of those suckers? I mean, really looked at it?
Chances are if it’s a letterhead it’s nothing more than a series
of black squiggles in a circle that you can barely make out as
anything at all. That’s because the original design was printed out
on 8 ½” x 11” pieces of paper and almost filled them. Nobody
thought about what it would look like at ½ inches tall on a
letterhead. Not that they would have cared if they had. The seal was
probably designed by a committee, most of them political types who
don’t know a thing about art and don’t care either.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">All
they know is, they want their art on the image. And by their art they
mean whatever bee is in their bonnet. Commissioner A wants a sheaf of
wheat to symbolize the heroic farmers who fed their community. And
Commissioner B wants a freighter for the sailors, and Commissioner C
wants a church, and Commissioner D wants a factory for the
capitalists, and Commissioner E wants a pick and shovel for the
miners, and commissioner F just wants great tracts of land and
Commissioner G wants railroad cars and so they sit down and work
their differences up and after much screaming, fighting and
bloodshed, they come up with a compromise that includes every last
thing that every Commissioner wants in a confused jumble which takes
some looking to figure out at full-page printout size.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">And
what you get is something like the official seal of Allegany County,
Maryland, as seen below in 5”x5” size or something like it (I
have no control over what size screen you’re reading this piece
on). </span>
</span></p><p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzlNPNMuvws22pdOPg2mpXWxwz4zzRhHuhT_y9lXHwfiGihTycDyXtVFSRF346VxkIgMfWZTl7WF92YtmvnqedPpo8sqDKkEHpIz3Q0awYIzEe4zsUpMEXpvFRB0XqqXnkjPVeegfUA61ubWVAm4NCdKc-HS52--k3Mdh9KzRQ_ZPycoEfMHReMAgF/s432/allegany-seal-5x6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzlNPNMuvws22pdOPg2mpXWxwz4zzRhHuhT_y9lXHwfiGihTycDyXtVFSRF346VxkIgMfWZTl7WF92YtmvnqedPpo8sqDKkEHpIz3Q0awYIzEe4zsUpMEXpvFRB0XqqXnkjPVeegfUA61ubWVAm4NCdKc-HS52--k3Mdh9KzRQ_ZPycoEfMHReMAgF/s16000/allegany-seal-5x6.jpg" /></a></div><p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">(I
have no idea what the target circles next to the house are all about.
Maybe bowhunting or something.)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">And
when this seal is printed on an envelope, say at two inch size, it’ll
look much more confusing, I mean you have to work hard to figure out
what you’re looking at is supposed to represent:</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />
</span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtT5kGrNDi8zVtqmO-5ZjRNRMHpNs3IfbMSKs390kotpVExH558fnem6QTT-tiXpf4xz-PacAxUdb7IHky88fmOWr9Q3Jg_rX5so-hMHkc-14FZZikCjVi-m6UOAYPZ9kL8THgaYD85qDMTiEuBlJWSSoSlWPpjSIiM92GRq32QVw9oQ3ggFrzdRyk/s154/allegany-seal-2x2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="144" data-original-width="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtT5kGrNDi8zVtqmO-5ZjRNRMHpNs3IfbMSKs390kotpVExH558fnem6QTT-tiXpf4xz-PacAxUdb7IHky88fmOWr9Q3Jg_rX5so-hMHkc-14FZZikCjVi-m6UOAYPZ9kL8THgaYD85qDMTiEuBlJWSSoSlWPpjSIiM92GRq32QVw9oQ3ggFrzdRyk/s16000/allegany-seal-2x2.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 12pt;">And
when it’s reduced to one inch to go on an envelope or a letterhead,
the size at which most people will arguably see it, it gets downright
indecipherable:</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />
</span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnRfW1vOD_4HhhxTKRRUsEwQj0PrdtGE42Ka3KvF266g77wX6xgC8ROAQv3U8VP5GfNOq8eVCkTaOQmCysv4byOa9Bj8-ayFEOeXXKXmrzButdanI_Hnt-MWM8HfGU8g_uyfOkxcnQ74NcfLBWSsaiQZYBPJBZt_0CtFhePtUfYIZ7e6CWh8XusztB/s77/allegany-seal-1x1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="72" data-original-width="77" height="72" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnRfW1vOD_4HhhxTKRRUsEwQj0PrdtGE42Ka3KvF266g77wX6xgC8ROAQv3U8VP5GfNOq8eVCkTaOQmCysv4byOa9Bj8-ayFEOeXXKXmrzButdanI_Hnt-MWM8HfGU8g_uyfOkxcnQ74NcfLBWSsaiQZYBPJBZt_0CtFhePtUfYIZ7e6CWh8XusztB/s1600/allegany-seal-1x1.jpg" width="77" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">(Disclaimer:
the Allegany seal, while definitely a poorly done seal, is hardly
unique, I could have pulled up hundreds that were just as bad or
worse if I had wanted to. I have no animus toward Allegany County or
its people. I just picked this one because it illustrated my point
nicely.)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">The
way to avoid this kind of problem is to design a seal that has a
simple, pleasing design that can be scaled to various sizes and still
look great. A very nice example here, the seal of Pinellas County,
Florida, at 4x5 inches:</span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiClHpyWQFhLr8Bh_MGSW8Neg8vt_0erIaRPoUNsNFeQzr_9rD2vpjdVBnaAdVkQighyM6aJ1XZUYOesZ_SVUiRufb2l6n9B9DaW3MnUqIxqyw7xaHz7GOohIbz1uMecoe4IT6zdwBaU1aFPIusrTz36PBknX41hP6XksdlCMDhRuF6wKU4c8tKqiWA/s432/pinellas-county-seal-4x5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="274" data-original-width="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiClHpyWQFhLr8Bh_MGSW8Neg8vt_0erIaRPoUNsNFeQzr_9rD2vpjdVBnaAdVkQighyM6aJ1XZUYOesZ_SVUiRufb2l6n9B9DaW3MnUqIxqyw7xaHz7GOohIbz1uMecoe4IT6zdwBaU1aFPIusrTz36PBknX41hP6XksdlCMDhRuF6wKU4c8tKqiWA/s16000/pinellas-county-seal-4x5.jpg" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">And
it scales to 1x1.5 very nicely:</span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKUlT6dLHX3iS3LEClkCRDfHZHet44qc2pBImkOYpQdCH4PTdvrRzoJdYfQXo7TDE2tLGZ3KaPsLO4-FJZLWCuGjDCzdWZ4M6hK6ohP66J_u2ixJRsD6tEo0aVi1MQHZrNnp2zJd2DfkJzcg8n2HVOlOwik0O_6mwb5uduzqJSlOeymBy0Ls1609gA/s114/pinellas-county-seal-1x1pt5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="72" data-original-width="114" height="72" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKUlT6dLHX3iS3LEClkCRDfHZHet44qc2pBImkOYpQdCH4PTdvrRzoJdYfQXo7TDE2tLGZ3KaPsLO4-FJZLWCuGjDCzdWZ4M6hK6ohP66J_u2ixJRsD6tEo0aVi1MQHZrNnp2zJd2DfkJzcg8n2HVOlOwik0O_6mwb5uduzqJSlOeymBy0Ls1609gA/s1600/pinellas-county-seal-1x1pt5.jpg" width="114" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">It
look good at any size and gives the city a unique visual image.
That’s all that you need to ask of any seal. It also says “sunshine
and water” pretty good too, which is definitely gravy, county
identity-wise.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">My
point here isn’t to make fun of politicians in committees trying to
be artists when they are not, rewarding though that is. My point is
that politicians and writers and editors do not have the mental tools
to create good art. They think entirely in terms of images of various
persons/plants/buildings/whatever that to their minds symbolize the
place they’re trying to create an image for. And they don’t care
much about the image’s visual appeal, nor do they think about how
it might scale. Nor do they think about other aspects the image might
convey.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">And
that’s not how you do good design. Politicians, bureaucrats,
writers and editors don’t have the mental toolkit to do a good job
of creating a visual design.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">You
need artists for that, people whose visual cortex knows what it’s
doing and who have been trained, through schooling or experience
(mostly schooling) to understand how to create successful commercial
images.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Now
I’m a writer who creates his own covers, partly from vanity but
mostly because I can’t afford to pay artists decent wages. But I
have this much going for me: I know I’m not qualified here. So the
first thing I do when I go about designing a cover is let my stupid
writer brain come up with whatever it likes.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">In
the case of the cover for “The Slave Girl Diet” I had already
come across just the image I wanted for the cover. It was this piece
of art:</span></p><p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVcfSdVUiPncwK9YOcsEz0Dbd9ndLOooSTKBkWUC89Y_fUF8h3bxnA5yk-99A97Wpf1joqaZ4EQL7dzKBqFt5GKLR1sq8R6NCdySURtGEiTlNetiEOKOItcrNObrv_xnHQLayh6Hyt7APQDLswhS2HUs8d_nDRYntjCspEnzofYKv9fNUSEk-O1zMm/s432/42356_cherie_deville-for-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="379" data-original-width="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVcfSdVUiPncwK9YOcsEz0Dbd9ndLOooSTKBkWUC89Y_fUF8h3bxnA5yk-99A97Wpf1joqaZ4EQL7dzKBqFt5GKLR1sq8R6NCdySURtGEiTlNetiEOKOItcrNObrv_xnHQLayh6Hyt7APQDLswhS2HUs8d_nDRYntjCspEnzofYKv9fNUSEk-O1zMm/s16000/42356_cherie_deville-for-blog.jpg" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s
a still from Device Bondage’s great video “Athletic MILF Fuck Toy
Cherie Deville Punished in Bondage and Sybian!!” And it beautifully
expresses the emotional intensity of a woman being fucked senseless
while bound and gagged on a relentless sybian fucking machine, and
dreaming of cakes and pies and whatnot and drooling all over herself
for a variety of reasons as a result. It would have been PERFECT for
the cover, except for a few minor considerations.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mostly,
for example, that Kink.com holds the copyright on the image and I’d
have to make arrangements with Kink.com to get their permission to
use the image commercially, which would probably have involved a
transfer of funds from my bank account to theirs that would be
greater than the likely sales the book will generate. Probably MUCH
greater.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">In
addition, I would have to generate artwork to cover Cherie’s
naughty bits, which are on glorious display here. And because it’s
a photo the artwork would have to be photographic, too, which means
difficult to do well, much more difficult than the usual white
panties and bra I have done on several illustrated covers.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">In
further addition, the books main character is supposed to be very
overweight, and a careful examination of Cherie’s body will show
that she is a marvelously trim and fit physical specimen. Look at
those abs! So I would have to artistically adjust Cherie’s contours
to make her look in need of a diet, and that would pretty much entail
drawing her from scratch. I wanted the image so bad I spent an hour
or so playing with various GIMP filters to see if I could come up
with outline art that I could use as the basis for a drawing that
might somehow resemble Cherie and capture her expression and pose,
but after that hour I was pretty sure that I was looking at days of
work with no guarantee of success, so I very sensibly shelved that
idea. (But it would have been such a great cover, if only…)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Next
I went to Deposit Photos, my preferred source of legal photo images I
can use for covers (because I pay for them.) I didn’t have any
clear ideas, so I just typed “woman diet” into the search engine
to see what I could find.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">But
at this point, I did do something smart. I realized that even if an
image didn’t work for me as is, many of them might contain visual
ideas I could borrow, or “steal” if you want to be accurate about
it. So I kept my brain open as I looked at the images, which took
major effort.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Interestingly,
bondage images were present. There were images of (clothed) women
with their wrists bound by measuring tape, and gagged by measuring
tape. And I would have used them, if the images had said anything
other than “diet” which is all they said. The book is erotica,
after all.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">But
I did find several other ideas that might be worth borrowing. There were a TON of diet images
available. But in the end, I only chose one, and I didn’t steal it,
either: I bought it fair and square. It was this one:</span></p><p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNLNDEliX6XN3Og867up2ghzSDurS1bZWB9keozRqv8oi7yMi_dvRMJMNmwD1_Phxqt8XAEU4KbYCyKpgMZdomu0n3SYOzXsMYMjkhwNQClJtuoEro2XhGDxK0WKoxR35BbLs8yxhH3rvU5iDI5uM3HdGQTOTeMiwkMRhl4LhABMPl8kCN-jLCVsoV/s432/dieter-tempted-art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNLNDEliX6XN3Og867up2ghzSDurS1bZWB9keozRqv8oi7yMi_dvRMJMNmwD1_Phxqt8XAEU4KbYCyKpgMZdomu0n3SYOzXsMYMjkhwNQClJtuoEro2XhGDxK0WKoxR35BbLs8yxhH3rvU5iDI5uM3HdGQTOTeMiwkMRhl4LhABMPl8kCN-jLCVsoV/s16000/dieter-tempted-art.jpg" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">It’s
very spot-on of course, and not at all erotic. But what if there was
a naked woman in bondage looking at all this art? Much better! So I
went to Second Life and got out one of my avvies and posed her a bit
(you may recognize her from “Junie Jamieson, Captured By Gangsters”
book) and got this image:</span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbVySOEiNrf9EfiP3CxqBFGULL5JMknGFejOSwUM75dr7wvA2rQy60F5Lv0e2C1vOooGvpemGfma4LOp8YWFU7jn_BkPl43ffuYbNtXuU6nlwTQcfq4hBraU9ZJGSg_a6JLFLNJoWMeC8-0yvI9JebuwN7G2cyyFrZJ86QIVzw3jRzxU1fyss4OfPI/s432/slim-chloe-standing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbVySOEiNrf9EfiP3CxqBFGULL5JMknGFejOSwUM75dr7wvA2rQy60F5Lv0e2C1vOooGvpemGfma4LOp8YWFU7jn_BkPl43ffuYbNtXuU6nlwTQcfq4hBraU9ZJGSg_a6JLFLNJoWMeC8-0yvI9JebuwN7G2cyyFrZJ86QIVzw3jRzxU1fyss4OfPI/s16000/slim-chloe-standing.jpg" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">which
was pretty much what I was thinking of. (The gray background is my
equivalent of a green screen.) Now just combine that image with all
those hands offering tempting treats and I’d have a great cover.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Well,
not really. There was more ground to cover. But before I got on that
ground, I took a little detour. They have very easy ways of
customizing avatars using slider bars in Second Life, including
controlling how thin or fat the avatar looks. I could make a fat
version of my thin Chloe avvie. And after a little playing with the
slider, I had exactly that:</span></p><p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPsMErWZEQVMlwX1fVTPpTo8RuVsAmRAQ4WcXNkILWtKQpeC68Oiwgp3SnIyi64930ge6i_VJnj4Y0VxKSHBEzWeZ0BWyF48f2ZPl8gtPx1r85JZbQzUYwecVIEFLI4gMLn__3-6czrAKRcH8KXzDtKlZkZWUMau_kmfTM15hGL91Rh9jCAummkBhT/s432/fat-chloe-spread1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="413" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPsMErWZEQVMlwX1fVTPpTo8RuVsAmRAQ4WcXNkILWtKQpeC68Oiwgp3SnIyi64930ge6i_VJnj4Y0VxKSHBEzWeZ0BWyF48f2ZPl8gtPx1r85JZbQzUYwecVIEFLI4gMLn__3-6czrAKRcH8KXzDtKlZkZWUMau_kmfTM15hGL91Rh9jCAummkBhT/s16000/fat-chloe-spread1.jpg" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">And
that’s when I had my great idea: if I superimposed the thin Chloe
image over the fat Chloe image I could have a cover that said
“dieting” and “nudity” both at the same time. So I gave it a
shot: ta-da!</span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSV1bWAFfe3cy0GtGg5MON-TI7RscWK3rJWJgUvo7q3ywrqlN8XtM1_a7ZsIGy8ShQS7G1PNrrg7D9uVRBlEXqGBtxs5wFGP6U66Jxa83nzG2QZLpZVdeEd7mxBpa8bvma9nB_i8KI7H1eP5oE-gPitJWLEzCJEyTiOQckGavp_vmW-Wps-DNCns_n/s432/double-chloe1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="413" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSV1bWAFfe3cy0GtGg5MON-TI7RscWK3rJWJgUvo7q3ywrqlN8XtM1_a7ZsIGy8ShQS7G1PNrrg7D9uVRBlEXqGBtxs5wFGP6U66Jxa83nzG2QZLpZVdeEd7mxBpa8bvma9nB_i8KI7H1eP5oE-gPitJWLEzCJEyTiOQckGavp_vmW-Wps-DNCns_n/s16000/double-chloe1.jpg" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Unfortunately,
it’s not a very attractive image. It’s visually confusing and
hard to figure out. Looking at it, I realized I was once again making
the classic non-artist mistake of trying to get a literal visual
representation of an idea and thinking it will brilliantly illustrate
the idea and look good as well. That just isn’t true, as any number
of city and county and state seals convincingly demonstrate, but it’s
just the way non-artists’ brains work.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">So,
back to the drawing board, or more accurately, back to the gray
screen. I decided to once again borrow from the ideas of artists. So
I bought a couple of sex toys on the Second Life market and started
looking at the animations the sex toys put my avatar through. This
was a long, arduous process, because Second Life is 3D and what you
see in an animation depends on what angle you’re looking at the
animation from, then taking a pic when you find something that is
potentially interesting.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Fortunately,
SL has excellent camera controls that let you look at things from a
wide variety of angles very easily. Unfortunately, if you
accidentally click on the wrong thing as you’re whizzing around
with your camera, which is very easy to do, the whole set up can go
to hell, with the camera out of position and/or the avatar out of
position. And if you want to make a change in clothing or hair or
avatar or anything, that can be time-consuming as well.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">Most
images you get are just kinda “meh” but you also get some very
wrong ones:</span></p><p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMsbfB_chNK0kf0YwLgzicDdJV-dxe7LPOWlmrm-CI5QvL7nQgXG05-zc-k6sdEXusUBGye6cSxV8BYzLMjk3hMkR6FCqK10-4aAN0kF5McPlXS7kNsIopgDGIdFBCt7d5OFBniOOphe1ivXimpItnbbt9JAXwQIGm-kfjoY5XYvBy4WNx9dUjyKQS/s533/no-just-no.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMsbfB_chNK0kf0YwLgzicDdJV-dxe7LPOWlmrm-CI5QvL7nQgXG05-zc-k6sdEXusUBGye6cSxV8BYzLMjk3hMkR6FCqK10-4aAN0kF5McPlXS7kNsIopgDGIdFBCt7d5OFBniOOphe1ivXimpItnbbt9JAXwQIGm-kfjoY5XYvBy4WNx9dUjyKQS/s16000/no-just-no.jpg" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">But
it can be worth it. Because in the process of just taking pics to see
what looks good, I got this:</span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhswYelmC7HjUqKIHGPIgi4SrCgvT6FKx3QWXsZDT8b_08mtyVNpPc61sYxwwYEallxMxTOR6FkHF7yaY6C7LOYZuU3vfc6jPaMjluwPKv0S1YU7HiHLMXKbu-tGrnOS1qx2jroiwssz56bUKPJmfiXEU8Jr8_uGElIX07y-KviQ6W36hT9gApr6c6/s540/diet-gold.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhswYelmC7HjUqKIHGPIgi4SrCgvT6FKx3QWXsZDT8b_08mtyVNpPc61sYxwwYEallxMxTOR6FkHF7yaY6C7LOYZuU3vfc6jPaMjluwPKv0S1YU7HiHLMXKbu-tGrnOS1qx2jroiwssz56bUKPJmfiXEU8Jr8_uGElIX07y-KviQ6W36hT9gApr6c6/s16000/diet-gold.jpg" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">And
this image was so much better than anything I could have come up by
thinking about how visual images might represent the ideas of dieting
and sex slave. It’s a still from an animation showing the avatar
squirming in ecstasy atop the sybian. It’s one of several that
would made an excellent image for the cover. Because the sight of the
slightly thick body squirming in ecstasy also looks like a
visualization of longing.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">And
if you just happened to have an image of a bunch of hands offering a
visual treat surrounding that naked, writhing image of longing, you
just might have a pretty good piece of cover art.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">So
I had two elements, but I knew from looking at the original diet art
that I didn’t want a flat background. Something a little richer
would be better. So it was back to Deposit Photos where I looked for
a variety of backgrounds using simple search terms: green background,
blue background, pink background, etc. And pink background turned out
to be the winner. I found a series of images that involved pink
paint dropped into water, photographed at high speed. They struck me
as pure visual metaphors for orgasm. I’m confident about that
because I wasn’t really looking for visual metaphors for orgasm, I
just looked at these images and said “Oh… that’s it.” I won’t
place the image that I picked out on this page because it’s quite
large (see: background art) and it wouldn’t tell you a lot. I’ll
just lay the finished cover down, I think you’ll see what I saw:</span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXEOr6JNy_spIPSwuYCa79uUS_VkTvpWSPGsDEZD_ohhQ1A1Nm3yybKO_O8iM0o8gULgtFh9HkdeGIzktp-sftSAIe1LqKdmhzQhXSdO9dPPO8LVOgGDFl9dA2ilZ6hr-7EnTPAvzVdDV_T1OQrGZIiBYNZdZbuB1DrRMojfWoUZezwrZy1QfFGTNU/s648/slave-girl-diet-cover-final-6x9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXEOr6JNy_spIPSwuYCa79uUS_VkTvpWSPGsDEZD_ohhQ1A1Nm3yybKO_O8iM0o8gULgtFh9HkdeGIzktp-sftSAIe1LqKdmhzQhXSdO9dPPO8LVOgGDFl9dA2ilZ6hr-7EnTPAvzVdDV_T1OQrGZIiBYNZdZbuB1DrRMojfWoUZezwrZy1QfFGTNU/s16000/slave-girl-diet-cover-final-6x9.jpg" /></a></div>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">I
think that’s a respectable cover. But here’s the thing: I’m
pretty sure any pro artist could have come up with a cover that is
just as good or better, and could have done it in less time and with
a lot less effort because they wouldn’t have gone down all the dead
ends I did. They would probably have come up with much better ideas
than mine.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">I
could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. At the very least, a
skilled artist could have created an original artwork based on the
original Cherie Deville image from Kink and made her heavier and
(just a teensy bit) more clothed and also not Kink’s intellectual
property. And that would have been fine.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;">The
only thing an artist can’t do, is do it cheaper. And I wouldn’t
want an artist to do my covers for free. The whole point of this post
is to say, “Artists are absolutely worth the money.” If and when
I get the money to buy cover art, artists will be getting my money.
I’ll pay it... gladly. It took me two days to create that cover
art. I could use that time.</span></p><p style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p><p></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-83112389250793020292022-06-29T21:46:00.002-04:002022-06-29T21:46:28.785-04:00The Honey Trapp Adventures Now Available on Amazon and Smashwords -- Both Novels and Both Novellas in A Single Volume!<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B59VCZQQ" target="_blank"> You can buy the Amazon version by clicking on this link.</a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgux4TRom7o7WGZynUvSUnIiIVwFXwqI203-1CCKoMFdIQa94fGVQZjA_GsL8sGuRM7UQWfEIPeWABv_8I160pMQiXBQp5lUdOwCo15GjFeZZAqWlhzUfj670rhjHnfNGFE9Figg3hDxauoomPIDuJJi3ffNzm3KQ-OI0KNrrMem9IbQsLEiqFEkfr_/s648/honey-bundle-cover-amazon-final-6x9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgux4TRom7o7WGZynUvSUnIiIVwFXwqI203-1CCKoMFdIQa94fGVQZjA_GsL8sGuRM7UQWfEIPeWABv_8I160pMQiXBQp5lUdOwCo15GjFeZZAqWlhzUfj670rhjHnfNGFE9Figg3hDxauoomPIDuJJi3ffNzm3KQ-OI0KNrrMem9IbQsLEiqFEkfr_/s16000/honey-bundle-cover-amazon-final-6x9.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1153584" target="_blank">You can buy the Smashwords version by clicking on this link.</a> Add this coupon code when and if you purchase for 25 percent off the Smashwords version: VZ86G. Offer good through July 5.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi72IQX10BHeXTrY4A16353ZKtUkmKsceWkCHB9yEK42hnroQ6RaJjuDu1NDP4NF-wHHxtPCF0WjLdyPUchNXIABnZ4CB2jWojrL18nAmFvS2VTDJHJH9vQoqGgNlkvN8KlzyhNR5QSbOZ2TKGBA7FaO9TpxVlre9gPY-JrEkNSZ0F1tWLmRJOuN0Kd/s648/honey-bundle-cover-smashwords-final-6x9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi72IQX10BHeXTrY4A16353ZKtUkmKsceWkCHB9yEK42hnroQ6RaJjuDu1NDP4NF-wHHxtPCF0WjLdyPUchNXIABnZ4CB2jWojrL18nAmFvS2VTDJHJH9vQoqGgNlkvN8KlzyhNR5QSbOZ2TKGBA7FaO9TpxVlre9gPY-JrEkNSZ0F1tWLmRJOuN0Kd/s16000/honey-bundle-cover-smashwords-final-6x9.jpg" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">I bundled my Honey Trapp stories together for July 4. They've been quite successful in the marketplace. I suspect everyone likes a good, uplifting story about a sex slave fighting climate change. Certainly, everyone should! It's what I call modern pulp erotica. It has the wonderful, freewheeling delicious cheesiness of the old pulp erotica, but without the embedded racism, sexism and generally backward viewpoints. (I mean, old time pulps weren't propaganda, they just had a lot of embedded social backwardness in them.)</p><p style="text-align: left;">As you'll note the covers vary in accord with the rules of Amazon and Smashwords. The original image is basically a tasteful nude, i.e., no naughty bits are showing. I combined it with a photo of the Earth surrounded by menacing clouds I found in the archives of my cover art provider. I put on the old white panties and bra layer on and scaled it back. Because even though there were no naughty bits showing in the original image, Amazon can get exercised over nudity even in a pose that hides all naughty bits.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The bondage gear was more difficult. With Second Life avatars drawn-in bondage gear works, since the avatars themselves are artworks. But not so much with photos, unless the image is quite small. (As in the "Greek Harem" cover where I drew in the bondage gear and it was OK because it was a tiny detail.) But in this image the face and hands are in the foreground. I drew in the collar on the image, and if you blow it up you can easily see it's drawn. But for the cuffs, I borrowed some cuffs from another image I had purchased, moved them around, erased this, pasted in that, and boob's your uncle.</p><p style="text-align: left;">For the gag I borrowed some highlights from a tape gag photo, and put them in a black outline of a tape gag I drew in. The borrowed highlights gave the flat black outline dimensionality and texture. Worked beautifully, better than the cuffs. The cuffs would have worked better if I had been able to dial the transparency back more: the cuffs were photographed under different lighting conditions than the nude and it shows. But when I went below 95 percent transparency things started showing through the cuffs, which is problematical in the case of black leather (as opposed to sheer underwear). So I left the transparency at 96 which didn't let the cuffs meld too well with the photo but it still looked OK.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I do like the artwork and the concept of the cover, I think it came out well overall. I guess we shall see if it attracts multitudes.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Here's da blurb, if you're interested:</p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Honey Trapp, born to wealth but orphaned at an early age by a tragic auto accident, finds solace in a wild partying lifestyle that fully expresses her submissive sexual desires. Convinced by her collegiate studies of atmospheric science that the end of human civilization is coming soon due to climate change, Honey parties like there’s no tomorrow. Intelligent, young, beautiful, wealthy and uninhibited, she has no problem being accepted by the upper echelons of the jet set as one of them.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">But there’s more to Honey than meets the eye. Honey funnels some of her wealth to the Initiative, a secret organization devoted to fighting climate change by whatever means are necessary. Mostly this involves upsetting the plans of various fossil fuel oligarchs.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Some of those oligarchs and their minions are into BDSM and have harems. The women in such harems are sometimes local talent, but elite dominants also hire women from the Bascom Slave Kennels, a secret supplier of beautiful, discreet, trained and carefully vetted submissives who play at being slave girls for elite dominants, for a price.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Honey, eager to help bring the oily oligarchs down and save the planet, and also totally down with being a slave girl/harem girl for her own very kinky reasons, goes through the Bascom kennels’ sex slave training program. Then she travels the world, infiltrating the sex harems of oligarchs and ferreting out their secrets for the Initiative, because even as a naked, bound and gagged slave girl, Honey has ears..</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Join Honey as she goes to the possibly mythical nation of Los Miserabils in South America in “The Naked Jungle,” to the semi-mythical nation of England in “England Goes Boom!” to the overtly mythical nation of Greece in “Greek Harem”, and to the mythically corrupt state of Louisiana in “Louisiana Slay Ride,” fighting fossil fuel oligarchs’ evil plans and slaking her slavegirl lust with one dominant alpha male after another all the way. It’s more than 115,000 words of danger, excitement and sexual bondage!</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">This collection includes all four of the Honey Trapp stories previously published on Smashwords.</span></p><p><br /></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-70401766992414604192022-05-27T18:59:00.002-04:002022-06-01T15:22:54.222-04:00Karg Now Available on Smashwords In Kindle and Other Formats<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPoILojhP-4H19Sy_0fw1k3vA4QtpnzX5gdXh0_PuHjXjCiuwl4ECW_ylYBaKoHXOtSrOQX1j7cncUcwOvswvwIGVqhXHQTgVZm__4CgegkzKcfjnMgI04QZx3HeRhbN9YjgvOgarQgY8VWHOGC3kooJD53uDd_0PVaeronDmxq2UuAPW-HZ6DFt-k/s648/Karg-cover-revised-final-6x9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPoILojhP-4H19Sy_0fw1k3vA4QtpnzX5gdXh0_PuHjXjCiuwl4ECW_ylYBaKoHXOtSrOQX1j7cncUcwOvswvwIGVqhXHQTgVZm__4CgegkzKcfjnMgI04QZx3HeRhbN9YjgvOgarQgY8VWHOGC3kooJD53uDd_0PVaeronDmxq2UuAPW-HZ6DFt-k/s16000/Karg-cover-revised-final-6x9.jpg" /></a></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div><i><b><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1149138" target="_blank"> Get a copy of Karg right now by clicking on this link!</a></b></i></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I originally published Karg in serialized form on my Jolly Roper website before Amazon existed. This was also before censorship existed on the World Wide Web, for all practical purposes. It was just for nerds, who cared what they said or wrote? The only major no-no at that time was child porn, because that was illegal generally, and it was the only thing that was generally illegal.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">That was a good thing for me because Karg was full of stuff that is a no-no in modern terms. Like bestiality and scat. And rape and nonconsensual sex slavery – so MUCH rape and nonconsensual sex slavery, the book was awash in it (and it still is, check out the keywords).</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I was able to publish Karg on Amazon without making any changes to it. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rape, nonconsensual sex slavery, bestiality and incest (incest was inexplicably left out of Karg, though) were all fine on Amazon </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">at that point in time</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> This was a mistake in one respect: </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Karg</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> could have REALLY used another thorough proofreading. When I was publishing from my website, I was doing it </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">for the sheer joy of writing</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I didn’t proofread nearly as thoroughly as I should have – </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">proofreading isn’t innately joyous</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Over time, and not a hell of a long time, Amazon grew markedly more censorious. I never got a complaint about Karg on Amazon, weirdly enough, because it was by FAR the most censorable thing I have ever written. But when several of my books got banned (“blocked” was Amazon’s term, but it was censorship just the same) by Amazon for rape (most notably the “Riverbeast” sereis and the “President Slavegirl” series) I unpublished Karg on Amazon along with several other books that were bound to be blocked sooner or later now that the censors were on my trail.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Republishng on Smashwords </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">now</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, I gave Karg another thorough proofreading and found way too m</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">any errors</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. I can’t guarantee the text is </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">now</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> error-free, being only human and all, but I CAN </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">say it’s much less errored -up than it was.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">M</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">y original impetus in writing Karg was to highlight </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">how unrealistic the female characters in the Gor novels are. One minute, they’re feminist teachers and librarians and students and whatnot, then they get one thorough dicking down from a Gorean Master and they’re in full submissive slavegirl mode. It doesn’t work like that at all </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">in real human psychology</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. It’s </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> straight up male fantasy </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">and not a particularly sophisticated one</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, and </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">it </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">works fine on that </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">low</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> level I guess, if that’s all you are looking for. But I think it’s more powerful when the woman involved is more self-aware and resists more.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">T</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">hat said, the Gor novels have done a LOT better than anything I have ever written has, so taking my words with a grain of salt here is probably a fair idea.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But my critique of Gorean female characterization is</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> why </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">conceived of Karg as being about a woman from an advanced starfaring society who is captured and enslaved by primitives. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Her mind is diffe</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">r</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ent from theirs. She experiences things differently and thinks about them differently. She doesn’t become part of their primitive society from a single </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">slave rape</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">or even a LOT of slave rape.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">tried to make my story generally more</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> realistic. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I’d read a number of accounts of how captured and enslaved people are and were treated by p</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">r</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">imitives in real-world Earth, and it was definitely Not Good. That influenced the way </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I wrote my story. I tried to maintain accuracy, though of course I leaned in the direction of nudity, bondage and sex as the book </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">i</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">s erotica, albeit SF erotica.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">H</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ence, the protagonist, upon being captured and clearly not from Around Here, was enslaved, stripped and gang raped. None of these things is done to every attractive female captured by primitives, but they were done to some female captives </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">by some primitives in real-world Earth</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And my reasons for choosing </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">those options </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">was to create a believable </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">and realistic </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">story. It wasn’t hard, if you read actual history instead of the sanitized stuff in textbooks, you’ll </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">find a lot of stuff that will leave you stunned</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">So I did have the astronaut beaten and tormented by women and children while bound naked to an altar at the center of the village. Historically accurate. She wasn’t sexually assaulted by them, that was the men’s prerogative, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a prerogative they take later.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But nowadays you can’t assume censors are people who give a shit about your story. They’re there to protect their corporations from legal liability, and they do not give a rat’s ass about the quality of the stories they publish, one way or the other. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Therefore, any mention of children in the vicinity of a naked woman </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">in a work of erotica</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">much less children hitting and physically abusing said naked woman is close enough for any such corporate censor </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">to ban it</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. So that scene had to be removed.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It wasn’t a big deal, it w</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">asn’t essential to the story so I had no problem removing the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">scene</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But there was also the bestiality. Nothing to keep me from publishing the bestiality on Smashwords, except that </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I had sullen teenage girls as the ones who had a reptiloid rape he</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">r. When</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I published the story on Amazon, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">bestiality was starting to get censored. Like, you could have erotic stories about werewolves but they could only have sex while in human form. Never in wolf form. There were still stories about women falling in love with dinosaurs and dragons and having sex with them for some reason, though. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I think the justification was that so long as the animal didn’t exist in the real world it was fantasy. (Like your average male character in an erotic romance exists in the real world. I mean, biker billionaires? C’mon! Tell me another!)</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I could see the writing on that wall. Plus, the teen girls were going to be an issue, I knew. So I rewrote that portion of the story so that it was young adult women and not teen girls who were planning on having the reptiloid fuck Susan. And in the rewrite of the story, the reptiloid refuses to fuck Susan ,who is of course still tied up and gagged and helpless, So the scene would have been described by a censor as underaged bestial</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ity</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> bondage rape, which is probably the most awful kind of porn that isn’t snuff. (Which probably helps explain why Karg </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">was</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> so darned popular </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">in the serial version</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.)</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Susan doesn’t smell right to the reptiloid, or look right, so no go. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The refusal is</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> actually a pretty realistic depiction of how things might have gone. The Romans for example had to smear the vaginal fluids of female hyenas in heat on the genitals </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">of virgins they had staked out in the arena to be raped by male hyenas for the amusement of the crowds. (Not making this up, the Romans really did that. As I said, real history is just full of stuff that will make your skin crawl.)</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">B</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ut by the time I was publishing on Smashwords I knew that scene would eventually g</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">et</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> me </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">in</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> trouble </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">from censors who do not give a shit about stories</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, so I nixed </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the entire scene</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I actually came up with a neat way to resolve the scene so that it really highlighted the cultural differences between Susan and her captors, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">though it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as underaged sexual bondage bestiality rape. (</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">B</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ut then, what is?)</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But then there was the baby-smelling scene in the barn. Given what I have already told you about the scenes I have removed from Karg, your hair is probably standing on end right now. Calm down, this is mild stuff. Susan gets captured and put in a barn because her captors think she is a former hucow because her breasts are so large. She’s not lactating so they try to encourage that by tying her to a post so she can’t move then hanging a sling from her neck and putting a baby in it, forcing Susan to look at and smell the baby.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Afterwards, a couple of nursing toddler are brought in and encouraged to suckle at Susan’s empty breasts.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Susan doesn’t care for her breasts being gnawed on and orders her nanoset (you’ll just have to read the book to find out about the nanoset) to crank up milk production. It’s not an erotic scene.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But I knew damn well that censors would see it as as erotica, and hence the toddler sucking scene was going to be trouble. So I tossed the toddler scene out, instead having an adult male farmhand work her breasts. I also knew the baby-smelling would be trouble for the same reasons. So I tossed out the baby and instead had Susan forced to smell a big ball of baby swaddling that still had the smell of babies on it. (In hindsight, this represents a little more realism, since the farmhands regarded Susan as a wild hucow.)</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I also tossed out a scene that involved forced piss-drinking, because urolagnia, i.e., scat, would be the call from censors, even though it was more attempts to induce lactation.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">At this point I realized that any and all references to children were probably a mistake, even if they were just standing around in the background, e.g.: “The women and children went off to gather fruits and nuts.” So I did a global search for the words “child” “boy” and “girl” and removed almost every occurrence. As a result, the primitives in Karg live in those erotica villages which are inhabited only by adult men and women over 18 years of age, thankyewverymuch.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">You are probably thinking, “Pat … have you got any story LEFT after tossing all that stuff out?” And the answer is, “Yes, I do.” The manuscript was over 120,000 words before I started editing, it’s over 117,000 words now. All the stuff I tossed was just a drop in the bucket. Karg is epic.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And no individual scene that I dumped/altered was essential to the story. But here’s the thing: though none of the scenes were essential, they arguably made the story more real. They may have been part of the background scenery, but they were helpful parts. Most people who read or even watch movies “knows” that if you visit a primitive village there will be lots of children swarming around. It’s not like they have daycare or schools.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Furthermore, the crude, ignorant cruelty with which Susan is treated by the tribe she encounters, and by the “civilized” Kargians she encounters makes the raw, primitive story more real. We “know” at some level that this is the sort of nastiness you might encounter from primitives if you are captured by the wrong ones. We need look no farther than the experiences of settlers captured by indigenous people in America to know this is so.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Still, if you like sex slavery and slave rape, you’re going to like Karg, you’re going to like it a LOT. And there will be a lot to like: 117,000 words, and in most of them Susan is either a slave being raped or headed for her next experience of being a slave who is raped. (Her travels are very eventful!)</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I’m not complaining about “whatever happened to my novel?” here. I’m trying to make a more global point about the effect censorship has on erotica. When I wrote the serialized version of “Karg” I wasn’t concerned at all about censorship. I crossed a lot of what would now be considered red lines, without a care in the world, just because I thought the scene would make the story more real, more believable based on what I knew about how primitives treated slaves. And I think overall it did.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In the censored version, by contrast, I’ve got primitive villagers living in villages where there are no children in evidence. I’ve got a woman in a barn full of lactating women being induced to lactate via dubious methods.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It’s subtle, and I doubt if most erotica readers would note it consciously, because of course every OTHER work of erotica has to operate by the same rules. It’s what you get when you censor.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Note: copies of the original serialized Karg are stored in the same vault with the original Necronomicon and you know who guards that vault.</span></p></div>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-40146699867786788912022-05-15T01:26:00.003-04:002022-05-15T01:26:34.270-04:00"Louisiana Slay Ride" Now on Amazon and Smashwords<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1B6FL78" target="_blank"> Here's the Amazon Link</a></p><p><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1147104" target="_blank">Here's the Smashwords Link</a></p><p>Here's the blurb:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“</span><span class="a-text-italic" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic !important;">I know oligarchs can get away with almost anything, but setting off nukes under oil wells has to be the one thing not even an oligarch could get away with.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Those were Honey Trapps’ words when she first heard abut Jacques Ledoux. Ledoux was Louisiana third generation oil wealth, a man who believed in himself but who probably should not have. He had already squandered a great deal of money on various unsuccessful schemes, so much that he was now only immensely wealthy instead of insanely wealthy. And Ledoux’s latest scheme looked like a desperate attempt to recoup his losses.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">There were also rumors in the wealthy BDSM circles that Honey Trapp traveled in that some subs who scened with Ledoux never scened with anybody again. When the Initiative asks her to join Ledoux’s harem and get the goods on his nuke scheme in the most sexually submissive way possible, Honey doesn’t want to go. She has a rule about not subbing for even the most alpha male doms if they have bad reports from other subs, and subs who vanish is about as bad as the reports can get.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">But Ledoux is rich and connected and hides his secrets well, if the rumors are even true. Only Honey’s unique skills at working her way into a dom’s heart via organs located elsewhere on his anatomy can worm the secrets out of him.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">It’s Honey’s most dangerous assignment yet, filled with intrigue, danger and much sexually submissive hanky-panky in Ledoux’s harem. Sex, adventure and intrigue abound as Honey risks her person and her fortune to stop an oligarch from precipitating a nuclear disaster.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">This novel is just over 43,000 words in length and is part of the Honey Trapp series.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">And here's the Amazon cover:</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: -4px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; margin: -4px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaeZqvblb252L0iqkim7bKZJPhCG6UZvZxEXmoL7QQg7nHak6c3PmJSB8_6oON-C3sX-u5Ns0UaoO-EVsvMZLMEMxv2cgpfiz3x7VihgFqN2DzPGwSyAtq6awSOhlmmp4ts8d_SRqzrospvbWvYaWeoTCn6ZEwKhtlO_AggWHgJ84STAZZYzGTTyJe/s432/honey-trapp4-cover-amazon-final-4x6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaeZqvblb252L0iqkim7bKZJPhCG6UZvZxEXmoL7QQg7nHak6c3PmJSB8_6oON-C3sX-u5Ns0UaoO-EVsvMZLMEMxv2cgpfiz3x7VihgFqN2DzPGwSyAtq6awSOhlmmp4ts8d_SRqzrospvbWvYaWeoTCn6ZEwKhtlO_AggWHgJ84STAZZYzGTTyJe/s16000/honey-trapp4-cover-amazon-final-4x6.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-family: "Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p></div><p></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-18046562320847890422022-05-14T00:51:00.002-04:002022-05-14T00:53:43.872-04:00The Perils of Using Game Avatars Instead of Photos To Make Covers When You Are An Indie Author<p>Cover for the Smashwords version of "Louisiana Slay Ride"</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaMo2Tz-wjx5O4p4El0f8Lhzw0PfdWHiyO468vc3NooMpQoe4GFPZvHil0nYm6l_gsJD5j4thb1BxUx9c3wU418UJyTiNMCupIj__leNBP-rKKLcZm9IX7TLWcSaT6c0ITDzRoiB3eQD00X07A8E4B0A_JZMnChxQ16V2Da-HWHfQdpLRXj2YVDxGa/s648/honey-trapp4-cover-smash-final-6x9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaMo2Tz-wjx5O4p4El0f8Lhzw0PfdWHiyO468vc3NooMpQoe4GFPZvHil0nYm6l_gsJD5j4thb1BxUx9c3wU418UJyTiNMCupIj__leNBP-rKKLcZm9IX7TLWcSaT6c0ITDzRoiB3eQD00X07A8E4B0A_JZMnChxQ16V2Da-HWHfQdpLRXj2YVDxGa/s16000/honey-trapp4-cover-smash-final-6x9.jpg" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Cover for the Amazon version of "Louisiana Slay Ride"<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0Rdc1G4mPyDz4jEQS1Qjg7kjNntcx9ilHApTZT20HZE5jHvqqk9ahTVSgK_eLwqOQLX5bSuG8reFm_ImhNHJZ8-r9KC5Lo-ObkUkUcycwVtX6QftBsLX8Zsio5O2D3qDd14r_6neqdvg37MfqLC7Tt5fMZN8h_UX3tESue0Mne6mb25laD7rFjqQ/s648/honey-trapp4-cover-amazon-final-6x9.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0Rdc1G4mPyDz4jEQS1Qjg7kjNntcx9ilHApTZT20HZE5jHvqqk9ahTVSgK_eLwqOQLX5bSuG8reFm_ImhNHJZ8-r9KC5Lo-ObkUkUcycwVtX6QftBsLX8Zsio5O2D3qDd14r_6neqdvg37MfqLC7Tt5fMZN8h_UX3tESue0Mne6mb25laD7rFjqQ/s16000/honey-trapp4-cover-amazon-final-6x9.jpg" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Raw art file of Second Life avatar for "Louisiana Slay Ride"<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha154qA1TIvffEuqTTGuj4oOW4yRYGOG8si6i03ETbqHTwAG5Wg5HdE0wmejeYOKnFIGVaa0h_WhGAv9DI7TVxYpBiM_YyFvRy68E-MoYaHJTLurybSukM0dG_565DV0fCKWdTXy7ZC-_yTX0XcsHXV1L-vFJp2UTAWqjRSKQb6ur93G1okItekAAE/s576/raw-honey-scaled.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="324" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha154qA1TIvffEuqTTGuj4oOW4yRYGOG8si6i03ETbqHTwAG5Wg5HdE0wmejeYOKnFIGVaa0h_WhGAv9DI7TVxYpBiM_YyFvRy68E-MoYaHJTLurybSukM0dG_565DV0fCKWdTXy7ZC-_yTX0XcsHXV1L-vFJp2UTAWqjRSKQb6ur93G1okItekAAE/s16000/raw-honey-scaled.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">I like the cover art I got for
“Louisiana Slay Ride" but getting there wasn’t easy. The big
problem was the left leg, particularly the knee, though censorship
issues posed their usual problems.</span></p>
<p style="font-style: normal;">As you can see on the raw art file, the entire left leg is
off. Compare it to the right leg, which is smooth and nicely modeled,
connecting nicely to the hip, the left leg is very nearly two
dimensional. The seam between the left thigh and the
left calf is almost invisible and ends way too soon. (I double
checked by looking at photos of kneeling models, the seam was always
clearly visible.)</p>
<p style="font-style: normal;">Even worse is the knee. The knee is a
tricky thing to accurately represent. But that dark blob where the
kneecap should be looks nothing like a knee should. And that bright
Y-shaped highlight is in the wrong place and looks off.</p>
<p style="font-style: normal;">It’s a problem with Second Life
avatars, joints like the shoulders, elbows and knees tend to render
unrealistically. But the whole left leg going out is a mystery. If
you look at pretty much the same avatar used for the cover of “I,
The Glider Gun” which is taken from straight-on, you’ll see that
both legs are nicely modeled.</p>
<p style="font-style: normal;">Why does the left leg go two
dimensional in a ¾ view? No idea. But I had to deal with that stupid
knee. So I created a new layer in GIMP and put a white area matching
the dark area of the knee. And I copied skin tone from the left thigh
and put it on another layer. Then I used the white layer to lighten
the dark knee blob, playing with the opacity until I had it lightened
to roughly the same value as the inner thigh. Finally, I made the
inner thigh skin sample visible and played with its opacity until the
dark blobby knee area looked like the inner thigh skin, only a little
lighter.</p>
<p style="font-style: normal;">The idea was to capture the underlying
kneecap shape with the skin tones where they should be. But what I
wound up was mostly flat skin tones like the inner thigh. So I did
the artistic thing and covered up the damn knee with my byline. Now
that’s artistry!</p>
<p style="font-style: normal;">A decent artist could have solved the
problem in five or ten minutes, I’m sure. Took me two hours to come
up with my half-assed solution.</p>
<p style="font-style: normal;">The censorship needed for the breasts
on the Amazon cover was also an issue. I could have just had the
avatar wear a bra. But nooooo, I decided that since the pasties I was
using for the Smashwords cover were white, I could create a white bra
layer and lay it on over the avatar’s breasts. Pasties hide the
nipples, bra obscures the breasts, boob’s yer uncle. And since you can get a white overlay looking three dimensional by playing with the opacity of the white layer, and bras are easy to create by using portions of circles as your templates, it can be a quick, easy task.</p>
<p style="font-style: normal;">But the pasties proved to be a bit
time-consuming, because if the bra covered the pasties or the chain
between them it would look wrong. So after I created the bra outline I
had to go into the bra layer and carefully erase those portions of the
bra that covered the pasties and chain. I also had to erase those
portions of the bra that covered the curls of the avatars hair that
would have covered her bra strap. It didn't require any artistic skill, but it was
time consuming, painstaking work.</p><p style="font-style: normal;">All that work with the knee and the bra on top of posing the avatar, finding the background
art, obtaining and creating the chain art in Second Life, and doing some other little stuff like enlarging the size of the
avatar’s thong cup to keep the censors happy, the job was time consuming.</p>
<p style="font-style: normal;">So it took about a day and a half to
come up with both cover versions. Maybe two days. OK, two days. I was happy with
the cover art, and I enjoyed making it, but damn. The images based on
photos are a lot easier. But it’s much harder to get a clip art
photo posed properly and to make the photo as naked and bondage-y as
I can get away with.</p>
<p style="font-style: normal;">Just part of the fun of being an indie
author, I guess.</p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-13686218802715846312022-04-26T16:25:00.000-04:002022-04-26T16:25:21.010-04:00PMC Glasses Have Clouded Netflix’s Vision<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i> In which I become the 4,263,769th writer to weigh in on "What's Wrong With Netflix"</i></span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>There
has been a lot of theorizing about what might have gone wrong </span>with
Netflix that has caused them to have the Earth-shattering minimal dip
in subscriptions that they recently reported, causing them to have a
35 percent drop in market capitalization because investors are
flighty idiots. (Not that I blame them, I’d be nervous too if I had
two nickels to rub together in this ghoulish Late Stage Capitalism
nightmare economy.)</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Anyway,
I want to get in on this whole theorizing thing myself, because I
think I have a theory that is more all-encompassing than most other
theories, which tend to run along the lines of “Netflix is failing
because it isn’t making the kind of movies/shows I like any more.”
My theory is more theoretical, more all-encompassing, explaining why
Netflix fails to make or buy engaging content for its subscribers most of the time.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">My
theory is that the Netflix execs, the producers, the showrunners, the
directors, set designers and decorators, costume designers and the
writers are all members of the Professional Managerial Class (or PMC)
or are at least PMC wannabes.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>First
of all, what do I mean by PMC glasses? I mean the people who make
Netflix productions see the world from the viewpoint of one of the
top 10 percent of American society, or world society. They are the
affluent, the comfortable, the successful. They aren’t angry about
anything. They aren’t upset about anything. They may have their
causes and their viewpoints, but they’re comfortable causes and
comfortable viewpoints.</span></span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>And
I’m not claiming that all these people being members of the PMC
class or PMC wannabes is the result of any conspiracy. No one
deliberately gave all those jobs to people just because they were PMC class members. Instead they
gave people who are successful in film and television money,
plenty of it, enough to propel them into the PMC class. By the time
they got to the point where they were cutting deals with Netflix,
they had been successful for a while. Members in good standing of the PMC class.</span></span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That’s
why Netflix comedies aren’t funny. To be really funny, humor needs
an edge provided by anger, by outsider outrage, which is generally in
short supply among the very comfortable PMC class.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For
example, one of the most successful, if not the most successful
offerings on Netflix recently was “Don’t Look Up!” in which a
planet-killer asteroid approaching Earth is an obvious stand-in for
the climate crisis. It is edgy it is angry it is full of the sort of
stuff that PMC types might find disturbing, looking at politics,
politicians, the military and the media with a very hard, cynical
eye. It has a downbeat ending and it portrays the mighty on Earth as
a bunch of self-obsessed, greedy idiots who are too busy money
grubbing and power grabbing to save themselves.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“<span>Don’t
Look Up!” would seem prove me wrong, except it had some outsider
outrage going from David Sirota who co-wrote the script with director
Adam McKay. Sirota was a senior advisor to Bernie Sanders’ 2020
Presidential campaign, and prior to “Don’t Look Up” was
primarily known as a leftie commentator. He wasn’t a
Marxist-Leninist, but he could fairly be described as a Social
Democrat like Bernie Sanders.</span></span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It
was Sirota’s leftist outrage over climate change and his in-depth
knowledge of the duplicity of the media and politics that made the
barbs sharp and nasty. “Don’t Look Up” succeeded by borrowing
its outrage from a political outsider, Sirota. The instincts of most
PMC types would be to moderate the anger and the rage, replacing it
with merely clever wordplay and very broad satire, leaving “Don’t
Look Up!” in the vicinity of funny. Sirota’s knowledge and anger
kept it right on target.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This
rarely happens on Netflix, and I think that’s what makes the
service dull. Once Netflix started getting up to 100 million
subscribers, its major preoccupation became finding entertainment
that wouldn’t offend its enormous base, rather than entertainment
that would make them glad they were subscribers.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This
impulse, combined with the PMC goggles that want to make everything
look comfortable and safe makes everything dull and interesting. The
comedies aren’t funny (lookin’ at you, “Yes Day” “Bad Trip”
and “Starsky and Hutch”) the romances aren’t all that romantic
and definitely not sexy (lookin’ at you, all of Netflix’s recent
romcoms) and the action/adventure stuff is vigorous and active but
not at all compelling (lookin’ at you “Red Notice,” and “Eagle
Eye”) and sometimes they’re just godawful (lookin’ at you
“Spenser Confidential”).</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>The
sexuality stuff is also indicative. They can’t even match softcore
porn in their sex scenes. It’s all ladylike porn, if you know what
I mean. There are a lot of articles on the Internet about movies and
shows that have porny scenes and content, and I’ve watched some of
them, and they’re a bunch of nothingburgers compared to actual
porn. They’re not porny, they’re kinda sorta in a way pornish, at
best.</span></span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Do
an image search of such notably “porny” movies and shows as “365
Days,” “Bridgerton,” and “Sex Education” if you like,
you’ll see what I mean if you’re familiar with actual porn.
There’s not much of it, it’s underlit, and most of the good parts
get blacked out. It’s PMC porn, in short, nothing to offend someone
too much and yet give them the impression that they saw something
sexy.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
problem is, the PMC vision doesn’t “see” the vast majority of
Netflix subscribers, who are definitely not part of the PMC class.
They don’t connect with their subscribers psychologically,
intellectually or emotionally. Netflix’s PMC types may have some
demographic data, but they have no idea who their subscribers are are
or how they live, other than “not as well as me.”</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So
the PMC types turn out generic stuff that doesn’t really interest
their subscribers. The bland, comfortable stuff that suites the PMC
vision doesn’t work for the angry, increasingly impoverished bulk
of Americans locked in alienating, dead-end jobs that bore them and
which they hate, while also taking great pleasure in gaming and
social media of various sorts that the PMC types typically do not
understand well.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If
Netflix and its content providers wanted to appeal to their actual
audience, if they could actually SEE them, they’d have more
characters who were out-of-touch seniors doing and saying stupid
things. They’d have more characters who were horrible corporate
bosses making their employees’ lives miserable. They’d have more
characters who were lovable slackers outwitting their horrible bosses
and having sex with all the pretty girls and making the lives of
those around them more rewarding, though generally not in monetary
ways.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Climate
change would be a huge theme in a lot of stories. Housing would be a
theme, mostly not being able to get it. The way the PMC and the
oligarchs rip off middle class and poor people would be a steady
background theme to the stories, and often the main theme.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Homeless
people would be portrayed as people, not drugged-out zombies. And
most people would be living in cramped apartments, often with
roommates to make paying the rent possible. And the struggle to keep
the rent paid would be a much bigger thing.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">PMC
types would say such stories are boring and distressing, not the sort
of thing people want to watch to be entertained. But the real truth
is that the “people” they’re describing are the PMC class,
because they can’t see the rest of us, and don’t want to.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And
they would really HATE stories about how they economically oppress
everyone else except their oligarch masters, and which detail how
horribly managers treat employees as a group, because they
instinctively dislike any story that reveals just how much better off
their lives are than those of the middle class and poor people they
systematically oppress.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>So
Netflix, its management and content creators consisting only of PMC
types, don’t show these things or anything like them. They have
shows about wealthy people, often members of the PMC class and
oligarchs who lead “interesting” lives. Even when they portray
members of the poor and middle class they do so through PMC lenses.
The middle class and poor people on Netflix live in housing that is
much nicer than real middle class and poor people could ever afford.
They generally wear clothing and have possessions that are nicer than
most middle class and poor people can afford. In fact, they tend to
live like upper middle class and lower upper class people do – PMC
types pretending to be poor and middle class, in short.</span></span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span>When
Netflix does attempt a realistic or gritty depiction of poor or
middle class people, they tend to go way too dark. For example
“Hillbilly Elegy”is a gritty depiction of how tough people in
Appalachian mountain country have it. It was presented in the
PMC-controlled mainstream media as a sympathetic portrayal of
Appalachian mountain people. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">But
very quickly reviews came out saying that the movie was actually
poverty porn, focusing only on the miseries of the Appalachian poor,
creating a misleading view of who they were as people. Even when the
PMC types are looking hard at the middle class and the poor, they
cannot see them as they are.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Wouldn’t
pay them to, you know.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I
hope I haven’t given you the impression that the PMC are conspiring
to exclude and misrepresent the poor and the middle class. It’s
just a case of shared interests leading to a shared vision, one of
those unwritten cultural things that’s invisible and would be
denied by most members of the PMC.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But
there are some members of the PMC who do intentionally lie and
mislead about the economic oppression of the poor and middle class.
Academics and media people often know enough to know that the wealth
of the oligarchs comes from the economic oppression of the poor and
middle class, but you’ll never hear it from their commentating and
the media enterprises they work for.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And
if PMC commentators do somehow attempt to tell a progressive message,
especially on political or economic topics, they are very rapidly
fired. For example, when MSNBC hired Dylan Rattigan, Krystal Ball, Ed
Schultz and Cenk Uygar to give a progressive “edge” to their
coverage, then fired them all when it turned out they
had spines.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">How
does this all relate to Netflix’s woes? Netflix, with its hundreds
of millions of subscribers and its PMC staff and oligarch management
can’t see its subscribers, and by “see” I mean understand.
What’s more, they don’t WANT to see their subscribers. What they
really want to do is feed the subscribers bland, feel-good escapism
and works that support the status quo, even when they claim to be
edgy, challenging work.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">(That’s
why Netflix, and ALL the streaming media are so ecstatically happy
with comic book movies. Movies about spandex-clad idiot good guys
flying around and foiling the plans of spandex-clad idiot bad guys
are just the pablum they want to serve to subscribers to keep them
docile and unaware.)</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This
is why virtually all the entertianment options on Netflix rouse only
half-hearted interest among subscribers, if they rouse any interest
at all. Netflix and every streaming service and cable provider would
LOVE to provide entertainment that will have audiences absolutely
rapt over what they’re watching and eager for more. Many may
actually believe they are doing just that. Some people do love a lot
of Netflix productions. And some of them are good. (“Don’t Look
Up!” “The Witcher” “Stranger Things” “Travelers” and
some others.) But generally they’re a drop in the bucket compared
to the huge swirling mass of mediocrity that is most of Netflix’s
(and most other streaming services’) productions.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There’s
a reason for that. Netflix’s content isn’t made for us. It’s
made by PMC people, for PMC people, though many of them think they
are making shows for us. They aren’t. That’s why they aren’t
any good. They’re not supposed to be good. They’re supposed to be
tranquilizers. Soma. And they are. Netflix’s collection of merely
tolerable films isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">See
you at work tomorrow, bright and early!</span></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-45447340608675982052022-04-01T14:27:00.000-04:002022-04-01T14:27:15.025-04:00"Yard Sale Slut" Soon To Be a Major Netflix Film!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAhaQV46VTAkOhjznnZY0F0TePNpDk0skjwGI9w95KBz_7JLIOHjDTS58vzQqjph0D4bccjWoWdxcQdL6TOFDjMIBVbP78YVJrWT4RkZaavFSJzhtl8S294K7ffUlwuFKanuKVg_seUEXY_VcLs_U21zat4swpAEenViYgm_UADSWdNdIricpoWptZ/s648/yard-sale-slut-ver2-fiinal-6x9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAhaQV46VTAkOhjznnZY0F0TePNpDk0skjwGI9w95KBz_7JLIOHjDTS58vzQqjph0D4bccjWoWdxcQdL6TOFDjMIBVbP78YVJrWT4RkZaavFSJzhtl8S294K7ffUlwuFKanuKVg_seUEXY_VcLs_U21zat4swpAEenViYgm_UADSWdNdIricpoWptZ/w400-h640/yard-sale-slut-ver2-fiinal-6x9.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1088842" target="_blank"><i>You can get the original novel here!</i></a></div> <p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">I've had to keep this under wraps for a while, but my agent, Pauline Perell, has called and I'm free to Tell All: my novel "Yard Sale Slut" </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">will be made into a major motion picture to be aired on Netflix this fall. It's set in the near future, and is the story of Moira, o</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">nce a promising student, who loses everything and is drugged, sold into slavery, stripped, bound, gagged, raped, lesbian gang raped, whipped, whored out and then suffered the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">most horrible humiliation of all: sold on the cheap at a yard sale to a sex slave tavern owner.</span></p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">I don't think I'll be surprising anyone when I tell you that there was a huge bidding war on the story between Lifetime Channel and Netflix. The amount of pathos and bathos here is unbelievable. I didn't even believe it myself when I wrote it! So the seven figure check they're cutting me makes sense, Hollywood sense anyway.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Of course Neflix is asking for a few minor changes in the story to make it more acceptable to a mainstream audiences. Minor stuff, really. The rape and sex slavery themes, they feel, are a little much. Or as Netflix director Wilson Pluckett told me, "Look I get that 'Yard Sale Slut' is a dark, edgy, erotic, kinky satirical critique of capitalism gone zonkers, but we were thinking of taking it more in the direction of a lighthearted rom-com. And you can't have actual rape and sex slavery in lighthearted rom-com, it's just too heavy. So we were thinking of throwing out the slavers altogether. Instead we're thinking of having the female MC bought as a "slave" at one of those charity yard sales they have, by the male MC. Be a good vehicle for Freddie Prinze and Jessica Alba, you know."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">"If you wanted a lighthearted rom-com, you could have optioned <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1117123" target="_blank">How My Slavegirl Found Me</a> it's an actual lighthearted rom-com," I pointed out. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">"And we may just do that down the road," said Pluckett. "But for now everyone is sold on "Yard Sale Slut" except for the title. The working title is now "Yard Sale Bargain Romance" to give you some idea. But otherwise it's exactly the same story. The male MC is still a politico, only now he's a candidate for US Senator from New York. And there'll be all sorts of raised eyebrows and media interest in the Senatorial candidate buying a slavegirl, you know, even if it's only a pretendy slavegirl. Mucho boffo humor here."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">"Oh, I could see that working very well with a sexual relationship where she's his sexy slavegirl and he's her dominating master, all very consensual of course," I said. "Plenty of chances for double entendre."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">"Well, about that," said Pluckett. "We find our rom-coms work much better in foreign markets without any sex. Or nudity. Maybe a chaste kiss at the end, maybe a bared shoulder or two. But no sex at all, especially no kinky sex."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">"I'm surprised you left in the romance and the comedy," I observed, catching the way the wind was blowing.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">"Well there won't be much of either, to be honest," said Plunkett. "Actual romance and humor are difficult and dangerous. We're looking for a script that is only in the vicinity of funny, and which keeps the romance down to knowing looks and raised eyebrows. We just want to leave audiences with a general impression that nice people had fun after encountering some mild difficulties, which is really what your story is all about, when you think about it."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">"Of course it is," I lied. "And of course there's all those checks I'll be getting based on net profits to help soothe my conscience."</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">"Exactly!" lied Pluckett. "I knew we could come to a meeting of the minds on this!"</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">NOTE: Post meeting, I've been informed that the story will now be set in Ukraine and will involve a giant time-traveling spider. Plot twist: the spider is the nicest character in the film!</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">P.S. "Yard Sale Slut" is one of the three stories included in my <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1101128" target="_blank">Three Tavern Sluts collection found here</a>. And extra buck goes a long way on Smashwords.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><br /></span>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-12765942201979901682022-03-20T18:58:00.004-04:002022-03-20T19:00:56.040-04:00Greek Harem: Honey Trapp #3 Now Available on Amazon and Smashwords<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhtUmT5kVMxywvXNNQx8gk2SPHKy0Vq6J3Vd1lRd0pUJdqRa4nmPDWOy9cH_iziTMAi1ntGl2wAd0wPBatilTKF4Bo1WUSn0iVwlSnVcjaFvj_pfeRLILFmdQPetGc0o7nR_9-X2WFzkB2vsJ6hJMg-OHUQdsr5C2oXYVrAuBMtbwYj8n9jFbIV5poH=s648" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhtUmT5kVMxywvXNNQx8gk2SPHKy0Vq6J3Vd1lRd0pUJdqRa4nmPDWOy9cH_iziTMAi1ntGl2wAd0wPBatilTKF4Bo1WUSn0iVwlSnVcjaFvj_pfeRLILFmdQPetGc0o7nR_9-X2WFzkB2vsJ6hJMg-OHUQdsr5C2oXYVrAuBMtbwYj8n9jFbIV5poH=s16000" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Cover of the Smashwords edition of Greek Harem. <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1138089" target="_blank">Here's the link!</a></i></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFVHOOR0-CPcCktcf1Yo0V8CpnPQBFuEoXVSPTFSaGK9dspvFRmTmLroiTxtQaQRArnRrgtPWcNTWyG-qV7Jk3RV0QuLY_tpJPpkJij1z1yVnnk_sVPsjB2zuhA1bsPfChrATcymDqdVdNFv1zyiYT2oswhQZ1CJt3-PWxZG7-1bP4_CuOH_QkaLGP=s648" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgFVHOOR0-CPcCktcf1Yo0V8CpnPQBFuEoXVSPTFSaGK9dspvFRmTmLroiTxtQaQRArnRrgtPWcNTWyG-qV7Jk3RV0QuLY_tpJPpkJij1z1yVnnk_sVPsjB2zuhA1bsPfChrATcymDqdVdNFv1zyiYT2oswhQZ1CJt3-PWxZG7-1bP4_CuOH_QkaLGP=s16000" /></a></div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Cover of the Amazon edition of Greek Harem. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VY4MP3L" target="_blank">Here's the link!</a></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the third installment of the Honey Trapp Snappy Stories, Honey infiltrates a Greek shipping oligarch's harem of pay-for-play slavegirl beauties. Her goal: to help discover how the oligarch's shipping firm is sliding past regulations aimed at preventing the use of bunker oil as fuel. "Something funky in the bunky oil indeed!" (Bunker oil is basically what's left over when you refine crude oil into gasoline. It's very low-grade stuff, full of sulphur dioxide and particulate matter which is toxic to human beings and other living things, which is why there are regulations concerning its use, pathetically limited though those regulations are.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This plotline gives me plenty of chances to indulge in some really fun orgy scenes and also some ultra-kinky public bondage sex action at the Art Institute for the Sexually Insane. It was great fun to write those scenes, which is probably why they constitute the bulk of the novella. And it was fun to play with the personalities of the four slavegirls other then Honey, their perceptions of themselves and one another, and to contrast a pay-for-play harem where anyone can leave if they want to, and the issues of historical harems which were not consensual and which sometimes led to bad results, like people getting killed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I also had some fun with nomenclature and myth. All of the local slavegirls have names from Greek mythology. One in particular stands out. Her name was initially Iris, but I decided for some reason, which was probably my subconscious at work/play, to base her on a the face of a remarkable woman I'd seen in some porn photo. (I've looked all over for it, I know it's somewhere in the huge folder I call my "Archives" but I can't find it.) She had a bull-like quality to her face, except that it was very feminine, not masculine at all. You might think cow-like, but we associate cowlike with being kind of placid and sleepy-looking, and that didn't match this woman's face at all -- she was very alert and aware-looking, just very confident-looking as well. Like a bull that absolutely owns its paddock. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">While writing the description, I remembered that there was a Greek myth about a woman mating with a bull, and sure enough, there was. A quick trip to Professor Google showed that a woman named Pasiphae offended the gods somehow, and she was cursed with lust for the Cretan bull, even though she was married to King Minos. She subsequently gave birth to the Minotaur, and also several human children, including a woman named Ariadne. I decided it would be fun to rename Iris the bull-faced woman Ariadne, thus ever-so-subtly implying that she is a distant descendant of the mythical Pasiphae, and the bull traits still show up in her children, however watered down. I didn't make Ariadne's descent part of the plot, but I did have some fun with the characterization. I'll say no more.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Also, check out the covers of my book. They are a good indication of the differences between Amazon and Smashwords censorship rules. There are two main differences between the two images. The Amazon image wears no gag, the Smashwords image wears a gag. And the Amazon has a thong strap and a but of cloth covering the portion of her butt that's visible from the side. The Amazon image does not. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I very much wanted a gag on the Amazon cover, I thought it kicked up the sexiness and kinkiness of the image a lot, but I did some research and other Amazon books with the words "Gagged" right in the title (like "Bound and Gagged") did not have pictures of gagged women on them. I've gotten away with such imagery in the past, but after looking at all the boos with "Gagged" in the title and no gags on the cover art, I decided better safe than sorry. I also covered up the butt bits, negligible though they were, because Amazon does not like to acknowledge that women have butts. I wasn't so put off by that because I don't think it affected the image much.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I also put the collar, leash and wrist cuff on the woman, because those do show up on the covers of kinky titles on Amazon. Plus, the cuff is plausibly deniable, there's nothing to distinguish it from a bracelet. And I also used the "Scale" tool to make the woman's body a bit thicker than in the original: she's one of those leggy fashion model whippet types, which is great, but I suspect erotica readers like a little more flesh on their models. That said, I absolutely love the strutting stride of the model, the way her head is thrown back, the general go-for-it attitude her whole body projects. Sales of this book are going VERY well, I suspect the cover might just have something to do with it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What do you think? Leave your comments, oh, just anywhere.</div><p></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-71205133871225702992022-02-26T23:36:00.000-05:002022-02-26T23:36:41.539-05:00England Goes Boom! -- Honey Trap #2 Now on Smashwords and Amazon<p> 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, "<span style="font-size: 12pt;">It’s the money that counts
you know, and by that measure my true allegiance is to Panama, not
England."</span></p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/mvbw3v/sin-a-rama-excerpt-my-life-as-a-pornographer" target="_blank"> this excellent description of what it was like to be a porn writer in those days by Robert Silverberg</a>, 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.</p><p>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.)</p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>And it's worth noting that things have gone full circle over the last few years. Recently I discovered <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1974615-authors-who-have-haven-t-neutered-their-bodice-ripper-backlist" target="_blank">this fascinating discussion thread on Goodreads</a> 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Amazon cover:</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgOhfgt-SbRwNs_HwvPOYsuI6CIeumYDFhmHFgN8KpqnKCSbueRT9AdvpeBdaTbqYUHjw-1d6BNYsEshpkxOrQ2eoTKJzpmAavj8dP64pKxkzMqQfMrUi3qUSTc9bb-2wEUomrEpNrJV3coIXFg-0v7vqjYldpezovKUB2vs_kGLVrg86eowk81zDJI=s648" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgOhfgt-SbRwNs_HwvPOYsuI6CIeumYDFhmHFgN8KpqnKCSbueRT9AdvpeBdaTbqYUHjw-1d6BNYsEshpkxOrQ2eoTKJzpmAavj8dP64pKxkzMqQfMrUi3qUSTc9bb-2wEUomrEpNrJV3coIXFg-0v7vqjYldpezovKUB2vs_kGLVrg86eowk81zDJI=s16000" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Smashwords cover:</span><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhnSn2scFNZfLhMB3IeBk37eK0tynosghxDkXJGFeR-vy3uzWTqgfyEMCOcXDcNnQPm8tnyB3Ty4Ht3rK-CunnzGeYOcIDRVAV-m334iYc_qjeStbtnfd_Nwu7g90i5M6-HHS7YQ4FcbfnyQGG4kLnAhqEqjWpEvr05Lvd5jXi_YGgaLbq4iQZBkCNV=s648" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhnSn2scFNZfLhMB3IeBk37eK0tynosghxDkXJGFeR-vy3uzWTqgfyEMCOcXDcNnQPm8tnyB3Ty4Ht3rK-CunnzGeYOcIDRVAV-m334iYc_qjeStbtnfd_Nwu7g90i5M6-HHS7YQ4FcbfnyQGG4kLnAhqEqjWpEvr05Lvd5jXi_YGgaLbq4iQZBkCNV=s16000" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Ok, here are the Amazon rules that are violated by the Smashwords cover:</span><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1) There shall be no visible butt crack!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">2) There shall be no bondage, even crappy totally mild bondage!</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">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)</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg85NAEYvc87mQEdn2qckrUoZVak9WMfnRU9eq-PSt6qOliSaH0TEPSI_wM_EUYSYlF-uMtIK9D4uV4IezGr4v6zauYoCgk3ZBC0o7yuwn8rllpOCRat2_y2wu51UKy2Z5isA9rs-gUWkoPjEmiFycGkGjRtU2oV-G1dx2o4irvWM57V43SdaW5TrPy=s648" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg85NAEYvc87mQEdn2qckrUoZVak9WMfnRU9eq-PSt6qOliSaH0TEPSI_wM_EUYSYlF-uMtIK9D4uV4IezGr4v6zauYoCgk3ZBC0o7yuwn8rllpOCRat2_y2wu51UKy2Z5isA9rs-gUWkoPjEmiFycGkGjRtU2oV-G1dx2o4irvWM57V43SdaW5TrPy=s16000" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>(Image Credit: "Athletic MILF Fuck Toy Cherie Deville Punished in Bondage and Sybian!!" for Kink.com.)</i></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">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.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Finally, here's the blurb for the story:</p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">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.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">And the results for the oligarchs just might be explosive!</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">This novelette is over 10,000 words long and is number 2 in the Honey Trapp Adventures series.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09TFK9S99" target="_blank">Here's the Amazon link for the novelette.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09TFK9S99" target="_blank">Here's the Smashwords link for the novelette.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> Now what are you waiting for? Get buying and get reading! You know you want to.</span></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-75739228922342627592022-02-13T11:41:00.004-05:002022-02-13T11:41:53.625-05:00"The Naked Jungle" Now Available on Smashwords<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh6_SN5AjPKeTyZD_QhvtxPVXyO8vLVYwlOUmWtm5giN1F7eVJNFQ5dNOwcwHUw2HxVx1_1ZV_0NHph1nkbKQrLiEygZg6FslCBB9HP59Bh7tO4gjQPSiKlvR4OPF-pQtWWp_K0MeEXnfW9dzkGwgUnJ9-5j2Arv5iuJOEm_zkWw-k01w20SNqzXVM4=s3200" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Naked Jungle cover art" border="0" data-original-height="3200" data-original-width="2000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh6_SN5AjPKeTyZD_QhvtxPVXyO8vLVYwlOUmWtm5giN1F7eVJNFQ5dNOwcwHUw2HxVx1_1ZV_0NHph1nkbKQrLiEygZg6FslCBB9HP59Bh7tO4gjQPSiKlvR4OPF-pQtWWp_K0MeEXnfW9dzkGwgUnJ9-5j2Arv5iuJOEm_zkWw-k01w20SNqzXVM4=w400-h640" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1132546" target="_blank">Click here to get the novel</a> on Smashwords in Kindle, Nook and other formats!</i></div><div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal; text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="font-style: italic; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;">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.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;">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.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;">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.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;">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?</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px; font-style: normal;">This novel is over 40,000 words long.</span></div></div><div style="font-style: italic; text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><p></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-731640942406247860.post-50174761786446136822022-01-13T19:14:00.001-05:002022-01-13T19:14:55.683-05:00I, The Glider Gun Now Available On Smashwords<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2hAJU7u9zu9JsggFBl33z_g96DrFpTlB2eHulROUWqQ8q_7ZiOeq4joybpxlbQRAR4oshSYFs5dMOKSFXJNGsubJ1GjjYn4iaTub4aJKTuNUm-E3PDEA9-M2farW4pBmBkAfD-XlxMRl1VLvqMkTe0qVOVofVF0lju3wG3UIEpzvMqmt753y-kpC2=s648" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="405" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2hAJU7u9zu9JsggFBl33z_g96DrFpTlB2eHulROUWqQ8q_7ZiOeq4joybpxlbQRAR4oshSYFs5dMOKSFXJNGsubJ1GjjYn4iaTub4aJKTuNUm-E3PDEA9-M2farW4pBmBkAfD-XlxMRl1VLvqMkTe0qVOVofVF0lju3wG3UIEpzvMqmt753y-kpC2=s16000" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><b><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1126608" target="_blank">You can obtain "I, The Glider Gun" by clicking on this text.</a></b></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">Detective Lacy Throbb of the Century City Police Department was a loose cannon who wrote her own rules and broke them, too! Criminals in Century City had a love-hate relationship with her. They hated the way things always came out badly for them whenever they tried to maim or kill her. And they loved how easy it was to rape her, especially if she was tied up.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">But there was a method to this madness and it would take the combined efforts of a numbers runner, Lacy's bestie informant Junie Jamieson, a genius hacker and Lacy herself to figure out what it was, and what it was might well challenge the nature of reality itself.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">This is a genre-bending story that's part taboo erotica, part hard-boiled crime noir, part science fiction and a little bit gonzo. If you had to categorize it, you might say it's pulp detective sci fi parody erotica, but that doesn't really do the story justice. It doesn't just break the mold, it CRUSHES the mold!</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">“I, The Glider Gun” is in the same universe (in fact, the same city) as “Junie Jamieson, Snoopy Reporter: Captured by Gangsters” but you don't have to read “Captured by Gangsters” to enjoy “I, the Glider Gun,” it is a completely stand-alone story. “I, The Glider Gun” is over 30,000 words in length.</span></div><p></p>Pat Powershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17546848088853626735noreply@blogger.com1