"Virgin Slave Girls of Parados" Is Now on Smashwords

Click here to be whisked away to Smashwords to buy the book!

 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!

(Actually, I'll call it historical erotica since that's an ACTUAL niche that really exists.)

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.

Because of course in this alternative world everyone is also into maledom/femsub, basically master/slave sex.

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.)

I also had fun inventing some bordello tech in a world without steam power.

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.

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!

Of course, I could be lying about all this. But I'm not. Read the book and find out... I dare you!

I Have A Website!

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Carissa Montgomery Feeling The Changes Coming

 

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.

"Abducted, Roped & Raped: Enemies to Lovers" Now Available on Smashwords

 

Click on the pic to be whisked to Smashwords and get the novella!

"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.

(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^th 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.)

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.)

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.

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. Click here to read it.

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.)

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.

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.

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...

Rape Erotica Novelette “Your Body Or Your Life” Now Available on Smashwords

 

You can get the book on Smashwords by clicking on this link. No links to Amazon, they don't do taboo erotica.

Here’s the short blurb for you blurb fiends:

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!

OK, here’s the straight skinny on this story. My previous short story, Butterfly 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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?

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!

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.

Still this is the sort of story that should attract readers all by its lonesome. We shall see.

(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.)

"Butterfly: A Day In The Park" Now Available for Labor Day!

Just click here to be whisked away to Smashwords and get the story!

Or just click here to be whisked away to Amazon to get the story! 

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.

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.

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. 

Why I Had To Kneecap The Promo Video for My New Novelette "Butterfly" (Capitalism Is The Villain)

 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:

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. (Here's a link to the original Swingrowers song, 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.)

And I came up with this video:

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.

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.

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! Here is a link showing what an expensive, pain in the ass process it is to license a song, particularly a popular song.

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!"

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.

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! 

(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.)

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.

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.

Like the music business is now.