The manuscript has been submitted. The release date has been set for Nov 14th, but it is available for pre-order. Amazon link here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FYNHHW32
Here is the blurb:
Demonic Justice is like Cosmic Justice, just a little less... accurate.
Erotic Horror master M. E. Hydra returns with a seventh sizzling collection of short stories featuring sexy succubi and other monster girls.
“Outcall with a Succubus” sees an overworked politician receive a visit from an amorous guest. A man suffering from anxiety is prescribed an unusual vac-bed treatment in “Shiborito in the Bag”. A group of activists in “A Trial in Vennington” discover a succubus is not quite the instrument of feminist vengeance they hoped for. An arrogant mage in “Mage vs Succubus Slime” learns why it’s important to have a full party after he’s ensnared and drained of his levels by a special slime girl. And finally, “A Succubus for Social Justice” has a succubus used as a tool of assassination, until the wrong target is chosen...
Enjoy these and other dark tales of erotic evil. They’ll give you pleasures beyond your wildest dreams, and terrors beyond your darkest nightmares...
And here is the full running order:
A Succubus for Social Justice, Part 1: The Old Goth A Succubus for Social Justice, Part 2: The Celebrity Rapist
A Chance Glance and a Chance Conversation in a Student Bar Shiborito in the Bag The Curious Disappearance of Daniel Drake from Flight 363
A Succubus for Social Justice, Interlude 1: The Stone Tablet A Succubus for Social Justice, Part 3: The Nuisance Streamer A Succubus for Social Justice, Part 4: The Slumlord Mob Boss A Succubus for Social Justice, Part 5: The Teen Gun Nut A Succubus for Social Justice, Interlude 2: A Phone Call
A Trial in Vennington Mage vs Succubus Slime A Sweet and Deadly Taste of Milk
A Succubus for Social Justice, Interlude 3: A Courtesy Visit A Succubus for Social Justice, Part 6: The Fascist Jogger A Succubus for Social Justice, Part 7: The Useless Male Ally A Succubus for Social Justice, Interlude 4: A Warning
AProudMaleFeminist gets Creamed Joey Farrell Walks into an Obvious Booby Trap Outcall with a Succubus
A Succubus for Social Justice, Finale: The Zealot
Yeah, I went a bit overblown prog-metal album for the running order on this one. :)
It's a weird book. The central framing story, "A Succubus for Social Justice", is a multi-part novella. Each part is a separate short story of a different protagonist being hunted down by the nameless succubus from the succubus tablet.
However, the other short stories also serve to introduce characters that appear in the central story, or start threads that are continued in later stories. Technically, each functions as a standalone story, but they are all part of a larger story.
That makes the collection somewhere in between a standard short story collection and a classic fix-up novel.
There are some pretty big lore moments, especially in the "A Succubus for Social Justice" stories, so I might need to figure out how to handle people discussing spoilers. The finale in particular has some surprise connections and hints of connections.
Anyway, two weeks, and then you'll be able to read them yourselves. I'll be teasing with various excerpts over those two weeks to hype things up.
I'm also looking into getting a print version ready for this one. Unfortunately, print versions are usually a little expensive for print-on-demand books (about $20 for a paperback) and the formatting is a lot fiddlier. I'm doing my research and hoping to get that ready to release at the same time. I can't guarantee on that. Creating a manuscript for an ebook is a doddle. Creating a manuscript for a print book is a... headache.
The one-month detour ended up being a couple of months, unfortuantely. Needing to write 45K instead of 15K words will do that. I also underestimated the time for formatting and editing the final manuscript (as usual). I still have some lingering work to do on the print book manuscript, but after that I will get back to HoHH, which is still my main priority at the moment.
This was a slightly quieter week to recover from the frenzied writing and editing of getting the new collection together.
I put a rough manuscript together to put on my kindle, and I'm currently reading through to catch anything I missed in the first editing pass. Given I found about 20 typos in the first two short stories, this feels a useful step in the editing process!
Originally, I was going to write that I was pretty much done and just waiting on the cover art. However, Marwmellow sent me a preview of that late last night, so I can move on with getting the cover done now.
My plan is to do the final edits, put titles over the art and submit everything to Amazon on Friday, with a planned publication date of two weeks after that. This will give me a couple of weeks to promote the hell out of it. Tentatively, I'm looking at a release date of November 14th.
As part of the promo stuff, I'll drop another story segment from the multi-part "A Succubus for Social Justice" story (novella?) as a taster about a week before the book is due to come out.
Nearly there!
Because most of the work on the new collection is winding down to near-completion, I was able to get back to working on House of Hellish Harlots. Currently I'm working through writing all the notebook sections for the low-tier harlots. That seems to be holding things up at the moment, and I want to spend a few weeks fully focused on it to see if I can get through that part.
What do you think of marwmellow's cover art?
Thanks for the support and interest! - manyeyedhydra
Art preview for this week is Boobella, who I definitely inadvertently spoiled while playing around with grok/imagine...
I did get a cute little animation for her, which fit surprisingly well.
I wrote her as a slightly different succubus to the usual dominatrix types in black latex. She's supposed to be more of an 'alpha bitch cheerleader' type. I wrote her as a more hate-sink type of succubus. Instead, she ended up being very popular. I guess people really like that type of bitchy bad girl. :)
Marwmellow captured her cute side very well, I think.
Boobella is also a harlot that showed up in one of my stories first. That one is going to be in the upcoming collection, but it's an old one that's been around for a while - "A Chance Glance and a Chance Conversation in a Student Bar".
I hope you like the art. Let me know what you think below.
This week was mostly mopping up the last bits for the new collection. It was a lot of mopping up, so there wasn't any time left over to get back onto HoHH.
All the writing and typing up is now done. I wanted to get the endings right for "Outcall with a Succubus" and the main story "A Succubus for Social Justice". If you're interested in the wider lore there are some big wham moments in the ending section of the latter. ;)
I also wrote an Afterword detailing the inspiration behind the stories. Then wrote it again because the first one was rambly and shit.
Everything other than the Afterword has had the first editing pass and all the various character names filled in.
After that it's just the assembling everying together and formating the manuscript. Next week will be on the fiddly stuff such as making it into an ebook and maybe a print book manuscript as well. I'm still waiting on the cover art, but we're getting very close to hitting submit to Amazon.
And now for the story.
This is the "extra" story I needed to write. I needed a Koontz story, and so wrote a very standard Koontz story. This one was trying to channel some of the campness of old spy movies and I think Kiki Sumoppai fits rather nicely as a femme fatale with a very bizarre assassination technique.
It's only had one editing pass, so there might be a few things I've missed.
Anyway. While the writing of the collection has taken a little longer than originally intended, it has given me a nice "extra" story to preview to patrons/subscribers.
As Kiki Sumoppai is also one of the harlots from HoHH, I also have some nice art of her to accompany it. I might give more of them their own stories.
I hope you like both. Let me know what you think below.
As you might be aware, I've been feeding some of the HoHH art into grok/imagine, and some of the results have been pretty good.
(I'd show them here, but Patreon is understandably finicky with video uploads from 18+ creators. I did make a blog post last week with some of them and have been posting a few on my twitter account as well.)
I thought I'd try to make it easier for patrons/subscribers to experiment with the art themselves, so Noeru has created the #slop-room on our discord. (Hopefully, the discord link still works. Let me know if it doesn't.)
To save people the hassle of trawling through past posts to find the art, I'll repost a new batch of already-previewed art at the beginning of the week. Go and have fun seeing what you can create and post the good ones in that discord room.
(Especially if you can get something for the... ahem... spicier art. I'm still falling foul of content filters despite my best efforts to find a way around them.)
It is AI, which I understand some have ethical concerns over. This feels more like using it as a tool to do something that would be otherwise difficult (animating existing art) rather than doing away with the artist altogether. People's opinions are going to differ on this though.
If you're fine with playing around with the 'slop machine', here are some hints from my early experimentation:
The custom prompts allow a surprising degree of control over what the figure does, but you might need to be sneaky with how you word "push boobs into the screen" to get Mamilla to look like she's trying to smother the viewer in order to avoid falling foul of the content filters.
If you want the harlot to say anything - eg "I will smother you", place it in the prompt between quotation marks. I also tried adding terms like - accent: English, although I'm not sure how useful it is. Grok doesn't always pay attention to this, so it might take a few attempts to get anything good.
The AI loses track of tails really easily. I've found adding "minimal tail movement" to the prompt reduces them swishing around too much and breaking/morphing into something else.
This problem is even worse with lamias and the more monstrous harlots. I haven't figured out a good fix there.
Unless you have managed to find whatever golden combination of country, account type, account setting that allows it, anything with exposed tits is going to get the dreaded "Content Moderated" message. Some people have been able to get around this, but I still have no idea how.
Currently I don't know if I'm going to be using any of these in the actual game (or can). I thought it might be a cool thing to try out. It's pretty spooky to write a character, commission somone else to create art of that character, then have AI make that character move and even speak.
The major writing (and typing) for the collection is pretty much done. I have a couple of pages to type up for the Koontz story and other assorted odds and ends of various epilogue type pieces.
"Outcall with a Succubus" is just over 8K words typed up. It's done aside from a short epilogue and editing.
The Kiki Sumoppai/Koontz story is going to be titled "The Curious Disappearance of Daniel Drake from Flight AA363". (The flight number might change. I haven't decided whether to use the actual flight number for that flight or invent a completely new flight number not used by anything.) Currently it's at 5K words typed up with a few pages still to go which I'll finish after putting this post out.
Most of the "A Succubus for Social Justice" multi-part story is edited. I'm in the process of writing the epilogue part.
The last bit of writing is a small afterword where I detail the inspiration behind the stories and where they first appeared. I'll get that done next week.
I'm pretty much down to the editing and then assembling everything into a single manuscript. I'd like to put this out as a physical book as well, so I need to do some research on the formatting for that as it can be a little trickier getting the margins right compared to the digital versions.
Once done I'll stick it on my kindle and give it a full read-through to make sure I haven't missed any glaring typos.
The other thing I'm waiting on is the cover art. Ideally I'd like a two-week period between submitting the manuscript to Amazon (and other retailers) and it actually coming out, so I can get a little bit of hype going. So we might be looking at an early or second-week November release rather than right on Halloween (which will probably help dodge the deluge of new horror books coming out that time).
I'm planning to post the Kiki Sumoppai story for Patrons/Subscribers as an early-look perk. Look out for that in the next week or so.
The other thing I did this week was get distracted by the new grok/imagine tool. That seems very very good at generating 6-second animations from static art pieces. I've been experimenting with various pieces of harlot art and getting some interesting results (which I've been posting on Discord and X).
I still don't know if this will be useful. If HoHH was a card game, this would add nice animations to the card art. As HoHH currently is, maybe they might only work as promo pieces rather than in-game animations. I'll keep experimenting.
In the meantime Noeru has set up a special #slop-room on the discord. I'll be putting art in there for people to try their own experiments with. I'll maybe post more in detail on that tomorrow.
Anyway, the tl;dr version - the book is nearly done and I should be back to harlot scenario writing (hopefully!) next week.
Thank you for your continued support and interest! - manyeyedhydra
Now that the writing on the short story collection is winding down, I'm going to try posting the regular art previews and harlot spotlights again.
There is a chance I might have lost my place and end up previewing harlot art I've already previewed. Between trying to stagger them across 3 different tiers and now getting distracted by the new AI tools capable of animating them, there's a good chance I'm going to get confused.
Anyway, here's Misty, who I hope is new for the $1 tiers.
She is the "guard dog" for the House and takes care of any unwelcome visitors when she's not entertaining guests.
(I did want to post them here, but 18+ creators are not allowed to upload video on Patreon. Probably because they know exactly what sort of video we'd be uploading. :D )
It is AI, which I appreciate is a subject of controversy, but the root picture is created by human, so it feels like more a tool for a creator than a replacement for a creator to me.
It's still locked down. I get blocked trying to put in anything with exposed nipples. And there appears to be a daily limit. I've had some fun playing around with various bits of harlot art.
I'm not sure yet if this can be used, but for now it's fun to play around with.
Unfortunately, some IRL stuff lost me a couple of days at the end of the week, so it's not quite as done done as I'd like.
I did think about activating the "must be finished by end of September" clause, but that was mainly in place if I felt I got blocked, or was twiddling my thumbs trying to push something that was stubbornly refusing to happen. That hasn't been happening. My prooductivity has mostly been pretty consistent and good. The main issue is what should have been 3 stories of around 15K words has turned out to be 4 stories of around 45K words. That's not a bad thing as it means I'm only using 6 of the previously written stories and will probably be able to put out a new collection next year as well.
As for the stories in progress, I let Nicole get a little too carried away in "Outcall with a Succubus". That was originally supposed to be a 5K word story. I typed up 7K words this week with maybe 1K to go. Again, I'm fine with this. Nicole is a popular character and my initial fear for the story was I had some good world-building content at the beginning, but the erotic parts felt a little tacked on and filler-ish. No danger of that. Nicole gives the lucky protagonist the full succubus experience in that one!
With all the writing and typing up, I was struggling to find time for editing.
"Mage vs Succubus Slime" has been edited, so that's pretty much ready.
I've edited about half of the "Succubus for Social Justice" segments. One of them needs me to come up with a lot of random street names, so that's going to be a bit of a pain.
The 4th one is the Koontz story. The start of that is a little messy, but I'm getting to the point where Kiki Sumoppai gets to deploy her special weapons.
I'll continue with it this week and look to start transitioning back to writing HoHH harlot scenarios as I get the book down to just requiring the editing parts.
I've also seen the early sketches for a possible cover by marwmellow. That wasn't the only thing I commissioned. I haven't forgotten about HoHH, and I might be looking to add some slightly spicier art... ;)
Thanks for the support and patience while I take this temporary detour. Normal work will resume on HoHH ASAP! - manyeyedhydra
Right, I do have something to post on the end of the month.
As a thank you for being patient while I took this month (and a bit) off to get the next collection of short stories together for publication, here is an excerpt of one of those stories.
"A Succubus for Social Justice" is the eponymous succubus tablet story. Someone gets hold of the succubus tablet and uses it for vigilantism in taking down people they don't like. The nameless succubus is quite busy and gets a few 'kills' this time around. I also tried to get creative with her various kills. "A Succubus for Social Justice" has six parts where the nameless succubus takes out different targets, as well as few various interludes and smaller sections dealing with the fallout and repercussions of the vigilante's actions.
In this one, it's a nuisance IRL streamer out in Japan. I think people will find it very easy to guess who the inspiration for the character is, although there are quite a few nuisance streamers running around nowadays. I did um and ah over the name, as it comes very close to violating my strict No Take Thats policy. I let it go as it's not the actual same name and the person who inspired the character is going to be forgotten in a year's time anyway.
The protagonist is racist towards the Japanese, and I didn't shy away from depicting that. In researching what nasty terms the modern yoof might use nowadays I did find an interesting discrepancy in perjoratives between the US and UK. Originally I had him using "Nip" as that is the no-no word for UK people while "Jap" is seen as a milder abbreviation of "Japanese" in the same way as "Brit" is to "British". However, in the US, "Jap" is the much more offensive term, so I switched to using that for this protagonist.
The character is supposed to be American, but there is a chance I accidentally slipped some Britbongisms in. So, if you're American, let me know if the protagonist thinks or says something that feels like inaccurate slang.
Despite the protagonist being a total asshole, he doesn't really deserve what happens to him. The main story is meant to be the usual cautionary tale on vigilantism, not "Hydra writes succubus killing people that piss him off", so don't worry about that. I know "people writing fanfic about public people they dislike getting killed gruesomely" has become a thing, but I personally think that's weak writing and try to avoid it.
I also did get to do some nice research on various red light areas in Japan. Tobita Shinchi is a real-life red light district in Osaka (and the Yakuza will beat the shit out of you if you try to film there). Yoshiwara is the infamous red-light district of old Tokyo and still has some adult premises today. I did take some liberties with the street in the story as I don't think you find street prostitutes on the same streets as the soaplands (although I might be wrong on this).
Yes, I write porn, but I still like to properly research my porn!
I hope you enjoy this little 3K word taster. Work on finalising the collection is going well and I hope to reveal more details throughout October.
Work on the short story collection is progressing quite nicely.
I have a rough running order sorted out. It will be around 80K words and about half of that will be brand new material. I'll only be taking six stories out of the existing stockpile, which means I still have quite a few left for future collections.
As for the new material.
I've arranged the various segments of the main [succubus tablet] story into some semblence of order. Overall it will be 20-25K words. Rather than intersperse it through the collection like I did with "Locked in with a Succubus", I'm going to break it into four chunks. This also gives me a chance to introduce relevant characters in separate short stories before they show up in the main one.
This one is fairly complex and the main reason it's been so long since I last put a collection out. Thankfully, it's pretty much done. All the pieces are written and typed up. I just have the final (short) segment to write and then edit everything.
"Mage vs Succubus Slime" is now fully typed up. That's 5K words and features a succubus slime getting to sexily level drain a mage in a fantasy setting. (Although there's a lot more going on than first appears).
"Outcall with a Succubus" is the third. I was hoping I'd have that written and typed up by now, but it's been one of those stories that has fought me all the way. On the plus side, at one point I was worried it would come across as a quick throwaway just to have Nicole in the collection, but now it is shaping up to have a hot and interesting sex scene. Nicole is showing a more feral side in this one, so I think it's going to go longer than the originally planned 5K words. Most of it is written now and I've started typing it up.
What will take me beyond this week and the end of September is the need for an additional story. There are a lot of connections between stories in this one as my various characters interact with each other. It would arguably be a very loose novel apart from a couple of stories in the middle that don't really have any connection with the others. While a lot of the characters will be familiar to long-time readers, I also wanted the collection to make sense to anyone picking that up as a first book. Fortunately, I do have existing stories that perform that role quite nicely. Aside from one character - Koontz. So, I need to write a new stort where one of his succubi gets to do her thing. I have a pretty good idea of what this story should be and it should be fairly straightforward to write. It will also feature a guest appearance from one of the HoHH harlots, whose art I've posted a little teaser of above.
My original plan was to have everything written and typed up by the end of September. Aside from the need for an additional story popping up, I'm still fairly close to that. I think one more week should hopefully be enough to get everything written, typed up, and edited.
I will have something to post for patrons at the end of the month. I'll let you have an early look at one of the [succubus tablet] story segments. So look out for that next week.
As for returning to art previews and the harlot spotlights, I'll see how the week goes. If I've got the writing and typing up done and I'm just on the editing, I'll post on Thursday/Friday as normal. If not, I'll put it back a week to make sure I have no distractions.
Work on the collection is rattling along nicely. There is a reason this one took so long to put together. It has a fairly complex structure. I jokingly likened my collections to music albums a few years ago. If that's the case, this is the really complex prog-metal concept album where every song is titled "something: part x". (Funnily enough, one of the short story characters is named after Arjen Lucassen.)
I'm at the point where I'm starting to edit the new stories and assign character names. (For those that don't know, I usually use 'MG' or similar codes for character names and don't actually assign a name to the character until the final edit.)
I'm conscious that me going off into the writing bunker for a month to get this done doesn't leave a lot to give hungry patrons while I'm busy on it. (Although I am planning to preview excepts and one of the new stories here next month). One thing I can do is let people put their name (or someone else's name) on the various lucky succubus victims in the upcoming collection. Now, this is an erotica page and I'm writing an erotic horror short story collection, so I can understand people not wanting to dox their real names. So, I generally encourage people to state it's a made-up name, even if it is in fact their real name, or name of their friend, or that irritating neighbour two doors name. No-one needs to be any the wiser.
Now for the new stories where these names will be used.
First, some unexpected news. I need to write an additional story. The collection is a sort of concept album. About a third of the word count is on a single multi-part story. This features a lot of cameo appearances from my roster of reoccuring characters. In fact, most of the stories in the collection have reoccuring characters cropping up in each other's stories. The way I've structured it is that each reoccuring character showing up in the main story also has an appearance in a preceding short story to "introduce" them. I was fortunate enough that my stockpile of unused stories contains a story for each character I can use. With one exception. I don't have a spare Koontz story. This means I need to write one for the collection. I have an idea, so hopefully I'll be able to rattle it off quickly. It's going to also use Kiki Sumoppai from HoHH. I think she might work well as a Bond-girl femme fatale assassin. Her aphrodisiac boob fumes are extremely potent if she can get the target trapped in a confined space.
So that's one character - a "spy" taken out by femme fatale Kiki Sumoppai.
Then there are the other new stories.
There is no option for the Nicole story sadly. "Outcall with a Succubus" is going to be a direct sequel to "Incall with a Succubus", and feature the same protagonist.
"Mage vs Succubus Slime" is an odd one. It does require a protagonist name, but it's only mentioned at the very end. That does feature a very comfy pink succubus slime, so if you'd like to be the one enveloped in sexy succubus slime girl, let me know.
That leaves the main [succubus tablet] story, and there are plenty of options there. The nameless succubus from the tablet is very busy this collection. Her victims are mostly asshole victims, so most of them aren't particularly pleasant characters. Here is a list:
- an old goth rocker (bit of a lech, but not as bad as the others). - a celebrity rapist (inspired by the Depp case, but if the actor was worse than Weinstein). - a Tory MP (a right-wing politician, but this one is a fairly normal family guy trying to do a good job rather than the usual corrupt stereotype). - a god-fearing gun-nut teen that shot some people, possibly in self defence, and is tormented by what he's done (not Rittenhouse, but I used that real-life case as inspiration for the character). - a feminist male "ally" (not a caricature or secret serial killer, like I've done with previous interpretations - this one's a fairly normal student).
There is also a nuisance streamer, but I think I'm just going to go with Tommy Tonali or something similar for that guy.
There are also a lot of various minor characters (friends and such) that have mentions, if someone would rather sneak their name in discreetly rather than assigning it to a main character.
So if you'd like to see your/a name in the next collection, put it in the comments below (or DM me if you'd want to be more private) with any preferences for a character to use it on. I'll be running on a "if it sounds right for the character" principle rather than first come, first served, so no rush.
I typed up about 7,000 words of the [succubus tablet] story. About four and a half of the sub-stories are typed up, which still leaves the 6th piece and a lot of short interludes that move the plot to the climax.
I'm really happy with how the collection is snapping together. It reinforces how most of these stories are taking place in a shared setting, and you'll get to see various characters move in and out of stories and hint at their own plots taking place in the background. The danger of this is it might confuse first-time readers, but I have a way to fix that. The [succubus tablet] story is the main spine of the collection, with separate parts sprinkled through it. Various recurring characters will show up in some of the parts, but I'll also be able to place a standalone short story featuring them before their appearance in the main story, so they shouldn't feel like characters coming in 'from the cold' so to speak.
It's a complicated little puzzle, but it is coming together very nicely.
The one story that is being a little slow is the Nicole story. It's a direct sequel to "Incall with a Succubus" and also ties into some of the other characters and plots. I just need to figure out the sex scene at the moment, while also keeping it understandable for people that haven't read "Incall".
There is still a fair bit of work to do - mainly in typing up and editing. I still want the majority of it done in September so I can get back to HoHH as fast as possible. This means I'm going to have to work my ass off next week! To remove distractions, I'll skip the art previews and you might not hear much from me until the usual update post next Sunday - hopefully with the news the collection is pretty much done aside from editing and formatting.
Right, back to it.
Thanks for the interest and support. - manyeyedhydra
I had a slight wobble last week and failed the get the usual harlot spotlight out. That one is written now, so it should go out Thursday as normal for $5 and higher tiers.
In the meantime, I'll continue to preview harlots that already received their spotlight a month or so ago.
This week it's the great pitcher plant Aphroú Kanáta ton Ouránia. Not the easiest one to draw, so I think Marwmellow did a good job with her.
Now I need to write that sidequest with Sapoonis, so we can have a nice piece of both having soapy fun with the player! (I'm going to go broke commissioning art of this project at this rate! :D )
The start of it was tied up with getting the details ready for the next art commission. There's some special stuff in that, so I'm interested in how those will come out and look forward to showing the pieces off when they come in. (The commission was a little... spicier this time. ;) )
Then... politics.
I consider myself an entertainer, and I'm a firm believer that because of the inherently divisive nature of politics and that any entertainer's audience is likely going to contain people with a wide range of beliefs, values, and political affiliations, an entertainer's role is to shut the fuck up and entertain. As a result, I try (not always successfully) to keep my own personal politics out of what I write.
I'm here to write succubus smut. And also a bit of succubus horror.
Mostly, I want the stories to be good and have more fleshed-out characters than you would normally see in erotica. I also like to take what's going on in the world as inspiration for stories. Mainly to give them more depth. There are only so many variations of the classic 'young clueless man walks into strip club/brothel and gets sucked dry by succubus' story you can write. So, there are little bits of politics sprinkled in. I try to play it fair though. My succubi are very equal opportunities. You're all prey to them. My stories have seen succubi take out racists, rapists, murderers, corrupt politicians, corrupt religious clergy, and other assorted assholes. And a lot of naive people. I'm really vicious on the naive. If there is a common recurring theme outside the usual cosmic justice, it's 'don't be fucking naive and put yourself in a dangerous situation'. I think I blogged about that and called it cosmic injustice a few years back.
Ironically, as an aside, once you add strong erotic elements to the horror, people prefer the cosmic injustice stories to the classic cosmic justive tropes. I think they'd probably prefer more people to survive the snu-snu as well, but what can I say, Horror-head is a hungry god and must be fed.
One of the themes I've been playing around with in stories over the past few years is to expand the roster of asshole villain types. In mainstream entertainment that has shrunk over the years to the point that if you see a rich, straight, white man with conservative leanings in a show or movie, they're probably going to be revealed as the villain. Once it shrinks that much, it starts to get predictable and boring. I'll still keep feeding them to Koontz's Big Black Bed, but I did want to add a bit more variety from some more modern tropes, and also balance it with some examples from the other side of the political aisle. Inspired by the frequency of it happening online, I wrote the 'male feminist is actually a threats to women' trope in "AProudMaleFeminist gets Creamed". This trope is pretty easy to write - it's basically the old ' pious religious leader is secretly an evil hedonist' trope updated to modern day.
Then we come to the upcoming collection. The main [SuccubusTablet] story is a riff on the classic dangers-of-vigilantism arc and features a far-left activist zealot using a succubus to assassinate people they don't agree with. Given the horrific events of the past week, that one... is a little more timely than I'd like.
I'll still go on with the release as planned, but the later half of the week was mainly a mess as my IRL socials blew up and kept me distracted. As a result I wasn't able to put out the regular harlot spotlight. That will go up, hopefully, next week. And while I've written more of the Nicole story, I didn't complete the first draft as I was hoping to.
Anyway. That's a lot of waffle. As a reward for putting up with it, here's one of the recent harlot pinup art pieces I've received.
And now, back to writing and hopefully next week the update will just be succubus smut and nothing but succubus smut.
Art preview today is Veronicella. I can think of two good reasons to like the piece.
Ahem.
Slug girls are fairly difficult to make sexy, so great work from marwmellow here.
I still don't know where to put Veronicella.
Her game mechanics are a better fit for the wrestling faction.
She does give the sensual body massages that fit well with the sensuality group, but I'm not convinced she's a fervent follower of using her gifts to bring pleasure rather than just eat them...
Oh well, she can stay there for now.
I hope you like the art. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
The start of the week was a little wobbly as the last "short" from the new [succubus tablet] story decided to fight a little. I managed to get it finished, but it was a slower start to the week than I was hoping for. All the parts for the complex [succubus tablet] story are written aside from the final closing section (which I'll do after I've typed up all the other parts).
I then tucked into the "Mage vs Succubus Slime" story. The first draft of that is very close to done. Just the last bits to be "sucked" out, so to speak. ;)
That just leaves the Nicole story to write. If I can get that done next week, I'll start feeling confident I can get everything done on the new collection in September.
As for HoHH progress, I received the latest batch of art from Marwmellow. That's more lovely harlot pinups to add to the game. And don't forget, if people want to "adopt" a favourite and commission a more explicit H-scene to be included in the game, get in touch. My art budget is a little stretched at the moment, so any help on that front much appreciated.
I also continued to write the notebook sections for the low-tier harlots, so that's still ticking along nicely.
It's time to talk a little bit about the next collection of short stories I'm working on. It's been 10 years since my last collection (A Succubus for St Patricks Day). I didn't really intend for the gap to be that long, but things happen.
While most of my time has been spent on HoHH, I have been writing new shorts stories here and there. Some might become 1st chapters of novels, so I'm going to hold them back for now. Overall, I probably have enough for a couple of collections.
One of the things holding me back from just dumping them in a new collection is I like my collections to have a consistent structure. They all have 13 stories. There is always a succubus tablet story, there is always a Nicole story, and there is always a [RPG Class] vs Succubus|Monster Girl story. I did consider breaking that format just to get something out, but the main issue is the succubus tablet story is usually essential. It provides the title story for the collection and also sets out the loose themes for the collection.
The succubus tablet story for this collection is… complex.
The succubus tablet stories in previous collections tended to follow a similar formula – protagonist finds succubus tablet, succubus appears promising sexual pleasures and to solve various problems the protagonist might have, those problems are solved in a way that is far worse than the protagonist intended, and finally the succubus reveals her true nature and takes his soul. "A Succubus for Remembrance" broke that formula by having the owner of the tablet off screen and instead following the man the succubus had been sent after to torment and kill. The succubus tablet story for this collection is similar to that, but split across multiple shorts from the perspectives of the various people the succubus takes out. I tried to be a little more inventive for those kills than "succubus rides victim cowgirl-style and sucks their soul out".
The individual shorts are fairly straightforward. It gets a little complex when the use of the succubus tablet attracts the attention of more powerful players. That results in a few surprise cameos leading up to a final short that brings everything together.
At one point I did think about making the collection a stealth novel, where all the short stories initially seem standalone, but are then revealed as all part of the same story of the nameless succubus being sent to seduce and kill various seemingly unconnected targets.
There were a couple of problems with that. Firstly, I didn't think the idea was strong enough to sustain a 70-80K word book. And secondly, it wouldn't be using any of the short stories I have lying around. That wouldn't be too big of a problem, as I'd just move them to the next collection, but it would require writing a full novel from scratch, which would be too much of a disruption to the current HoHH project.
The succubus tablet story will probably end up taking a good chunk of the word count – maybe a third or just over. And the plan is to intersperse the seemingly unconnected parts of it among the other stories.
The main issue I have is I can't really finalise the full running order until I've typed up all the pieces of the succubus tablet story and know its full word count.
There are some hard considerations I want to stick to in order of importance:
1) Total length around 80K words.
2) Inclusion of brand new, never-before-seen [Nicole] and [vs] stories.
3) Inclusion of some short stories that fit the loose theme of the collection. Those are "A Trial in Vennington", "AProudMaleFeminist gets Creamed", "Joey Farrell Walks into an Obvious Booby Trap", and maybe "The Good, the Bad, and the Monstrous Beauty."
4) 13 stories.
The 80K word count takes precedence over the 13 stories, but I'm fine with shunting that up or down (mainly down) a little if it gives me the "magic" 13.
I have some flexibility with the [succubus tablet] story. I can either count that as 1 story and fill out the rest of the collection with the shortest stories in my stockpile. Or count each of the parts with a sex scene as a short story (there are 6), and round out the collection with some of the longer stories I have lying around. I should have a better idea once I've typed up the [succubus tablet] story and know how many words I have left to play with.
And now the important part – how much work and time will this collection take?
I have quite a few short stories finished and ready, so I have a fair bit of flexibility over which ones are included. Those will just need a final edit to correct anything I missed off before posting them the first time around.
There are three stories to write – [succubus tablet] (the longest and most complex one), [vs], and [Nicole story].
As of this post, the first draft of the [succubus tablet] story is done aside from the final ending piece, which I'll leave until after I've typed up the rest of it.
I did have the first draft of a [vs] story written, but I think I might push it back to the next collection. Too many stories bashing the same targets and it starts to get anvilicious and tedious. Its theme also better fits the light theme I'm aiming for in the next collection, which is sometimes you shouldn't just blindly follow what people tell you. Stories like "Safe Sex", "The Banquet of the Queen of the Goblins", "Chad's Challenge", and "The Real Money Shot", all fit that theme perfectly, so that collection is also pretty much close to done and I hope to get that ready same time next year.
Instead I have another slightly goofier [vs] story that's been half-complete for a while. I just need to write the final Bad End sex scene where an RPG Mage falls victim to a magic-immune, amorous slime girl.
That leaves the [Nicole] story. This is another one that was started a while back. (So long in fact, I need to switch some of the real-life politicians hinted at in the story as they are no longer in the same party or even in politics anymore). I already have a rough idea of the plot and it nicely links Nicole with a couple of other characters within the universe.
I think I should be able to get everything done in a month, but as a safety valve, I will only be using September. HoHH is still the number one priority, and I'm not going back to jumping from project to project, and never finishing anything. If I do get stuck on writing or typing up one of the stories, then everything stops at the end of September and I put the plans for publishing the collection on hold until next year.
Also, while I'm working on the collection, I'll also be working on the notebook segments for the low-tier harlots in HoHH. Currently, I'm working through and writing them. Doing them all together should make it easier to standardise them.
As for what I'll be putting out for patron/subscribers in September. I still have a lot of harlot art to show off (marwmellow just sent me a new batch of finished pieces this morning), so the art previews and harlot spotlights will continue as normal.
Also, while I won't be posting the full stories I'm working on (I need to have some stories that are collection-exclusive and not found anywhere else), I will post some little teasers and maybe one of the parts from the multi-part [succubus tablet] story.
Expect more news on the collection as I get closer to putting it out.
I skipped the art preview last week to make room for the HoHH release. Getting it back on track, here is Cerastesia (although I'm not 100% happy with her name, so that might change).
She is the sister of Calliophi and a much more fiery and passionate personality. She likes a sensual dance with her visitors.
The original sketch was supposed to be for Calliophi, but it didn't really fit her so I added Cerastesia to the commission and had marwmellow use it for her instead.
I hope you like the art. Let me know what you think below.
First up, I finally got the slime smother nun (Voluptua Obruo) release out. The details of that are in a previous post.
My replacement laptop also showed up a little quicker than expected, which meant I could also update the houseofhellishharlots website at the start rather than the middle of the week and get back to regular activities.
This left most of the week clear for the next activity.
I mentioned at the start of the year I would be setting aside a month to get a new short story collection out. I did want to do that after finishing all the round 5 elite harlots, but I also wanted to drop the new collection sometime around Halloween, which is looming, so that month needs to be pretty much now.
Even though most of my focus has been on HoHH, I've still been sneaking out the odd short story here and there. I've nearly got enough for two collections. What needs to be written are the staples that show up in every collection - a Nicole story, a Succubus Tablet story, and usually some variation of "[RPG-Class] vs Succubus (or monster girl)". I'll probably drop more details on this in a post sometime next week.
The Succubus Tablet story for this one is a little complex. Rather than focus on the person possessing the tablet, it focuses on the persons the succubus is sent to assassinate. I thought I'd do something similar to what I did with "Locked in with a Succubus" (from A Succubus for Freedom) and scatter the parts through the whole collection. Hopefully, it should work better this time as the parts are standalone shorts in their own right that just happen to be part of a larger story that is resolved with the final piece.
I have two of the shorts already written from a while back. The plan is for 6 H-scene shorts of the succubus in action, a 7th short resolving the whole story, and 4-5 fragments filling in some of the gaps as some of my regular characters put in an appearance. I didn't mess around at all this week and wrote 3 of the shorts, and 4 of the fragments. That's pretty much writing 3 short stories in a week, so that's pretty fast for me. I'm hoping I have that same productivity mood when I finally get around to writing Succubus Summoning 301. At that rate I could probably write the first draft in a month!
This is exactly the start I wanted to make (and the nameless succubus is quite creative with her 'kills' when let off the leash). The succubus tablet story is the most complex piece for the collection, so if I can get that out of the way, the rest is more straightforward. Ideally I'd like it all done (first drafts, typing up, editing, ebook formatting) by the end of September, so I can give myself some PR time to hype the collection up before dropping it on Amazon (and other online stores) around Halloween.
I haven't forgotten HoHH. The other thing I was doing this week (yes, I've been very busy. :) ) was writing the notebook sections for the low-tier harlots. I'll continue doing this while working on the collection.
Thanks for the interest and support. - manyeyedhydra
My replacement laptop showed up a little earlier than expected, so I'm gradually getting full internet access back.
I was able to update the houseofhellishharlots website with the new release. Also the Embed Twine plugin I was using appears to be working again, so no more opening text version in a new tab.
The public text demo has been updated to v0.056 (this adds Temptacia).
The private text demo has been updated to v0.058 (this adds Mother Voluptua Obruo). The new password for the private demo is: v0LUP2u@ (zero instead of capital O in the password)
The website might still look a little funky on mobile devices. It's on my todo list to get that cleaned up.
Testing yesterday went fairly smoothly, so the demo version v0.058 of House of Hellish Harlots is finally ready. Because I also commissioned pinup art of Voluptua back when I commissioned the batch of other harlot "elites", I can show that off as well.
This is the text-only version of HoHH, which currently has all the harlots (83!). It's also been a long gap between text-only releases. Originally, my plan was to put out Voluptua at the end of February. This was knocked off course by a combination of adding new features to the art version of HoHH (1.5), elites being much longer scenarios to write in general, and a lean period through June and July where I didn't get much writing done. I'm hoping you don't have to wait that long for the next one! (Tentatively, a harem of sexy imps.)
The 0.058 release again adds a single harlot. This is another Elite. In the final game they will only be encountered on specific rounds and have multiple sub-scenarios to give them replayability. For now they are free-roaming and can be requested from The Madam the same as the other harlots.
Now onto the new harlot.
Mother Voluptua Obruo Voluptua is a Mother of Suffocation from the Sanctum of Strangulated Sighs. She is a tar-pillow cushionblob (a black slime girl, basically) that fashions her malleable body into the form of a fetish nun in what looks like a kinky latex nun's habit. She also uses her malleable form to erotically smother the player while squeezing out their cum.
The mechanics of her sub-scenarios are fairly similar to Temptacia's. She will present the player with the choice of 2 sub-scenarios (from 5), with an extra 6th scenario being selectable on all visits. With Voluptua, the choice is what the player would like to be erotically smothered with (ass, boobs, etc).
This is the standard blueprint for the elites - multiple sub-scenarios. Because they are the only harlots present on their round (or will be in the final game), they are essentially 4- or 5-harlots-in-1 to make up for it.
The Round 5 elites are not intended to be too difficult. Although, because of how her mechanics work, Voluptua is a little more dangerous in this demo version where she's not fixed to any particular round.
Her mechanics are fairly straightforward, so I don't think she'll be too difficult to "solve".
This is the text-only version of HoHH, so it comes as a single .html file. Double-click it to run the game in your default internet browser.
I will also be updating the houseofhellishharlots.com website to have the new version later in the week when my new laptop shows up. As I mentioned in the weekly update post, I'm currently having to access the internet through an old backup computer with a knackered keyboard.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy being erotically smothered by Mother Voluptua Obruo's many sexy techniques. Apologies for making you wait so long for this one. Let me know how you find it below.
First up, the wifi network adaptor for my main laptop has died, meaning I no longer have internet access with that machine. I was about due needing a new laptop anyway, so I have a new one ordered, which should show up next week sometime. In the meantime I have partial internet access through a backup laptop that is old, slow, and has a dodgy keyboard.
Thankfully, this hasn't affected development too much, but I'll probably be off discord and other places until the replacement laptop comes through sometime next week.
Slime Smother Nun now has a name - Mother Voluptua Obruo.
Last week went roughly to plan. I finished typing her up, left it a day, edited the manuscript and then implemented her in Twine. Implementation took a day longer than anticipated through a combination of Elite harlots being about the size of 4 regular harlot scenarios and a faulty attempt to fit her to HoHH1.5 coding rules.
She is mostly implemented. I just need to add the Elegant Woman and Portly Gentleman "scoring" sections then give everything a thorough testing. I should be able to get that done either today or early tomorrow. I'll have to do some memory stick juggling to transfer the file over to this machine, but unless something untoward crops up, I should have the full release out sometime tomorrow.
Nearly there! Thanks for your patience and support. - manyeyedhydra
Continuing the art previews, here is another mid-tier harlot from the Artificial Beings faction.
Va-kyuuma loves to put men in her vac-bed and give them a good long suck.
Art is by marwmellow. I like the piece, but wish I'd planned the factions out more in advance to give them different colour schemes. Va-kyuuma looks very similar to the smotherbuses.
On the other hand, part of the gameplay of HoHH is figuring out which factions the harlots belong to, so having a few with appearances that might confuse the player might be fine.
I hope you like the art. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
I kept plugging away on Slime Smother Nun and got about 7-8,000 words typed up. Not superfast, but steady progress, which I'll take at this point. All 5 of her sub-scenarios are pretty much typed up. I just have her insta-Bad-End option to do (a shorter sub-scenario leading directly to Bad End) and some smaller core pieces. Maybe 1-2K words total.
My plan for next week is to finish the typing up, leave it for a day or two, come back and edit it, and then implement it. I'm hoping she'll be ready by this time next week or just after, depending on how the implementation goes. Unlike Rwberia, her mechanics are fairly straightforward, so I'm hoping that part will be pretty smooth.
The other work I did this week was on a slightly changed side project. My plans at the start of the year did include getting a new short story collection out. I was roughly aiming for around Halloween for that and the plan was to take a month off to finish the last remaining stories and do all the editing and formatting. I did want to put that off until after I'd done all of the round 5 mini-bosses (I should probably just call them elites), but adding the notebook functionality (which I need to get back to for the individual harlots) and getting really bogged down with the slime nun has thrown me off schedule. Halloween is starting to get close, so - once the slime smother nun is out - I'll use the rest of Aug and as much of Sep as needed to get the next collection together. The run in to the end of the year will then be to get the Imp Harem elites added and get a proper working demo of the art version of HoHH out. It's a little less than I'd have liked at the start of the year. This is why adding new features mid-project is a Bad Idea! (I'm hoping the notebook functionality will be worth it though).
A much better week overall. Hopefully the next update post will be the release notes for the slime smother nun. Fingers crossed!
Thanks for the interest and support. - manyeyedhydra
I think I've paused it enough to catch up. Time to restart the art previews for the $1 tiers.
This will cover the mid-tier harlots. I don't have full profiles for them yet. I'll write those when I come to add them to the 1.5 Art version of HoHH. That will be after the round 5 mini-bosses and notebook functionality for the low-tier harlots. Both of which have proven a little tricky and time-consuming, but are - gradually - getting done.
Art for this week is the artificial being Nef 0-CWMWL. I've had this for a while as originally I was commissioning batches in faction order, before changing that to tier-level.
Art is by marwmellow.
I hope you like her. Let me know your thoughts below.
The main goal for this week was to try and get things back on track again.
It was a little mixed. I had some other IRL stuff to fix as well. The crypto exchange I use to pay marwmellow recently upgraded their security, so I had to get that sorted out in order to get access back to my account. Thankfully, that does appear to be sorted out and I was able to pay marwmellow what I owed him from the previous batch and also get the next batch of harlots commissioned.
I was hoping to put the imp harem in that batch, but I'm still in the middle of brainstorming them. I have their game mechanics figured out, but I need to figure out what H-scenes to give them. I didn't want it to default back to the usual boobs, ass, sex, oral scenes I've been using for the other mini-bosses. It will likely be those regulars, but I want to add a sensual harem-girl twist to them.
Typing up Slime Smother Nun was still a little stuck, but I was finally able to get her moving again near the end of the week. Her vagina and ass smother scenes are now typed up. Hopefully I'll be able to continue this and make good progress on typing up her remaining scenes next week. I know people have been waiting expectantly for her and I'm sorry things got a little stuck in June/July.
I'll continue plugging away on the Smother Nun and hope to get her out ASAP.
Thanks for your patience and support. - manyeyedhydra
As mentioned in the previous post showing off some lovely Tete Khantu art, the Slime Smother Nun is still giving me problems. I felt the deadline pressure was locking me up again, so I took another few days off to try and shift it.
Normally I partition my day 4-5 hours on 1st drafts, 2-3 hours typing up, and 2-3 hours coding. This means that if I'm running slow on something, I'm still moving on something else. Unfortunately, when I'm behind, that gets thrown out of the window and everything is devoted to the current thing. Sometimes this works (the coding earlier in the year, especially when the notebook functionality proved more complex than I thought). Other times it blocks everything.
With hindsight I think I should have just started writing the Imp Harem scenario, not cared about getting Nun out, and kept working on her in her designated slot. July has ended up being pretty much a write-off month, with getting Nun's first draft fully written being the only positive.
I know the mechanics for the Imp Harem mini-boss, so I'll try and see if going back to my usual designated hours gets things moving again. At least then, if Nun still remains very stuck, I'll still be making progress on other HoHH features.
As usual, if I have a bad week, you all get to see some nice artwork early. Not only did the last batch have some nice Tete Khantu art (thanks to Crimson Crown), it also included the high-tier independents. Here is a lovely pinup of Hiru no-Koochi. She's eager to give you a good suck.
I think marwmellow did a fantastic job with her!
Apologies for the slow month. I'll force that tighter partitioning next week and see if that gets things moving again. - manyeyedhydra
