Wrapping up 2020

So, 2020 was... a year.

It was mostly an up, then down, then up year for me.  As a writer, I didn't think the lockdown would affect me too much, but it turns out being confined to a rural village and only going out to the local supermarket and back would put the head in a little box.  All things considered, that was likely an above average experience compared to everyone else, so I can be thankful for that.

Writing productivity for the most part was good at the start of the year, went a bit messy in the middle of the year where I had one month where not a lot got done at all, and then finished strongly at the end of the year.

House of Hellish Harlots
This was my big project for the year.  I'm still excited about it as I think it will make a good H-game.  I made some good progress at the start of the year, the wheels fell off in the middle, and then I refocused and got it back on track in the last few months.  Currently I'm up to version 0.014.  There are 21 harlots for the player to choose and 4 of the 'mechanics' NPCs are implemented.  In writing content alone, it probably already matches most H-games, although I will need to look at commissioning art at some point.  In 2021 I want to get that public demo out to try and gauge what kind of budget I'll have to play with if I do want to evolve it beyond a text game.

Where I erred was underestimating the complexity.  The core game loop was fairly simple.  Letting each harlot scenario get more and more complex was not sustainable given how many the game needs.  That was what caused me to lose focus.  Thankfully, I had a rethink, and have been steadily writing new scenarios since late October.

H-space Bestiary
This was the escape project of sorts.  I want to flesh out those stories and turn them into a themed collection.  The Sun Lamia received a 3rd rewrite and became "Sun, Snakes and the Great Uncle Fergus Stash."  There will be more.  That will likely be something I fit in between work on HoHH, with an aim of finally getting a full collection together.

2020 was also a year of finishing off some of the half-written short stories I have lying around.

"Breastfeeding as a Combat Art" was another H-space story I put out for patrons.  I was undecided on this one.  It didn't come out as well as I'd have liked, so I think it will join the others for a future tweak.

I felt much better about "A Sweet and Deadly Taste of Milk".  This is more where I want the H-space stories to be, although maybe not all 7K words.

General Short Stories
Length was a definite theme to the short stories I put out this year.  I didn't write that many new stories, but the ones I did were long.

I finally finished "The Succubus Heart Squad".  That was a story I intended for a Literotica Valentine's Day competition and failed to finish.  I ran it as a min-serial on the blog for a while and that too failed to finish.  But this year I went back and finally completed it for Lit's Valentine's Day comp.  At 11.5K words it was a bit of a monster.

So too was "The Succubus in Mr Herbert's Summer House".  That was a spur of the moment idea I wanted to enter Lit's Summer contest, but that ballooned to 11K words and went in the Halloween contest instead.  It also presented me with an interesting little novel idea I have filed away to be worked on later.

In continuing the theme of finishing off half-written stories, the main story I wanted to enter for Halloween is another story that's been hanging around for a while.  That one I didn't finish, mainly because I had another spur of the moment idea inspired by a viral social media video and foolishly tried to work on both simultaneously.  Unsurprisingly, I failed to finish them in time.

This turned out not to be that bad, as the one I did finish, "The Subway Succubus" was rejected for being a little too nasty.  With both "The Succubus in Mr Herbert's Summer House" and this, I was trying to use some more conventional horror themes.  In the case of "The Subway Succubus", a really icky fate for one of the protagonists.  I don't blame Literotica for deciding that was a bit too much!  It was also another lengthy story at nearly 7K words.

-

So, a mixed year overall.

Most of these were Patreon-exclusives.  That will likely continue as it's now a regular source of income.  It's not much, but I'm fairly prudent and it pays the bills.  I would like to get some new Amazon ebooks out, though, as it has been a painfully long time since the last one.  While they've kept their Orwellian tendencies quiet for a while, having Patreon as a main funding source is still a big risk considering how randomly ban-happy they can be. In 2021 I might see if I can mirror things on Subscribestar, which will make the exclusives available for people that refuse to have anything to do with Patreon.

Anyway, the fireworks are going off, it's time to grab a beer or six.  I wish a Happy New Year to you all and let's hope 2021 is better!
- manyeyedhydra

A belated November update

Apologies for the belated update.  I've had some dental work done which has knocked me about a bit (having bits of metal screwed into your skull will do that!).

So, what has Hydra been up to?

As part of my commitment to patrons, I've been looking at posting story ideas from my ideas file and behind-the-scenes looks at some of my stories.  I wanted to do a piece on H-space, but I wasn't really happy with how that piece was turning out.  Mostly, I was unhappy with how long it was taking.  When I'm in slow, scratchy periods of writing, pieces like that sometimes eat up far too much of the day.  That's time that should be spent writing fiction or creating CYOAs.

(This is the reason I stopped writing the more general blog posts on other subjects – I'm not very quick at writing them and it's time that should be spent writing more useful things.)

I don't want to stop writing those pieces, or the game reviews, walkthrough etc.  Currently I'm experimenting with zoning off bits of the day so I can write these bits'n'bobs without suddenly looking up and realising I've wasted most of the day dicking about on some less-important paragraphs when I could have been bashing out another short story/chapter.

I'll come back to the H-space behind-scenes-stuff article at a later date.  I've been trying to think about what to do with the H-space bestiary.  I think I can make a good collection (or collections) with the material I have, but I think the current stories need a little more fleshing out before I'd be comfortable publishing them (and others) as an ebook.

In the meantime, I've set aside an hour a day.  I'll use it for the more general posts to keep both the manyeyedhydra blog ticking over with new content as well as give some nice behind-scenes insights for patrons.

(Although, for the next week it's mostly going to be needed for filing my tax returns.  Blegh.)

As for actual writing.  That was a little spotty about the time of having dental work, but is moving quite rapidly again.  The first draft of the boob monster girl story is pretty much done and I'm about 2K words into typing it up.  I'm hoping to have that done in the next couple of days.  It will be a patreon exclusive, I'm afraid, but only a temporary one.  I'm getting close to enough material for another ebook, and it will be included in the next collection.

I put the CYOA on the backburner a little while I was focused on getting the boob monster girl sort story written.  That should jump back to the forefront now the first draft of said boob monster girl story is done.  I'm targeting end December/early January for that, although it might slip depending on how difficult the central mechanic proves to implement in Twine.

And that's that for this week.  I'm still looking to find the right day for these update posts, so expect them to slide around a little until I find a slot that fits.

-manyeyedhydra

Updatery stuff - Escape the Pink Jelly Girl

First off, massive thank you to my patrons.  It means a lot.

Ideally I would have liked to have been in the middle of a serial when starting this, just so it wouldn't look like I'd taken the money and gone AWOL.  This hasn't happened.  I'm still working on the pink cushionblob CYOA scenario.  I did think about posting some of the scenes from this, but I think it would then make those scenes anticlimactic in the finished scenario.

As for that scenario - yeah, I over-complicated things for myself.  At the last count there are 11 End scenes of varying degrees of badness.  This is not including the various sexiness Volumpula gets up to with the player outside of those.  I think the final scenario will be a lot of fun, but I think for future scenarios I'll try and keep the sex scene count down to something more manageable so the waiting periods between releases aren't too long.

I was working on another short story, but I've temporarily put that aside to concentrate on finishing the cushionblob scenario.  My plan is to get back to it once the scenario is finished, as well as writing (or rather, finishing off, as I wrote half of it last year) a short story for Lit's Halloween competition.

Apologies for the brevity of the update.  Back to bouncy, sexy slime girl sex scenes.  Hopefully the next update will come with a finished beta version for people to have fun with.     

Update

Not playing Doom.  :)

Would like to as it looks and sounds amazing, but I don't have a machine with the oompth to run it.

The reason I've skipped a couple of weeks is the writing brain temporarily threw a cog.  It happens.  Usually I operate on an Advancing Wall of Doom (okay, self-imposed deadlines) approach to keep me focused on getting serials and short stories out.  This normally works aside from those occasions when the Advancing Wall of Doom gets too close, I put too much pressure on myself and the writing part of my brain locks up.

Nothing serious.  Normally I take a week off for a breather and then the writing machine starts running smoothly again.

The next H-space bestiary story is nearly ready.  I was hoping to have it up this week, but it ran over 1.5K words (again!) and isn't quite finished.  It should be up next week and with a bit of luck I'll start hitting my targets again.

Updates and a St Patrick's Day Sales Promotion on All Romance Ebooks

Yes, yes, there should be a Succubus Summoning 212, part 3 here, I know.  I knew that chapter was going to be a swine to write and likely slide around the weekly schedule until I got on top of it.  The next part has some interesting revelations and a bunch of exposition that was tricky to write.  My first draft didn't exactly nail it, which meant the typing up part was a little slower and more painful than normal.

There should be a new part out this week.  It's about 500 words and a decent edit away.  I was going to put it out tomorrow and shift the usual H-space slots back, but what I'll do instead is post the H-space MGB pieces in their usual slots (as they're already done) and bump SS212, pt3 to Saturday.  That'll give me a chance to triple-check I haven't borked the exposition passages.

In other news, it's St Patrick's Day tomorrow, so it would be rather remiss of me not to remind you of the appropriately themed collection of short stories I put out this time last year:

I liked the cover on this one, but for some reason the book didn't come out the gate with similar sales as the other collections.  One of those things, I guess.  Anyway, if you missed it the first time around, there are thirteen stories waiting for you to read, some of them brand new and appearing only within this book.

The other reason to mention St Patrick's Day is because my publisher, Excessica, has let me know they're part of a St Patrick's Day sale on All Romance Ebooks.  For that day Excessica's entire catalogue of books will be 25% off on All Romance Ebooks.  So, if you've found me recently through my stories/reputation and would like to see what my published work is like, tomorrow is a good time to pick up my previous books at a discount.

My books can be found on All Romance Ebooks here.

Also, here are the other books Excessica offers.  Give them a look and see if any take your fancy.

ETA:  Hmm.  Okay those links don't quite go to where I was hoping.  They're still easy to find.  Author -> M. E. Hydra in the top right search box on the page will take you to my books and Publisher -> Excessica Publishing will do the same for my publisher.

Further Update: The links now go to the correct places.  Thanks for the fix suggestion in the comments, Anon.

Literotica Halloween Contest Recap and Nov 2015 Update

The voting period for Literotica's Halloween Contest is over and they've announced the winners.  I didn't place, but to be honest I wasn't expecting to.  Both my entrants, "Snuff/Skin Flick" and "Chad's Challenge", are Bad End stories and generally it's the longer (sometimes very long!) stories with heart-warming endings that finish in the top 3.

One thing that did disappoint me was that I only managed to enter two stories.  The story I had originally planned to be a third entrant had an ending that was fine for a horror tale, but wouldn't work for erotica.  I had an alternate planned, but was not able to finish that in time.

Overall I liked the idea of using October as a short story challenge month.  November is normally the month for NaNoWriMo - where aspiring (and some grizzled!) writers attempt to blast out a 50K novel in a single month.  NaNoWriMo doesn't work for me as I write out all my first drafts longhand and it's not easy to keep track of the word count that way.  What I might do for future years is to instead use Literotica's Halloween Contest as a challenge to see how many short stories I can blast out in that three week period.  At least I've set a low bar there with only two entrants to beat!

Update time.

Currently I'm finishing off the two stories that didn't make the deadline.  One will likely end up being a mini-serial going out this month or next.  The other will be posted as soon as it's done.  There's a chance that one will kick up an online shitstorm, which might be fun. :D

"Sandwiched by Scyllas" is moving again.  I did the usual thing I do with stories that have derailed - start typing up the 2nd drafts early until I pick the thread back up again.

I want get these out of the way ASAP, so I can get on with the major task of finishing Succubus Summoning 201 and preparing it as an ebook to go out as soon as eXcessica has a spare slot.  I have some novel and novella ideas I'm keen to get on with, but I need to really get the second arc of that serial wrapped up satisfactorily first.  (This year would have likely been far more productive if I'd got those last two chapters finished this time last year!)

Writing Updates: Oct 19th, 2015

Somebody highlighted this on my twitter feed.

My first thought was:  Well, durr.  You people have become the Stop Having Fun people, and it's in the nature of youth to rebel against the Stop Having Fun people.

(@radicalbytes is the man behind Feminist Frequency, responsible for the Tropes vs. Women series on Youtube.)

In the past it was the religious morality brigade.  Nowadays it's authoritarian SJWs.  South Park has already lampooned it with PC Bros, it's only a matter of time before other comics lock the trope in.

This is nothing new.  The late 80s/early 90s saw a similar push for political correctness and trumpeted the arrival of the 'New Man' - in touch with his caring, sharing side.  By the mid 90s the New Man was soundly rejected by women as an unsexy wet drip and Political Correctness was buried beneath universal mockery.  This was the decade that saw the emergence of Lads' mags and Lad Culture in Britain.

The same cycle is repeating itself now.  Unfortunately, the viciousness of the more extreme fringe of activism is greater and more visible this time around because of social media.  And I think that means the resulting pushback will also be vicious.  My own personal opinion is that the average person is considerably less [foo]ist and [foo]phobic nowadays, but there's only so many times you can get hit in the head by a rock before you give in to the temptation to start throwing them back.  It's become a cottage industry (or, in some cases, a financially lucrative business) to throw a rock at a group, then scream harassment and seek sympathy when the riled-up group throws rocks back.

Where does that leave us?  Probably with a bunch of virulent anti-women misogynists when those 10 to 14-year-old boys, fed up of being constantly told they're the root of all evil, grow up.

And on that cheery note, it's time to get back to writing.

This week I'll be trying to finish off the two stories I have planned for the Literotica Halloween Contest.  It ended up not quite being the story bonanza I was hoping for.  Progress was a little too much on the stop/start side.  I suspect I might be going too long on my short stories (6-7K instead of 4-5K words) and not getting them finished fast enough.  I've noticed my productivity and enthusiasm for a story starts to wane once it drags past a certain number of days.  Getting an idea down in 2-3 days, while it's still fresh, is what I should be aiming for.

The second story features plenty of weirdness and dangerous snu snu.  That's typed up and should be posted in the next few days after I've finished editing it.

The third story references the #GamerGate controversy, so the response to that should be... interesting.  It also features an appearance of one of my regular characters.  Sort of.  I'm deep in the 1st draft for that one.  The closing date for the competition is the 22nd.  That might be tight, but I'll still post it even if I fail to make the deadline.

Originally I had another third story planned.  The first draft is nearly done on that one.  Horror-head and Erotica-head had a fight over the ending and Erotica-head rightly pointed out the original ending, as planned, would likely leave readers feeling like they'd been cheated out of some of the sexy stuff.  The story does have plenty of nice cliff-hanger moments, so I'll be running that here on the blog throughout November as a mini-serial.

Then it's back to getting the long-delayed "Sandwiched by Scyllas" ready for publication.  I'm hoping a break from banging my head against the wall trying to write the second half of that will get it flowing again.  Lots of tentacle goodness to come there. ;)

Breaking the Sandwiched by series out of the monthly cycle that wasn't doing me any good means I won't be immediately pressured to get the 5th done (currently pencilled in as the slightly voretastic "Sandwiched by Stomachs").  That means it will be time to do what people have been asking me for all year and bring Succubus Summoning 201 to a satisfying end.

This should have been when I tell you about a hot new story, but...

This week didn't exactly go to plan.  Actually the whole of August didn't exactly go to plan, considering I was too ill to do anything for half of it.

I did have a good idea for a (loosely) summer themed story for Literotica's current story contest.  It was last minute, but I reckoned I might be able to finish it this week and get it out before the deadline of Saturday midnight.  (This is also why the Violated Hero 5 updates have been absent this week).

Then I got distracted by the #GamerGate stuff and had to hack up one of those mental hairballs just to get rid of it.

Even then I thought I might make it, until I realised how long the story wanted to be.  By Friday I had typed up 7,500 words and just needed to finish the 1st draft, type up the rest, edit it and then get it in before midnight.  Didn't seem so bad, except the rest of the story ended up running to 21 pages.  The succubus decided she was going to give someone a thorough sexual working over in this story.  It's a new succubus character, but I think people will like her.  It's also a really steamy story.  Plenty of hot succubus sex in this tale.

You won't have to wait too long to read it.  I didn't make this deadline, but Literotica's Halloween contest isn't far off and pretty much all of my stories are appropriate for that theme.  It will give me a chance to properly edit it so I don't embarrass myself with tons of typos and grammar errors.  I'll let you all know as soon as it's posted.

On the positive side, as soon as I realised I wasn't going to make it I switched back to Succubus Summoning and finished typing 210 up.  I'll edit that over the next couple of days and it should be up next week sometime.

As for Violated Hero 5, I'll get back to that tomorrow.

And for me:

Stop getting distracted by political things...
Stop getting distracted by political things...
Stop getting distracted by political things...