Pat Powers's Blog: Pat Powers Goes BEYOND Outer Subspace!, page 10
June 16, 2019
What if there was no rape or sexual harassment -- the Dinosaur Conundrum!
Suppose we lived in a world where dinosaurs lived in our forests and jungles and plains and were dangerous and frequent predators of human beings.
Do you think movies about dinosaurs eating people (like Jurassic World) would be the same experience in a world where most people have uncles and cousins and brothers and sisters and parents and children who were eaten by dinosaurs?
Of course not, the movies would be a LOT scarier and would probably have trigger warnings attached to them. The dinosaurs would probably be treated a hell of a lot less sympathetically, too, not being a fantastic beast of old but a current and horrible problem.
By the same token, I don't think there was a LOT of recreational BDSM of the fun, consensual variety going on in the American South prior to, say, 1860. I'm sure there was some, human beings are human beings and we know that the bordellos of Europe offered entertainment for gentlemen that liked to tie up, cane and flog women, or be tied up, caned and flogged, etc.
But it wouldn't be as open or accepted as it is nowadays, given that nonconsensual slavery was a thing. What's going on in the culture has a LOT to do with how accepted entertainments and behaviors of various sorts of are, including sexual kinks.
That's why I think BDSM as she is now practiced is part and parcel of the success of feminism. Because we have granted women greater freedom and autonomy over their bodies, they get to use them in a wider variety of ways, for their own profit and pleasure, and for the profit and pleasure of others.
This is something many feminists do not “get.” They think BDSM of the maledom/femsub variety is symptomatic of patriarchal control of women. They ignore women who LIKE being submissives and try to deny them agency over their own bodies and decisions, without appearing too flagrantly to do so. They say submissive women have internalized the patriarchy and are acting out that internalization. They say such women are self-hating and need to be healthier and discouraged from doing all those awful things from the era of male dominance in all things.
This is not ALL feminists. There are plenty of sex-positive feminists and others who give submissive women agency to express their sexual desires just like anyone else. That's a mistake that a lot of anti-feminists make, conflating all feminists as one group. Feminism is a HUGE tent, and there are a lot of women who call themselves feminists for a lot of different reasons. Picking a fight with ALL feminists when you've only actually got an issue with SOME feminists is stupid.
But to get back to writing -- and yes, this is all related to writing, it's not just a political screed, though I'll admit it sure sounds like one – how about we take our thought experiment one step further? What if rape and sexual harassment were rare, very rare? I mean, what if women got raped about as often as people get eaten by sharks, or alligators? We know sharks and alligators are out there, and they're dangerous animals, but very few people actually worry about being attacked by them, because it happens so very rarely.
How would women behave in such a society? How would women in OUR society look to them? And how would THEY look to women in our society?
Thinking about it yields some interesting results for the thoughtful science fiction writer, but maybe for you, too. More on that later.
Do you think movies about dinosaurs eating people (like Jurassic World) would be the same experience in a world where most people have uncles and cousins and brothers and sisters and parents and children who were eaten by dinosaurs?
Of course not, the movies would be a LOT scarier and would probably have trigger warnings attached to them. The dinosaurs would probably be treated a hell of a lot less sympathetically, too, not being a fantastic beast of old but a current and horrible problem.
By the same token, I don't think there was a LOT of recreational BDSM of the fun, consensual variety going on in the American South prior to, say, 1860. I'm sure there was some, human beings are human beings and we know that the bordellos of Europe offered entertainment for gentlemen that liked to tie up, cane and flog women, or be tied up, caned and flogged, etc.
But it wouldn't be as open or accepted as it is nowadays, given that nonconsensual slavery was a thing. What's going on in the culture has a LOT to do with how accepted entertainments and behaviors of various sorts of are, including sexual kinks.
That's why I think BDSM as she is now practiced is part and parcel of the success of feminism. Because we have granted women greater freedom and autonomy over their bodies, they get to use them in a wider variety of ways, for their own profit and pleasure, and for the profit and pleasure of others.
This is something many feminists do not “get.” They think BDSM of the maledom/femsub variety is symptomatic of patriarchal control of women. They ignore women who LIKE being submissives and try to deny them agency over their own bodies and decisions, without appearing too flagrantly to do so. They say submissive women have internalized the patriarchy and are acting out that internalization. They say such women are self-hating and need to be healthier and discouraged from doing all those awful things from the era of male dominance in all things.
This is not ALL feminists. There are plenty of sex-positive feminists and others who give submissive women agency to express their sexual desires just like anyone else. That's a mistake that a lot of anti-feminists make, conflating all feminists as one group. Feminism is a HUGE tent, and there are a lot of women who call themselves feminists for a lot of different reasons. Picking a fight with ALL feminists when you've only actually got an issue with SOME feminists is stupid.
But to get back to writing -- and yes, this is all related to writing, it's not just a political screed, though I'll admit it sure sounds like one – how about we take our thought experiment one step further? What if rape and sexual harassment were rare, very rare? I mean, what if women got raped about as often as people get eaten by sharks, or alligators? We know sharks and alligators are out there, and they're dangerous animals, but very few people actually worry about being attacked by them, because it happens so very rarely.
How would women behave in such a society? How would women in OUR society look to them? And how would THEY look to women in our society?
Thinking about it yields some interesting results for the thoughtful science fiction writer, but maybe for you, too. More on that later.
June 15, 2019
Portraying Socially More Advanced Societies
Suppose you traveled forward in time and visited a future Earth where human society was more evolved than ours. What would such a society be like?
This question has been answered in books, movies and television shows set in the future, and the answer is very clear: people in more advanced societies wear togas, talk a lot but don't ever use contractions or slang, and view both violence and sex as animal behavior. In short, they're basically a Victorian Englishwoman's idea of ladies and gentlemen, dressed in togas.
In creating Collar World, I came up with a different answer, encapsulated by Ariana Hufflepuff's observation that she felt that she “had wandered into a summer camp that thought it was a city.”
Of course, she was on a college campus, which does have a summer camp feel compared to most urban environments, especially the older ones. People do a lot more walking and riding of bikes on college campuses. They're also more relaxed generally.
I suspect the cities of the future will be similarly more relaxed and casual. People will not be expressing social status through clothing, and will exist at a generally lower level of anxiety, because their societies will be healthier. They will not be worried about staying fed, clothed and sheltered, that would be something everyone gets for being human in a post-scarcity society.
Women would be more relaxed around men, because rape, sexual harrassment and violence against women would be almost nonexistent. In “Conquest of Incel World” my Nero Wolfe character notes the way this difference between the women of Incel World (i.e., Earth) and Collar World: “When a man shows up, their assholes pucker up so tight you can hear it.” Whereas Moxie Maven, the Archie Goodwin character and a free-use girl, thinks men are “like candy.”
That's why the men of Earth are so attracted to the women of Collar World – the Collar World women have a much more friendly and open attitude toward men generally because they aren't worried about being attacked, sexually or otherwise, by them. Earth men are like the Victorian sailors who discovered the women of Polynesia would have sex with them without having to be raped, tricked, drugged, married or even given money … they liked men and sex! Of course they went wild for them, in many cases jumping ship and taking up life on the islands. They knew a good thing when they saw it. I mean, rum, sodomy and the lash are all right, but are no substitute for a healthy sex life, especially if you are on the receiving end of all the lashing and sdomizing.
Earth people just gravitate toward Collar World people because they seem so nice … because they ARE so nice, coming from a healthier culture.
That's my approach. Let good mental health be the hallmark of the more advanced culture, and let your characters interact accordingly.
This question has been answered in books, movies and television shows set in the future, and the answer is very clear: people in more advanced societies wear togas, talk a lot but don't ever use contractions or slang, and view both violence and sex as animal behavior. In short, they're basically a Victorian Englishwoman's idea of ladies and gentlemen, dressed in togas.
In creating Collar World, I came up with a different answer, encapsulated by Ariana Hufflepuff's observation that she felt that she “had wandered into a summer camp that thought it was a city.”
Of course, she was on a college campus, which does have a summer camp feel compared to most urban environments, especially the older ones. People do a lot more walking and riding of bikes on college campuses. They're also more relaxed generally.
I suspect the cities of the future will be similarly more relaxed and casual. People will not be expressing social status through clothing, and will exist at a generally lower level of anxiety, because their societies will be healthier. They will not be worried about staying fed, clothed and sheltered, that would be something everyone gets for being human in a post-scarcity society.
Women would be more relaxed around men, because rape, sexual harrassment and violence against women would be almost nonexistent. In “Conquest of Incel World” my Nero Wolfe character notes the way this difference between the women of Incel World (i.e., Earth) and Collar World: “When a man shows up, their assholes pucker up so tight you can hear it.” Whereas Moxie Maven, the Archie Goodwin character and a free-use girl, thinks men are “like candy.”
That's why the men of Earth are so attracted to the women of Collar World – the Collar World women have a much more friendly and open attitude toward men generally because they aren't worried about being attacked, sexually or otherwise, by them. Earth men are like the Victorian sailors who discovered the women of Polynesia would have sex with them without having to be raped, tricked, drugged, married or even given money … they liked men and sex! Of course they went wild for them, in many cases jumping ship and taking up life on the islands. They knew a good thing when they saw it. I mean, rum, sodomy and the lash are all right, but are no substitute for a healthy sex life, especially if you are on the receiving end of all the lashing and sdomizing.
Earth people just gravitate toward Collar World people because they seem so nice … because they ARE so nice, coming from a healthier culture.
That's my approach. Let good mental health be the hallmark of the more advanced culture, and let your characters interact accordingly.
June 14, 2019
Collar World Is the Fetish Fuel Future
So this is the definition of a fetish fuel future from TV Tropes:
>Any fictional setting where the sexual kinks of the author are considered normal by society.
Well, in Collar World everyone considers maledom/femsub sex slavery to be absolutely normal. So, got me, Collar World fills that bill. But I think where Collar World may differ from your garden variety fetish fuel future is that I play with it, parodying Earth normal sexual institutions with their Collar World equivalents.
For example, on Collar World, instead of marriage, we have a Personal Collaring, either done privately or in a big public ceremony with a Worst Man to have a fake sword fight with the groom as he claims his bride as she kneels shackled at the Auction Post while the moms cry and the dads comfort them.
Or instead of elopement, a young man kidnaps the apple of his eye when she turns 18, hooding her and binding her and taking her to the nearest police kiosk to register it as a collaring so no one will think it's a kidnapping, followed by several days or weeks of balls-to-the-wall sex.
Or there's the tradition of Scary Aunts and Crazy Uncles. In traditional Deep Southern Gothic culture, they used to lock up unmarriageable aunts and uncles in the attic to keep them from being a social embarrassment. But on Collar World, crazy aunts are enslaved to scary uncles, with the hope that they'd hit it off sexually and sane each other up, killing two birds with one stone, as it were.
And of course, there are all sorts of collars o Collar World, not just personal collars for the marrying sort, but free use collars for the promiscuous, business collars for the corporate go-getters and asexual collars for those who don't want to be bothered. Fitting in on Collar World is mostly a matter of finding a collar that fits comfortably on a woman's neck.
Collar World was originally conceived by me as a thought experiment. Kink exists in our society in contrast to vanilla sex, i.e., “normal” sex. But what if kink was the norm?.What kind of world might you have.
Well, you could look at such a world as a utopian ideal, which is what I suspect most fetish fuel futures are. But you could also look at it as a fun way to parody our Earth institutions.
And that's what Collar World is.
June 13, 2019
How Incel World Got Its Name
“Incel World” is what the inhabitants of an alternate world timeline call our world in my book “The Visitor from Incel World.” It's the story of a gender studies grad student who gets caught in an accident at a physics lab and winds up transported to an alternate timeline.
The inhabitants of that timeline call it “Earth” but to us, it's known as “Collar World” due to all the women there being willing sex slaves to the men. Basically, most people in Collar World are into BDSM, specifically, the maledom/femsub variety. There are dominant women and submissive men and gay and lesbian pairings as well, and they are accepted, they're just less common than the hetero maledom/femsub pairings.
In fact, most young adults don't pair up early, they spend years engaging in the “free use” lifestyle, which involves lots of promiscuous sex, called a free-use collar, because women engaged in it wear a “free use” collar that encourages others to have sex with them.
Now, incels don't dominate our world the way collaring dominates Collar World. We got the moniker “Incel World” because the Visitor from Incel World, one Ariana Hufflepuff, was a gender studies major and hence more focused on incels than most people are. Her descriptions of incels made them seem more important to our world than they really are, and more dangerous, too.
And in a world where near-universal promiscuity among young adults is the accepted norm, the whole Incel phenomenon would seem a lot more strange and exotic than it does to us, and it does seem strange and exotic to many of us. It's an inaccurate name that kind of stuck, in part because, even though it's inaccurate, it does express the uneasiness that Collar World residents have for Incel World residents.
(The official designation of our world on Collar World is Earth 2. The official designation of Collar World on our world is Earth 2. It's a rare case of the official designation being a lot more confusing than the unofficial designation, and another reason everyone uses the unofficial desiginations.)
The people on Collar World, a pragmatic matriarchy that hasn't experienced war in centuries, regard the people on Incel World as violent, sexually starved (and often physically starved) rapists and murderers, thanks to Ariana's vivid (and distressingly accurate) descriptions of our world. I can't say I blame them!
There's a lot of fun to be had via misunderstandings when you are dealing with alternate world themes.
The inhabitants of that timeline call it “Earth” but to us, it's known as “Collar World” due to all the women there being willing sex slaves to the men. Basically, most people in Collar World are into BDSM, specifically, the maledom/femsub variety. There are dominant women and submissive men and gay and lesbian pairings as well, and they are accepted, they're just less common than the hetero maledom/femsub pairings.
In fact, most young adults don't pair up early, they spend years engaging in the “free use” lifestyle, which involves lots of promiscuous sex, called a free-use collar, because women engaged in it wear a “free use” collar that encourages others to have sex with them.
Now, incels don't dominate our world the way collaring dominates Collar World. We got the moniker “Incel World” because the Visitor from Incel World, one Ariana Hufflepuff, was a gender studies major and hence more focused on incels than most people are. Her descriptions of incels made them seem more important to our world than they really are, and more dangerous, too.
And in a world where near-universal promiscuity among young adults is the accepted norm, the whole Incel phenomenon would seem a lot more strange and exotic than it does to us, and it does seem strange and exotic to many of us. It's an inaccurate name that kind of stuck, in part because, even though it's inaccurate, it does express the uneasiness that Collar World residents have for Incel World residents.
(The official designation of our world on Collar World is Earth 2. The official designation of Collar World on our world is Earth 2. It's a rare case of the official designation being a lot more confusing than the unofficial designation, and another reason everyone uses the unofficial desiginations.)
The people on Collar World, a pragmatic matriarchy that hasn't experienced war in centuries, regard the people on Incel World as violent, sexually starved (and often physically starved) rapists and murderers, thanks to Ariana's vivid (and distressingly accurate) descriptions of our world. I can't say I blame them!
There's a lot of fun to be had via misunderstandings when you are dealing with alternate world themes.
June 12, 2019
"The Road to Aquibonya Is Now Available on Amazon
You can get the book on Amazon USA by clicking here!
Or you can visit my International Bookstore links and find ALL of my books.
I've written another erotica short with an actual plot. When will I learn? But I did include a helluva sex scene. To wit:
People tried to warn the mage Crom Agnon when he bought a dozen Immortal slave girls at the Immortal Gardens slave auction and headed out of town on the Vanyita Trail the next day.
They told him that between the outlaws and the supernatural creatures that infested the woodlands around the trail, and most of all the dozen Immortal slave girls, that he would not survive to see the next day.
But Crom Agnon was no ordinary mage, and he had bought a dozen of the hottest, kinkiest, most dangerous slave girls known to man for a reason. Well, two reasons. One was exactly the reason you'd expect a man to have for buying hot, kinky slave girls. The other, almost rational reason was related to his plan to journey to a remote town in neighboring Aquibonya, where he would face one of the most fearsome supernatural entities known to mankind -- if he lived to get there.
Note: this story contains a sex scene that is almost 10,000 words long. Sex addiction, blindness and hairy palms are NOT the responsibility of the author or the publisher. Also, this story has been infested with humor. You have been warned! You may take such warnings lightly, but being sex addicted, blind, hairy-palmed and laughing your a** off is no way to go through life.
This story is 26,000 words long and exists outside any known universe.
Now go forth, my minions, and buy this book! There are almost 30,000 subscribers on If only HALF of them buy this book, that means I get ... lessee, carry the 2, divide by 7.348, multiply by -1.45 ... LEBENTY MILLION DOLLARS!?! Go forth, my minions! Buy! Buy! Buy! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
June 11, 2019
Plotting and World-Builiding are Interlinked And Can Help Avoid Cliches
Breaking News! "Road to Aquibonya" has been published on Amazon! It has already passed review and is being distirbute it on their sites, which can take hours. So ... maybe semi-breaking news ....
The Immortal slavegirls in “The Road to Aquibonya” are a great example of how plotting and world-building are interlinked, or can be interlinked, and how good world-building can help you enjoy cliched writing.
My original concept was to have a slavegirl who was magically cursed to be immortal and young, and to make any man she fucks revert to being physically 26years of age every time he fucks her. She's a practical source of immortality, so long as her owner keeps fucking her. Talk about a stable relationship.
But over time, as her qualities become known in the world, such a woman would inevitably become a commodity. She would be very attractive to rich and powerful men, who would probably do a lot of vile and despicable things, such as killing other rich and powerful men, to get their hands on her. And of course they'd keep her in chains once they got her, because they wouldn't want her to escape, and more to the point, would not want her stolen.
This implies a long and unhappy history for said Immortal slavegirl, kept in chains and raped a lot, because of course said rich and powerful men wouldn't care if she wanted to be fucked or not. That's why it's a curse.
Problem is, what we have there, despite the sexual element, is a pure MacGuffin plot, with the Immortal slavegirl serving as the MacGuffin that the good guy, the bad guy and everyone else wants to obtain/control. The story kind of writes itself, a pure damsel in distress line, and that's the problem. The stories that write themselves get written a lot, and are generally cliched and trite and dull because chances are, the reader has already read the story, or something much like it.
Then I thought, why not have a whole race of Immortal slavegirls? Instead of having just one rare slavegirl, have them be commonplace. Why not make them a part of their world, an element of society? They would be commodity, but a common commodity, hence not the MacGuffin that a single Immortal slavegirl would be. There would probably be an active trade in them.
I liked this because it led to some interesting world-building. How would having slavegirls that could make you immortal be a commonplace thing affect people and the nations around them? Especially if there were some places that had a lot more of them than others?
But with commonplace slavegirls that could make you immortal, and who really liked having sex, especially kinky sex … didn't just accept their lot in life as slavegirls, but absolutely loved it … I'd lose a lot of the dramatic tension I'd had with the single MacGuffin slavegirl. I had created the basis for an EXCELLENT party and an interesting world, but not much conflict.
Eventually, I figured that I could solve that problem by having a SORT of penalty element to their nature: make the slavegirls half succubi – hence their magical immortality power – who have to be fucked every day before midnight or they turn into full succubi and they kill you by fucking you to death – yes, it's death by snu-snu! Even better, the slavegirl has to have an orgasm or she goes full succubus. It would make for a certain amount of difficulty in distributing them.
This might not a problem with a single Immortal slavegirl, but what if you had a dozen of them?
Well that brings the dramatic tension right back into the story, and in an original way, I think. World-building avoids cliched plotting, for the win!
The Immortal slavegirls in “The Road to Aquibonya” are a great example of how plotting and world-building are interlinked, or can be interlinked, and how good world-building can help you enjoy cliched writing.
My original concept was to have a slavegirl who was magically cursed to be immortal and young, and to make any man she fucks revert to being physically 26years of age every time he fucks her. She's a practical source of immortality, so long as her owner keeps fucking her. Talk about a stable relationship.
But over time, as her qualities become known in the world, such a woman would inevitably become a commodity. She would be very attractive to rich and powerful men, who would probably do a lot of vile and despicable things, such as killing other rich and powerful men, to get their hands on her. And of course they'd keep her in chains once they got her, because they wouldn't want her to escape, and more to the point, would not want her stolen.
This implies a long and unhappy history for said Immortal slavegirl, kept in chains and raped a lot, because of course said rich and powerful men wouldn't care if she wanted to be fucked or not. That's why it's a curse.
Problem is, what we have there, despite the sexual element, is a pure MacGuffin plot, with the Immortal slavegirl serving as the MacGuffin that the good guy, the bad guy and everyone else wants to obtain/control. The story kind of writes itself, a pure damsel in distress line, and that's the problem. The stories that write themselves get written a lot, and are generally cliched and trite and dull because chances are, the reader has already read the story, or something much like it.
Then I thought, why not have a whole race of Immortal slavegirls? Instead of having just one rare slavegirl, have them be commonplace. Why not make them a part of their world, an element of society? They would be commodity, but a common commodity, hence not the MacGuffin that a single Immortal slavegirl would be. There would probably be an active trade in them.
I liked this because it led to some interesting world-building. How would having slavegirls that could make you immortal be a commonplace thing affect people and the nations around them? Especially if there were some places that had a lot more of them than others?
But with commonplace slavegirls that could make you immortal, and who really liked having sex, especially kinky sex … didn't just accept their lot in life as slavegirls, but absolutely loved it … I'd lose a lot of the dramatic tension I'd had with the single MacGuffin slavegirl. I had created the basis for an EXCELLENT party and an interesting world, but not much conflict.
Eventually, I figured that I could solve that problem by having a SORT of penalty element to their nature: make the slavegirls half succubi – hence their magical immortality power – who have to be fucked every day before midnight or they turn into full succubi and they kill you by fucking you to death – yes, it's death by snu-snu! Even better, the slavegirl has to have an orgasm or she goes full succubus. It would make for a certain amount of difficulty in distributing them.
This might not a problem with a single Immortal slavegirl, but what if you had a dozen of them?
Well that brings the dramatic tension right back into the story, and in an original way, I think. World-building avoids cliched plotting, for the win!
June 10, 2019
I Know Why The Buffalo Are Exploding
I have so much fun writing. But when I read the posts in the r/writing and r/scifiwriting subreddit on Reddit.com, and so many of them are about all the stress and unhappiness people go through when writing, I have to wonder.
For example, I am really enjoying putting my hot female Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin characters through the wringer in “Conquest of Incel World.” In the Rex Stout novels, Nero Wolfe really hates driving (or being driven, he can't drive) in cars, being certain that the car will crash momentarily. Archie is of course a very capable driver, the only one Wolfe trusts, and enjoys Wolfe's discomfiture enormously.
Well I decided that Nitro Wilde, my Nero Wolfe prototype, should also have a terror of being driven. And so should Moxie Maven, my Archie Goodwin character, because on Collar World self-driving cars are the norm, and accidents are exceedingly rare. They're both terrified when they wind up in a car driven by a human, what's even worse, a car driven by a human in heavy traffic made up of cars and trucks driven by humans. Moxie is much less terrified than Nitro, but she feels it, and for this reason is sympathetic with Nitro's terror, rather than simply enjoying it as Archie does with Nero.
(Well, also, Moxie and Nitro are women, who tend to be more empathetic than men.)
As a long-time voracious reader, it's pure pleasure to get in there and really fuck with favorite characters like Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. And doing it in a way that many Nero Wolfe fans would find deeply distressing, well that's just icing on the cake! How can you not enjoy that?
When I read other authors whining about how HARD it is to write and edit, I just have to roll my eyes. Get in there and have some FUN with what you're doing, maybe your readers will have fun with it, too.
Then again, sometimes I wonder if I'm like the Ed Wood character in the movie “Ed Wood.” Ed clearly loved his job, every bit of it, he enjoyed filmmaking, even though he was objectively just awful at it. Maybe when I write my stories, I'm like Ed, looking at random film clips and exclaiming: “The buffalo are exploding, and no one knows why!”
Or maybe I'm the one who knows why the buffalo are exploding.
For example, I am really enjoying putting my hot female Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin characters through the wringer in “Conquest of Incel World.” In the Rex Stout novels, Nero Wolfe really hates driving (or being driven, he can't drive) in cars, being certain that the car will crash momentarily. Archie is of course a very capable driver, the only one Wolfe trusts, and enjoys Wolfe's discomfiture enormously.
Well I decided that Nitro Wilde, my Nero Wolfe prototype, should also have a terror of being driven. And so should Moxie Maven, my Archie Goodwin character, because on Collar World self-driving cars are the norm, and accidents are exceedingly rare. They're both terrified when they wind up in a car driven by a human, what's even worse, a car driven by a human in heavy traffic made up of cars and trucks driven by humans. Moxie is much less terrified than Nitro, but she feels it, and for this reason is sympathetic with Nitro's terror, rather than simply enjoying it as Archie does with Nero.
(Well, also, Moxie and Nitro are women, who tend to be more empathetic than men.)
As a long-time voracious reader, it's pure pleasure to get in there and really fuck with favorite characters like Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. And doing it in a way that many Nero Wolfe fans would find deeply distressing, well that's just icing on the cake! How can you not enjoy that?
When I read other authors whining about how HARD it is to write and edit, I just have to roll my eyes. Get in there and have some FUN with what you're doing, maybe your readers will have fun with it, too.
Then again, sometimes I wonder if I'm like the Ed Wood character in the movie “Ed Wood.” Ed clearly loved his job, every bit of it, he enjoyed filmmaking, even though he was objectively just awful at it. Maybe when I write my stories, I'm like Ed, looking at random film clips and exclaiming: “The buffalo are exploding, and no one knows why!”
Or maybe I'm the one who knows why the buffalo are exploding.
June 9, 2019
Dodging Pitfalls On The Road To Aquibonya
I have finished the cover art for my erotic gamelit harem fantasy adventure, “The Road to Aquibonya.” It was initially conceived as a fantasy about a slavegirl who could give any owner who fucked her immortal youth by returning him to age 26. (That's roughly the point at which your brain stops developing, generally considered the attainment of full physical maturity. Mental maturity is a different matter – demonstrably, many never attain it.)
I eventually decided it would be more interesting and fun to have an entire race of slavegirls who could bestow this benefit on their owners. A single slavegirl who can do this is just a MacGuffun. A whole race of slavegirls who can do this are a commodity! I play with this idea a bit and also introduce a potential penalty clause for owning such girls into the story. You can read it to find out what it is. Let's just say it keeps our male protagonist busy.
The male protagonist is another bit of characterization where I play off a favorite character. In this case, it's the typical Roger Zelazny protagonist – very capable, very powerful, sometimes an actual god, but male but also very human and very much a worldly-wise smartass. He was a refreshing change from the usual windbags you got in fantasy stories back in the day.
The real challenge with writing a Zelazny style protagonist is capturing the combination of power and smartassitude without creating a Marty Stu. I'm not saying Zelazny's protagonists are Marty Stus, Zelazny had a way of making them relatable without nerfing them, but for us mere mortal writers, it's difficult. I gave it a shot, with some surprises about the character as the story develops.
I guess you'll have to read it to discover those surprises. I plan to have it out early this week, mid-week at the latest. Meanwhile, it's full charge on finishing “Conquest of Incel World” and marketing “The Visitor from Incel World.”
I eventually decided it would be more interesting and fun to have an entire race of slavegirls who could bestow this benefit on their owners. A single slavegirl who can do this is just a MacGuffun. A whole race of slavegirls who can do this are a commodity! I play with this idea a bit and also introduce a potential penalty clause for owning such girls into the story. You can read it to find out what it is. Let's just say it keeps our male protagonist busy.
The male protagonist is another bit of characterization where I play off a favorite character. In this case, it's the typical Roger Zelazny protagonist – very capable, very powerful, sometimes an actual god, but male but also very human and very much a worldly-wise smartass. He was a refreshing change from the usual windbags you got in fantasy stories back in the day.
The real challenge with writing a Zelazny style protagonist is capturing the combination of power and smartassitude without creating a Marty Stu. I'm not saying Zelazny's protagonists are Marty Stus, Zelazny had a way of making them relatable without nerfing them, but for us mere mortal writers, it's difficult. I gave it a shot, with some surprises about the character as the story develops.
I guess you'll have to read it to discover those surprises. I plan to have it out early this week, mid-week at the latest. Meanwhile, it's full charge on finishing “Conquest of Incel World” and marketing “The Visitor from Incel World.”
June 8, 2019
"Conquest of Incel World" Goes Nero Wolfe!
I'm getting back on the track of “Conquest of Incel World” the exciting sequel to “The Visitor From Incel World.” I'm enjoying this one a lot because I had some fun with the main characters.
I've long been a fan of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels, you see. Stout was an incredible writer. His prose style was smooth as silk. He got away with a lot of flaws in plotting because his books were a pleasure to read and his characters were some of the most engaging people in fiction.
Chief among those is Archie Goodwin, assistant and chief flunkie to the great detective Nero Wolfe. It's an open secret that Archie is the real appeal of the Nero Wolfe novels. He's the everyman through which we see Wolfe and the parade of familiar and fantastic characters that move through Wolfe's office in the course of a story. Goodwin is smart, sharp and would undoubtedly be a successful detective on his own if he wasn't in thrall to Wolfe's genius. He also has a cynical appreciation of Wolfe's flaws, because in addition to being a genius, Wolfe is lazy. Really fucking lazy, like “won't work until he's about to get thrown out of his comfy New York City brownstone” lazy. And Archie understands that perhaps his most important job is prodding Wolfe into working when he needs to. Goodwin understand that he's definitely a second banana intellectually to Wolfe (along with practically everyone else) but that he has qualities that Wolfe needs to be successful.
Well I think that with just a LITTLE bit of tweaking, Archie would make an EXCELLENT bratty slavegirl. His gender would have to change, but that attitude: perfect! Respect combined with cynical knowledge of the Master's flaws. Or in this case, Mistresses' flaws. Because of course Wolfe's gender has to change, too.
Except that I thought I'd make Wolfe asexual. In the Rex Stout novels, Wolfe is heterosexual but celibate by choice, fearing the effects that sexual passion has on him. (Wolfe's got a bit of a control dysfunction, too, I kept that for my version.)
At this point you may think my approach to characterization may be very similar to Jerry Lewis' approach to sculpture in The Bellboy. And I can't blame you. But I had fun with it, and I created a couple of interesting characters in Moxie Maven (aka Archie Goodwin) and Nitro Wilde (Nero Wolfe). Moxie is Nitro's slavegirl, but it's strictly a business collar, as Nitro is asexual. Moxie would fuck Nitro in a heartbeat, but she's not dying to have sex with Nitro, she's just a free use girl at heart, hence will do anyone she can hook up with. Just like Archie Goodwin, she's promiscuous, but she's got good taste.
Oh, there's also a plot about the invasion and conquest of Incel World, as it's known on Collar World (or Earth as we call it) mixed in there. And Moxie and Nitro will be squaring off with a team of agents from the CIA's Exceptional Cases Department, Felix Munger and Diana Stark. They do mostly paranormal casework, and they get called in on the Collar World (as Moxie and Nitro's timeline is called on our Earth) because although it's not strictly speaking paranormal, it is WEIRD, and Munger and Stark know their weird.
(And if you are thinking that Munger and Stark sound a lot like a certain Mulder and Scully … bingo!)
So, yes, I'm having great fun with my characters. Hopefully, readers will, too.
I've long been a fan of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels, you see. Stout was an incredible writer. His prose style was smooth as silk. He got away with a lot of flaws in plotting because his books were a pleasure to read and his characters were some of the most engaging people in fiction.
Chief among those is Archie Goodwin, assistant and chief flunkie to the great detective Nero Wolfe. It's an open secret that Archie is the real appeal of the Nero Wolfe novels. He's the everyman through which we see Wolfe and the parade of familiar and fantastic characters that move through Wolfe's office in the course of a story. Goodwin is smart, sharp and would undoubtedly be a successful detective on his own if he wasn't in thrall to Wolfe's genius. He also has a cynical appreciation of Wolfe's flaws, because in addition to being a genius, Wolfe is lazy. Really fucking lazy, like “won't work until he's about to get thrown out of his comfy New York City brownstone” lazy. And Archie understands that perhaps his most important job is prodding Wolfe into working when he needs to. Goodwin understand that he's definitely a second banana intellectually to Wolfe (along with practically everyone else) but that he has qualities that Wolfe needs to be successful.
Well I think that with just a LITTLE bit of tweaking, Archie would make an EXCELLENT bratty slavegirl. His gender would have to change, but that attitude: perfect! Respect combined with cynical knowledge of the Master's flaws. Or in this case, Mistresses' flaws. Because of course Wolfe's gender has to change, too.
Except that I thought I'd make Wolfe asexual. In the Rex Stout novels, Wolfe is heterosexual but celibate by choice, fearing the effects that sexual passion has on him. (Wolfe's got a bit of a control dysfunction, too, I kept that for my version.)
At this point you may think my approach to characterization may be very similar to Jerry Lewis' approach to sculpture in The Bellboy. And I can't blame you. But I had fun with it, and I created a couple of interesting characters in Moxie Maven (aka Archie Goodwin) and Nitro Wilde (Nero Wolfe). Moxie is Nitro's slavegirl, but it's strictly a business collar, as Nitro is asexual. Moxie would fuck Nitro in a heartbeat, but she's not dying to have sex with Nitro, she's just a free use girl at heart, hence will do anyone she can hook up with. Just like Archie Goodwin, she's promiscuous, but she's got good taste.
Oh, there's also a plot about the invasion and conquest of Incel World, as it's known on Collar World (or Earth as we call it) mixed in there. And Moxie and Nitro will be squaring off with a team of agents from the CIA's Exceptional Cases Department, Felix Munger and Diana Stark. They do mostly paranormal casework, and they get called in on the Collar World (as Moxie and Nitro's timeline is called on our Earth) because although it's not strictly speaking paranormal, it is WEIRD, and Munger and Stark know their weird.
(And if you are thinking that Munger and Stark sound a lot like a certain Mulder and Scully … bingo!)
So, yes, I'm having great fun with my characters. Hopefully, readers will, too.
June 7, 2019
The Case for Truth-Telling In Marketing
Here's the cover of The Visitor from Incel World. Notice anything different about it?
The byline is different, it's written by Barry Anderson, not Pat Powers. I'm using a pseudonym for this one. {Well, a DIFFERENT pseudonym. Pat Powers is not my real name, either, though as much as I've written under that name, it kind of FEELS like my real name, sometimes.)
There's a reason I'm using a pseudonym for the book, and that reason is the Amazon Algorithm, the mighty piece of software that sorts books for Amazon. Because I've written erotica as Pat Powers, if I use the name Pat Powers, the algorithm will categorize my book as erotica. And erotica books don't show up on searches as readily as non-erotica books do. So there's a distinctive advantage to having a book identified as not being erotica.
Especially when it ISN'T erotica, and “The Visitor from Incel World” isn't erotica, it's straight-up SF comedy, though being set in Collar World, it has plenty of fetish fuel and could be classified as a fetish fuel future.
I have what I call my “Birds of Prey” theory of marketing for my work. It's based on the rapid demise of the much-ballyhooed TV series Birds of Prey an early attempt to get the superhero genre started in TV. Birds of Prey was heavily advertised as being about the adventures of a trio of young, hot, sexy superheroines. There were shots of one of them writhing suggestively in the promos.
It worked, the premiere episode of Birds of Prey had excellent numbers, the best the Warner Brothers had ever had for the 18-35 year old male demographic. What it DIDN'T have was hot, sexy young superheroines. There was a trio of superheroines but they dressed dowdily in form-concealing cloaks and such, and they spent most of their time moping about what a bummer being a superheroine was. As a result, ratings for the show dropped precipitously, and it barely lasted a single season.
As soon as guys saw the first couple of shows they knew they were being hosed by the ads and they abandoned the series in droves.
I drew an important lesson from that: when you market a product as having quality A or quality B, you need to DELIVER on that quality in your product. If you don't, no matter how good your marketing, people will stop watching/reading/drinking/whatever it. What's more, they'll thereafter be deeply suspicious of anything you produce, because they will remember how you hosed them that one time.
It's not just a VIRTUE thing to deliver on the qualities you market in a product (though of course it IS virtuous to tell the truth) but a matter of good business practice. True, your product may not sell if people don't like it, but that's got nothing to do with marketing.
You can tell Amazon whether or not your work is erotica when you publish it, by putting it in the erotica category. I have done that for all my Pat Powers books, because they are. But Amazon's Algorithm will also throw your book into the erotica bin (which means it won't show up in non-adult searches) if it THINKS your book is erotica, based on a number of factors. And one of them is the author name. An author like Pat Powers who writes erotica will be presumed to be writing another erotica book.
Hence, “The Visitor from Incel World” is written by Barry Anderson, a pseudonym that I developed just for my SF books that aren't erotica.
I was also planning on saying in my promotional copy for the book that it is not erotica. But I can't do that, because the Amazon Algorithm looks at your cover copy, keywords and promo copy and if it contains the word “erotica” your book gets classified as erotica.
Sigh.
And it doesn't stop there. “The Visitor from Incel World” is or rather, should be, the fifth book in the Collar World series, since it is set mostly on Collar World. But it can't be, because all the other books in the Collar World series are erotica and the Amazon Algorithm ... sigh.
I can at least tell the truth in non-Amazon venues, such as this one. But Jeebus, this is annoying, having to get around a silly algorithm based on ridiculous prudishness about sex.
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