A. Regina Cantatis's Blog, page 12

Ten...nine...eight...seven...

It's countdown time to the publication of "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny." With help from my contest winners (See the post just below this one for details - and join a later contest if you like), I've finalized the story; and I've just uploaded it to Amazon for pre-order.

This is another of those cases where I'm giving my blog readers a special gift. When the book goes live on March 28, it will sell for $2.99; but you can pre-order it for $0.99 here.

Here's the synopsis of the story:


Doctor Theodore Steele, the lantern-jawed hero of a thousand intergalactic adventures, is about to meet his match…in a nemesis he's beaten dozens of times before. Until now the brave hero and his sidekick have come out on top because, well, that's just the way it works. But does it have to work that way? Ursula Major has just thrown out the old rule book and written a kinky new one. In her version, the hero is vanquished, the damsel in distress isn't saved, and the villain gets the girl. It might be just crazy enough to work.


"The Final Adventure" is a send-up of your favorite old pulp science fiction stories with their blue-eyed heroes and helpless, admiring sidekicks. It includes alien life forms and heavy bondage, shiny ray guns and shinier latex, white knights in armor and bi-curious sidekicks, and a planet's worth of hypnotic spirals.




key words: hypnosis, satire, pulp fiction, lesbian, mind control, bdsm, dominatrix

Let the contest begin!

This is it, folks: your chance to win a free copy of one, two, or three of my next three ebooks – and even to get a personally autographed copy of the last one if you put in enough effort.
Here's how the contest works.
I am looking for six people to beta read an ebook and review it on Amazon. The Amazon review is critical; you don't win a free ebook until the review goes online.
Now, I need two volunteers for each of the ebooks. To keep it easy for you, I'm making three separate blog posts below this one – one for each ebook – and I'll accept the first two volunteers in the comments section for each post. If you win, you're committing yourself to beta reading and reviewing that particular ebook – not one of the other two – and you cannot volunteer in the other threads.
However, winning in one thread means you also have the option to receive a free copy of one or both of the other two ebooks, and to win an autographed anthology. You just have to review (but not beta read) those as well. And if you review all three ebooks, you'll receive all three as separate editions and the anthology will come autographed.

How can I autograph an ebook? Easy. I'll write the autograph on a piece of blank paper, saying whatever you like – within reason. Then I'll scan the autograph and put the image on the title page of the ebook I send you. Voila: a real, digital autograph.
If you need a little more explanation, here are three different examples of how to work the contest. I'll use "If Wishes Were Horses" as my example (because it has the shortest title and I'll be typing it a lot), but the same basic process goes for the other two ebooks.
You start by going to the "If Wishes Were Horses" blog entry and typing in the comments section, "I commit to beta reading 'If Wishes Were Horses' and posting a review on Amazon." If you're one of the first two volunteers, I'll send you a Rich Text file to beta read. You send me back your comments in the requested time frame, and once the book goes up for sale, you post your review (Say whatever you like; I'm not trying to force you into anything). Let me know you've done so, and I'll send you your free ebook copy of "If Wishes Were Horses."Now let's say you want to beta read "If Wishes Were Horses" but you also want a free copy of "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny." In that case, when you volunteer to read "If Wishes Were Horses," just add a second sentence telling me you'll also commit to reviewing "The Final Adventure." Then I'll send you the Rich Text file for that one too, and I'll send you the free ebook once you post your review for that one on Amazon.Finally, let's say you want the grand prize: all three ebooks, with the anthology autographed. In the same comment where you volunteer to read "If Wishes Were Horses," tell me you'll commit to reviewing all three ebooks separately for Amazon. I'll send you Rich Text versions of all three stories, and each time you post a review for one of them, I'll send you a free ebook copy of it. But only after you post all three reviews will I send you the autographed anthology. I hope that makes sense. If you have any questions, post them under this entry. Don't post under the other entries unless you're volunteering to beta read/review that particular ebook. Incidentally, there's a bit more detail within each of those entries, so read them before you post any questions here.
Good luck!

This is the contest post for "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny"

Note: Be sure you've read the original post, Let the Contest Begin!, before proceeding.
Now, here are some things you should know about this story before deciding to volunteer:The quick-and-dirty synopsis: This is a satire of traditional B-grade space adventures with their dashing white male heroes and damsel-in-distress sidekicks. Dr. Steele and Franny run up against a villainess who's decided to stop playing by their B-grade space adventure rules and instead to be as nasty as she wants to be. The Doctor and Franny just can't compete.If you want to win this ebook, you must be prepared to turn in your beta reader notes by March 24, because this is the first of the three books going to print. If you don't give me your notes, you win nothing.If you give me your notes in time but don't review the book on Amazon, you still win nothing.The story will go live on Amazon sometime between March 25 and March 31. There's no deadline for posting your review, but you don't get the free ebook until you post it. To win this contest, you have to be one of the first two commenters in this post, and you have to say (and mean), "I commit to beta reading 'The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny' and posting a review on Amazon."
Note: If you win in this thread, you aren't allowed to post in either of the other two threads. HOWEVER, you can still win one or both of the other two ebooks, and you can still win the autographed copy. All you have to do is tell me in your comment here which other book or books you commit to reviewing (You don't have to beta read those two, just review them).
Okay, ready…set…go!

This is the contest post for "If Wishes Were Horses"

Note: Be sure you've read the original post, Let the Contest Begin!, before proceeding.
Now, here are some things you should know about this story before deciding to volunteer:The quick-and-dirty synopsis: Captain Benbow has just returned from her First Contact mission with an unknown race. While she waits in her shuttle, in decontamination, she indulges in a private EMC fantasy based on one of my own personal Virtual Hypnotist files. And, not to spoil anything, what happens in decontamination doesn't stay in decontamination.This is the second ebook going to print. I plan to publish it in the final week of April, so I'll need your beta reading notes by mid-April. Unfortunately, I can't give you a firm date yet because I haven't polished the story yet, so you'll have to be flexible. I'll get you the story as quickly as I can.If you don't give me your beta reading notes by the deadline (which, again, I can't specify yet), you win nothing.If you don't write a review once the book goes live on Amazon, you win nothing.However, there's no deadline for when you post your review. It all boils down to how quickly you want your free ebook. To win this contest, you have to be one of the first two commenters in this post, and you have to say (and mean), "I commit to beta reading 'If Wishes Were Horses' and posting a review on Amazon." Note: If you win in this thread, you aren't allowed to post in either of the other two threads. HOWEVER, you can still win one or both of the other two ebooks, and you can still win the autographed copy. To do so, just tell me in your comment here which other book or books you commit to reviewing (You don't have to beta read those two, just review them).
Okay, ready…set…go!

This is the contest post for the "Dark Spaces" Anthology

Note 1: Be sure you've read the original post, Let the Contest Begin!, before proceeding. Note 2: Be sure to read the next section very, very carefully, because this third of the contest works a little differently than the other two.
Here are some things you should know about this story before deciding to volunteer:
This anthology includes the two stories I've already mentioned in this contest, "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny" and "If Wishes Were Horses." It also includes a third story not published anywhere else: "What to Expect from Your Alien Brainwashing."To win an "ordinary" copy of the anthology – meaning one with no autograph – you only have to write a review of the anthology. But since the anthology includes three stories, you have to read all three before writing the review. You don't have to beta read any of the three unless you want to. All you have to do is review the anthology on its own Amazon page and mention each of the three stories.You can win an autographed copy of the anthology by reviewing each of the three ebooks on their separate Amazon pages.I plan to publish the anthology at the end of May. I can send you an advance reader copy of "The Final Adventure" right away, but I can't send you the other two stories until I finish polishing them. That could take a month or more, so you'll have to be flexible. Remember, you don't win the ebook unless you follow through on your commitment.However, there's no deadline for when you post your review. It all boils down to how quickly you want your free ebook. To win this contest, you have to be one of the first two commenters in this post, and you have to say (and mean), "I commit to reading all three stories in the "Dark Spaces" anthology and mentioning all three stories in a review I post on Amazon."
Note: If you win in this thread, you aren't allowed to post in either of the other two threads. HOWEVER, you can still win one or both of the other two ebooks as separate files, and you can still win the autographed copy of "Dark Spaces." Just tell me in your comment here which other book or books you commit to reviewing separately. If you review all three separately, you get all three ebooks as separate editions and "Dark Spaces" will come autographed.
Okay, ready…set…go!

Before I get started...

I'm intentionally writing this post now instead of after I polish my new story* any further, or after I compose the cover. This way, I can tease you with some images that might or might not show up on the actual ebook. Meanwhile, the things I'm going to say about the story are solid facts.

I have the story in good shape now. I plan to do a couple more polishes and then ask for beta readers/reviewers. In last week's post I talked about having a sort of contest but said I hadn't figured out the fine details. Now I have figured them out. I'm not ready to spill all the beans yet, but I'll say this much: there will be six winners who'll each have the option to decide how much work they put into the project, and those who put in the maximum will get autographed ebooks of the anthology. Yes, that's right: I've figured out how to autograph ebooks.

This afternoon I'll be polishing again and then setting the story aside for a few days so I can work on the cover (and give my brain a chance to forget a little, so that I can read the story one more time later in the week with fresh eyes). If all goes well, I'll start the contest with next weekend's post.


Now, about the cover art. I've been browsing dollarphotoclub.com for images, and believe me, that's no easy task. You can't beat that site, price-wise, but they sell cheap by reducing overhead, which includes having a truly sucky search engine. But I did find the perfect picture for Franny, which you see at the top of this post (This image and the others here are comps, not the paid versions of the shots). Isn't she delectable? Choosing her didn't require any thought at all. Choosing the image for Ted Steele was a little harder, but I've narrowed it down to the two at left here.

Choosing the right image for Ursula Major, who'll be looming over Our Heroes with a hypno-spiral or something behind her, was my hardest task. I've found the right model but can't say for sure which picture will look best on the cover  (although I have a pretty good idea) until I play around with the composition. I'm pasting in a few of the best shots below, knowing already that some of them won't work, just to give you something to fantasize about.




*the awkwardly-but-hopefully-humorously titled "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny"

Gift bag

This post is a mixed bag that starts with a gripe which turns into a cheer, and after that it's all uphill into EMC fetish nirvana.

So, okay, if you don't have an adult blog on Blogger yourself, you might not be aware that earlier this week Google sent a mass email to all us pervs saying we were officially no longer welcome and had until mid-March to vacate the premises. Well, you can imagine how pissed off I was. I fully expected to make this weekend's blog entry a combination gripe session and plea for advice about where to move my blog. Fortunately, I instead get the chance to say, "Suck it, Google!" My fellow pervs (who obviously have more sense than I do) didn't wait till the weekend to complain - and they complained very loudly and to the right people. Because of them, Google was forced to retract its words and pretend it didn't mean them the way it really did mean them. And as for me, I avoid the hassle of moving all my shit. So again I say (because I can), "Suck it, Google!"

Now onward and upward. Earlier today I found a Facebook group dedicated to Hajime Sorayama, joined it, and immediately found myself presented with images like the one you see at right. Yes, some blessedly twisted souls decided to stage one of my favorite statufication pieces with actual live women. I am in heaven. There's lots more great art in that Facebook group (although sadly, nothing quite this elaborately staged), so if you have an FB account, jump on in; the water's fine.

Moving on again, I'm still working on my heavily revised, much hotter, and retitled "Sucker Punch" (now to be called "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and His Intrepid Assistant Franny"). In last week's post I said the story had turned out to be much shorter than I remembered, and that I thought I'd better combine it in an anthology with "If Wishes Were Horses" and "What to Expect from Your Alien Brainwashing." Well, since then I've been seeking advice from other indie erotica writers (some in the EMC crowd, some in a Facebook group) about how to combine and price the triad. I think you'll like their suggestions as much as I do. My plan now is to release "The Final Adventure" first, alone, and price it at $0.99. A month later I'll release "If Wishes Were Horses" alone for $0.99. Then, a month after that, I'll publish the two together along with "What to Expect" as an anthology (new working title "Dark Spaces") and sell that for $0.99. All this seems counter-intuitive to me, but I've never had a head for business; and the people who do have a head for business say this is the way to go.

Are you happy yet? Well, let me see if I can make you even happier.

1. Again, on the advice of one of these business mavens, I've repriced almost all the existing books in my Amazon catalog from $2.99 to $0.99 (and Sleepwalkers from $3.99 to $2.99).

2. It works out even better for you and for me if you have a Kindle Unlimited membership and  borrow the books instead of buying them (Just read the whole books, okay? The magic doesn't work unless you read at least most of the way through.). Yes, this is even more counter-intuitive than what I said above, but it's true - and in fact, it's true for every Kindle ebook that sells for $1.99 or less. I won't bore you with an explanation unless you ask for it; but I will tell you that the best way to support your favorite indie authors on Kindle is to borrow rather than buy - again, if the price is $1.99 or less, and if you at least flip through all the pages to the end. Otherwise, buy. And review. Reviews mean a lot to sales.

3. I'll need some beta readers for my upcoming stories, and I'll also need some people willing to actually review the books on Amazon; so when the time gets closer, I'm going to offer a few Advance Reader Copies. I haven't figured out the fine details yet, but this is the gist of it. I'll choose the ARC recipients in my usual way, by asking people to volunteer in the comments section. The winners will get to beta-read Word versions of one, two, or three stories on the condition that they post reviews once the stories go live on Amazon. Once their reviews go up, I'll give the winners free actual ebooks of the stories they beta read and reviewed.

Well, I'm certainly in a good mood now that I've shared all this...and I hope you're in a good mood now that you've read it.

Sweet dreams.

It's complicated

I haven't done any writing in several months, not serious writing. I did rework "Couples Skate" for inclusion in an anthology called Cupid's Secrets (which you should consider buying or at least borrowing; not all the stories will be to your taste, but I can almost guarantee you'll love "Horngry" and "Two Gods Walk into a Bar"), but other than that, nada.

And why haven't I been writing? Well, it's complicated. My real-life life has been pretty unpleasant these last few months, and I've also been channeling a lot of energy into a different, vanilla project (which none of you will ever see - sorry!). I get obsessive about things, but I only have a limited amount of obsession available; and it's been going in a different direction than writing.

But suddenly that's changed. Even while I wasn't writing, I was thinking about which story I wanted to work on next. It was going to be "Avatar" - which, of course, will have to be retitled now - but I wasn't too enthused about the project. Then last night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I started to think about "Sucker Punch"; and suddenly a host of fun, new ideas presented themselves to me. That's the story I need to work on next, not "Avatar." I'll be shuffling and, in a few cases, totally rewriting scenes, and changing the brainwashing method into something more appropriate for the Flash Gordon satire that this story is.

I need a better name, though - something along the lines of, "The Final Adventure of Doctor Theodore Steele and his Intrepid Assistant Franny." But as amusing as I find that title, I think it might be too long and weird to attract new readers. Tell me what you think. If you didn't know my stuff already, and if you were browsing Amazon for a good EMC story, would a title like that pique your interest or turn you off? Let me know in the comments.

After all, real-world drones are male

This post is a two-fer, with both halves involving drones. First I'll give you a tantalizing book passage, and then I'll share some personal stuff.

My fetishist friends and I write about female drones because we get off on the idea of women being depersonalized and controlled. But of course, in real life, the drones in a hive are male. The bees that leave the hive and actually work are female, while the drones are pretty much just sex toys for the queen.

With that in mind, let me share a passage from a book I read recently called The Honey Month. The author received a month's worth of exotic honey samples, tried one a day, and used its color/smell/taste as inspiration for some pretty freaky vignettes. Some are fantasy, some are SF, some are skewed just a little bit off normal, and then there's this one - which I'd say classifies as horror. Don't be fooled by the badassery at the beginning of the story. This man's fate is not what you expect.


Cranberry Creamed HoneyColour: Dark amber, cognac. Funny to me how I have such boozy associations, but they are apt.Smell: There’s a sharpness, a resinousness to this. It’s also very liquidy.Taste: A definite cranberry tartness, but the honey taste dominates; the tartness limns it, darts around its edges, makes it one of the more refreshing honeys I’ve tried. I think of pine, strangely, redwood; tasting it is like walking a forest path.     There is fire in his wrists, fire in his sharp-shod walk, fire beneath his fingernails. He is red, redder than rowan berries, for rowan doesn’t bleed as cranberries do, and it is cranberries that he gathers, that he stews and crushes, cranberries in which he steeps his skin. Lacking a Mithrasian bull, he takes them, bathes in them, rinses his hair red-black, seeking transcendence.     It is not white, he says, that is pure. It is not black. It is red, because it moves, it changes, and it keeps itself always. It is not static as fossilized wood, not delicate as new-fallen snow. When red seeks to be its truest self, it is in motion. It fears no change.     He has shrugged at Paracelsus, at Tarot cards, at accusations of devilry. Red is his religion. He squeezes berry juice onto his eyelids, swallows it nine times a day, thrice at each meal. He wants the redness to spill from him like a scent, that in walking the forest paths the sleeping deer and wolves and rabbits will come to dream in garnet tones, will tremble and flush at the thought of pursuit, the game of the chase.     The bees dream red when he passes.     When they wake, their queen begins to wail. She needs it, she says, that red of reds that walks the woods like a shadow. The bees are dutiful, and go.     They find him, but do not know how to scrape the redness from him, cannot brush it against their bodies, cannot gather it like pollen. In vain they stamp his cranberry cheeks, in vain they buzz his cranberry ears. They cannot take a piece of him back to the hive.     Meantime he is beset by a phalanx of black-ribbed gold, drowns in the drone of their discontent. He swats at them, rages at them, gathers stings against the back of his hand, the curve of his elbow. What are these that come to gild his redness, limn his red thoughts with their bright noise? What are these that dare change his red shadow’s shape, settling and rising like clouds at sea?     They madden him. They do not mean to. They hardly know that they are pushing him, driving him, herding the redness of him homeward.     Enough, says the queen, while he weeps in great red sobs. Enough, that is enough. She does not need to leave her childbed to imbibe him, only needs him to stay in the comb of her children’s bodies, stay and share his colour with her. He cannot but comply.     She dreams, and her workers pour red into their gold, raise larvae with rust-red bodies, make honey heady as the setting sun. They weave it into their songs and dance its colour into the air they breathe. There is an orange to them, an amber, now – never quite red, for it is not the cranberry they love, but the shaping of their gold, the change, the sharpened edges to their queen’s dreams.     He is in all they do, their most precious drone; they love him like a fine day. They look after him in their fashion. The bees go out, burrow into their sisters’ bodies, sing their gladdest thanks against his lips. They go bearing their darkest honey, the densest, the best, the closest to the red they can never quite achieve, the redness that is his, only his. One by one, they place a drop on his tongue like a sacrament.    It is never red enough.


And now for something more personal. If you've been following my blog long enough, you know I'm a gigantic Muse fan. Well, the band has a new album coming out soon, and apparently it's going to be called Drones. They've been releasing teaser art with the guys sporting glistening black eyes and all the identifying information from the original pictures scribbled out.

I'm not just imagining, am I, that the theme of the new album is depersonalization? In fact, it might even be about outright brainwashing. That's a topic the band has explored before. Front man Matt Bellamy is a fan of conspiracy theories; claims to have learned from a book how to brainwash people in real life; and once wrote a song about MK Ultra, a real but thankfully dismantled project by the US military that attempted to rewrite people's minds (I've posted the "MK Ultra" video here a couple of times before, but naturally, I now have to post it again. You're welcome.).

But here's where it gets really personal. You might think I'm thrilled to have my favorite band making an album about my fetish. But seeing pictures of the guys with drone eyes makes me squirm in a way that's not entirely pleasant. It's like having one of those "naked in public" dreams. I feel exposed and kind of...guilty. See, I wouldn't care about seeing celebrities I hate turned into mindless drones, but these are my boys. They're supposed to be the heroes, not the victims. I almost feel like I'm the one doing this to them.

I have no idea whether that makes sense to anyone else or not. Probably it doesn't, but what do you think?

Two kinds of gorgeous

First, let me remind you that photographer LXXT has a gallery on Deviant Art that mostly features Princess Fatale and occasionally includes some of her playmates. It's updated frequently, so be sure to follow it or at least bookmark it. Here are some of the best pictures from recent weeks.


And now for something completely different. A few days ago I ran across an article on io9 called The Most Jaw-Droppingly Beautiful Cliff Top Hotels Ever Built. Now, I always like to look at beautiful architecture, but I'm not in the habit of sharing it on my blog (Facebook is a different matter; you get a fuller view of my interests there than you do here), but this pertains to the topic at hand. As I was writing What Do You Give the Alien Who Has Everything?, I had pictures in my head of how the Imperators' compound should look, but I never found any real pictures to convey the scale and beauty of it. Then I ran across this article.

The first picture, in particular, is almost completely true to my vision (All it lacks are the colonnades). The last one really isn't very true to my vision at all, but it's just so gorgeous that I had to include it anyway. And everything in between will at least give you a better idea of what was in my head as I was writing.