A. Regina Cantatis's Blog, page 16

Getting over the speed bump

Here's the short version: I've spent the last week working on an old, slow loaner computer while I waited for a part to come in that was supposed to fix my real computer; but when the new part came in, it didn't fix the problem. I finally came to the realization I should have had a week ago: I needed a new computer, not a fix to the old one.

So now I have that new computer, and with it a new version of Windows to learn and an assload of files to restore. Fortunately, I can restore them, because ever since the debacle a few years ago when I lost my most precious Virtual Hypnotist programs, I've been backing things up regularly to the cloud. I can get everything back this time, but it's going to take a while.

In the meantime, here are a few notes that I hope will make you smile. Even on the slow loaner computer (and twice on a public library computer), I've been able to keep working on "What Do You Give the Alien Who Has Everything?" It's 4/5 done now, and all I have left are the climaxes - pun fully intended. And since I'd already asked to take next week off from work for vacation, I can spend most of that time catching up on my writing - which I really, really want to do because I'm still in the zone and I'm loving what I'm doing. I might get the rough draft finished in another couple of weeks, and then I'll be able to share it with some select beta readers.

Finally, until I have the time to share a bunch of hot new latex/total enclosure pictures I've been hoarding, I'll give you these two lovelies instead. Here are my physical models for the two mind controllers of "What Do You Give": Julia Alexander will be "played" by Kato, and Steven Dominick will be "played" by Jude Law. I expect those choices will meet with your approval. ;-)

speed bump

My computer is out of commission for (hopefully) just a few days, so I can't really post a full entry here. I'm on a public library computer and don't want anyone to see me posting my usual kind of stuff. ;-) But thankfully, I've been uploading my story to the cloud every day, and now I can download it and work on it from here. After all, who's going to bother reading simple words over my shoulder? It's just pervy pictures I have to worry about. };-)  So I'll keep writing, and I'll keep my fingers crossed that I get my own machine back soon.

Sneak Peek at my Upcoming "Choose Your Own Adventure" Story

First, about the picture at right. I'm thinking about using it (in slightly altered form, and with a tropical background) as part of my cover art. I need a young, blond, innocent slave. Do you think this model is sexy enough to do the trick?

Now, on to the sneak peek. I've said before that in this story, you'll be able to choose your stand-in's sex and orientation (with orientation being loosely defined; you're not locked in with the sex scenes). I'm about to give you the first segment of the story, where you choose your stand-in's gender, and then the first path after you choose the character's gender. The paths diverge right away, and I've decided to give you the male point of view because there's a bit more mystery to it. So here you go:


“This is Mark Holland, reporting live for Global News Network.”
“This is Elizabeth Kirkland, reporting live for Global News Network.”
^^~~~~~*~~~~~^^

“I’m on the final leg of my journey to the Seychelles, once the most exclusive island resort on the planet, now home to the man and woman who rule that planet. Thousands of others live here too. Once they were kings and queens, politicians, models, performers, soldiers, and the preexisting resort staff of Mahé Island. Now they’re only slaves.“At the moment I’m just a few miles west of the Island, approaching the North West Bay. For the most part, the view is magnificent: soaring green mountains dotted with granite outcroppings, clear turquoise water, and hardly a cloud in the sky. But there’s something different about the Glacis District these days: irregular patches of silver clouding parts of the Imperators’ complex. Until today, when they finally allowed outsiders to approach the Seychelles, we believed the blur was only visible to satellite cameras, that it representing some kind of jamming field. Well, it certainly is a jamming field, but it’s also a physical phenomenon. Have a look.” The camera follows your gaze, homing in on walls and domes that look like solidified mist. They glitter brightly in the morning sunlight. You know what used to be under those structures, before the Imperators came back; but anything could be under there now.You continue your report. “Fortunately, most of Mahé is and always has been visible. Just over there you can see the beach where the British SBS were scheduled to land during their joint raid with the American SEALs–” you point, and the camera follows your finger. “Whether they did land, and what eventually became of them, are two of the mysteries I hope to solve today.”Even seeing the Imperators will solve one mystery. Earth’s satellites capture slave displays every day, but you haven’t seen an Imperator since the disastrous raid, although they’re surely not hiding out of fear. Earth has no weapon that can hurt them. Steven Dominick and Julia Alexander still look human enough, but they are not human. They aren’t even the people they used to be. The two of them must have gone through a battery of psych tests before being chosen for the Europa mission, and if they’d had any tendencies toward world domination, NASA would never have accepted them. But here they are now, ruling the planet and mocking every attempt to take them down. You think again about the sex slaves, displaying themselves (or being displayed) so proudly. It hasn’t escaped your attention that every reporter the Imperators summoned is young and telegenic. They might plan to make sex slaves of you all…and if they do, how could you ever stop them? You imagine yourself nude and kneeling blissfully at the end of an Imperator’s chain. It might happen or it might not. Maybe the Imperators don’t want you for a slave, or maybe there’s some way to change their minds, or to beat them, or…well, something. Still, you can’t stop thinking that you might end up a mindless sex toy. And if you do, whom would you rather belong to?Steven Dominick
Julia Alexander
^^~~~~~*~~~~~^^

seriously kinky shit

This is me...more or less. I've started messing around with the Bitstrips app on Facebook, and this is actually a pretty good likeness. Also, I have indeed been writing some seriously kinky shit lately.

"What Do You Give The Alien Who Has Everything?" is coming along swimmingly. Instead of doing the barbecue-and-fireworks thing for Independence Day, I spent most of the weekend indoors typing - and I loved it. I am deep in the zone and very pleased with how the story is coming together. I can't wait to share it with you. It's hard to do a word count for a Choose Your Own Adventure, but by my best estimation, I wrote over 10,000 words this weekend - and that's just a small fraction of the story's total length. So far. ;-P

A couple of people have asked me whether I plan to make the original "What Do You Give the Man Who Has Everything?" available again. I don't think so, no. When you read "What Do You Give the Alien," you'll see that a good 80% of "What Do You Give the Man" is still in there, and you'll have about eighty times as much new story on top of the old.

This won't be a long post; I don't suppose many people are spending their weekend online anyway. But I to talk for a minute about another subject, completely unrelated to what's above. In between bouts of writing over the weekend, I started reading another Jeff VanderMeer book, City of Saints and Madmen. It's a collection of interconnected stories centering on a fantastical, slightly steampunk city called Ambergris. There are monsters, both human and inhuman. There is fungus. But this book is so unlike the Southern Reach series that it's hard to believe they were written by the same author.

Now, City of Saints and Madmen didn't grip me immediately the way Annihilation and Authority did. In fact, I actually thought at first that I'd wasted my money buying it. Then the book took the same kind of hard left turn that VanderMeer pulled off at the beginning of Authority, and I'm pretty sure I actually said "holy fucking shit" out loud. You might think you know where the first story is heading. You might think you know where VanderMeer wants you to think it's heading, and that you know where it's really heading instead. Well, he is trying to make you think it's heading somewhere - and he's probably even trying to make you think you know where it's really heading in spite of where it appears to be heading. But you'll still be wrong about where it's heading.

If you're confused, you're meant to be.

What I wish I could do...and maybe you *can* do

For a long time, I've had what I think is a great idea for a YouTube video: a compilation of some great MC scenes from movies and TV shows that have been slowed down, chopped up, and otherwise enhanced for maximum EMC goodness. I have several scenes in mind already, including ones from this 2012 post; and I also have what I think is the perfect backing track.

The problem is time. I've never done a video compilation before, and although I'm sure I could figure it out, it would take a while. But I have stories to write and (possibly) photo manips to make. That being the case, I'll just share again the videos I have in mind (at least, the ones that haven't been taken down since that old post), I'll suggest some more great scenes, and I'll give the music I'd use in the video.

And then I'll make you an offer: I've saved all of these videos, including the ones that got taken down. If anyone out there wants to make their own YouTube compilation using some or all of my clips, I'll put them in a Dropbox and share them with you. As long as you really do plan to make a compilation and share it on YouTube, I'll be glad to put the files in a Dropbox for you. Just be aware that I can't share them with people who just want to see them for their own enjoyment because it would take a lot of time even for me to cut the right scenes out of the full movies I have.

Anyway, for your enjoyment, these are some of the scenes I'd include:

1. Lily's seduction in Legend:







2. Emma Peel's brainwashing in The Avengers:







3. "Close to You" from Mirrormask:




4. The vampire Carmilla seduces a maiden (Start viewing at 4:46):



5. "Fleurs du Mal" from Agent Provocateur:




6. The Fright Night club scene, 1985 version:



7. Dana Scully's hypnotic orgasm:



8 and onward: No EMC video compilation would be complete without Big Trouble in Little China, and I have the whole movie, but it got pulled from YouTube; so you'll have to make do with these pictures.

9. I'd also include Dwan's drugged progression toward King Kong in the 1976 version of the movie; some clips from the old B&W White Zombie; the "I Want It" clip from Looker (which, again, I have saved); one or more clips from The Lair of the White Worm (again, I have them saved); and scenes from TV shows like Lois and Clark, Wonder Woman, Falling Skies, and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (I don't have those saved, but they're easy to find).











Finally, here's the music I'd choose as accompaniment to the compilation. It sounds slinky and seductive, and the fact that I don't understand the language just makes it easier for me to lay my own interpretation over her words.

Brain dump 2, now with sexy pictures

Lots of only-semi-related stuff going on here again. Why don't we start with the insanely hot and just-waiting-to-be-turned-into-an-EMC-story image at right? I found it on Facebook. I don't know who the models or photographer are, but does it really matter? ;-P

I'll sprinkle a few more Facebook finds down the page just to keep you on your toes.

1. Regarding the brain dump, let's start with the "Choose Your Own Adventure" story I'm writing. It's coming along very well. I've hit cruising speed and am enjoying myself so much that I wish I could take a week off work and do nothing but write.

So far a couple of people have told me specifically that they want to be beta readers. I don't know how many lurkers also want to be beta readers (lots, I hope!), but in the interest of fairness, I'll be making the process first come, first served. When I finish the story, I'll post about it here and ask for people to volunteer in the comments section. That way there's no dispute about who got there first. You can even shout "First!" just like the AICN kiddies if you like.

This is what I'll need from the three beta readers: you must be willing to review many different story paths - including the gay male ones - in what's going to be a very long book, and you must get back to me within three weeks about what you've found. In return, you'll get an in-story cameo or Easter egg of your choice, a thanks in the "Acknowledgements" section, a free copy of the finished e-book, and another free e-book of your choice.

1a. I need some advice from a person with military knowledge regarding a scene in the story. Say a SEAL team is storming a beach, and they swam to shore from a patrol boat. Now, are they officially called a team, or is there a more appropriate term? What would be their ranks? How many would be on the beach? Who'd be in the patrol boat, and what would be their ranks?

1b. I've joined the "One-Handed Writers" group on Facebook. It's a great group of people who, unfortunately, mostly don't write MC erotica (Jacqueline Sweet is the exception). Recently, group members tagged each other to play the "five by five" game, in which you tell five things about the protagonist of your latest work in progress. This is what I said about mine:

1. My hero or heroine literally *is* a hero or heroine because I’m writing a “Choose Your Own Adventure.” The first choice my readers make is the sex of the protagonist.
2. The protagonist is a young, attractive reporter working for a major news outlet.
3. The protagonist has been summoned to the Seychelles for a press conference that will be the scoop of his/her life - but which might also leave her/him brainwashed and enslaved.
4. The protagonist has been summoned to the Seychelles by two astronauts who came back from a mission to Europa radically changed, and who then proceeded to take over the planet.
5. If the protagonist takes just the right action in just the right location, s/he opens up a huge, game-changing hidden plot line.

2.  I've now finished the second book of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy. It started off slowly and got progressively creepier, blew me out of the water with one of the freakiest scenes I've ever read (no spoilers, but here's a hint: it involves shelving), and then blew me out of the water even harder with a "holy fuck, where did that come from?" climax. Yesterday I found out that Goodreads has a new "Ask the Author" feature, and VanderMeer is participating - all the way through July. I asked him a question last night about the climax of Authority and got just the answer I was hoping for. Based on what he said, Book 3 will be total lunacy from start to finish. I can't wait.




(c) Eric Nyquist

"Hoarder" is now live as an ebook

This is my famously freaky dragon story. ;-) And since it's short, I'm only selling it for $1.99. Plus, here's the usual coupon (good for one month) to get it for 25% off at Smashwords: PE36J

And here's the description:


For six decades a dragon has terrorized the city of Weyderchi. At first its needs seemed small: one sacrifice per year, no hymen required. Then the beast became greedier, and the Priests were forced to give it nobles rather than milkmaids. Finally they realized it wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than the Crown Princess.
Rolanne is brave and smart, but the dragon has already taken two friends who were braver and smarter than she. Her only advantage over them is a mythical weapon only she had the right to claim. It’s strong enough to cleave rock, so a dragon’s hide should be no problem. She just has to reach the dragon with her mind intact and the sword still in her hands.
Unfortunately, that could be a problem….and it’s not even the worst one. The dragon didn’t eat Rolanne’s friends, and it doesn’t want to eat her, either. Its plans are much larger than that. In fact, they encompass all of Weyderchi.
This story involves dragon sex and extreme levels of mind control. You have been warned.
“Hoarder” is a story for fans of “Willing Subject” and “My Very Own Serial Number.”


Enjoy!

A great "breaking out of hypnosis" scene

I'm most of the way through Authority, the second book in Jeff VanderMeer's "Southern Reach" trilogy (and am incidentally eating my heart out because the final book won't be published until September). I've been dying to blog about it here, although it's hard to find a way around the spoilers. But when I reached the two scenes I'm about to quote below, I knew I had to share them with you, spoilers or not. The descriptions are just too rich and hot and dirty to keep to myself.

Fortunately, I can set them up for you without giving away too much of the surrounding plot; and to anyone who knows much about hypnosis, it's obvious almost from the first that the protagonist is being unwittingly subjected to it. The question for me, not having finished the book yet, is whether he's really free after this scene, or whether he only thinks he's free. A little later, someone reassures him that they couldn't implant false memories in him because "That kind of thing would make you such an expensive model that no one here could afford you" - which is a very provocative statement, in my opinion (And just for the record, I absolutely do not trust the person who told him this). Also, considering how much more important hypnosis is in Authority than in Annihilation, I expect it to be a crucial plot point in the final book. Which, again, I'm biting my nails while waiting for.

But on to the quotes. Here's a setup with as few spoilers as I can manage. If a few is too many for you, bail out while you have a chance - but IMO this is a safe enough read.

The protagonist, ironically nicknamed "Control," is an operative for the organization that manages the Southern Reach. He only ever talks to his handler via cell phone, and his handler's voice is masked so that Control doesn't even know whether he's talking to a man or a woman. He just calls that person the Voice. Well, as I implied, the Voice has been manipulating Control with hypnosis; but Control stumbled across a list of hypnotic triggers someone else had written, and he realized the Voice was using those triggers on him. Below is his retaliation. First I'll give you the scene where he zaps the Voice. Then I'll give you the flashback that shows what went on behind the scenes.

First thing Saturday morning, Control had called the Voice, from his house. He had placed an electronic bullhorn rigged with a timer on one side of his desk, set the timer. He had placed a neon orange sheet of paper with his reminders on it to the right, along with a pen. He drank a shot of whiskey. He smashed his fists down on the desk, once, twice, three times. He took a deep breath. Then he made the call, putting the Voice on speakerphone....

"Is your house in order?" the Voice asked....

Deep breath. Then, preempting anything the Voice might say, Control launched into a shouted string of obscenities of the most vile kind, contorting his throat, hurting it. After a surprised pause, the Voice shouted  "Enough!" then muttered something long and quivery and curling. Control lost the thread. The bullhorn went off. Control shook himself out of it, read the words on the orange sheet of paper. Checked off the first line. Launched again into a string of obscenities. "Enough!" Again, persistent, stubborn, the Voice muttered something, this time moist and short and darting. Control floated and forgot. The bullhorn went off. Control saw the words on the orange sheet of paper. Checked off the second line. Obscenities. Mutters. Floating. Bullhorn ripping through. Control saw the words on the orange sheet of paper. Check mark. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Fifth time. Sixth time. The seventh time the script changed. He fed back to the Voice all the muttering, glottal moist soft words he'd gleaned from the director's cheat sheet. Heard the wet gasp and shriek of hitting the target, then an awkward lunge of words toward him, but feeble, disconnected, unintelligible.

That had left a scar. He doubted his incantation had had the full effect, but the point was that the Voice knew and had had a very unpleasant experience.

The bullhorn went off. Control saw the words on the orange sheet of paper. He was done. The Voice was done. They'd have to get another handler, one not quite so manipulative.

"Here's a joke for you," Control said. "What's the difference between a magician and a spy?" Then he hung up.

He had reviewed the surveillance of his Wednesday and Thursday conversations with the Voice on Friday night after a vigorous jog. He'd been suspicious, hadn't trusted the way he seemed to fade in and out during those conversations, or how the Voice had infiltrated his thoughts. With [his cat] on his lap, and the feed piped in from his phone to the television, Control had seen the Voice execute hypnotic commands, seen himself become unfocused, head floating a bit on his neck, eyelids fluttering, while the Voice, never dropping the metallic, guttural disguise, gave him orders and suggestions....

The Voice, while Control languished under hypnosis, had a sharpness and focus not as present otherwise, and a kind of casual perversity, telling Control s/he wanted a joke to end their next phone call, "one with a punch line." As far as he could tell, he also had been serving as a living tape recorder for the Voice. The Voice had pulled out of Control verbatim conversations, which explained why he had been so late getting home Wednesday even though the conversation had seemed short....

So he'd written on the neon orange sheet that he could not possibly miss:

CONTROL, YOU ARE BEING SUBJECTED TO HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION BY THE VOICE
_____Check this line and scream obscenities. Move down one line.
_____Check this line and scream obscenities. Move down one line.

Rinse, repeat, brought out of it by the bullhorn, pulled back into it. Until, finally, he reached the end: "Check this line and repeat these phrases" -- all of the phrases he'd found in the director's desk. Shout them, actually.

So tell me now, dear readers: wasn't that worth a bit of spoilage? 

brain dump

There's been a lot going on in my head lately, some of which will interest you and some of which will not. I'll stick to the stuff that will interest you, but bear with me if this post veers too far into stream-of-consciousness.

1. One of my favorite fetish artists, Hajime Sorayama, has a new book of art on the market; and he also has a bunch of fantastic new paintings on his Facebook page. Go have a look.

2. I'm still working on my Choose Your Own Adventure story, which will be called "What Do You Give the Alien Who Has Everything?" It's a lot of fun to write, but also very challenging, and this sucker is going to be huge when it's done. I mean really, seriously huge. That's the nature of the CYOA beast. Anyway, I still need two or three beta readers, but the size of the book means I need to give bigger thank-you gifts to those who accept the challenge. Here's the new plan: volunteers (chosen on a first-come, first-served basis) will receive a free final version of the e-book, another free e-book (either one I've already published or an IOU for one I haven't published yet), and a choice of personalized Easter eggs to be embedded in the CYOA. If this interests you, just keep the idea tucked away in your brain for now. I'll keep posting updates until I reach the end of the draft stage, at which point I'll ask for volunteers.

3. Back in March I blogged about a weird/cool/MC-themed book called Annihilation, the first in a trilogy that I couldn't wait to read in full. I said that the author, Jeff Vandermeer, had already written books 2 and 3 and would be releasing them in the coming months; and that I planned to pick them up right away because Annihilation was that damn good. Sadly, I've only just picked up Book 2 (Authority) today. All I can tell you so far is that it's off to an excellent out-of-left field start. In the very first chapter, you get the kind of huge revelations you'd normally expect to find at the end of the third book in a trilogy - which, of course, means there must be dozens of bigger revelations down the pike that I don't even know enough to anticipate yet. This is very exciting. Also, thanks to the wonders of e-book technology, I can search back through Book 1 for words like "control" and "thistle" and even "breakfast" and see how Vandermeer was planting seeds (another of his clue-words) in Book 1 for ideas he develops in Book 2 - and presumably develops further in Book 3.

That's the advantage of writing your whole epic before you publish the first part: you have the control (hah) to do precisely this sort of seed planting. It's a major reason I didn't start posting Sleepwalkers online until I was near the finish line, but you can also chalk that up to anal retentiveness. Hmm, well, I suppose Vandermeer might be just as anal retentive as me, to do what he did with his Southern Reach trilogy. I have no idea about his personality, but it strikes me that you have to have a certain bloody-minded perfectionism to write that way (J.K. Rowling certainly had it, and look how far it got her. Love or hate the Potterverse, you have to admit she kept total control of a very complicated plot over the course of seven books. David Lynch couldn't even keep control over Twin Peaks for two seasons).

And now I'm struggling not to babble about Authority. The things I've read so far wouldn't count as spoilers to anyone who's read Annihilation, but they'd be huge spoilers to anyone who hasn't, so I'd better keep my mouth shut. I'll just say that Vandermeer has a talent for creating very odd, flawed, and totally believable characters who refuse to fit the molds you want to put them in. I already have a very different opinion of the Southern Reach and the people who run it, especially the new kid on the block who is also the new protagonist on the block: poor, ironically nicknamed "Control." Half of me wants to kick him, and the other half of me wants to hug him. It'll be interesting to see where Vandermeer takes the character.

They're real, and they're spectacular

I'm still working on my "Choose Your Own Adventure" story, of course (I expect to be working on that for months, but I also plan to publish "Hoarder" in the meantime). One of the places you'll be able to tour is a garden which the aliens are terraforming. Now, since the story is set in the Seychelles, I Googled the flora and fauna of the region so I'd have a realistic starting point. Imagine my astonishment when I came across the images you see in this post.

At left is a seed of the coco de mer tree. This species produces the largest seeds in the world, but as you can tell, they're not exceptional just because of their size.

But wait! There's more! The stamens of the male trees look just as suggestive as the seeds of the female trees - and they're just as large. The whole thing kind of reminds me of the Babel Fish joke from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where the fish is such an obvious clue to the existence of God that it actually negates God's existence.



Then there's the jellyfish tree. If ever a plant was designed to feature in a tentacle sex story, it's this one. Sadly, it's an endangered species, but at least in my story the aliens have a way to give it an edge on survival.

Finally, here's a clue that you might want to tuck away in your memory until the story gets published: the garden is an interesting place to visit, and depending on where you go, you might have a life-changing experience there...but what's behind the garden could be even more important.