Entire Riverbeast Series Now Available

As noted in a previous post, some prude got ahold of my Riverbeast books, and they all got banned from Amazon for being too hot, sexy, kinky and fun to sell on Amazon.

I regret that I am unable to sell the books on Amazon, but there ARE other markets, and I've uploaded the entire Riverbeast series: Fink's Revenge, Awakening, Beneath Slavery, Games, The Saloon and The Gambler as well as the single volume that contains all six volumes in the series, Riverbeast: The Journey.

The books are available at Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Inktera (formerly Page Foundry), Blio, Axis 360, txtr (an ebook app for Android devices), Overdrive, Flipkart, Scribd, Gardner's Extended Retail, Yuzu, Tolino (a group of German retailers who have an ebook subisidiary), and Odilo. Yes, I have been a busy author.

Other books of mine have been banned by Amazon, I'll be going wide with them, as well. I'll reserve Amazon for my stories that meet their very narrow definition of what's acceptable.

"Doin' Time In The Blue Shadows" Now On Smashwords

Click on the pic to go to Smashwords and buy, buy, buy!"
My first story has finally made its way through the Smashwords Meatgrinder (Smashwords' term for the software that converts a manuscript into a variety of formats used by various ebook retailers) and is now available for sale in a variety of formats. More stories should be forthcoming, as I have always kept the formats of my stories very simple, because I understand what XML is and how it works. And with XML, the simpler the better.

Setbacks and Achievements

Cover of my latest work. Eat your hearts out, Slavegirls From Beyond Infinity. You can't purchase it anywhere ... just yet.    Some of you may have noticed that my catalog on Amazon has been severely reduced. At some point in the last few weeks, either someone read a bunch of my books and brought them to the attention of Amazon's censors, or some Amazon censor got busy prior to the holiday and reviewed a bunch of my books and found them not in agreement with Amazon's TOS.

As a result, four or five of my books got blocked (Amazon's pathetic euphemism for "banned") mostly books from my Riverbeast and President Slave Girl series. Realizing that I might see MORE blocked books, I went through my catalog and unpublished all the other books in those series, as well as several others, getting rid of ANYTHING that might be in violation of Amazon's TOS.

This resulted in my catalog on Amazon being cut in half, basically. The books that remain are, in my opinion, well within Amazon's TOS.

Unpublishing some of my books on Amazon turned out to be a futile response, however, because a couple of weeks ago I got notices that the SAME books that had been blocked by Amazon had been blocked again. And no, I had not resubmitted those books to Amazon. I'm not sure how my books got  blocked WHILE IN THE STATE OF BEING BLOCKED, but they did, as I got a new rash of notices.

And I also got a not-so-nice letter threatening that if I didn't stop submitting books that Amazon found bannable, my account would be suspended, which would mean no more publishing on Amazon. And that my books would get more severe scrutiny henceforth.

Well I'd feel confident that I'm not going to run afoul of Amazon's rules, except that I don't know how they got banned a second time, and I'm afraid to ask. Not out of general timidity -- when I got the second wave of ban notices, I wrote Amazon and asked why my books had been blocked a second time after being blocked, and I suspect that's what prompted the notice that I might get my account suspended. (And no, I did not get an answer to that second letter. Although I guess the suspension threat could be considered an answer of sorts.)

And I have no idea if I'll get a third set of notices of books that have already been blocked twice. As is usual with large organizations like Amazon, I suspect that the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing, and the brain in between them has no fucks to give about that.

In the meantime, I have submitted to Amazon what I suspect might be my best, most fun works to date, "Slave Girls Of Outer Space." I wrote about the origins of it in this post from my Politically Sexy blog (which is NSFW).

To put it briefly: a 1990s B-movie called "Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity" had a series of opening scenes that promised an exciting space opera comedy about half-naked slavegirls on the run from interstellar slavers, but dropped that about ten minutes into the movie for an EXTREMELY tired remake of "The Most Dangerous Game." I wrote a review of it a couple of years ago in which I expressed the opinion that it would have been a GREAT movie if they'd stayed with the storyline that the opening sequence promised. I was casting about a couple of months ago for a new storyline to start, and I happened to reread that review, and I had an A-HA! moment. I would put my talent where my mouth was and write the sexy interstellar adventure story that I had envisioned from the opening sequence.

That's what "Slave Girls Of Outer Space Part 1" is, a 25,000 word NON-EROTIC (though still damn sexy) novella. I am damn proud of it. It's fun, sexy and funny, to the extent I'm capable of making it so.

I have ALSO written "Slave Girls Of Outer Space Part 1: The Erotic Edtion," which is a 33,000 word novella that's just like the non-erotic edition, except for 8,000 words which explicitly describe the sort of sexual shenanigans our heroines get up to. Readers can make the choice as to which version they like. I think both are pretty damn good.

Both books have been "In Review" for almost a week now. Normally books take less than a day to review, sometimes, just a couple of hours. This must be the greater scrutiny Amazon was talking about in its letter.

The first book I ever had blocked stayed in review for days and I sent a letter asking what was up and got a response that it had been blocked. So I'm not going to poke the Amazonian elephant about this book. I'll let them take their time and hope it is not found blockable.

In the meantime, I am taking my blocked and unpublished books and doing a maneuver called "going wide" with them, which is to say, publishing them on other platforms that are not so prudish as Amazon when it comes to sexual content. I already have published several of my blocked & unpublished stories on other platforms, specifically, I'm using the Direct2Digital and Smashwords platforms to distribute my stories to itunes, Kobo, etc.

I've uploaded the following stories to Barnes & Noble: Riverbeast 1: Finks Revenge, Riverbeast 2: Awakening, The Wrangler, Stolen Misery, Fifty Shades of Slave Princess Gaia, A Little Bit of Monica and Doing Time In The Blue Shadows."

I've also distributed "Doing Time In The Blue Shadows" on Smashwords and Direct2Digitial, using it as a stalking horse for any cow pies I might encounter with their distribution systems. So far, smooth sailing, so look for more books on these channels. And there are a lot of retailers covered by them: "Doing Time" is on sale at Itunes, Inktera (formerly Page Foundry), Kobo, Baker & Taylor, txtr, Flipkart, Oyster, Scribd, Gardner's Extended Retail, Yuzu, Tolino, Odilo and Gardner's Extended Library.

Look for a lot more of my books to be published on these channels. And in the meantime, I'll continue to publish on Amazon, so long as they'll have me, because I believe the REAL relationship in literature is between the writer and reader, not the writer and publisher/distributor, and I don't want to deny my readers the opportunity to read my books on the platform of their choosing.

President Slave Girl Gets Corporate Training

You can get Corporate Training by clicking on the pic or clicking here.

Corporate Training is the third in the President Slave Girl series.

In Book 3 I wanted to do a riff on the standard sex slave training meme, but of course I can't serve it straight up, no, I also wanted to slide in some sly parallels between corporate slavery and sex slavery. And of course, lots and lots of sex, bondage, sexual bondage, lesbian sexual bondage, public sex, and tons and tons of humiliation for MacCammon, because she has been a very bad, prudish and evil President. But I threw in some growth as a character for MacCammon, as well, through an encounter with an old enemy. I wanted to point a way out for MacCammon. Even the bad guys (and gals) can learn and transcend, and MacCammon is not the sort who learns easily, but she's had a lot of very willing teachers once she became a slave girl.

Here's the blurb:

Trapped in a corporate training facility deep under a skyscraper, former President of the United States Eileen MacCammon must somehow maintain her sense of self even as her trainers teach her to submit to their every salacious command.

MacCammon is forced to confront an old enemy for the entertainment of Art DeFabio, the billionaire alpha male financier who controls her life, and his friends. Can the sound political instincts and will to win that drove her to win the Presidency help her win the confrontation with her enemy, and triumph over DeFabio and his One Percenter friends? And can she overcome her old prejudices as she does so?

Get Witless On Lothar!

Get Witless or Be Witty ... It's YOUR Choice! Image source: Hottitude Press.

OK, fans of my adult website Bondagerotica (Google it, I'm not doing any direct links from my wholesome author blog) will remember that I did a series called "Witless on Lothar" way back when, and I realized that I could easily collect them and put them in book form for sale on Amazon, so i did. And when I finished, I realized, "This is not erotica, there's only two sex scenes and they're only a few paragraphs long."

What they were, actually, was political satire. It was all about the contrast between the protagonists (political pundit Anne Coaltar) highly politicized view of the world and the barbaric (and really dumb and unbelievable) reality of Gor. Then former presidential candidate Hilarity Clanton winds up being First Girl in the slave kennels where Anne winds up, because "Duh!"

It was so much fun to write. I'm hoping it will be as much fun for others to read.

Here's the blurb:

When political pundit Anne Coaltar wakes up on a strange new world naked and chained to a huge rock after what must have been a hell of a party, she naturally assumes it's a practical joke. Or perhaps that it's one of those dreams where you think you are awake but really are not. But when she's accosted by hard-looking alpha males who look like they stepped out of a Renfair and subjected to indignities that outstrip ANYTHING she had ever suffered at the hands of even the most rabid democrat, Anne realizes this MIGHT be more than a joke, or a dream. If it is a dream, it is a very NAUGHTY dream.

But this is just the BEGINNING for Anne, as she's drawn farther and farther into this dream, or world, or most likely, democratic plot to discredit her. Anne winds up in a slave kennel and discovers that her superior in the slave kennel hierarchy is none other than Hilarity Clanton, her greatest enemy and candidate for the US Presidency!

It it all a dream, a subconscious demon brew of repressed lust and desire that runs counter to Anne's every conservative desire? Is it a democratic plot to discredit Anne? Or is it a science fiction reality that has launched her across the stars only to be confronted with something out of a medieval fantasy?

Find out as you explore the world of the Witless On Lothar!

Where Have I Been?

Well, simple enough: our Simon Legree of a landlord sold the house we were renting out from under us because real estate prices in the neighborhood we were living in have been going through the roof, and he made a bargeload of bucks. He gave us notice, but the unexpected expense and hassle has been a total PITA. Very much modern America, I guess.

I've been spending the last two months frantically searching for housing, getting us packed, and getting us moved. I've had to put writing and publishing on the back burner for this period, as in, "not doing any of either."

We're in a smaller but very nice living space now, paying a little more for rent, but not much. And I'm back in the writing and publishing game, as subsequent posts will demonstrate. But in the meantime, the game has changed, and as I result, I've had to make some changes, too.

Riverbeast: The Gambler Now On Sale On Amazon

The sixth and final installment of Book One of the Riverbeast series is now on sale. Happily ever time? You betcha! Click here to get the book!

The final installment of the first book of the Riverbeast series is out, I hope it meets or exceeds all expectations. Especially sales expectations! But also, expectations of anyone who has liked the other books in the series. Here's the official precis:

Trapped in the notorious Hole in the Bluff Saloon after she is sold as a runaway slave girl to the saloon owner by riverboat pirate Bart Fink, Constance Harlee finds herself forced to live the life of a saloon girl. She expected it to be a hard life, serving outlaws so wicked that in many towns they would soon find themselves hanged for their crimes. But what she never expected was that she would fall in love with one of the customers! This book is over 19,000 words long.

I had a lot of fun researching this book. I tried to keep things as authentic as I could. Little things like lighting ... I found out that in 1820 whale oil lamps were in common use for lighting except among the very poor who had to make do with candles. Or the sanitary facilities on steamboats ... turns out, they used chamber pots and had communal showers. At the same time, they had very luxurious accommodations and traveling barbers and generally were the high life for the upper deck passengers, not so much so for passengers on the lower deck. (There were no below decks quarters, steamboats had a very shallow draft as you might expect, given the fact that the Mississippi could get very shallow indeed in places, and the locations of shoals tended to change with seasonal storms.)

The real Mississippi riverboatmen are not the unremitting bastards of Bart Fink's crew as portrayed in this book. They were a wild lot: they fought, they drank, and their lives were often short. But they were not outlaws, per se, and the sort of treatment Constance endured in the story is not what you would expect from them. But you have to figure a scumbag like Bart Fink would attract the worst of the worst. I also seriously doubt that prostitutes traveled on riverboats paying their fare in sexual favors, but I liked having the chance to contrast Constance's treatment with that of the prostitutes, so I got all unhistorical.

The Hole in the Bluff Saloon is VERY loosely based on the Cave in the Rock outlaw hideout, and Davey is VERY loosely based on an infamous outlaw who ran a tavern near there whose specialty was killing visitors to his tavern and taking the money they had too much of. Federal troops did raid the real Hole in the Rock outlaw hideout (it was not in fact a saloon) without success on several occasions. It was apparently a very well situated hideout, it was in use for decades. But it was also not on the Mississippi River, so good thing I changed the name to protect the guilty, eh?

I won't tell you what gambler Big Al is very loosely based on, except that it is not Bat Masterton.

Constance is not based on any historical or fictional character, I totally made her up. However, there is historical precedent for Costance's story. Historically, slaves were worth enough money that there was a lucrative trade in kidnapping freed black people in the North and selling them in the South. There were SOME cases where the bounty hunters kidnapped white people who happened to have dark skin and sold them as slaves. They were rare, but they did occur.

And of course the whole issue of "white" and "black" was not nearly as black as white as it was made out to be. There were free people living in the North who had a great deal more black ancestry than many enslaved people in the South. Particularly, attractive young women known as "octoroons" (people with 1/8 black ancestry) were popular in brothels because many of them looked very white indeed, and could eaily have "passed" for white people ... because, for all practical purposes, they WERE white people. It was only the racism and bigotry of the times that made the term meaningful, which is why you don't hear it much nowadays.

Constance, with her black hair and Mediterranean bronzed skin, was in fact entirely of what they would have called "white" ancestry at the time, but Fink and Davey realized that she looked blacker than some octoroons, and could easily be passed off as such. I don't have any idea if this ever happened historically, but it's certainly well within the bounds of possibility.

And if the book sneakily gets the message across that race is a very arbitrary divide and treating people differently on the basis of it rather than their actual character makes very little sense ... well, that's a win ... in my book.