I Atent Dead

It’s been a long time since I posted here. In fact, it’s been the better part of a Presidential administration since I posted here. But I’ve already explained why that is in the last post I did, back in 2012, so I won’t rehash them now. I will say that I’m going to make a special effort to post more. I’ll talk about my writing process, about the stories I have forthcoming, and about what I’m doing in the wider world of smut.

I’ll also plug myself, because part of the reason that I haven’t been involved in erotic mind-control fiction so much lately is because I’ve needed to spend time and money on paying projects and day jobs, and this has been one thing that hasn’t really fit in either category. But I’ve now created a Patreon page, and if I can get some people to pledge to it, then this can become a paying project and I can justify spending large amounts of my day writing about sex and brainwashing. Which we all love.

So if you like my writing, and you want to poke me into more of it, then maybe yes pledge maybe? I promise I’ll talk more about hypnosis. 🙂

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A Brief Apology/Reassurance

To anyone who might have been worried about me: No, I didn’t suffer some sort of terrible injury that left me incapable of posting a story last week, and no, this is not the beginning of the end for the Jukebox oeuvre on the EMCSA. I just got completely wrapped up in getting ‘Classic Jukebox’ ready for publication, and by the time I had it all done and Friday rolled around, I had utterly forgotten that I hadn’t sent a story off to Simon, because that’s what I always do! Except, obviously, that I didn’t. 🙂

I have already sent off this week’s story, so normal service is definitely resuming, and rest assured I’ve still got a nice long backlog ahead of me! And in the next couple of weeks, when I publish my next anthology (hint, hint…) I will try not to skip another week.

Possibly Amusing

This month’s contest on the Mind Control Forums isn’t a story contest (someday, I might list which of the stories up on the EMCSA are contest entries and what inspired them…) It’s actually a review contest. To enter, you have to review other people’s stories and constructively critique them in an interesting and entertaining fashion.

I am tempted to enter, but not entirely certain. I’m tempted because I do enjoy reviewing other people’s work; I’ve written a few reviews on my various vanilla blogs, talking about what I liked and disliked about other people’s writing, and I’ve also done some proofreading for published authors who have indicated to me afterwards that they really felt I improved their finished product. So there is that going for it.

I’m uncertain because I know that I am not a gentle critic. I believe that the best way you improve is by having someone go through your work word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, sparing absolutely no awkward turn of phrase or contrived plot twist. I only review for people who I believe to be entirely committed to improving their writing skills and secure enough in their abilities that they will not let any mild ego-bruising that I give them get in the way of revising their work. That doesn’t always apply on the EMCSA, where people just want to be allowed to post their sex fantasies without having to get all “literary” and don’t want people pointing out all their spelling and grammar errors.

On the other hand, the potential deal-maker? The winner gets all of their stories reviewed by the contest judge. Every single one. Given that I now have 194 stories on the Archive, and four more posted by the time the contest finishes, I’m tempted to go all out just to see if the reviewer’s able to follow through on his promises if I win. 🙂

Fun With Statistics!

One of the neat things about Literotica (and one of the reasons that I decided to start posting my stories there as well as to the EMCSA) is that in addition to seeing people’s comments on my stories, you can also see statistics of how many times people have viewed each story and what they ranked it on a scale of 1 to 5! (Although honestly, the comments alone are worth it. One person said she thought I was writing at the level of “Anais Nin, Anne Rice, or other Higher Art writers of erotica.” There are really no higher compliments.)

So, since this is data I think is interesting, I thought I might share a few tidbits with you!

Most Viewed: Sweet Surrender has over 30,000 views (meaning you could populate a reasonably small town with the readers of that story alone.) Unwritten has 21,000 or so, as does Secret Journey; and most impressively to me, Urgent has hit 15,500 in about a week.

Best Rated: Love Like Winter has an amazingly strong 4.88 out of 5, although that is a bit biased due to the fact that people who weren’t grooving on the White Album probably didn’t bother with the third story of the trilogy. Sweet Surrender holds its 4.5 out of 5 on the strength of 133 votes, which is almost more impressive in some ways. There are a few others in the 4.5-4.6 range (Small Town, Invisible Touch, Flesh for Fantasy), which is also nice, but none of them have a ranking that high on 100+ votes the way Sweet Surrender does.

Worst Rated: Winter Wonderland has a 3.60 off of 10 votes, which I feel is because induction pieces aren’t really going to have much of a following on a mainstream erotica site even if it does have an explicit “Mind Control” section; while Cars has a 3.66 off of 32 votes, which I feel is because it was my first story and it kind of sucks compared to all the others. Even so, my worst stories poll as “slightly above average”, so I feel like I’m getting pretty strong feedback.

Most Commented: Urgent has six comments, although one of those is me politely asking a previous commenter what the holy living fuck he was talking about (he said it should have been explicitly labeled as “gay”, and he didn’t want to read that kind of “disgusting shit”. Which, setting aside the “huh?” factor of a porn reader who didn’t like lesbians, is still incorrect. It was in the “Lesbian” category, not “Mind Control”.) Other than that, Unwritten and Unsent both have five. Must be something about the “U”.

Anyway, hope that interests you! Feel free to head to Literotica and leave comments of your own!

Requesting Assistance From the Internet Hive Mind

Does anyone know a book review website that accepts both a) self-published books, and b) erotica? I’ve seen a few that will accept one or the other, but I haven’t seen any that will do both. Searching on my own seems like it could take forever; there are, after all, a lot of book review websites out there. But if I ask all my readers to look, too…

Just drop your answer in the comments, or email it to jukebox0012000@yahoo.com.

Getting Meta For a Moment

I’m stuck for a topic for this week’s post, so bizarrely enough, I thought I’d talk about why I’m stuck for a topic for this week’s post. I think if I was any more meta, I would be at severe risk of collapsing my blog into a singularity.

It’s hard, knowing that I have so much difficulty writing for this blog, because I know it’s Lady Ru’etha’s favorite. She enjoys my stories, of course, and She enjoys my vanilla writing too, but I know She’s always a little bit sad when I get behind writing this blog. And when Lady Ru’etha is sad, I am sadder. 🙂

But on thinking about it, I know exactly why this is the hardest of all my regular writing gigs to come up with a topic for. It’s not because I don’t have enough of an interest in hypnosis (believe me, I live a hypnosis lifestyle 24/7, and I couldn’t be happier with it.) It’s because the columns here have a narrow focus, and I’m not exactly a narrow-focus kind of guy. Look at my stories, for example. On a weekly basis, I veer wildly from humor to romance to body-horror to darkly sadistic BDSM, and that’s sometimes just in one story! (Rimshot.)

But here…I have to talk about hypnosis. Like, just talk about it. Even on weeks when all I have to say is, “I was hypnotized again last night and it was utterly deliciously hot and sexy and fun!” (Which is even harder, given that I generally try to trail off in these posts before I explain just what happened after the hypnotic inductions. You want porn, go read my porn. 🙂 ) I’m not an expert on hypnotism, so my insights on hypnosis aren’t frequent enough to warrant a weekly summary of them. And as much as I love to talk about my writing and hypnosis in media, I think people would get sick of the former and the latter is really someone else’s gig. I’d fill up the gaps with short fiction, but, um…that goes to an obscure little site called the EMCSA. (It stands for something, but I can’t remember what.)

All of which means that it’s a little harder to think of weekly ideas for this blog than for the other things I write. Which isn’t to say I’m giving up–far from it. In case you missed it at the beginning of this post, Lady Ru’etha loves reading my blog entries. That by itself is motivation to keep trying every week. But some weeks are easier than others, and I thought my readers deserved to know why.

A Request For a Favor

As I’m sure you all know, I have made my mind-control erotica available in book form at the wonderful Lulu.com, both in downloadable ebook form and print-on-demand book form. I have mentioned this from time to time, because while writing these stories is a labor of love, it is labor nonetheless, and I like to think that if given the option to give me something back for all the warm happy moments you’ve had reading these stories, you’d do so. (There is no need to mention exactly how warm and happy some of the warm and happy moments are. 🙂 )

But I also understand that money is not always easy to come by in these difficult times, and so I figured I’d mention a nice thing you could do for me that didn’t involve spending it. Every one of my books on Lulu has a section where it is rated and reviewed by consumers, and even if you haven’t bought the books, there’s a good chance if you’re reading this that you’ve read the stories. So if you wanted to go and rate/review the books, I’d be much obliged! In order to help you out, the specific stories included in each anthology are listed below:

Greatest Hits, Volume One: “Cars”, “I Melt With You”, “Whip It”, “Simply Irresistible”, “Mickey”, “She Blinded Me With Science”, “Who Can It Be Now?”, “One Way Or Another”, “Eternal Flame”, “Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This”, “Addicted To Love”, “I Touch Myself”, “High On You”, “Submission”, “A Question of Time”, “Under My Thumb”, “Shameless”, “The Bitch Is Back”, “Transylvanian Concubine”, “Sex As A Weapon”, “867-5309”.

Classic Jukebox: “Back in Black”, “Dare To Be Stupid”, “Come As You Are”, “Turning Japanese”, Life in the Fast Lane”, “She Drives Me Crazy”, “You’re So Vain”, “Jukebox Hero”, “Killing Me Softly”, “Jessie’s Girl”, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, “Hysteria”, “New Sensation”, “All She Wants To Do Is Dance”, “Always Something There To Remind Me”, “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”, “Love in an Elevator”, “Never Surrender”, “Video Killed the Radio Star”, “Tempted”, “Love Bites”.

The Immaculate Collection: “Unsent”, “Weird Science”, “Push”, “Hip To Be Square”, “Uninvited”, “Don’t You Forget About Me”, “Play the Game”, “Surrender”, “Moment of Weakness”, “Policy of Truth”, “Miss You”, “Kiss Me Deadly”, “Keep Myself Awake”, “Feels Like the First Time”, “Love Stinks”, “Listen to the Music”, “True Colors”, “Look What the Cat Dragged In”, “Promises In the Dark”, “Follow You Down”, “Then the Morning Comes”.

The Best That I Could Do: “Silly Love Songs”, “Criminal”, “Headwires”, “Suddenly I See”, “If You Leave”, “Help Me Rhonda”, “Nothing Else Matters”, “Here Comes the Rain Again”, “Wake Up Call”, “A Hard Day’s Night”, “Here Comes the Bride”, “What’s On Your Mind”, “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “Don’t You Want Me”, “Black Velvet”, “Heat of the Moment”, “Small Town”, “The Final Countdown”, “My Best Friend’s Girl”, “Unforgettable”, “Hot Blooded”.

Past, Present and Future: “Don’t Speak”, “Sharp Dressed Man”, “Show Don’t Tell”, “Already Gone”, “I Ran So Far Away”, “Zombie”, “Talking In Your Sleep”, “You’re the Inspiration”, “Common People”, “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”, “God Save the Queen”, “Just Can’t Get Enough”, “Xenophobia”, “The Reflex”, “I Need To Wake Up”, “Enter Sandman”, “Paint It Black”, “Come On Eileen”, “Suicide Blonde”, “All You Zombies”, “Soft and Wet”.

Songs In the Attic: “Dancing With Myself”, “What a Girl Wants”, “Sweet Surrender”, “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody”, “You May Be Right”, “Step By Step”, “Unwritten”, “Zero”, “Brand New Key”, “Wage Slaves”, “I Can’t Wait”, “I’m a Believer”, “Electioneering”, “If I Only Had a Brain”, “Secret Journey”, “A Question of Lust”, “Dressed for Success”, “You Can’t Deny It”, “Dirty Laundry”, “The End Is the Beginning Is the End”, “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”.

In a Word: Yes: “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now”, “Losing My Religion”, “One of These Nights”, “Wish You Were Here”, “Body Language”, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”, “Glycerine”, Enjoy the Silence”, “The Joker”, “Good Morning Little School Girl”, “Urgent”, “The Waiting”, “Give Yourself To Me”, “Caught Up In You”, “Daydream Believer”, “Changes”, “Cruel To Be Kind”, “Come Together”, “Kiss”, “Too Late For Love”, “Ladybug Waltz”.

Classicks: “Re: Your Brains”, “Heart Shaped Box”, “My Name Is”, “Joy to the World”, “Exercise One”, “Yesterday”, “Running On Empty”, “Every Breath You Take”, “The Way You Make Me Feel”, “Left in the Dark”, “Quicksand”, “Trigger Happy”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, “Take a Bow”, “Vampire”, “Fascination”, “Spellbound”, “Nothing Too Serious”, “Fever”, “Nobody Does It Better”, “It’s Raining Men”.

The collections after that have stories not yet posted to the EMCSA; if you want to review those for me, you’ll either need to wait or else give them a buy. (I know which one I’d prefer…)

Word to the Wise…

I’ll be at the Fetish Fair Fleamarket this weekend in Providence with Lady Ru’etha, and rumor has it that I will have ebooks available for sale (including, quite possibly, a brand new one premiering this weekend exclusive to the con!) If you are kinky and attending, feel free to look me up and we can talk hypnosis, or just geekery in general.

Heck With It!

I haven’t had a good idea for a post in two weeks, despite some delicious hypnotic sessions with Lady Ru’etha…so I’m just going to ask you, my readers, for things to talk about. Go ahead, ask me questions in the comments; about my stories, about my influences, about hypnosis, about how many swallows it takes to carry a one-pound coconut! I can’t promise I’ll answer every question (some of the very very personal ones might be off-limits, for example) but I’ll give it the old college try.

Quietude

Sorry, been a little quiet lately…something to do with the fact that Lady Ru’etha is doing an extended tour of the Northwest Territories, which leaves me at loose ends a bit. But I’ve used that time wisely, I hope, by beginning to submit my writing to Literotica! Feel free, if you happen to be members, to say nice things about my work when and if it starts popping up.