Free books for the masses

Hey! My author friend Lizbeth is running a giveaway again! If you are a member of Goodreads, you can enter to win a copy of her book. And if you like dark fantasy and erotica, boy, are you in for a fucked-up treat. 😈

To go to the giveaway, please click on this link.

Reviews for the Theater of Dusk taken from the giveaway info:  

“...If you like dark, mysterious and slightly disturbing things, this is the book for you. I cannot be happier that this author and I crossed paths. This collection is a mix of dark, mystery and a little of the in between. It's a mix of emotions and darkness. Darkness that wraps you up in its tight-fisted hands and pulls you in close to kiss you so passionately that you go stupid. You forget everything.”

“This little read takes the reader by surprise. In its entirety this book is filled with darkness… We become each character, however horrific that thought is, and realise that love does not exist. …Each short story takes you along a road of self-discovery and the reader can recognise elements of the darkness within the self… I would recommend it to anyone prepared to brave the deep.”

Good luck! Giveaway runs until the 10th of November. I hope you win, it'll be an amazing belated Halloween gift. And while you're there, check the other giveaways too. Lots and lots of books of every possible genre available. Enjoy your browsing!

(If you enjoy my content, please consider supporting what I do. Thank you.)

Anita Blake

I have read six of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series books by Laurell Hamilton. The main reason I keep reading the series is to see Anita finally. Get. Laid. The plot is not bad, either, although it is not good in every book. Anita is often irritating and the writer repeats the same plot tricks and machinations to make Anita react in her very familiar, annoying, stubborn, inconsiderate way. Which means, whenever there is a new woman around, she is usually taller than Anita and she will inevitably insult and irritate the protagonist until she springs into action and 'proves' herself. Whenever there is a new bad vampire in the series, usually it's a man torturing or wanting to rape some poor helpless woman, or it's a woman torturing someone weaker, so once more Anita has to save the day. And it's the same plot element, recurring in every book. Again, and again, and again. One would have expected word of Anita kicking so much ass going around and making other vampires wary, but no, it never happens. They consider Anita the ideal candidate for their inane little power games and idiotic self-confirmation experiments. And Anita is always happy to rise to the challenge, making you wonder who's the most stupid and childish of the two, the vampire that doesn't know the extend of Anita's powers or Anita who does.

Anyway, Anita does get laid, at the end of book six, just as I was about to eat my socks out of sheer frustration. But then another frustration comes along. The sex scene itself, which is description, not erotica. Because erotic writing is so much more than description of what goes in where and the kind of noises people make when they fuck, or about licking foamy water from each other. I check on wiki and see that reviewers comment on how the series becomes boring from book 14th onward. Unfortunately for me, the boredom concerning sex descriptions started in book six. I felt cheated to expect something for so long and not get it in the end. And yes, the books are erotically charged, but that's what they remain; charged. That tension is not released. At least I have not seen it released yet.

*Sigh*

"Few mainstream books delve so deeply into pure, unadulterated erotica"?

Wait for me, motherfuckers. Just you fucking wait.

 

Anita Blake

Reader reaction to the series's shift in tone from crime noir thriller to focus more predominantly on the sexual themes in the series has been mixed, starting with Narcissus in Chains when the main character of Anita Blake becomes infected with the ardeur. The ardeur is a supernatural power inadvertently given to Anita by her vampire Master Jean-Claude that gives her massive amounts of power but also demands that she have sexual intercourse with several different people through the course of a day, sometimes in large groups. Reception to these dynamics and to the usage of sexual abuse, incest, and rape in later books has been mixed,^[3] with some reviewers commenting that the character of Anita spent too much time "obsessing about whether or not she’s a slut" while others remarked that the erotic themes enhanced the series.^[7] In response to these comments, Hamilton issued a blog entitled "Dear Negative Reader" where she addressed a growing number of readers on the Internet that was expressing disappointment in the series's changes.^[3][8] In the blog Hamilton told the readers that "life is too short to read books you don’t like" and that if they found that the current subject matter pushed "you past that comfortable envelope of the mundane" then "stop reading" and speculated that some of the readers were either "closet readers" or comment based on others' opinions.^[3][8] The blog entry was negatively received by some readers.^[3]

Critical reviewers have also commented on the amount of sex in later books, as in a 2006 review in the The Boston Globe of Micah. The review was largely negative, stating "we were not impressed. Hamilton no doubt appeals to romance and erotica lovers, but it does not take long for the clichés and the constant droning about sex to become tiresome."^[9] Other reviewers for The Kansas City Star and Publishers Weekly also commented on the rise in sexual themes in the series.^[10] The reviewer for the Kansas City Star stating that "After 13 erotically charged books, boredom has reared its ugly head for the 14th novel in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series, as eroticism becomes mere description..." and Publishers Weekly commenting that Blood Noir had a "growing air of ennui, which longtime readers can't help sharing as sex increasingly takes the place of plot and character development".^[11]

In contrast, a Denver Post review of Danse Macabre took a more positive view of the eroticism in Hamilton's work. Although it noted that "[t]hose looking for mystery and mayhem on this Anita adventure are out of luck" it also stated that "the main attraction of the Anita Blake novels in the past five years has been their erotic novelty", and "[f]ew, if any, mainstream novels delve so deeply into pure, unadulterated erotica".^[12]

  

Taken from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurell_K._Hamilton#Anita_Blake 

With all that said and done, let me add a few pictures of Jean Claude, Anita's vampire boyfriend just for kicks... Damn, if I had such a character in my books I would write the new Iliad with sex-obsessed, penis-brandishing, humping-you-unexpectedly-in-dark-corners vampires.

The last two pictures are taken from here:  
http://arianne023.deviantart.com/art/Jean-Claude-and-Anita-Blake-322530203

Cold sweat, or, anus, what a wonderful word.

Ooooooooh VERY PRETTY...

I make tea to calm my head down.

There's an English Thesaurus, one ancient English-Greek/ Greek-English dictionary and one English grammar book carelessly thrown on various surfaces near me. My fingers run the keyboard. I am flushed. I feel private parts of mine clench and unclench. A customer comes. I sell a pack of cigarettes. The customer leaves. I stretch my back. I continue writing. My villain is fucking an innocent young man blind. I try to keep my sentences small, which is always a struggle for me. The words need to be precise and convey what both heroes feel. I am trying to decide whether to use the word 'rod'. It seems ridiculous and decide against it. Generally speaking, I am in favour of more simple language. Nothing wrong with 'cock', 'asshole', 'fuck'. But I don't like repetition and I don't like vulgarity. It makes the whole procedure more interesting and more difficult.

I read what I've written.

I swallow a couple of times.

I wonder what the average man will think of it. He will probably screech in terror and run away. Casual bisexuality has never been the average man's strong point. Masculine characters that offer oral pleasure to other masculine characters can't possibly be protagonists if you aim at a male audience.

Fuck the male audience. I am writing this for me. I am writing because I want to read it and get horny. If my writing makes me horny, then perhaps more readers will get horny. If I am writing this to aim at an audience, I am like a blind man shooting arrows to the moon. I'll get shit.

I wonder what kind of publisher would want to publish my book.

A gay man, most likely. Or an open-minded woman with cojones the size of watermelons.

I read what the villain says to his young hostage. The image of myself hiding in a cave while all the media worldwide crucify me flashes before my eyes. I see my mother's stunned expression as journalists ask her what she thinks of her daughter's preoccupation with what can fit inside a human anus. I can even hear her outraged questions, demanding more information from the journalists.

I can see you all wondering what the hell, doesn't your mom know what you're writing about?

Are you crazy? Of course my mother doesn't know what I am writing about. She knows that I write about vampires and does not even like that. 

Writing is not about safe ground, or making your mom happy.

Writing is about as easy as walking butt naked in public display. While masturbating. And screaming obscenities. With a loudspeaker. In a stadium. Full of Mormons.

With a wry smile, I consider that the customer probably wouldn't have wanted that pack of cigarettes if he knew the places my mental fingers had been seconds before.

I make a mental note to find a cave with internet signal.

I make a second mental note not to tell my mom where the cave is and go back to writing. 

Fuck this.

I just came across a site that specialises in Vampire fiction.

http://www.lovevampires.com/index.htm

It gave five stars to Twilight. It's one of the most badly written, repetitive and less than mediocre books I have read in my life and that site gave it a solid five out of five review. No, wait. In fact I could not read it. No. I couldn't. I doubt I finished it. I think I just passed it on to another poor unfortunate soul, may God/dess have mercy on her.

Going through the site I discovered that there is a crapload of books in the vampire genre, by authors I have never heard in my life. It appears that there are more vampire's asses out there than there are vampires. It's scary and intimidating for someone like me who writes an essentially vampire novel. I mean for crying out loud. My vampires are not mysterious strangers that chuckle softly to themselves from the shadows of their dark castle. No, one of them appears with a mop in hand in the very first chapters. Another starts crying because he's so upset that he can't help it. The third has been used as a punching bag for so many years by his progenitor that has developed the psychology of a lifer in prison. He pussyfoots around everything and anything and tries to be invisible most of the time. How's that for dark and mysterious strangers? No?

Look, I am a woman. I can't help being romantic. But there is romantic and romantic. Most people believe romantic is dinner in a candlelit restaurant. I have very different ideas on it. And there is one very important element that does NOT mix with a romantic outlook. Realism. Realism and romanticism just don't get along. I am first and foremost trying to write a book that has a strong, realistic core to the degree this is possible since we're talking about vampires. I don't want black and white characters and I most certainly don't want caricatures or stereotypes. So if someone has to mop in the house of a very paranoid and misanthropic vampire then this someone is the vampire himself. I don't know who mops in the houses of all those other vampire characters. I suppose that unless they live in a sewer or a burrow someone DOES mop the house. :) So bite me.

I think I must invite all my male hesitant emo characters in one gathering and let them pat each others' backs for several hours and nag to their heart's content. Even if I turned that meeting alone in a book it would probably make a better read than Twilight.

And as I said before, bite me.

Seraph

Today is the first day my face in the mirror looks familiar again. I haven't a clue why.

I saw you in my sleep last night. 

It's funny how I see you in my sleep while we don't talk in real life. You were wearing a light blue suit that shined at parts with an almost satin sheen. I am guessing that it was the tie, or the shirt that shined. This time you looked like your usual self. And blue looked good on you, although I have never seen you wearing it. 

Damned fairies. Damned race of alcoholic, sex addicted, heartless, whimsical nutters. Nothing but trouble and heartache. It's all about your glamour and conquests. I am guessing most of you die of liver failure or drug overdose, and those who don't just carry some kind of STD to their dying day. But I forgot; you're a lucky bunch of arseholes. You manage to avoid disease most of the time even if you're not particularly careful.

I would so spank them collectively. Using planks. Or better big clubs and flattening their stupid heads.

Talking about fairies, the character I would mostly like to BE (from my own ones) is Seraph. Seraph has a fairy soul, but not the "drink and make merry" type, but rather the "kill and fuck mercilessly" type. He's Irish, 6'3'' (1, 93m), long coal black hair, gray blue, almost silvery eyes, very pale skin, lots of blue black tattoos, and also a real piece of work. A brooding, misanthropic, nearly growling young man, presently in University, who's about as amused with humanity as I am, but not really interested in censoring his mouth if you aggravate him. What are you going to do, hit him? You can try. He's been trained to kill vampires since he was practically a child. He has even killed a few. Come on, try. Give it your best shot. The doctors will have such a good time re-arranging your bones afterwards. Like playing Tetris but with no visible bricks. Thankfully Seraph looks like someone that it's NOT in your best interests to annoy. Most people instinctively know he can break them in two. Even bullies shrink away from him, and those who don't are usually used as an example for others, and offer quality time to doctors and physiotherapists (practicing the medical Tetris I described just now).

What I admire about Seraph is his willpower and self-discipline. He has been exercising since he was very little, partly because he needs to be in perfect physical condition for hunting and partly because regular exercise keeps his murderous and restless nature in check. He never questions what he is, never doubts what his responsibility is. He's quite content with his share. He's been brought up to kill vampires, period. Not all vampires. The ones that kill humans. You'd be surprised to know, perhaps, that most modern day vampires would rather not. You can't magic away a corpse, and leaving a trail of corpses behind you is guaranteed to attract the wrong kind of attention. Seraph takes care of those stupid enough or uncaring enough to do so.

Clichés I have tried to avoid: 

He's not a vampire. I mean, give me a break. Jesus wept.

He's not a loner because he has been heartbroken. He just happens to enjoy the company of his own self a lot more than that of other people. He never invests a lot in order to be heartbroken.

He's not misanthropic because he's old and disappointed. He is merely disillusioned. Has seen through the lies and appearances and social conventions and knows how petty and ugly most people are on the inside.

He does not kill vampires to protect humans. He doesn't like humans very much to begin with. No, his mind is far too complicated and different to see humans as 'good' and 'vampires' as bad. He strives to preserve the balance, because a vampire that habitually kills is a chaotic, disruptive, unchecked power. Still he's not obsessive. He's aware he cannot kill ALL wild vampires out there. He, too, is only human after all. At least his body is.

He does not kill for revenge. Another cliché. He never had any of his relatives or friends killed by a vampire. Hell, I am not sure if he even has any friends. He's pretty dispassionate about it all. Vampire hunting just happens to be his calling, and he enjoys doing it because he’s what he’s best at. 

In addition to the above, he can also kick seven shades of blue out of most people, armed with nothing but his stunning body and a grin. xD

I would love to be Seraph. Don't get me wrong, I love vampires. But give me a good body and many years of training to kill and a few bullies to practice on. Oh god yes. This would be orgasmic.

I go do something else now, before I soak my pants so thoroughly that my socks get wet too.

How to kidnap rock stars

The battle rages on… And I try to win by writing poetry. And listening to Dir en Grey, of course. What else.

I have not written here in ages. It has been a busy time. Most of the time, not in a good way. But as I said before, the battle rages on. I don’t give a flying fuck. I will win. I will win because I am on the right side. The one that has butter, that is.

I am trying to be positive. I already am A positive as a blood type. It counts for something, I guess. I also am watching the True Blood series. It has a positive impact on me. I think. Vampires and rednecks. Why the hell not. Thank you, K. for giving the series to me. I have always hated that part of US and now, watching vampires trampling rednecks underfoot I swear I would have gotten an erection if that was anatomically possible.

Ahh… There is so much I would like to write about. This time I’ll refer to a fantasy I have, if only to please my black velvet heart. I have a friend of mine who looks like a crossover between Vin Diesel and the guy from Machette, only with less scars and more ways to kill. Let’s call him P.G.R. (Initials stand for Petite Grim Reaper.) As expected, he has more male friends like him who are of equal dimensions and skills, if only to be able to play with the boys without any repercussions. Read between the lines: exchange friendly slaps and pats on each others’ backs and be casual about it. To help you understand, slaps and pats that would have knocked professional wrestlers unconscious and would have caused the average person to suffer multiple spinal fractures. So I have this fantasy of my friend P.G.R. and two of his friends knocking on the door of a specific rock star saying “packet for you sir, signed delivery please”. As soon as the rock star answers his door he’s silenced with a friendly concussion-causing knock on his head, grabbed and ushered inside a large wooden box. Next scene is taking place in a sunny green field, where I am sat on a director’s chair sipping chocolate milk from a large mug and watching those three friends playing rugby using the aforesaid rock star as a ball. There is also this curious brick wall serving no obvious purpose, built in the middle of the field. Idyllic, isn’t it? Just think about it. Think of how many times he’ll slip off their grasp and land on the ground, preferably head or face first. The number of times they’ll miss and send him though the brick wall, onto tree trunks, into the small picturesque piranha-infested stream nearby. And if he doesn’t slip we can always undress him save for a loincloth and cover him in Vaseline first, then continue. Oooooh, naughty! I think I am getting wet. I go do other things now.

PS: I had a friendly conversation with P.G.R. a few days ago. I was complaining to him about the need to practice my speaking skills in a foreign language and once more he offered to kidnap and bring me the same rock star to help me. Then he added, “of course, I’ll break his pelvis first, in case you get any funny ideas.” When I complained to him that the rock star speaks too fast and I won’t be able to follow, he offered to rip off his jaw, too, if only to assist him in speaking more slowly.

It is the time of falling leaves

The moon tonight looks like a crescent night light that someone stuck onto a huge canvas- a canvas painted in various shades of grey.

It is the time of falling leaves.

I am falling. Everyone leaves.

It does not matter.

The city calls me at night.

It has a tiny voice, disguised as static.

Sometimes the city answers my questions in the form of a passing car with a particular song booming out of its open windows. When I wallow in my melancholy, there is a gentle night bird urging me on through its soft, repeated song. The disconnected, shattered phrases I catch from strangers, while passing by outside their windows or conversations. There are nights I hear the stars themselves tingling as they pour out of the womb of the universe and adorn the fabric of the galaxy. Other nights I only hear my own songs, or sobs. But those too form the voice of the city.

If someone was to pull the fabric, what then?

Isis unveiled.

If I was to reach out and get hold of one corner of the fabric of existence and then try to pull, what then?

Would I discover I am pulling at the flesh of my own face?

I think of Dorian, my vampire serial killer, and of how he understands the night in the city. The songs he hears and I can only imagine. Human voices forming a huge tapestry of sounds, spread thinly over a greater, thicker weave of noises, man-made or otherwise. Animals must stand out in this tapestry like altogether different threads. Different colour and thickness. And there are also sounds that do not belong to any man or animal, sounds that come from very different sources. Can anyone possibly imagine how someone like him perceives this huge, collective creation? If it was indeed a carpet or tapestry one would be amazed; all manners of materials crisscrossing and drowning each other, from the most expensive silk and gold thread to artificial wire and humble straw. Patterns created from a spider on drugs moments before it collapses dead; holes, missing and broken threads, tightly woven parts, parts the whole thing seems on the verge of spreading open, held together only by breaths and times gone; parts thick and oily and grimy with the stench of human toil and despair. What kind of museum will ever hold this tapestry? Are vampires, in this sense, our lore keepers? Is this their true punishment?

When you step out, my predator, does the human smell attract you and disgust you at the same time, the way certain bodily odours do it for us humans? Do you stop by windows, listening to the same dramas being re-played a million times from the dawn of of humanity onwards? Betrayals and promises of forever, pain and ecstasy, first and last breaths, do you listen to them? Your ears are sharp enough to hear the sound of hair, sharply whipped to the side by the flirtatious turn of a woman's head. But do you care?

I wish I was as free as you are. Because there are nights I, too, need to kill. I want to push my nails into someone's eyes till I feel them pop under the pressure and my fingertips are covered by a wet, gelatinous mass. I want to run after a breathless teenager and grab them by the hair-long sweet smelling hair, supermarket shampoo and hopes of getting laid-, stopping the escaping scream with a single, sharp pull. I want to drag them home and tie them up and use knives to carve their flesh. But contrary to me, whenever you get one of those urges you act on it. You do the killings for me and I keep the balance for you. You watch and I keep watch. You destroy and I heal. I destroy in order to build,while you build for time to destroy. Time watches over us both; but I am the tumbling leaf and you the stone.

There is nothing more to say.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Music: System of a Down: Toxicity.

If I was my character, Dorian, I would have gone out hunting. The night is deliciously cold and crisp and it smells like winter. The air has a razor quality that cuts through clothes and freezes the face, but in a pleasant way. And the sky is such a dark blue that puts any fabric to shame.

If I were Dorian I would be walking out nearly invisible, looking for the one to kill, the one to quench my thirst. Not for blood. For sky. Killing is one more way of deifying one's self. However Dorian is a vampire, and that's a handy excuse for killing. A vampire is no longer human. It does not obey to the same laws a human does. A wolf is only expected to kill, after all. And we have lost the archetype of the hunter long ago. Or perhaps upon returning to the collective and diving back inside, it emerged as the vampire this time. The urban figure of the dangerous, alluring stranger. But I am straying from my original thought. And my original thought is related to killing.

My dark side is having a party. It is okay. I invited all my demons out to get to know them better. They talk to me, and the things they say are more than just tempting... They are delicious. That's probably the reason I will never understand vegans. Killing is a sacred act. Killing is not alien to our nature. I suspect that people would have a much better relationship with death and loss if we still had to catch and kill our own food. And as for all those people freaking out at the mere thought of taking advantage of someone innocent, there is nothing more tempting than the destruction of innocence. That's natural to us too, and only cowards would deny its pull.

I need to voice out my darkest callings. I need to let them roam free inside my head, or else I will burst. If thoughts were a crime, we would all be behind bars or in padded cells. Yes, I would love to kill, or scare someone witless. Yes, I would love to take something beautiful and destroy it utterly. And I would certainly pick the most beautiful and charismatic I could find from the human crowds, and also find them at an age I would be able to work on them as if they were clay. No, I would not kill them. I would turn their world view upside down and make them like me. I would make them worship their egos as the only god that exists in this sad age. I would create little viruses like myself and I would unleash them. And through the opposition I would only serve my part of the plan. Sad, isn't it? In all our glory and creativity, and though possessing the strongest weapon that exists -the human mind- we can only serve one of the two basic urges: love and death. Sex and power. We cannot escape our glands and genitals. We cannot think of something beyond that, and even if we can, human language cannot pinpoint it or describe it. Lovecraft tried to second guess alien gods. Arthur Miller and Arthur Machen tried to hint of Iago, to describe pure evil. The anti-saint. And all the average human can think of is money and pleasure. Sad.

At nights like this one I am happy. Content with the taste of winter on my lips and the sense of wild joy in my heart. As if I am the one leading the hunt, and there is a strong horse between my thighs and miles of snow-covered forest ahead of me, with no sign of humans anywhere, with no human city to be encountered ahead of me. Because they don't exist yet. I am happy to look at the night sky and watch my breath crystallise. I am fulfilled.

Moonlight...

Last night I went to rooftop. The moon is nearly full, but not yet. I could hear the birds of night, uttering their monotonous songs with what sounded like reverence; I could feel the wind carrying all those news and bits of information. Life being created and life ending. Ghosts resting gently upon mossy rocks. Teenagers dancing. The city mysteriously alive, pulsing, breathing. The moon illuminating everything with a secret smile. My heart felt like it was ready to burst with longings I could not put to words. I wanted out. I wanted to float like a balloon and follow the silver brilliance to its source, vanish. Be gone. Disappear. I wanted so many things, too many to count. My entire being is made up of longings...