Posts tagged Blackstone
Happy Birthday, H P Lovecraft!
010 years ago
Here at Martian Migraine Press HQ, one need only take a cursory glance at our catalogue to understand a very basic thing about us: we love Howard Phillips Lovecraft, warts and all. From our authors, who work with Lovecraftian themes in their poetry, fiction, and weirdly arousing erotica, to our cover artists and graphic designers, and yes, our discerning readership (who can smell a weak pastiche from a mile away, the smartypants!) it’s clear: to be affiliated with MMP, you gotta be Keeping It R’lyeh, in one form or another.
And if you consider yourself Lovecraftian in any way, then you know the Old Gentleman’s birthday is this week, on the 20th. Yes, had Howie lived longer, he’d still be dead by now! Because 124 years is a long time for any organism, let alone one who subsisted on beans, crackers, coffee, and ice cream. Oh, and lengthy correspondence, let’s not forget that. Christ n Cthulhu, HPL would have loved chatrooms, we’re thinking. Can you imagine him utterly destroying Reddit these days? Yes.
Which is all to say we, like you, are celebrating Lovecraft’s birthday, his contribution to the literature of the Weird, and his influence on our own authors and various projects (more on which in a post of the very near future!) by offering readers a present or four. OK. Exactly four presents.
If you’re an Amazon customer and own a Kindle (or have a Kindle app installed on any device – they’re nifty that way) then scoot on over to the Big A for the following MMP ebook deals!
R’LYEH SUTRA by skawt chonzz – FREE AUGUST 19 & 20 (Amazon link HERE)
No less a Mythos luminary than Wilum H. Pugmire recommended this chapbook as “charming”, “delightful”, with “lovely poetic prose, all quite Lovecraftian”. Originally limited to a run of 50 chapbooks from Martian Migraine Press, R’LYEH SUTRA is now available as an electronic chapbook. Recalling Spicer and Burroughs, these are poems that explore the shifting, fractal edge of madness, that question the nature of identity, consciousness and language, and do it all with wry humour spliced with a species of alien sexuality. As the title implies, there is an obviously Lovecraftian occult inspiration to the work: in fact, the original, physical run of the book contained, in the form of an insert, a portion of a large hand-written document received in a brutal channeling session from an ultra-terrestrial entity, which chonzz experienced in the spring of 2011. Each copy is therefore utterly unique, a facet of a whole that perhaps should never be viewed in its entirety, and likely never will. This electronic edition seeks to replicate that reading experience with hidden links to previously unreleased segments of that occult document.
PRIESTESS (Blackstone Erotica Volume 1) by Justine Geoffrey
FREE AUGUST 19 & 20 (Amazon link HERE)
If you think that “Lovecraftian smut” can only be poorly written cheap rip-offs of standard hentai themes, then we couldn’t be more happy to educate you in just how weird and wonderful a truly loving approach to the sexuality that breeds between the lines of the Cthulhu Mythos can be. Justine Geoffrey’s BLACKSTONE Erotica series combines raw, character-driven eroticism with mind-melting horrors and a cheeky sensibility that draws from the best of the pulps, Hammer horror films, and of course Lovecraft and, in the case of the first BLACKSTONE book, the muscular energy of Robert Bloch’s classic Mythos tale The Black Stone. This collection brings together all four of the BLACKSTONE books in one massive volume! Follow a novice Priestess of the Black Stone as she calls up prehistoric sex-gods in the mountains of Eastern Europe, gathers power and partners in the glitzy dungeons of London’s BDSM scene, and mates with monsters in subterranean chambers of lust and horror! Priestess also contains excerpts from Blackstone Book 3, Yellow Sign Bound and Justine’s Orgy in the Valley of the Lust Larvae PLUS a special essay from the author on the weird-erotica writing experience.
CONQUEROR WOMB: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath
Kindle Countdown Deal AUGUST 20 & 21 (Amazon link HERE)
(“What’s a Kindle Countdown Deal?” Starting at 8AM PST on Lovecraft’s birthday, the price for this book will be ONLY 99 CENTS. So get it then, because by 2PM another dollar gets tacked on. And so on, until the book is back at it’s regular price of $5.99 late on the 21st.) This anthology is easily the most popular MMP title of 2014! with Conqueror Womb: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath, Martian Migraine Press and editors Justine Geoffrey and Scott R Jones bring you 18 pulpy tales of fertility and fear, hot sex and chilling sacrifice! Stories that squelch, tales that both titillate and terrify, from some of the best writers working in Lovecraftian horror and mind-bending erotica today: Wilum H. Pugmire, Molly Tanzer, Don Webb, Christine Morgan, Kenton Hall, Brian M. Sammons, Jacqueline Sweet, Copper Sloane Levy, Annabeth Leong, and Christopher Slatsky, along with fresh new voices. From nighted glades where frenzied orgiasts work unholy magic to slick urban dungeons of unbridled pleasure; from fertility clinics to fevered dance clubs; from the misty depths of the past to the unthinkable future, join us as we offer praise and abundance! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!
WHEN THE STARS ARE RIGHT: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality
by Scott R Jones – REDUCED from $7.99 to $2.99 AUGUST 20 ONLY!
(Amazon link HERE)
Yes, the book you’ve been hearing about. The one Laird Barron says “gives Thomas Ligotti a run for his money in the Cosmic Horror Philosophy arms race.” The twisty little tome that Leeman Kessler of AskLovecraft.com calls “a crime scene!” The appalling text the mere mention of which caused the venerable S. T. Joshi to raise an incredulous eyebrow! The one that’s making Lovecraft spin wildly in his materialist-atheist grave on his birthday this year. Are you “Keeping It R’lyeh”? Sons of Cthulhu, Daughters of Dagon, you know there’s only one way to know for sure, and that’s picking up Jones’ groundbreaking work on R’lyehian mystical thought and getting down with the Deep Ones in ways you can’t even imagine! Not yet. Not until you’ve taken the Cthulhusattva Vow and entered the Black Gnosis. With a Foreweird from noted Gnostic author Jordan Stratford and beautiful illustrations by Michael Lee Macdonald. When The Stars Are Right is currently out-of-print, so this electronic version is the only way to acquire the book at the moment. And at $2.99, it’s a steal. BUT ONLY FOR ONE DAY.
Thanks for celebrating with us, Migraineers! (As ever, feel free to drop a review on any of these titles once you’ve put yourself back together after reading!) Happy Birthday, H. P. Lovecraft. Here’s to another 125 years of new and exciting interpretations of your horrors.
Martian Migraine Press: the Best Kind of Headache!
Too Hot! Too Weird! Too Shubby for Amazon!
010 years ago
Well, yesterday the tutting grandmothers and maiden aunts that work out their sexual frustrations stoking the boilers on the Censorship Engines of Amazon.com saw fit to relegate our new title, Conqueror Womb: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath, to the unsearchable dustbin that is their ‘mature content’ tag. What did this mean? It meant that until an hour or so ago, you could still find Conqueror Womb, if you knew where to look (ie. the Kindle store, specifically), and it also meant you wouldn’t find it, if you searched for, say, Lovecraft or Shub-Niggurath in the general search terms for Amazon.com itself.
Is this kind of thing a big deal? I mean, don’t most readers come to MMP titles because of something MMP authors say or do or post? Who goes searching for the term “conqueror womb”, anyway? Precious few, I’m sure, and I’m not sure I’d want to know anyone who would. (I’m sure you’re lovely people, but … you understand.)
So, why’d the grannies hit us, and hit us so fast? Conqueror Womb was released on the 10th. Of February. That’s right, a mere three days ago. We were alerted to the fact of our change of status by one of the collections authors, the sharp-as-a-goddamn-tack Jacqueline Sweet. Alarmed that they had moved so quickly, and just before Valentine’s Day, which was, you know, the whole reason for releasing this book this week, Scott immediately got on their case with this letter…
According to their spokes-granny, the cover (by friend-of-the-show and genius Glaswegian illustrator Garry Mac) was deemed to be “mature content”. Ladies and gentlebeasts, the original cover…
Beauty. That’s EIGHT breasts, at least. And, like Scott said, monstrous. And not all that sexual, even. In fact, Garry Mac’s Shubby here is feeding her Dark Young. Amazon, what do you have against breastfeeding mothers? she asks in something nearby to complete seriousness. Well, whatever problems they have with that particular miracle of nature, the upshot is they asked us to change this. Remember, too, that we had to confront them on this issue: if we hadn’t noticed their action, they wouldn’t have mentioned it to us at all. If you’ve never seen one of their your cover is too smutty emails, they look like this.
Well, gosh, Cecilia, thanks for being so up front and honest and understanding about Amazon’s behind-the-scenes manipulation of our product!
So, yeah, we changed the cover. And if you think it was easy for us to move the text elements north to cover up our beautiful, regal Shub-Niggurath, then let me tell you honey, IT WASN’T. (Sorry, Garry! We’re sooo sorry!) Here’s the revised cover…
Not exactly a hatchet job, but we are saddened, still.
Now, here’s the thing: Amazon asks you to choose two categories for a title, and we, in an effort to be honest about the content of Conqueror Womb, chose Horror (obviously!) and Erotica (also obviously)… certainly CW is far more horror than erotica. Even we don’t think it appeals to prurient interests enough for anyone to reasonably get their rocks off, although you’re welcome to try. Scott felt, and I concurred, that we had been penalized for our transparency. And so the Martian Migraine response was a little testy, naturally…
At this point, we pretty much threw up our hands. Wiser heads than ours nodded sagely and advised us that once a title had been flagged as mature, it was effectively done, kaput, as good as disappeared. Certainly, this has been my own experience with the first two Blackstone books (Red Monolith Frenzy and Green Fever Dream both got hit about eight months back, and sales of those has dropped noticeably — but hey, there’s the links, go, now, and buy a copy of each, just to rub it in their noses, please) and so we resigned ourselves to obscurity.
Then, this happened…
We fought Amazon.
We fought a rear-guard battle, granted, and we gave up some territory (those lovely mutant mammaries!), but we fought Amazon…
AND WE WON! We won. It can be done.
But, just to spite ’em, remember this, Migraineers: buy DIRECT from MMP and you’ll get the uncensored glory of the original cover AND exclusive website bonus content! Delivery may not be as swift as Amazon’s Whispernet (generally under 12 hours to your inbox) but you get our chummy personalities and sweet extra swag with the transaction, and our gratitude for supporting independent presses. It’s Valentine’s Day! Show your sweetie some weird love and pick up a copy of Conqueror Womb: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath for a little light pillow reading!
Justine out.
FESTIVAL NEWSCLUSTER
010 years ago
FESTIVAL SPECIALS
It is the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It is the Yuletide, and we here at MMP HQ have some Saturnalian-next-level gifts for the weird-reader on your list to consume all Goya-style, if that’s their bent. AND WE KNOW IT IS.
From Friday December 20 through to Christmas Eve, The Ecdysiasts (a flash fiction collection by Scott R Jones), will be free for download to your Kindle or Kindle-enabled device from (where else?) the juggernaut that is Amazon, right here. Don’t have a Kindle? Well, you’re probably still a good person, and for that reason alone, if you’d like your free PDF or EPUB file of The Ecdysiasts, simply pop us a little Christmas card (or, y’know, an email, we’re not picky) indicating how you’d like your MMP Xmas gift formatted and we will get it out to you within 24 hours. Maybe even sooner, because we are frighteningly efficient that way.
Also, during that same time period, Justine Geoffrey’s collected Blackstone erotica volume, PRIESTESS (with killer cover art by Jim Pavelec), will be discounted with the Kindle program’s new Countdown Deal promotion. Starting at $0.99 on Friday December 20 (the deep discount! Starts on the 21st in the UK) and getting progressively more expensive each day until Christmas, when it shall return to its usual pricing. Yes, it’s wacky, and we’re not sure how interesting that will make the book, but there it is. We’re all about the experimentation at MMP.
STRIPPED DOWN & TAKEN
Speaking of which, our latest lab work down in the steaming porn vats of Amazon is an experiment in (re)packaging. We love Justine’s Blackstone series, of course, and think it’s just fine the way it’s presented, odd titles and all. Red Monolith Frenzy is, for us, evocative of so much subtle deviancy that we are loathe to change it. And yet, dinosaur erotica. Yes, saurian-based smut does better at the end of the day. So, a test: with Justine’s approval, we’re stripping down the Blackstone series to bare text files (no extra graphics or links), re-covering them for maximum pop, and re-titling the stories with the ever-popular prefix Taken by the [ BLANK ]. This is strictly for new readers on Amazon, of course, (we won’t be featuring the titles here on the MMP site, so as to avoid confusion) and at $0.99 we’re semi-confident that we’ll see a pick-up in sales for Ms Geoffrey’s excellent work. And in case you’re already a Blackstone fan with the original books on your device, don’t worry, the new stripped down Sex & Horror series is clearly labelled with a “previously published as…” caveat, so there’s little chance of doubling up. Unless of course you feel like doubling up, in which case go ahead, we won’t say no. Here are the covers so far. Wish us luck!
OUR SPLOOSH PILE RUNNETH OVER!
Submissions are now closed for the second Martian Migraine Press annual anthology, Conqueror Womb: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath. Our editors would like to thank everyone who sent in work and are even now beginning their first tentative dips into what Editrix Justine has termed her sploosh pile. (Get it? Slush pile, sploosh pile? Hyuk. Archer reference.) We’re told there are a lot of woodland orgies in the sploosh so far, which was expected. Geoffrey and Jones will be reading over Christmas and starting to make yea-or-nay decisions by New Years. If you’ve submitted a piece for consideration, expect a response on or before January 15, 2014, and if you haven’t heard from MMP by then, do please drop us a line. Conqueror Womb: Lusty Tales of Shub-Niggurath is set to birth horribly into the world the second week of February, just in time to serve as a cautionary collection of tales for Valentine’s Day. Ah, breeders… you know not what you do!
