"Retiring"*

 For the past few years, about three or four times a year, I have debated quitting doing erotica for good. I never really took those feelings too seriously no matter how strongly I felt it at the time, because my mood on the subject flips back and forth regularly, and it was just part of my creative cycle to have down times in order to recuperate the energy for the up times. Every time I thought I was honest to god, for real, absolutely done with it, within a month or three, my muse would come back around to throw her empty booze bottles at my brain, and all of a sudden, a bunch of stories would burst forth, and I wondered why I ever thought I would actually quit.

By contrast, there’s been several times where I also came to the conclusion that erotica is clearly my destiny, that it’s what I’ll be writing forever, nothing else I try to do ever goes anywhere anyway, and I should just embrace it with full abandon. These are the times I had sudden big bursts of inspiration, did a lot of work over an extended time period, and really tried to push myself to take the “content creator” mindset. And every time, of course, I eventually flamed out, going back on hiatus and thinking that that was the last ride.
 
Rinse, repeat, year after year. But this time feels different.
 
It’s telling to me that a lot of my projects in the last couple years have been me wrapping up various series and finally knocking some long-overdue stories off the backlog. That I find myself more often than not in these recent stories including sex scenes more out of obligation than out of passion. That the biggest project I’ve worked on in this time became a vessel to help me process some sort of Writer’s Midlife Crisis.
 
I think something fundamental has faded within me, and as someone whose drive has primarily come from within, keeping going is like trying to force an engine to run without gas. Sometimes, a little trickle of fuel condenses in the tank just enough to spark the ignition, and allow me to sputter the car along for another few miles, but that’s as far as I seem to get before the engine dies again. I do feel like a few of my best stories have come out of these past couple years, and that I’ve been able to make some truly interesting work, even if it wasn’t very well polished. But I also have to admit that some of that work I really had to force myself to get out, to a level I’ve not had to before.
 
A variety of factors have contributed to this: repeated mental and physical health setbacks, general decline in libido as I get older, tapping the well dry after being at this for going on fifteen years (over twenty, actually, counting the stories I wrote before I took the Salamando name), my interests shifting over time, getting back into art as a creative outlet recently, having to relearn time and again that I’m not a “content creator” type, my attitudes on certain things shifting over time. It’s all really come to head this year, and I think, despite past experiences with the up-and-down cycle, I have crossed a threshold this time that I’m not coming back from.
 
Truthfully, I’ve been ready to move on for a while. I’ve just been afraid to. Afraid to let go of the one creative endeavor of mine that’s ever seen any real success. Afraid of letting go of the one truly “original” idea I ever came up with, when novelty is a dragon I’ve chased my entire creative life. I’m afraid of losing my audience. I’m afraid of losing the supplemental income (however small) that I could theoretically gain from potentially making more ebooks and games and art set in my worlds, some day, eventually, maybe. I said in my last announcement that I still had some erotica left in me, but while that isn’t untrue, part of that was me trying to forcibly hype myself back up, and it didn’t really work. No matter how much I wish I could keep it running, no amount of kicking and pushing and whipping the car is going to make up for an empty tank.
 
Some creators can genuinely work on one project their entire lives and never lose the passion for it, even if they suffer an occasional slump. The majority of creators tend to work in phases, where they might spend several years dedicated to a project, but eventually, they hit a stopping point, and it’s time to move on. I’m definitely in this latter camp. It’s been the same with my genre fiction projects; no matter how much they meant to me at the time, going by past measures, I think most of my creative projects have about a maximum ten year life span, usually far shorter, before I move onto something else. My erotica as a whole has lasted me much longer, but even within that, I did a lot of different series and settings and shifted across different mediums to keep things fresh. But starting new projects isn’t enough anymore.
 
So I think it’s time. I’m officially tendering my “Retirement”* from erotica.
 
Of course, I say that with quotation marks and an asterisk for a reason. Even now, when I’m feeling confident enough in my decision to actually post this announcement after letting it sit in my drafts folder for over a year, I still don’t want to claim that I will never write another erotica work ever again. Someday, I might get in the mood to write down another Little Scene or make another Comic. I might get an idea for another ebook that I decide is worth doing. I still have ideas every once in a while, it’s just that at this point, everything feels like tired retreads of what came before, or it’s ideas I actively dislike, and I don’t have the interest, energy, or enthusiasm to pursue them anymore.
 
Someday the spark might come back and burn just hot enough to get something new out, but all I can say is, don’t hold your breath, and don’t set your expectations too high. I’m saying “Retirement”* instead of “indefinite hiatus” for a reason, because I don’t want to leave the impression that I’m just biding time to build up to another comeback. I’m considering myself done, as far as my own expectations for myself go, and part of me genuinely wants to be done. But if down the road, the muse swings by and slips some fuel into my tank, I won’t be opposed to taking another spin for old time’s sake. Are you sick of the car metaphor yet? Good. If I have to suffer it, so do you! :V
 
Before I go, I want to thank all of you who’ve taken the time to read my work. I want to thank everyone who left a comment, whether it be praise, criticisms, questions, or suggestions. I want to thank everyone who bought a book or game or donated to my Patreon when it was active. I want to thank everyone who spread the word of my work and linked people back to my stories. I want to thank all the writers, artists, image captioners, voice actors, and roleplayers who ran with their own ideas on Sex Mages and spread the concept even further. Even if my primary motivator for writing is my own internal drivers, all of your support has made all this worth it, and helped me keep these stories coming for as long as they have. It feels a little silly to say that out of all my projects, my erotica has turned out to be my life’s work, but it’s true. It’s been a fun ride.
 
I have a few more decisions left to mull over regarding my work, but Sex Mages and Other Strangeness will stay online for as long as I’m able to facilitate it. In the still-non-zero chance Blogspot follows through on a future NSFW purge, I’ll find some other place to re-upload my stories, but I think we’ll be good for a while yet. My Smashwords and Itch.io pages will remain up as well, and as always, I very much appreciate your support. If you wish to contact me, you can always e-mail me at salamando_flames@yahoo.com.
 
Thanks again and take care of yourselves!

2022 Update

Well, that sure was a year wasn’t it. 2021 saw a successful clawback to the realm of writing, but I’m still no where near where I wanted to be by now, and a good amount of the writing I did do was almost certainly not what most readers were hoping for. Overall, this has been a year of experimentation and finally finishing off a few long-languished projects. In that regard, I’d consider this year to be fairly productive. Even if some of it was cringe-worthy, or makes me absolutely livid that it took me so long to get to, I’m glad I worked on what I did and was able to finally knock some stuff off the backlog.
 
As to the future, though, I have no idea what to do next at the time of this post. I have no real plans and no strong inspirations. I have vague notions of projects I’m still flirting with doing, such as another RPG or Visual Novel or full-scale 3D comic, and continuing to make ebooks, but I don’t have any solid ideas committed just yet.
 
What I can say is that, while I am still interested in making more erotic content, for the foreseeable future, my output will continue to be very sporadic and infrequent. There’s a variety of factors, but the long and short of it is my head just isn’t in it like it used to be. I’d like nothing more than to be a content machine cranking stories on the weekly, but I’ve had to face the harsh reminder that it’s something I’m just not capable of. I won’t declare anything definitively, as I can never predict my creative whims, of course. All I can say is I do intend to make more stuff this year, but don’t hold your breath. I’ll get to things when I’m capable of getting to things.
 
In the bigger picture, the 2020’s have been a ripe sack of ass for a lot of people so far, and things don’t look to be on the upswing any time soon. I hope all of you are doing well, and that the future sees you safe. Good luck out there, whatever your life’s endeavors.
 
Cheers.

Comics Update!

ALL COMICS ARE NOW VIEWABLE ON-SITE AT MY CAPTIONS BLOG!

When I first started making and posting my comics, Blogspot had a hard cap on the number of images you could put in a single post. It was initially twenty, then they might have bumped it up to thirty. But at some point in the last year or so, they appear to have removed the cap on images, which means I can now post the comics in their entirety in one post!

I know some people were have trouble viewing the .CBZ files or just didn't want to bother with them, and fair enough. However I stuck with posting them that way, because it really bugs me having to split up single stories across multiple posts. Especially the comics, which have thus far been one-scene stories that don't have a natural chapter break. However, with the cap removed, even my longest comic can be posted uninterrupted. And yes, I did try to make the comics into PDFs, but for whatever reason, whatever method I tried to use to make the files constantly chopped the images up across the pages. CBZ never had that problem, so that's what I stuck with.

I will still make a CBZ file for download for each comic, for those who prefer that format, or want an easy back-up copy. However, I have gone back and added all the pages to each of the posts. I'll be keeping them on my Captions Blog because I still would like this site to be mostly free of images, but I'll make announcements here when I post new stuff.

So, for those who missed out, or want to re-read without downloading the file again, here are the four Sex Mage World comics made thus far!

Out in the Woods

Boy in the Park

Loopholes

Sore Loser

Dominali

One of the more unusual manifestations of Sex Magic, the Dominali are quasi-sentient Tease Spells. In other words, they are self-aware phantoms composed of living Sex Magic. Unable to survive in the Material Universe in their raw elemental form, they must bond with a living host. Furthermore, in order to sustain themselves, they must periodically consume Lust Energy, an ethereal psychic power generated through sexual activity. Due to the femdom/malesub nature of Sex Magic, Dominali are naturally only able to take on human women as hosts, and find the Lust Energy of men many times more potent and nourishing than that of other women.

Now on Itch.io!

You can now purchase my little JRPGs on itcho.io! This are under the Pick Your Price models, so you can pay whatever you want (default is set to $3), or you can just download them for free. You can also, of course, just download them from the google drive links on the individual posts, if you don't want to sign up for itch.

If you are that desperate to part from your money, click here: https://salamando.itch.io/

Oh, and I've also tossed the Jahi's Invasion books on there, because why not?

An Experiment In Suggestion

Okay, so the point of this post is that I'm basically going to try taking some suggestions for material. If you are interested, please read the rest of this post before pitching in ideas.

So, a story concept for the Sex Mage World that I have had for a few years now has been the idea of a Winesburg, Ohio-style mosaic story of showing a long chain of various cock-teasing events throughout a particularly horny day in a single town. What this essentially boils down to is a sort of "cock-tease telephone game", where every chapter is a self-contained, Just A Little Scene-esque flash fic, but with the gimmick that a side character in one Scene will be the main focus of the next Scene, or the events of one Scene will be sensed by characters elsewhere in town and inspire them to get up to their own mischief.

For example: Two teen girls are driving down the main street and sense some particularly horny boys in a passing van. They cast some tease spells as they laugh about how silly boys are, edging the boys right in front of their mother, whose driving the car! The next scene follows the flustered mother as she tries to resist the good vibes coming from her horny boys cocks (and maybe discreetly slips them a few spells anyway), and when she gets home, she takes out her horny mischief on her blue-balled neighbor. The next scene follows the blue-balled neighbor trying desperately to not ejaculate all over his sister's clothes; he's supposed to do the laundry as part of a deal he made with her, and he has to get it done before she gets home, but how can he while some mysterious cock-teaser teases his cock! And this ends up leading to some other thing, and that leads to another, etc.

I don't have any particularly deep narrative through line like Winesburg, but there may be a couple characters who frequently pop up across several of the stories, wherein following their sub-plot would be the closest thing to a "main plot". But I get ahead of myself.

Now, while I like this idea, the problem here is that in order to do it, I must come up with something like thirty to forty Just A Little Scenes all in a row, in a short time. However, Just A Little Scenes have always come to me on completely random whim, it takes years to build up enough scenes to justify a full collection of them, and this would be the first time I've made an attempt to Martian Chronicles a bunch together into a coherent sequence. And as I've made known, since the end of 2019, I've been in the erotic inspiration gutter, so I've only managed to come up with maybe two or three interesting half-scenes to include in this collection since conceiving of the idea. I am running on vapors and pulling teeth trying to come up with more.

I have also made it known that I am notoriously incapable of taking suggestions or doing commissions. But, as my weary, jaded ass refuses to get younger, I'm getting at the end of my rope. This is basically one of my two only plans left for an SMW project, and I can't seem to muster the mojo to come up with anything beyond the five hundredth rote "Sex Mage laughs as she Tease Spells her poor neighbor's boner" scenario. Which is probably what half the book is going to be anyway, and that's fine, but I'm having trouble coming up with engaging versions of that template.

So, as an experiment, I am opening the floor to suggestions on this one, to see if I can wring some blood from this stone. I do, however, have some caveats:

1) I intend to sell this as an e-book exclusive. This was always the plan, but now, part of the point of this exercise is to see if I'm at all capable of cold-writing material for compensation. Depending on how this goes and how I feel about things afterwards, I may find myself more capable of doing commissions than I thought. Or I might hate it and be assured to never try this again. We'll see.

2) Please suggest something that will fit within the framework detailed above. Do not just ask me to write some other story, or give me an outline for your own entire version of the book. I mainly just need some basic scenarios from which to build some simple scenes, and I'll see how I can duck tape them together.

3) There is no guarantee I will use your suggestion. Some stuff I just do not want to write about. But we'll see what comes up.

4) This could take awhile, between how long it takes to get enough suggestions I feel are workable, and just finding the time/energy to do the work. If it ends up being a bust, I'll let you know by the end of the year.

5) If you end up having a ton of ideas of your own, I would ask you to limit your suggestions to only five scene ideas for now, just to allow more people the chance to get their thoughts in.

And I guess that's about it. If you have a Little Scene idea that would fit into the theme of a "horny day in the life of a random Sex Mage town", please consider leaving a suggestion in the comments! I guess I'll leave this open for a month to see what builds up, but if I end up starting work on this over the summer, I may keep taking ideas if I get later entries and need to fill more chapters.

New Blog: The Omnymphotents Story Archive

Click here to see the new site!

After much rumination, I have decided it is once again time to split up the blog. I know this will be a little inconvenient for some readers, but I feel the time is long overdue. Sex Mages and Other Strangeness, while convenient as a one-stop shop, has gotten truly cluttered with content. Despite my attempts to organize the Tables of Content as effectively as possible, just the fact that there are so many subdivisions of settings and categories scattered across the archive can make things confusing and frustrating to navigate.

Moreover, with my decision to revamp the Omnymphotents as my main project with a fresh start, I may as well give the property its own blog, so it doesn’t end up burying, or getting buried under, the Sex Mage World and Erotic Adventures Universe content.

As such, I’ll be moving all Omny-related content to the new blog, with some minor touch-ups or a bit of polish to fit the new direction. I may keep some posts here for the short term just to archive some comments, but eventually it will all get deleted. Thankfully, there's not really that much to transfer, so it shouldn't be a big loss for this site.

I have also been considering doing some revisions of a few older, previously unrelated stories, refitting them into the Omnyverse setting. However, I will not be erasing the old versions in this case, so no worries there.

Presently I’m not sure if this will also include any of the image-based content, such as Captions or Mini-Comics, for the Omnys. I’d kind of like to keep those in a separate Gallery section rather than the main blog feed, but Blogspot doesn’t seem to really have that kind of feature, so for right now, that stuff will stay on the Caption Stories blog till I figure out where to put it.

Lastly, while it is not currently a priority, I have for a long time been considering separating the Erotic Adventures Universe content to its own archive blog as well, and thus Sex Mages and Other Strangeness would specifically be for posting Sex Mage related content. Sex Mages are by far the thing I’m most known for and what people seek my site for, and the EAU is long retired at this point. So, along with some other really old content of mine, I sometimes feel that for the sake of further streamlining things, it would just be better to dump it all into its own archive. Like I said, though, it’s not a priority right now, so I’ll worry about it once I get the Omny content squared away.

2021 Update

Given last year's prolonged absence, I figured I should make an update post as per what's going on with the website this year. Well, to be honest, I don't really know. I've gotten a little bit of the creative spark back, but I'm having a hard time maintaining it. I'd like to do some more erotica work this year, but while I have ideas and plans for projects, I'm having an extremely hard time making any of it come together. The Break Year did little to recuperate me, and while I've always been a neurotic flake of a writer, I've really gotten lost in the mental weeds over what to do and to what degree I even want to keep doing this kind of writing. I have many long-winded reasons, but you’re not here to read my excuses, you’re here for sexy fun stories.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I can provide them like I used to. Maybe this is just an extended, but still temporary slump I’ll eventually climb out of, or maybe this is the wind down to finally quitting erotica. I doubt the latter, but then again, I haven’t felt this scatterbrained and burned out about things for this long a stretch before.

Still, as I said, I have some ideas. Partly, I would like to continue working on the Omnymphotents concepts, both fleshing out the Omnys themselves, as well as doing shorts and scenes involving their Empowered. While I'd still like this to be a sillier, just-for-fun series, I’d also like to build on it a bit more solidly than just doing random flash fic sex scenes.

Part of me has also wanted to return to more adventure-focused erotica, alla the Civero, Centurions, Jahi’s Invasion, or Paramour Powers settings. However, it’s hard to keep these kinds of adventure stories consistently sexy; some have barely any actual sex at all, and the plots certainly aren't always erotic. Just look at how little sexy stuff is in the Phallica series; I think those stories are still enjoyable, and definitely some readers like them, but I also know some readers will probably be turned off by stories with a lack of sexual content, or they just don't want to slog through the superhero and sorcerer adventure elements to get to the good parts. So, I'm not sure how much I should really pursue this angle. Obviously, I'll ultimately just write what I want to write, but if it turns out writing genre-fiction-with-occasional-sex-scenes is a dead-end for most readers, then it's probably something I won't bother continuing.

As for the Sex Mage World, I have to admit, I really feel like I’ve wrung the concept out as thoroughly as I’m going to, as far as stories I’m interested in actually writing. I know I say this every year, and every year, I manage to come up with new SMW stories, but it’s really gotten to the point where I feel like every time I sit down to write a new SMW story, I am just retreading the same scenarios and phrases I’ve already milked to death. Yes, there is still a ton of potential yet untapped, but a lot of that potential lies in stories I just don’t feel much interest in. For example, writing a political drama about the Queendoms is the most obvious thing I should have already written five years ago, but I hate political dramas and don’t know how I’d go about writing one even if I didn’t, so that kind of story is probably never happening.

That said, I do still have a couple of SMW ideas in the works, but no idea when/if they’ll come to fruition. And moreover, I’m sure whatever else I write will probably involve some very Sex Mage-type sexual content anyway, even if it doesn’t literally involve Sex Magic, so hopefully even my non-SMW stuff will still appeal to those looking for that.

So, what does this all add up to? Well, I’m sure I’ll probably end up tossing out some random Little Scenes here or there, probably futz around with the 3D model stuff some more when the whim takes me, but otherwise, this is likely to be another low-productivity year. The projects I do have in mind, I’m going to have to take my time getting to and working on, and might fall through anyway.

As for monetization efforts, the Patreon was automatically closed because I didn’t utilize it for too long, and I’m going to keep it closed for the foreseeable future; I can always reactivate it when I think I’m ready to go back to it. I think instead, I would like to focus on making some more ebooks, because I keep getting sales on those, despite how irregularly I publish. I might make more money in a year on Patreon, but that only works if I have the productivity to justify its use, whereas ebooks can keep making sales even during unproductive periods. For right now, the plan is to turn the aforementioned iffy projects into novellas or anthologies for sale, some of which I’ll still post for free on the blog if and when I publish.

And that’s about it. Thanks again for your support, and we’ll see how this year pans out.

Break Year

So, I'm just going to call it, I'm taking the rest of this year off. There's a chance I'll change my mind in a few months, but as it stands, I'm in a hard case of burn out when it comes to writing erotica. I think the last couple years were maybe a little too productive (by my standard), and now the muse needs a break!

More seriously, though, I had a really bad start to the year mentally, which set me back a lot harder than I anticipated. January is usually my bounce-back month after the holiday work load, but instead, I ended up in a deep funk for various reasons. I'm doing alright now, but the fact of the matter is, I'm not feeling the spark for erotic content returning to me. I think this is a little beyond my usual need to "recharge my batteries". I think I need a solid break from even engaging in this material creatively for a while.

Beyond that, as far as writing in general goes, I really want to focus on building my non-erotic work again. I have been struggling with it for years; it has always been substantially harder for me to write "normal" genre fiction, despite that being where most of my writing passion lies. In 2018, I managed to write a web novel, but I have done nothing but flounder since then, and I want to get back on the ball.

One of the reasons I've been as prolific as I have been with my erotic writing, despite it supposedly only being a small part of my creativity, is that sometimes I have just used erotica as a crutch to soothe the manic need to write. Sometimes, after tearing my hair out over my genre writing, I turn to erotica in order to write literally anything just to get the demon out of me. And that, I think, doesn't do either sides of my writing any favors. I end up with unfinished genre stories that get binned, because I bled out the creative fire elsewhere before I could finish them or at least fix what was wrong. Likewise, I end up with unpolished throwaway filler erotica that I could have done more with if I'd actually gone into it with a full passion for that story, instead of using it as a bleed-off for the frustration of a failed project.

So, as something of a self-discipline measure, I would like to give myself a significant chunk of time where that crutch isn't there. If I write anything this year, I want it to be focused on honing my genre work. Maybe nothing will come of it this time, either, but at least I won't just be diverting that frustration into sub-par smut.

Rest assured, this does not mean I've quit forever. In fact, I'm sure I'll probably sit down and pop out a couple erotic shorts on whim this year regardless, but if I do, I think I'll hold off on posting them. If I do a batch of Captioned Images, I may post those, but there's no plans for it. Likewise, I'm not going to worry about any other media projects right now, so no comics or audios this year either. I will return to writing erotica, I always do, but for now, don't expect any more content until 2021.

That all said, I'm going to leave my Patreon active, but of course won't be charging. Drop your pledges for now and come back later when production resumes, if you like. I will still be on the Discord, where people can share their own supernatural femdom erotica, be it Sex Mage World stories of their own or other similar content. Otherwise, I'll see you all again next year.

Centurions E-Book Update

The Centurions ebook has been updated into a complete package, with a new cover, and containing every official Centurions story I've written. If you've already purchased the book previously, you can just download the new edition for free. If you haven't, but have enjoyed the Centurions stories, and want to support my work, please consider making a purchase!

You can acquire the book here at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/131938

It's been many years since I wrote a story set in the Centurions Universe. Much like the World of Civero, it was a setting that started strong, and yet fizzled out after a few years, as I moved on to other projects like the Sex Mage World. While the Centurions continued to be a significant part of the growing lore of my erotic universe, in actual practice, it's pretty much a dead property; I haven't written a "real" Centurions story since 2012. Furthermore, from this point, I'd rather any future superhero erotica I write to be unrelated.

With that in mind, it seemed best to just wrap everything up in one collection. These were all fun to write at the time, and stories like Feel Girl are among my most popular early works. If you missed out on these stories, why not give them a look? And if you've read them before, but it's been a while, maybe give them another read and enjoy the super erotic fun all over again!

So You Want To Write A Sex Mage Story

Great! I am very flattered that my work has inspired you to write something similar. I started writing Sex Mage stories because no one else was writing anything quite like it, and part of me kind of hoped others might pick up the trend. While at this point, I do like that I am basically “the” Sex Mage guy, I don’t mind other people also exploring the concept in their own ways.

Ultimately, this being the internet. I can’t stop you from writing and posting whatever the hell you want, in whatever way you want, regardless of my consent. I do appreciate if you ask me first, but it isn’t necessary. Even if you don’t ask, I’d like it if you let me know when you’ve posted your work, so I can take a look at it myself. However, if you do decide to do a Sex Mage story, if you respect me and my work, there are a few things I would appreciate:

Credit Where Due

If you are directly copying the Sex Mage World and Sex Mages template and various directly related concepts, then please credit me for the concept. I would consider this to count even if you opted to combine my Sex Mage concept with a different setting. You’d essentially be doing fan fiction at that point, and naming your “source” would be proper etiquette in this instance. The Sex Mages and Sex Mage World as a concept and setting is something I’ve been working on and building up for years, it is my Intellectual Property and Brand (however amateur), and I’d say I’ve earned the right to be recognized for it as much as any author should be recognized for their specific stories in a given genre.

Likewise, if you are directly borrowing concepts from other Sex Mage style writers, such as PancakesForDinner (aka PFDee)’s Sex Powers Universe, please credit them as well, (or instead, if you’re fully deriving from them, and not from me). For example, the “Loops” and “Willy Wanker/Procedure 501” techniques are specifically part of Pancake’s Sex Powers set, not my Sex Magic set.

Otherwise, if I just inspired you to do your own magical femdom idea, and you’re using your own similar, but original power set, then I don't expect credit, even if the end result is fairly similar in style and tone (such as a world of Goddess Powers or Succubus Powers alla Gloryboy and MVGaius). If you wanted to mention me as an inspiration, that would be appreciated, but I won’t hold it against you if you don’t.

What I Am Okay With

You may use the Sex Mage/Sex Magic power set and a basic version of the Sex Mage World (all women have the Magic, there’s different power levels, using the magic tricks like Boyboarding, etc.). Feel free to make and explore your own Queendoms or how various pre-Queendom countries dealt with the magic. Feel free to even use Sex Magic in combination with some of your own ideas or settings.

I do encourage people to take the basic Sex Mage concept and run with their own spin on it, if only to keep our works distinct. I won’t ask/pressure you to, but unless you really want to replicate my setting as is, I’d say feel free to find your own unique spin on it. Pancake’s Sex Powers concept, for example, uses a different set of rules and limitations compared to my Sex Magic, while Grey Savidge’s Chastity Island world has Sex Magic confined specifically to the island nation of Castem. SexMageJenny posited a world where "Jenny" was the first Sex Mage, and all other mages gained their powers through her and her chosen followers. Even I have a second version of the SMW in the form of Dellissa’s World.

What I Am NOT Okay With

Please do not use any of my specific characters from any setting. Instead, please use your own original ones. If you absolutely must write a character of mine, at least change the name. Chances are, your interpretation of them will turn out differently anyway, so they may as well be your original.

Likewise, please do not use any of my other erotic settings. This includes, but is not limited to: Civero, Temael, Fount-Loche, the Centurions, Jahi’s Invasion, Dellissa’s World, the Fae Lord Realms, Magic Lina, Zama (Seven Stars), etc.

Within the Sex Mage World itself, I would also appreciate if people did not touch on the greater meta-lore that links the Sex Mage World to these other settings, including the appearance of Temaelean, Civeron, and Centurions characters on Earth. I’d also rather people not do stories involving the Cults, the Cult Wars, the Special Task Force, or the Dark Queendoms. (I actually highly doubt anyone is remotely interested in writing about these things, but just in case.)

That Time I Was A Woman On The Internet

So, I’m going to do something I may very well end up regretting, but as a fire elemental, I suppose it’s only fitting I set my “career” aflame at some point. No time like the present, I suppose.

As I was putting together my Recommendations list, there’s one name I held off placing there. Long time readers on the Orgasm Denial forums may recall a certain female author who wrote stories of supernatural femdom quite similar to my own. One could even say she created the first true Sex Mage style character; Pancake even cited her as his other inspiration for his first Sex Powers story. This woman likewise mysteriously up and vanished right around the time I started posting on the OD forums. If you’re familiar with her work, then you probably have already guessed my confession: I was her.

I was Magic Lina.

To everyone this angers and hurts, I’m sorry. I really am. I regret ever taking on the persona, I regret tricking people, and I regret keeping it a secret for this long. I want you to know that nothing I did as Lina was with malicious intent or out of some perverse pleasure at using people. I did not enjoy tricking others and leading people on. I lied about my gender, but everything else I said was sincere, be it genuine thoughts and feelings on a subject, or just being a goofball to entertain people. I know that’s probably pretty disingenuous sounding after such a revelation, but it’s the truth, for whatever my word is worth right now.

So why did I do it? Lack of confidence, plain and simple. At the time I first posted any erotic work online, I was only eighteen and had little exposure to the sheer depths of perversion that existed on the internet. I genuinely thought my fantasies of super powered women dominating me with said powers would be received as too weird, and put off a lot of people. I wanted my work to be seen, but I was afraid I would be rejected, and I was too ignorant to know how to seek out better solutions.

However, at time, I was already into femdom and had recently gotten into orgasm denial. This led me to some early femdom and orgasm control communities, like NTCWeb and the Orgasm Denial forums. I thought that if I posted as a woman, people in those communities would not only be much more eager to read my work, but also much more likely to give it a chance, even if the premise initially turned them off.

There was also a small part of me that figured pretending to be a woman online might give me some better perspective on how to write a dominant female character. I don’t know that it ever did, but what I did end up doing is turning my female persona into a character in her own right, and I found myself playing that role on the forums as a means of promoting my work.

I ended up doing this twice over: my first online erotic identity was as SilkenBunny, first on the NTCWeb forums in 2000, then on OD later that same year. I switched over to LinaInverse after one of OD’s many site hacks jacked up my SilkenBunny account, and I stuck with the Lina identity for a couple years. Then I disappeared for a while, came back briefly as a man called Peniswithoutacause, but disappeared again. Both disappearances were due to frequent moving and losing home-based internet access, as I did many times in the early 2000s.

Then, in 2008, I eventually came back to OD for the long haul. I had actually intended to return as Peniswithoutacause, but once again, site problems had screwed things up; that account apparently got erased, and for some reason, I was having trouble making a new account. Likewise, the SilkenBunny account still didn’t work. However, the LinaInverse account was still active and accessible, so I just said fuck it, and logged back in as her.

Then I started talking to people again, and just fell back into the role. Perhaps because I knew Lina/Bunny already had an audience, I suppose I convinced myself it would be better to keep writing as her and promote my work through her forum character. I decided to write “Magic Lina” as the main character of several supernatural erotic stories, and I kept playing the character on the forums. This time, I really went all in on the magic theme, definitely roleplaying a more fantastic version of the character this time, but I still maintained that I was also a woman in real life.

And then I started making friends and getting a little too close again, and I felt disgusted at myself for having fallen back onto the crutch of being Lina. I did not enjoy deceiving people like this, I wanted to be able to just be myself, and I hated having to keep up the mask. I was ready to just out myself, for better or worse, and publicly switch identities back to man. However, around this time, a big scandal arose as the OD community had recently discovered several of the dommes were either duplicate accounts from women pretending to be different people, or more egregiously, men pretending to be women. This latter discovery had a good amount of the community quite furious, and a couple of the people I befriended as Lina made it clear they would be very hurt if they discovered I’d been lying to them about being a woman.

I didn’t want to hurt them and I didn’t want to cause more problems for the community. But mostly, I was being selfish: I didn’t want to be shut out by the OD community. OD was the first real online community I was ever a part of, it was a place where my crazy sex story ideas were accepted, and I didn’t want to lose either. So, I quietly “retired” Lina, waited a few weeks, and then created my current identity as Salamando, pretending to be a new member. Now, eight years later, here we are.

I’ve debated outing myself before, but fear of the backlash kept me silent, especially as I started building an audience through my new line of stories as Salamando. However, it’s been a long time since I last took the role of Magic Lina. I could probably keep the lie going forever, and just let Lina fade to nothingness. For one thing, most of my newer readers probably don’t know who Lina was, nor are likely to care that much if they weren’t around when I was posting as her. Even on OD, nobody talks about her, no one ever called me out on how similar the two of “us” were, plenty of the community from back then aren’t even around anymore, and none of Lina’s old contacts have ever tried to reconnect with her since I stopped playing the role. Plenty apparently suspected that Lina was a guy, but no one made the connection between her and me, or at least no one called me out on it, which to this day I’m a little surprised about; I rather figured it obvious, given our identical interests and posting styles. So, I could likely have gotten away with my deception scot-free.

So what’s the point of even bringing it up? Well, aside from wanting to make this belated apology for a while now, there is also admittedly an ego motivation behind this. Earlier this year, I decided to fully commit myself to making erotica writing my creative focus, and to make it my “second job” of sorts. I have made my own brand in the form of the Sex Mage World, Civero, and other related concepts. I have created a considerable body of work by now, and have collected as much as I can onto my blogs and story archives.

It nags me every time that there are some stories I just could not mention without giving away my old identity as Magic Lina (aka LinaInverse aka SilkenBunny). I could not even talk about my earlier erotic concepts, because I used a lot of them for stories while writing as Lina or SB. But they are my Intellectual Property. They are my stories. They were my first steps to becoming the erotic writer I am today, and to be forced to disowned them just to keep up an old, outdated lie is ridiculous and tiresome.

So that is my confession. I realize this may cost me some readers. It definitely will not go over well with the OD community and probably others. I probably deserve some chewing outs coming my way. But the past is the past, I want to move forward, and I want to do it unhindered. And I want to say again that I am sorry.

Sex Magic the Collecting

SEX MAGIC, THE COLLECTING

A Sex Mage World “Non-Collectable” Card Game

This began as, and mostly still is, a “Porn Parody” of Magic the Gathering, with my own Sex Mage World twist to the terms and themes. However, as I started taking it a bit more seriously, the game developed to have a few of its own mechanics. It still largely plays like MtG in that it uses Spells (Sorceries and Instants) and Servants (Creatures and Artifacts), while using a different Mana Generation system. Those interested in actually playing this game could probably improvise something with actual MtG cards and some dice.

And hell, who knows, if this gets developed any further, I could even make a non-sexual spin-off for some kind of official version.

Anyway, the theme here is “Sex Magic battles” between Megami/Queen Megami to settle international conflicts. Rather than try to kill one another, they attempt to seduce and steal away the Men that the enemy Megami is using as a power source for her spells. The Megami Sex Mage who finishes the fight with the most Loyal Men is declared the winner.

HOW TO PLAY

The game requires dice and Sex Magic the Collecting cards (examples to be provided using a Card Game Maker/Editor program, feel free to make your own). Each player needs exactly 50 cards in their deck. The game also requires a minimum of 1 twelve-sided die (1d12) and 5 six-sided die per player (5d6). 

Why Not Technology?

I'm not a fan of technology or devices as a means of power fantasy. I've always felt much more drawn to characters who have innate super powers. Even when using magic, I greatly prefer characters who can just point at something and shoot a fireball, rather than those who have to use chants or reagents or magic rituals (unless those things can be used as a plot hook for something). This traces back to my preferences with superheroes, wherein I'd always prefer someone like Spider-Man or Superman over Iron Man or even Batman. I like all those characters, but in terms of thematic powers, I prefer the former to the latter. Robots like the Transformers and such are the exception, and I think that's only because the machines themselves are the characters, and thus have a soul to them, and their tech abilities hence feel like super powers.

However, on occasion, a reader will bring up the idea that they much prefer technology to magic, and wonder why I don't use devices such as chastity belts or special futuristic body suits or nanomachines that would do all the things I write about, except instead of magic and psychic powers, it would be technology. Heck, one person basically outright said, "You should do everything you already do exactly as you do it, but you should just say it's because of futuristic nanotech instead of magic." Sorry folks, but I'm not going to do that, unless I get into one of those moods where I just do something I normally wouldn't for the sake of doing something different. Obviously, taste is subjective, and I'm not knocking people for preferring technology to magic and psionics. However, I'd like to explain my reasoning for it, nonetheless.

Now, the primary motivation for the tech preference seems to be twofold. Firstly, basing it in technology helps some people better pretend that it is real, because technology is real and currently advancing at such a fast rate, that in theory, super sex devices could become a reality, and some cases, do already exist. Even at its most basic, everyone can indulge in a chastity belt even if they don't have a mistress or master to hold their keys.

However, that element of it has never really impressed itself upon me. I guess I prefer magic and super powers, because when you get down to it, those superhuman abilities are simply exaggerated expressions of the innate power a human being already has, and thus, using superpowers to enhance sex is a means of further enhancing intimacy. Sex Mages fascinate me as a concept, because it's taking everything that is naturally powerful about a woman and ramping it up to superhuman levels. The Sex Magic lets women directly manipulate men's libidos and body, because a woman can already do that, and this is an enhanced expression of that. Her power reaches into him and overwhelms his senses because she is funneling part of herself into him, knowing his every intimate secret, and directly tugging on his strings to make him move and feel the way she wants. Even if she's playing the ice queen, sitting across the room with arms and legs crossed, and a bored expression on her face while her man is thrashing in ecstasy on the bed and she's holding back his orgasm, she's doing it by extending her power into him in a direct connection.

With the use of tech and devices, in my mind, it creates this disconnect, it takes away from the intimacy, and thus dulls the excitement and connection to the character. Sure, in real life a woman can just strap a vibrator on a man and leave him tied to a bed that way, and while some may find it hot, it doesn't do much for me if she's not in some way getting directly involved. It's just the guy and a cold, unfeeling machine mindlessly stimulating his genitals. At least have the woman cuddle with him, straddle his face, make him suck your toes, taunt him in a sultry voice, masturbate in full view of him, or something! Which is not to say I don't enjoy sex toys. A good vibrator is always a fun time. But storywise, its just not the same as a woman using telekinesis to give a man a handjob, even if she's on the other side of the city from him. Incidentally, this mentality is also why I despise chastity devices, and much prefer the idea of magically making a man unable to masturbate while his cock swings hard and free and desperate in front of him, ready to be played with by his mistress.

The second aspect is the illusion of a male being able to escape his device somehow creates a deeper thrill, because a woman having all the power with no hope for the man to escape is too boring. The possibility of escape means either the man still has some fight in him or there's the illusion that the woman still isn't quite in control and still needs to do more work to fully break him.

Well, okay, I'll admit, the woman being absolutely overpowering kind of what I like, so that even as much as the man may struggle, there's no chance for him to break free. That's just how I like it on a fantasy level, and it ties back to the intimacy thing. However, this also touches on a rather significant pet peeve of mine in fiction in general. Yes, with the chastity belt, there's a chance the guy could escape of his own will. But he won't. In every chastity-based story I've ever read, through whatever means, the man remains belted, and even though he may be teased with the idea of its removal, it only comes off and stays on at the woman's discretion. Even if by some miracle, the man gets the belt off, he either gets caught and it's put back on, or he ends up being so under the woman's control he submits to being belted again.

I get that for most people, this is an effective psychological element, but for me, it completely fails to interest me, because I know story wise it's a fake out. It's very much like in superhero stories wherein the superhero loses their powers and is forced to combat the villains or overcome a trial without their special abilities. Whenever I see this type of story, it always irritates me, because I know that regardless of how much the hero struggles, they pretty much cannot fail without their powers. This is because losing their powers means they gain super-special-plot-armor that protects them to an even stronger degree than when they have abilities, because point of the episode is to show how bad-ass the hero is or to hammer in the moral lesson that "even people without powers can be special!" I have never been able to buy into the illusion of greater danger because I know the hero is going to somehow bullshit their way to victory even when it should be impossible. In this same fashion, the whole element of "but he could escape the belt" holds no water for me.

You then might say, "Well, but then, its not true submission when the woman just overpowers the man with mind powers." I would also say that's not true; in my stories, the men do struggle, and they submit to the women, because that's the point of the story. We all know this. That's what we're here for. But this is also why I've never been a fan of mind-control stories that actually do erase or overwrite people's thoughts. Even against impossible odds, there is still a thrill in seeing someone struggle against power. In most stories, we like to see them succeed, in domination fantasy stories, we like to see them give in. You'll notice most of the time, the women in my stories leave the minds of their men intact, to fully appreciate what's happening to them and submit of their own free will. In the stories where that doesn't happen, it's usually because a supervillain is just using sex as a means of mind control for a greater plot beyond being merely a cocktease.

So, that's pretty much that. I can see why people might get bored with the women being so powerful and why magic is too out there to suspend disbelief, but this is where I come from on the matter.

On Sequels and Continuations

Sometimes, I get comments and e-mails from readers asking me if I plan on doing a sequel to a story, or if I’m going to continue a story. Unfortunately, the chances of anything I've written seeing a genuine sequel or a continuation are pretty slim. I apologize if this disappoints some fans of my work. I’m not against the idea of sequels or continuations, and in fact, I’ve actually tried doing some, which usually results in failure, hence they don’t get posted. There’s several reasons for this.

1) I am constantly coming up with new ideas, and I very quickly get bored with reusing the same material over and over. Frankly a lot of my ideas use the same one or two story formulas, and most of the sex tends to be pretty much the same stuff over and over, so I’m especially susceptible to getting burnt out on stuff.

This is why I keep trying to tackle different situations, settings, genres, etc, with each new major story. I want to keep trying new formulas and combinations of elements to keep things interesting and fresh. Unfortunately, revisiting the same characters tends to lead to stagnation of the concept.

2) Very often, everything I set out to say or do with a character ends up getting done in a single story, which is to say, the character becomes “finished” in my mind. If the conflict that drove the story gets resolved, and I don’t see any more seeds of conflict, I just really don’t have anything left to say.

For example, the main conflict in Kat’s First Boytoy is Kat deciding whether or not she’s really going to use her powers to seduce and sexually dominate Ben, as well as convincing Ben to submit to her once she does decide to go for it. This all wrapped up by the end of the story, and thus the conflict is over. After that point, the only thing left for me to write about would just be more sex scenes involving the two, but I feel that would be just be stale.

Of course, I could introduce a new conflict, but the only thing I’ve ever come up with as a legitimate Kat sequel ends up coming off as a repeat of the Violet vs. Sarah story, and well, I already mentioned my issue with repeating myself too much.

3) Very often, the sequel ideas I get end up being pretty much not erotic at all, which, well, kind of defeat’s the whole purpose. Either the stories end up being all about the psychological consequences of being victimized by abusive Sex Mages (which can lead to horribly dark territory I don’t even want to get into regardless), or it ends up being more about the superhero/adventure action than anything else. If the sex is an after thought, than it’s not an erotica. And I presume that when you want me to write a sequel to an erotic story, you plan on that sequel also being erotic, not a psychological horror piece or a schlocky action story.

To correlate with this, sometimes making an erotic sequel just really doesn’t make any sense in terms of the established character. For example, some people want to see a story where Sarah breaks out of prison, tracks down Dough and Violet, and gets her revenge by turning them both into her sex slaves. Yeah… no. If Sarah ever did break out? She’s not going to turn them into her sex slaves. She is going to outright murder them. The thing about Sarah is that it was never really about the sex; sex was just the medium through which her magic worked. It was all about the power. Sure she enjoyed sex, but it was never a motivation, it was a weapon for her to use to control people, and in the case of Doug, it was her means of gaining more power for herself. Violet and Doug defeated her and stole her power; ergo they deserve to die in Sarah’s eyes.

Similarly, Feel Girl isn’t motivated by sex either. She’s motivated by the thrill of being a supervillain. Sex is her weapon, shield, and means of controlling others, but you better believe that if, given the opportunity to switch her powerset to something much more directly destructive or controlling, she would switch to that in a heartbeat. Ergo, a sequel involving her, more than likely, would mean joining or forming a team of supervillains who would more than likely be immune to her power, and using their resources to advance her supervillain “career.” She would not, as was once suggested to me, go buy an island and build a mansion where she could be waited on hand and foot by men she cockteases into serving her.

4) I started writing a story, but for some reason, it completely crapped out on me, and I couldn’t come up with any way to continue it that didn’t either feel forced, stupid, or contradictory. Or, I just plain ran out of ideas. Unfortunately, sometimes, this happens after I have already posted part of the story, and I end up left with a dud that isn’t finished. These days I try not to post things too soon, and if I do make that mistake, I try to cap off what I’ve already written as much as best as possible, with varying success. Unfortunately, stories like this, such as Sandy the Psychic Cougar, The Erotic Misadventures of Jamin Frey: The Golden Hook, and Centurions: Curse of the Druj, just aren’t going to get finished. I ran into a wall or a gaping canyon, and I’m just not going to be able to get past it unless I do the whole thing over from scratch.

And yes, I did finally manage to do that with one of them, a rewrite of Sandy, set in the Sex Mage World. Unfortunately, even that one crapped out on me at the end, resulting in a sloppily written conclusion, and even getting that far was like pulling teeth trying to get it out. It’s not an experience I wish to repeat, so even a remake is unlikely to occur for the other stories.

5) Specifically in regards to the Just A Little Scenes: These are not, and never were, intended to be full stories in the first place. Most JALS are just scenes I came up with that I couldn’t manage to expand into a bigger story, so I just capped off the scene at the ends to try and make it more self-contained. Occasionally, I’ve taken a scene from a failed story I only partially managed to write, and decided to cap it off and make it a JALS as well. As such, JALS by their very nature aren’t really meant to continue. I tried it once, with the You My Goddess sub-series, but well, personally I think that while the first one is one of the best erotica/porn I’ve ever written, the sequels felt flat and forced to me.

However, it is true that some JALS can lead to bigger story ideas. Violet and Sarah, for example, started off as JALS characters, who were reimagined in the Violet vs. Sarah story, and a few JALS served as prototypes for the Sex Mage World setting, so in that sense, the JALS do lead to other things.

6) Heck, if nothing else, I also just plain can’t stand it when a story doesn’t know when to end, and sometimes, the best way to end a story is to tease the readers imagination so that they can draw there own conclusion as to what further sexual adventures the characters might have. Again, if the conflict is already established and resolved, and all that’s really left is for the characters to just keep having sex on a frequent basis, well, I know I can’t please everybody, and my own tastes tend not to jive with a lot of other people’s preferences. Ergo, after showing you the sorts of things a dominant psychic woman can do to her non-powered male sub, in some ways, it’s better to leave it to the readers imagination where that can go from there, rather than just dragging them through scene after scene of sex, sex, and more sex, that will ultimately just grow stale.