by Albion, Rex
“Truly, you are blessed, Norman,” said, the demon. It nodded thoughtfully as they looked out across the city. “Are you ready to begin your eternity of service to our dark lord? I can give you a few minutes if you need it, although I can’t delay my other duties indefinitely.”
Norman shook his head. “I didn’t want to die. But now I’m here I kind of want to get straight to the part with the violation, I’m sure you understand.” He laughed heartily. “It’s good to be able to talk about it openly, instead of having to know my audience.”
“My, I don’t think we’ve had one quite as keen as you in centuries,” said, the demon. “I can admire that.”
“Yes. Who do we get to violate? Are they the souls of the sacrifices we made in life or perhaps actual mortals brought to the realm of Libidos?” said, Norman, his excitement growing.
The demon stared at him for a moment, then threw its horned head back and laughed heartily.
His flesh was the rich, dark red that Norman ordinarily saw only when he gutted a victim and the skin glistened as if covered in oil. His bat-like wings fluttered behind him. Only the demon’s membranous wings weren’t supported by bony arms, but by quivering tentacles, which was markedly more disturbing to behold.
The demon was naked and facing away, but he could see the curve of its muscular buttocks. His whole body was built like the strongman in a travelling troupe of players, with bulges in places where Norman wasn’t even sure he had muscles himself.
“What a charming misconception,” said, the demon, turning to face Norman and cupping his chin in its mighty clawed hand. “That you are here to violate souls. Most amusing. I must tell the guys later.”
“I worshipped our lord, Libidos for a decade and performed many sacrifices. I earned my way into paradise through service to him. Have I not earned the right to violate prize souls in his name?”
The demon chuckled again. “In the flesh pits of Libidos, it is not humans who do the violating, but demons. You are a human, and I am a demon.”
The monster slipped his hand his hand up to the top of Norman’s head and tilted it forward, forcing his gaze down. Norman’s eyes went wide, as he beheld the mighty appendage that protruded from the demon’s groin. It was truly immense, and just as he’d seen in the cult’s murals and tapestries on pilgrimage. He began to struggle.
“You are not here to violate, Norman, but to be the violated,” said, the demon, managing to make his smirking tone audibly distinct. “That is the afterlife you chose. Come, human, let us go to the nearest altar, so that we may pray together, in glorious worship of Libidos!”
Norman began to scream and never stopped.
Author Notes
Thank you for reading folks! I hope you enjoyed the book.
Allow me to explain why this book took ten months to complete and the next will come much faster.
You’ll have to read to the end to find out how fast. Or you know, skip My Tale.1
Bullet Points of Positivity:
I published multiple other books in that ten months under other names
I’ve prioritised Vandal the Barbarian and my main genre going forward
All my distracting passion projects are on the back burner now
Financial security is my main goal, and VtB is a huge part of that
My productivity has skyrocketed in 2021
I’m doing writing sprints with friends
My income is increasing
My stress level is decreasing (correlation does imply causation in this case)
My Tale: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Notifications
My procrastination problem
I’ve never done a job that’s simultaneously as hard and as easy as being an author. All my other jobs have been difficult because I had to deal with customers, or had hard physical labour to carry out. I have friends who find the writing or generating ideas hard. That’s not too bad for me.
The hardest bit for me is working efficiently from home. I love the writing, but it’s super easy to have a pointlessly clean kitchen, or tidy bathroom, instead of sitting in my writing armchair to get some words done. 2
It is common for authors to leave a full time job, or be made redundant and think they’re suddenly going to be hit with A Blessing of Word Count & Marketing +3 as a result of all this extra time they’ll have. Some people have told me they were fine with it. More have struggled to adapt as I have. Counter-intuitive, I know, but true.
There I was, I hadn’t been writing enough, my income had dropped a lot, debt was rising. I had work I should be doing on my existing series. I spent time working on projects with co-authors that didn’t pan out (but hopefully will in the future).
I wrote down every idea I had, and outlined it. I have folders full of great ideas and weak ones but mostly in genres that wouldn’t make money anyway.
All that instead of focusing on what was already reliably making my living.
Eventually, I reached a point where I started to get back on track. I’d had enough and I started to try and organise myself.
How Vandal the Barbarian came about
A few years ago I got into reading GameLit and shortly after, harem. At first I was just curious, having met other authors who wrote in the genres, but I enjoyed the work enough that I wanted to write some. In Sept 2020 I wrote an outline for a GameLit harem series, and that became Rescuing Roxy. Ten months later I’m days from publishing it.
I’m achieving several writing firsts for me with this book, the word count, my first GameLit work and my first harem novel.
That’s a lot of stuff to be getting on with, and I really struggled with the GameLit elements. The harem aspect is relatively easy provided the prose suits people’s taste. But to do GameLit or LitRPG you need to balance how crunchy it is, decide how in game notifications work, how combat is described, experience points and so on. And you can’t use someone else’s system. Well, not without a licensing deal anyway.
I had the book mostly done within two or three months. All the time since then has been procrastination caused by anxiety about whether it’ll be a success and how hard editing it will be because of the game systems.
Did I get the number and feel of the notifications right? Are people going to hate the way they look or sound? Have I nailed enough harem and GameLit tropes or will the book go down like a lead balloon?
It took a while to get over those mental blocks and get back into editing the book. But I found a way through (and yes it involves spreadsheets), that I hope gives the book a fairly light touch game system. What I should probably have done was write either a GameLit or a harem book and not mixed the two, but I’m glad that it’s done and looking forward to the next one.
I’m now confident that I have a process in place that will make writing and editing book two a much smoother experience. I understand the GameLit elements I need to use, have formatting rules and styles to follow and can more easily fix the problems in editing.
I won’t make any unrealistic claims about how long it will take me, but it won’t be ten months. Unless no-one buys this book, of course. In that case, I’ll likely be going back to working for someone else.
Help me Name an Elven Warlock!
If you’ve read this far, I’m guessing that you want to know when the next book will be coming.
It’s tentatively titled Freeing Faye. Faye is an Elven Warlock and she’s got herself in trouble. Like Vandal and Roxy, she’s Awoken, meaning she’s dead as a doornail as far as Earth is concerned, and New Albion is the game she’s picked to pass the time in her digital afterlife. Together, they’re going to kick some cultist bottom. And shag a fair bit. Do some town building around the Temple of Amoria. That sort of thing.
Faye is just the short version of her full name. Roxy seemed great for a goblin. Vandal is a silly pun, just liked you’d choose when generating your character in a game that doesn’t require ten pages of character background to play. I’m looking at you Ars Magica! Tha
t was an exciting looking game I spent more time generating characters for than actually playing because it was so complicated and no-one had the energy after rolling up their mages.
Since Faye is an elf, her true name should be something longer and suitably Elven. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that!
She’ll mostly be referred to as Faye but if you were generating an avatar for an immersive MMO, would you go with Fayeuriel or Fayellenna or something else entirely? Those are literally just things I typed here to illustrate the point.
If you’ve got thoughts that won’t infringe someone’s copyright, come on the Facebook page and share them with me. It’s hardly a crucial point, but I’m not happy with anything I’ve come up with. She even needs a surname. Should her character be a minor royal?
Oh, and the next book? Freeing Faye? I hope to outline it in August 2021. Writing between September and November, depending on length and other commitments, for publication by Christmas 2021. That’ll go more smoothly if this book gets rave reviews, great sales and lots of support. And you know, once I solve the problem of Faye’s full name because that shit is going to bug the crap out of me until it’s solved.
TLDR; The more reviews and support I get, the faster I can get the next books written, because good mental health, financial stability, and general happiness are crucial to my productivity.
Kind Regards, Rex Albion
1 I promise I won’t be offended. Unless you tell me. Then I’ll be hurt, but I’m British so I’ll keep it inside where the pain will fester into an ulcer, and the only evidence will be a faint quiver of my upper lip, which will create yet more internal anguish.
2 This sounds as fancy as I want it to be in an imaginary future when I own my own penthouse flat (apartment). Actually it’s a comfortable, but old armchair, so old my landlord protested at its presence in the flat. He’s a friend and I love him (platonically - in case someone needs that clarified), but I told him to fuck off. Obviously. Comfort > aesthetics. And it’s not jumpsuit orange or anything. ;)
About the Author
Rex Albion writes men’s adventure fiction, with GameLit elements and harem relationships.
You can find him on Facebook at his imaginatively named page, or on Reddit where he frequents r/haremfantasynovels a great community for, you guessed it, people interested in geese farming.
We, Rex has met geese before, and wants nothing to do with them.
Because Rex is a new pen name, he’s sticking to Facebook and Reddit for the time being but might show up elsewhere in the future.
You can also find Rex at his website here:
https://rexalbion.wixsite.com/home