XMas Reads

Merry XMas!  Or Merry Festivus for the rest of us!

As I have since 2014 I wrote an Eric Filler gender swap story for Christmas.  Called...wait for it:  Transformed for Christmas 4!  The subtitle is:  The Missus Clause.  Maybe you can guess where this is going.

I'm going 2 Fast 2 Furious with the cover!

Basically the idea is that months ago Mrs. Claus died suddenly of an aneurysm or something so elf magic at the North Pole couldn't save her.  For the first time in about 200 years Santa is without his Mrs. Claus.  And he's not taking it well.  Santa has retreated to the arctic wastelands to live like a primitive.  It's only a week before XMas and if Santa doesn't come to his senses soon Christmas will be canceled!

The head of the elves decides on a radical plan:  searching human dating sites he finds Santa an ideal mate in Chicago and sends a team to abduct the woman.  There's just one problem:  the elves kidnap the wrong person!

Hayden was just crashing on his sister's couch while she's away in India when he's abducted and taken to the North Pole by elves.  When he wakes up, he finds he's been changed into a woman by elf magic!  If he wants to change back and save Christmas he has to use his new feminine wiles to make Kris Kringle come back.

In case you're wondering this story is pretty much PG.  There's only implied sex.  Writing Santa having sex was just too creepy even for me.

You can buy it for $2.99 or get it free on Kindle Unlimited!

And as I've done since 2015 I also wrote a Christmas story under my other name:  Ivana Johnson.  It's called Naughty or Nice 3.

The main character is a take on Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa.  He is a mall Santa who is an asshole.  On Christmas Eve a girl pulls on his beard and he gets pissed off at her.  But her mother jumps in and puts a curse on him.  Soon he finds himself changed into a young woman.  As if that's not bad enough, he then starts getting younger and younger until he's a small girl.  There's no sex in this either and it's not all that long.

Buy it for $2.99 or get it FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

And as Billy Bob Thornton sang:  there's no day slower than Christmas.  Have fun.

Indie Bookmas Day 9: The Shemale Anomaly by Carl East

This isn't really a gender swap story but it's pretty close.  The Shemale Anomaly by Carl East

When Jessica is thrown through the portal to find herself in an alternate universe, she discovers that the inhabitants are all Futa females and don't even know what a man is. So begins her erotic adventure in a world that is fascinated by the fact that she doesn't have a penis.

It's only like 22 pages so it's not very long.  Kind of a fun little erotic sci-fi story.  But like many of these the author could use a little help with the grammar.  Just saying.

Get it FREE on Amazon and other retailers!

Indie Bookmas Day 8: The Bohemian Magician by A.L. Sirois

On this eighth day of indie bookmas it's the latest book by A.L. Sirois, who you might remember illustrated the Tales of the Scarlet Knight comic book.  And also did some revisions on my Chances Are covers.  This has nothing to do with that; this is a fantasy novel called The Bohemian Magician.

Young Guilhelm has everything a man of the middle ages could ask for: money, title, admirers. But he has one thing that puts all of that in jeopardy. One thing that he cannot get rid of. He has been designated FAIRY FRIEND. Now, no matter where he goes, the fair folk of our world are attracted to his side, and they cause more trouble than Guilhelm seems able to bear. 

I don't read a lot of fantasy but this was pretty fun.  It gets a little far out when Guilhelm starts being changed into a cockroach, leech, and bird.  But mostly it was a light read that isn't as LOL funny as Terry Pratchett's Discworld books but is still pretty funny, especially with how annoying the fae are.

Buy it for $2.99 on Amazon!

Indie Bookmas Day 7: Lightspeed Frontier by Adam Corres

I think this was another book advertised on my Kindle that I decided to buy for the hell of it.  I listened to it in my car while I was on vacation in Petoskey, MI.  I distinctly remember I listened to a large chunk of it my last day when I went down to Traverse City and back.

“When you play pool, do you see it as an exercise in advanced trigonometry or do you just pick up a stick and poke?” That’s the question that untrained pilot and space-punk heroine Exia asks in this idea-fueled sci-fi comedy as she takes her scavenger space ship to the frontier of human colonization and inflicts her personal brand of chaos on an already messed up galaxy. If you want adventure, wit, hard and soft science, original thought, a future full of imaginative charm and a burning tortoise that picks out grant applications, this is the book you’ve been waiting for. It is truly unlike anything else ever written in science fiction.

This is supposed to be a light sci-fi comedy like Date Night on Union Station that I previously talked about buying because it was advertised on my Kindle repeatedly.  Unlike that book, I didn't really like this.  As I said in my review it seemed like a lot of prattle searching for a plot.  Which as a backhanded compliment would mean that fans of Tony Laplume would love it!  If Adam Corres and Tony Laplume teamed up they could make a sci-fi epic twice as long as Infinite Jest and with twice as little plot!  But I do like the cover.  So, that.

Buy it for a measly 99 cents from Amazon or other retailers!

Indie Bookmas Day 6: The Curse by Nikki S Jenkins

Happy Star Wars Day!  Though many people have probably already watched the movie and spoiled it on the Internet.  Anyway, I'm not here to talk about Star Wars.  I'm here to talk about another indie published book:  The Curse by Nikki S Jenkins.

After a horrible prank, a distraught girl takes her own life, leaving a devastated best friend in her wake. Vanessa reacts by enlisting the help of her aunt, who casts a curse on those she deems responsible - her high school's resident power couple, Josh and Anna.

The curse manifests itself when Anna begins to show infantile traits while Josh's masculinity slowly abandons him. How far will the curse go? And can Vanessa see the error of her ways before it's too late? 

This is both a gender swap story and an age regression story.  Though the age regression isn't physical so much as mental as the girl begins acting more and more like a baby.  For the most part this was good, though I didn't really like the ending and the parts with characters besides the victims of the curse were kind of lame.  Still better than a lot of the crap put out there.

Buy it for $2.99 on Amazon!

Indie Bookmas Day 5: Terrestrial Affairs by Tony Laplume

The newish novel by my favorite frenemy, Tony Laplume!  It's Terrestrial Affairs.

Eloise meets Hollym, who sort of crash-landed to Earth as the vanguard of an alien invasion. They fall in love, but obviously it's complicated. What follows is a mad dash across worlds as they struggle to secure a most forbidden love.

What can I say?  It's definitely a Tony Laplume novel.  (Honestly if I say anything bad he'll never let me forget it.  Shhhh.)

Buy it for $2.99 on Amazon!

Indie Bookmas Day 4: Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

This one is more small published than indie published.  Anyway, if you've worked in an IKEA or just visited it, you probably know what an annoying, confusing experience it can be.  Now imagine being locked in there at night with things going bump.  That's the concept of Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix.

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.

To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, Horrorstör comes packaged in the form of a glossy mail order catalog, complete with product illustrations, a home delivery order form, and a map of Orsk’s labyrinthine showroom.

This is another I can't really recommend.  It started out as a fun light read, like Scooby-Doo in an IKEA.  I wish it had stayed there because about halfway through it turns into this dark gore-fest.  It wasn't really what I was hoping for from it.  but I've had people pissed about that with some of my books, though maybe not to this extent.

You can get it for $2.99 from Amazon and other retailers!

Indie Bookmas Day 3: Swap or Die by Nikki Crescent

Every time I send an Eric Filler newsletter I try to find a gender swap type book that's on sale to also advertise.  So on Fridays I'm going to highlight one of those for Indie Bookmas.  Today it's Swap or Die by Nikki Crescent.

"Style’s hands dug into my long soft hair as my head started to move up and down the length of his manhood. He pulled me in tight, forcing his quickly lengthening shaft further down my throat."

Roxy is just trying to go through the motions of her mundane life, but something seems off. Things happening around Roxy just aren't adding up. As the days go by, strange images start to manifest in Roxy's brain. Images that don't seem to belong to her... Not only do they not belong to her, they don't belong to a woman at all.

Soon enough, Roxy begins making sense of the memories, and begins to discover that she used to be a man who was given a deadly ultimatum.

Swap or Die is a 5500 word erotic thriller, bound to get your panties wet and your blood flowing. 

It was kind of interesting that this starts after the gender swap has already been accomplished.  The downside of doing this is a lot of readers like the transformation thing.  In fact, some like you to go into it in great detail, which is something I usually don't want to do. Trying to describe it in minute detail takes you out of the person's point-of-view.  Anyway, this was fairly interesting as the girl doesn't remember she used to be a guy but is sort of having flashes of it.  This could have been expanded a lot more than 5500 words.  Just saying.  Like I said in my review, it's one of the better gender swap stories I've read--that I didn't also write. 😏

Get it for $2.99 on Amazon!

Indie Bookmas Day 2: Rollie Gold by Joe Basara

Joe Basara is one of my favorite indie authors who I don't know on social media.  His loss, I suppose.  I heard of him through Ethan Cooper a while ago and really enjoyed most of his books.  The fifth book in his Cypress Lake series is called Rollie Gold.

Rollie Gold's father had been a Marine drill instructor during World War II, and treated him like just another raw recruit who needed to be run through boot camp. At least this was Rollie's opinion, though as a kid he loved to hear his father's war stories of when he'd fought in the Pacific. When his mother later told him these stories were untrue, it felt like a betrayal. His mother made him promise he'd never tell his father, and he never did, but whatever chance they had of ever enjoying a healthy father-son relationship seemed lost. In his twenties, he moved to Oregon with three companions to live on a commune. There, he came to see a parallel between the four of them and four characters he'd read about in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance. He came to see this romance as his personal myth, but later came wonder if it might be only an illusion. Growing older, he came to equate this illusion with his father's illusion about fighting in the war. This novel focuses on five years in Rollie Gold's life. In his own words, Rollie describes his thirty-year search to find a reconciliation with his father. 

I can't really give this book a recommendation.  I thought it was as boring as the cover.  Some people complained about Where You Belong that the main character is too passive, but Frost Devereaux is a dynamo compared to this guy.  The commune part is especially dull and it just seems to go on and on.

But just because I didn't like the book doesn't mean other people will.

Get it for only 99 cents on Amazon!

Indie Bookmas Day 1: Hyde by Nigel G Mitchell

Since the first Jekyll & Hyde novel by Robert Louis Stevenson in the 19th Century there have been plenty of updates in books or movies.  Has anyone written it from the monster Hyde's point of view?  Well someone has now!

In the spirit of "Maleficent" and "Wicked," get ready to see one of fiction's greatest villains in a whole new way with HYDE.

You may think you know the story of Jekyll and Hyde, but what if Hyde wasn't the monster? That's the question faced by Henry Jekyll's lawyer Utterson when a mysterious woman gives him a manuscript in the dead of night. In the pages, Utterson finds a new account of the story from the perspective of Edward Hyde, trapped in the body of Henry Jekyll, and hated by all men. As Hyde struggles to build his own life independent of his creator, Hyde finds himself drawn into sin and corruption, abused and driven to violence and murder. At the same time, he discovers the cruelty and hypocrisy of society at large. Prepare for a compelling story, not about good and evil, but the shades of gray that lie in between them. 

What I liked is this is essentially a story about nature vs nurture.  Is Hyde born evil or does he become evil because the world treats him that way?  The answer seems more the latter.  As someone who is not physically attractive I can feel sympathy with Hyde's plight.  Most people will treat you with varying degrees of disdain if you're not good looking and/or rich and/or powerful.  I had more than a few job interviews where I walked into the room and interviewers checked out mentally pretty much right away.  It's even worse if you're ugly and deformed like Hyde.

Get it for a mere 99 cents on Amazon!

Indie Bookmas Returns December 4th!

Last year I used the time up until XMas to spotlight various indie published books.  Which probably resulted in 0 sales.  But let's do it again!  Starting on Monday I'll spotlight an indie or small published book each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday up until XMas.  So there.

Here's one last Storypalooza idea I had inspired by playing fantasy football this fall in my brother's league.  This would be a lot better for a screenplay than a novel.  Let's call it Fantasy League.

Like Major League you have a scumbag owner who wants to move his team to LA or Vegas from a smaller, grittier city.  Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell is a loser who doesn't have a real job and spends most of his time studying stats and managing his fantasy football team. One day the owner of the local team is on sports talk radio and Sandler/Ferrell calls in and gets into it with the owner.  As a publicity stunt (and to help the team tank and move) the owner decides to hire Sandler/Ferrell as the new team general manager. 

And from there Sandler/Ferrell finds managing a real team is a lot more difficult than a fantasy team.  There are early struggles and Sandler/Ferrell is ready to quit.  But with the support of some girl who works in the office, he starts to turn things around.  And of course in the end the team manages to get to the playoffs and stay in the city and Sandler/Ferrell has a new career and a new girl.

A lot of sports comedy cliches in there!  Which is why it could totally happen.