#lamiana

[augustrenfelt]

I have reissued the second Lamiana story, "Secrets of Magic" and it has gone through vetting... sort of.

Smashwords thinks that the cover is too revealing to allow for inclusion in their Premium Catalogue. This means that it will not go out to distributors like iBooks and Barns & Nobles unless I change the cover. That is not a problem to me, as the first story, "Fate, like Water", isn't available anywhere but on Smashwords, so I don't intent to distribute "Secrets of Magic" widely anyway. But it is a funny illustration of the hoops a poor dishonest peddler of porn has to go through to make a buck in today's world ;-)

Here is the link to this... Smashwords exclusive! Too Risqué for Amazon and iBooks! Story: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/300880

[augustrenfelt]

Lamiana update: Smashwords has recently soften their stance slightly on... uh... a particular murder method employed in "Fate, as Water." So I'm trying to republish this short story, and we'll see what happens. It'll only be available from Smashwords, and I'll hold off on re-releasing the second story in the series, "The Secrets of Magic," until I can be certain that the first one will be allowed.

[augustrenfelt]

Regarding the further adventures of Lamiana.

As some of you might know, I had to pull "Fate, as Water" from publication because it contained a murder performed via an... amorous... donkey. I hinted that I might put the story up for free, as well as its sequel "The Secrets of Magic", and indeed complete the quartet as a gratis series.

That project has hit a snag. The submission policies of places like Literotica, tumblr and DeviantArt are either as strict or stricter than Amazon's and Smashwords'. So I wouldn't actually be able to post the first story there, raising the question what the point would be in posting the second, albeit murder-by-donkey free, story, or for that matter write the last two.

I could, of course, put the first story up as a PDF on my own web page. But in this day and age no one browses personal web pages looking for gold. I would get about zero new readers by so doing, and thus the point of taking the effort to complete the story would be defeated.  

So there you have it. Posting and writing a free four part series where no one will ever find the first episode seems pointless.

If anyone have a solution to this dilemma, by all means post a comment.

Yours

August Renfelt

[augustrenfelt]

Q & A

Paraphrased for brevity & anonymity.

Q: What happened to your stories? Why can't I find "Needles" on Amazon and where is "Fate, as Water" and "Secrets of Magic"?

A: Needles has been banned from Amazon, they found it too... rough. Smashwords still have it and, I believe, iBooks, Barnes & Nobles, Kobo and other such outlets.

The two Lamiana stories, however...

In "Fate, as Water," there is a murder, a murder by donkey as it where, which, upon careful reflection, violates the hard guidelines of all the major e-book outlets. So, where "Needles" could be judged to be too violent, "Fate, as Water," defiantly crosses the line. As I rely on the goodwill of the publishers, I had to show some of my own, and I took the story down. As "Secrets of Magic" is a direct continuation, I took it down also. Basically I had to scrap the series, which breaks my heart, but there you go.

This of course has had an effect on my writing. "Flashing Teeth" had, as the name implies, the potential to be exceedingly gory, but I opted to make the vore more implied than graphical. I can only hope that this decision relieved as many readers as it disappointed.      

Yours

August Renfelt