Voodoo Fetish, the second book in my Vodou Trilogy, is free on Amazon until 28 July: it’s available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. The first book, Ridden, details Eloise’s brush with the lwa and Baron Cimitiėre in which she’s used as an instrument of supernatural healing. Her powers are only released, though, when she has bdsm sex in which she can use her pain to channel away another person’s illness. This novella isn’t free, so to read the backstory you’ll need to pay a nominal two dollars and some cents. Voodoo Fetish details her life back in London. You’d think London is a long way from vodou – but the vodou diaspora is present these days in many large cities. She’s called upon by the lwa to carry out a healing ceremony for the daughter of a work colleague. Among other things this involves supernatural sex, discussions with crows and a dead witch, sex with a pagan couple she meets who are recruited to her healing project, a relationship with a houngan (male priest) who comes from the slightly different New Orleans tradition of vodou, a bass guitar with interesting properties, and discussion of the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics. There will be a third novella in due course, which explains how the various people she’s healed are connected together and what the longer-term project of the lwa was. And, yes, bdsm and sex will be involved. However, for now you can read the second novella, Voodoo Fetish, for free. Go to it. Enjoy.
Tag Archives: voodoo
Free Voodoo Fetish!
From 8 to 12 May 2013, my Voodoo Fetish novella is free on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
I won’t bore you with the plot summary or blurb, because you can find those things on Amazon anyway.
I’ll just point out that it’s an erotic novella with paranormal and BDSM themes. Along the way you’ll find sex, bondage, whips, post-structuralist philosophy, vodou, paranormal sex, fluid dynamics equations, three-way and four-way sex, the 1832 Public Cemeteries Act, fetishism, gas masks, sex in a cemetery, syncretism, demonic possession, medical and musical equipment being destroyed by a malevolent spirit, a bass guitar, a goat’s head, and an anvwar mo. And references to certain things you can find on YouTube. And sex and bondage and bdsm.
I hope you enjoy it. If you could also review, rate or tag it on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever that would be kind. And if you like it – I have others; Ridden, obviously, which is the first book of the trilogy, but you’ll find other paranormal/supernatural erotica over on the ‘our publications’ page of this blog.
Velvet also has paranormal erotica published, including the much-praised and well-reviewed A Woman Possessed – an entertaining story of spiritual possession, pagan ritual and bdsm.
Writing Voodoo Fetish
You may have noticed the second novella in my Voodoo Trilogy was published last week. Since it draws, at least a little, on voodoo (or vodou, or voudun) practices I thought it would be worthwhile giving you some background.
Not being a practitioner myself, I drew on a bunch of sources – books and interweb stuff I’ll mention later.
The first thing they told me was that voodoo is a religion that probably started sometime in the mid-1600s but became more developed in Caribbean slave populations in the 1700s, based partly on Christian (mainly Catholic) beliefs and partly on older West African religions, generically labelled as vodun or voudun.
The second thing they pointed out was that there are several more or less distinct branches of voodoo, with both Haitian and Louisiana (or New Orleans) versions, plus santeria (in Cuba, and based largely on Yoruba rather than Fon and Ewe religious beliefs) and candomblé (Afro-Brazilian).
And the third thing was that the voodoo diaspora has spread worldwide as its adherents have migrated out of the Caribbean. So there are populations of believers in the US (particularly New York), Montreal, London and probably almost any other ‘world city’ you can name. Plus there are believers in West Africa where the original Fon, Ewe, Yoruba and other religions also still exist.
As it’s spread, of course, it’s become more varied. It started as a syncretic religion, putting together elements of other traditions. And it remains such, since it’s been taken up by a number of people who don’t (as far as I know) have roots or heritage in Haiti or New Orleans. So it’s still evolving, and that’s a feature I confess I’ve used to excuse a certain latitude in the way I’ve dealt with voodoo in the novella.
If you want to know more than Wikipedia will tell you, you should find (or at least I did) some books in your local library. Probably around shelfmark 299.67, which is where they are in my local library (you’ll find that shelfmark referenced in the novella).
I’d also recommend, from among a range of things I’ve read, Voodoo: Truth and Fantasy by Laennec Hurbon. You’ll probably only find it sporadically in Amazon’s ‘used’ lists, but the author’s written other similar books that I imagine are equally good. You’ll find this book name-checked in the novella too.
I can’t even begin to list the websites I looked at. A Tumblr blog, effyeahvodou.tumblr.com is a mine of information. Haunted America Tours is a page primarily for tourists to New Orleans and thus based on Louisiana voodoo, but contains a wealth of information and links. And in the UK, there’s a musician who’s also a voodoo practitioner whose blog is at www.doktorsnake.com. If you’re interested in visuals, the majority of stuff you’ll find on the internet is not of any serious interest. Some of it is Christian preaching against voodoo; some is deliberately sensationalist, and some is perhaps intended more for the low-end horror film market. However there’s one interesting documentary on Youtube that’s more anthropological in nature – Maya Deren’s 1945 ‘Divine Horsemen’ film of actual voodoo rituals, with a very open-minded take (it’s probably duplicated elsewhere on Youtube as well).
And so to the novella. Following on from part 1, ‘Ridden’ (also on Amazon.co.uk), our heroine Eloise finds herself back in London teaching English as a second language. Despite her change of location and culture, the lwa have a job for her. They don’t know the ultimate significance of it (which will have to wait for the third part of the trilogy) but they know it’s important. She’s nudged – in fact, thrown bodily – in the direction of doing their bidding. Eloise has certain supernatural powers that aren’t particularly flashy and spectacular in themselves, but only come into play in the course of sex that involves bondage and more. Hence she has to create the situations in which sex with very strong bdsm and fetish elements can take place. Which she does.
I’ve borrowed syncretically (i.e. mashed together) a number of real-life locations for the action, including a cemetery I know, and a magic shop (as in, it sold products for magical workings) that no longer exists but used to be close to where I lived in the days when I lived in London.
I might add that some of the scenes in the book are written from (ahem) personal experience, bearing in mind my connections with pagans who have been involved in sex magic. Not that I, or even they, have demon-battling experience or anything. But as a writer of imaginative erotica I’m entitled to stretch a point…
Find my novella Voodoo Fetish at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Ridden – for free, 14-18 November 2012
It’s true, you can get Ridden for free, for a limited time. Xcite have it on free promo on Amazon for four days. Erotic novella, bondage and BDSM, voodoo and paranormal, more details in previous blog posts.
Get it from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. And please leave a review on Amazon when you’ve read it!
Bearing in mind it’s Part 1 of a trilogy (though each volume is self-standing and complete in itself) and Part 2 is mostly written while Part 3 is already plotted, I’m still open to suggestions about particular scenes you might like to see in the later volumes…
Novella finished
Fulani finished writing a novella yesterday: something set against a vodou background, a contemporary setting, a questioning attitude to what we really mean by the supernatural. And a fair bit of sex, bondage and bdsm. And he was looking at stock photo websites for ideas about a cover to suggest to the publishers.
The weird thing is, despite the huge number of images out there on stock sites, it’s almost impossible to find images of women who are (a) Caucasian-ish (b) in a vodou or at least vaguely paranormal setting, (c) have some suggestion of being tied up and (d) look nonetheless as though they’re involved in bondage willingly and making their own choices about their fetishistic proclivities. The closest you get are probably old photos of witchcraft initiation ceremonies (i.e. wrong culture) and they’re quasi-documentary pics that are unlikely to be available for use on a book cover. And there’s not a lot of mileage, unfortunately, in trying to set up a photoshoot to capture the right combination of elements.
On the other hand, repeated google searches did turn up something completely unexpected: a series of sound recordings of bdsm play – thwaps, moans, shrieks and so on, with apparently both female and male recipients of the thwacks, originally put out under the name ‘Tortura’ (volumes 1 and 2) by Bondage Records in 1965. If you want to listen, there’s a link over at Theendofbeing.com – which is incidentally a fine site with all kinds of obscure and weirdly interesting stuff on it.
Meanwhile if anyone has any cool suggestions for a cover on the lines described, Fulani would be interested to know!
deliciouslydeviant 