Author of SF and Fantasy erotica

There’s a lot of inspiration that went into The Lonely Ship from the Accord, and I’m going to try and share that here.

• First and foremost, this writing project began life as a solo campaign of the greatest roleplaying game ever made, Ironsworn: Starforged. The story has changed a lot since those long lunchbreaks of 2022, with a general tightening up of the focus, time spent writing from other perspectives, the hammering out of inconsistencies and changing some names that didn’t quite work. But those familiar with the game will definitely spot the hints in the story’s origin, most obviously in the setting being a galaxy named the Forge. I still recommend Starforged to everyone I think will listen, and I’ll recommend it again here and now.
• But Starforged isn’t inherently a horny game. For that inspiration, I’d like to thank the masterpiece that is Motel Spooky-Nine. Superbly simple mechanics tease out a real wealth of a solo journalling experience. And the permission that it grants players to safely explore arousing situations is nothing short of spectacular. I’ve always been a fan of monstrous and alien romances, but this game is what encouraged me to start work on a long-form story about horns and tentacles and cool stuff like that. Most of the core cast of Lonely Ship began life as residents of the motel, including Miriham, Therese, Hal and Sera, Demi, Ashe and Sleighbor (though he was way different in the beginning)!
• I’ve toyed around with horny writing for a little while now, but I don’t think I really hit my stride until I happened upon the indie RPG Monster Girl Dreams. Though an incredibly deep turn-based dungeon crawler RPG in its own right, I learned a great deal from striving against (and repeatedly losing to) the denizens of Lucidia. A game that repeatedly pushes its players into evocatively sexy situations needs to make sure its language is varied and interesting, and Dreams succeeds heartily in that regard. And I learned an absolute ton about describing interaction with non-humanoid physiology, if you catch my drift. I have a list of all the great little ways the game describes what’s happening to you in lieu of actually showing you visually, and a lot of them ended up in Lonely Ship.
• The webcomic Alfie was a real awakening for me. It’s fantasy monster smuttery, which I like, but it also blends erotic encounters with a genuinely engaging throughline that has kept me captivated for months. It’s a fascinating blend of sex and story that balances perfectly, while still keeping sex at the forefront and centre of the story’s beats, and the lessons it teaches in that regard are those I’ve tried to take to heart in Lonely Ship. Man, I wish I could draw.
• Obviously, the story borrows a lot of traditional sci-fi elements, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out some of those staples. I’m not a huge Star Trek fan, but the idea of a little science ship with a diverse crew exploring unknown space is definitely a fun one. I was surprised by how much I took to season one of Strange New Worlds!
• (Edit, 25th Nov 2024. I just remembered that Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda exists, and that’s definitely in Lonely Ship! It’s a small crew, found family, ancient starship that heralded a federation of cultures that don’t naturally get along and may have been forced to, the ship is hot and horny kinda story. I remember watching, like, all of season one while sick with the flu one week in middle school. I’d be mad if I didn’t recognise that influence, even if the show is naff!)
• (Edit, 1st April 2025. Just finished re-watching Gurren Lagann, and whoops, have I been plagiarising? Seriously, the inspirations in Gainax’s seminal drill-fest are all over Lonely Ship. An esoteric power generated by (in part) getting turned on that has the ability to tear through space and time with a visual effect like physics is breaking like glass. And animal people. Gurren Lagann has always held a very special place in my heart for its message of pushing past common sense and speaking truth to power, two things I find incredibly hard to do. I’m proud of the influence the show has had on Lonely Ship.)
• James SA Corey’s Leviathan Wakes is another literary space opera classic and really hits the nail on the head with its small, intimate, found-family crew of desperados. There’s also some clear inspiration there in its depiction of an ancient and unknowable race of alien tech-builders. I like the TV show, too.
• Elizabeth Moon’s Serrano Legacy is another classic. I did not know how much I loved big, slow, tense space battles in mismatched ships with wildly different technology until I read these books. You won’t find the measured pacing of Moon in Lonely Ship, but it did get me thinking about stellar scope, relative mass, FTL and what a space gun might look like.
• Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice is the quintessential ship-has-a-body-and-walks-around-in-it story. Toren’s plight as a ship AI in a borrowed body is thrilling, chilling and heartbreaking, and Leckie uses some literary brilliance to really put you in her shoes all the way through. Stunning! Rune’s journey is a lot more hopeful. Demi gets a little of the Ancillary Justice treatment too.
• On that topic, I couldn’t write a book about living, talking ships without mentioning Robin Hobb’s sensational Ship of Magic. A stellar series that really takes the time needed to draw the characters out of the enchanted boats of Bingtown. I had dreams of a grand family of diverse Mythmaker ships to rival Hobb’s world, though that’s something I’m yet to properly realise in writing.
• And a quick acknowledgement for grand strategy sci-fi masterpiece Stellaris. The stories told are entirely your own, and that’s part of the incredible charm of the game. But those familiar may recognise a couple of elements from Stellaris naming conventions. ‘League’, ‘mandate’ and ‘covenant’ all came from the empire name generator, and I liked the pattern they set. The RKON Earth premise also borrows a lot from my beloved main start – the gestalt machine rogue servitor!

That’s all I’ve been able to think of so far. But let me know if you’ve spotted anything else in there. At the end of the day, I wrote Lonely Ship because it was what I wanted to read. If there’s other stuff out there like this, I want to read that too!

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