Janine Ashbless's Blog, page 119

For Mitzi

Mitzi Szereto asked us contributors to come up with author photos posing with Thrones of Desire.


I find it incredibly hard not to pull faces when having my photo taken. I mean ... I don't look like this all the time - do I?

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

I've been editing an Arthurian story for Wild Enchantments , so here goes with some Arthurian art!

John William Waterhouse, 1893"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (the beautiful merciless lady) was a short poem by Keats, probably based on a 15th Century courtly poem, that was taken up by a bunch of Victorian artists as the theme for a painting.

Arthur Hughes, 1863 
The story goes: knight meets mysterious lady in the forest; they make love (I'm reading slightly between the lines here but not much); he falls asleep and dreams that all her previous dead lovers have come - too late! - to warn him that he is DOOMED; he wakes and she is gone; he loiters at the spot until he dies, because he can't bear to ride away from the last place he saw her.


Henry Meynell Rheam, 1901
It appeals to art-viewers who get a kick from the idea of a irresistably seductive woman who enslaves poor helpless men, bringing the mighty and noble low. In modern terms, femdom.

Robbert Anning Bell (1863-1933)
Waterhouse's picture at top is, to my mind, the best, but this one is probably the most famous:

Frank Dicksee, 1902
Note the near-crucifixion posture.

Walter Craine 1865
For some artists it seems to have been a bit of an obsession:

Another Robert Anning Bell, 1920
Another  Henry Meynell Rheam, 1901 again.I like the ghosts in that painting. Why the harp-playing girlies represented in the one below?

John Melhuish Strudwick (1849-1937)It's probably drawing upon the idea of the Belle Dame as being a fairy lady, rather than a human. The presence of other fairies spying or conniving, as she has her wicked way with a mortal, makes folkloric sense.

In this, slightly later picture, the visual emphasis is less on the sleeping/stricken/dying knight in the foregound than on the lady's sumptuous dress.

Frank Cadogan Cowper, 1926But note the date of the painting, and the poppies. This is almost certainly a WW1 reference - to the soldiers killed in the trenches. Young men cut down by a power they cannot understand and cannot hope to resist. This is a case of a painting that looks only decorative and sentimental, and actually has a deeper darker meaning.

"You've been warned"

It was a particularly lovely surprise, whilst idly surfing Facebook, to be pounced upon by a unexpected review of Red Grow the Roses . And what a fabulous, thoughtful review! Tilly Hunter says:

 Janine Ashbless has taken the vampire myth and made it her own.

and

Red Grow the Roses is often discomfiting. The vamps treat humans as playthings to be used and discarded. They bicker amongst themselves and the book culminates in all-out nastiness between London’s five undead. But it’s also a book that draws you in and consumes you with the need to keep reading. You’ve been warned.

Full review here.

Thank you Tilly!
(who also gets extra cool points from me for citing Jung and using the epithet "ridiculous" ... to describe the price of the e-book. Which was 20p when she bought it ... but is currently 49p. OMG the price is climbing out of control!)

Amazon US : Amazon UK

Eyecandy Monday

Editing and rewriting this collection of my short stories, I am perforce searching out boobs.... ;-)

I can't just hope no one sees them:


I have to be ruthless:


It's a hard life being a writer!

Pole dancer

Her name is Jenyne Butterfly and she is just amazing. If, like me, you were wowed by the athletic poledancing in Rock of Ages, you'll love this.

Here's some more:

Wild Enchantments - first draft

Thanks to Alec for sending me this pic!

2013 is definitely going to be the Year of the Romantic Novel - I am after all under orders! - but first I'm polishing off the last of the filth. Well, polishing up the filth anyway ... I've just finished the 10th story in a collection tentatively titled "Wild Enchantments" (have you spotted the pattern yet?) and spent several hours yesterday stuffing the squabbling, fractious things into a single volume.

Over the next week or so I have to get it ready for submission - formatted, spellchecked, each story prettied up. I have to log every name I've used in my database to ensure I'm not repeating myself. And talking of repeats - I need to make sure that the sex varies across the volume ("Oh, do we have to have anal again, Janine?"), that I'm not reusing metaphors or tropes or story structures (I already know there's probably too much rainy weather), and that the narrator voices are individualised.

And then there's the research for tiny but vital details. Off the top of my head this will include fact-checking across websites on

How to speak EnochianThe life of Ivan the TerribleZombie antsModern Military jargonmedieval musical instruments
I've said it before: thank goodness for t'Internet!

Stories that turn me on

Today I'm doing a guest post over at Kissing Velvet, as part of the ongoing series "Stories that Turn Me On". Which is where erotica authors get to 'fess up about someone else's work that puts them all in a tizzy.

I picked a favourite story from Alison Tyler's Luscious anthology. I'm slightly distracted now by the book's lovely new cover. Mmmmm....

Ahem. Anyway, the story is Something Dirty by Erica Dumas, so you can go find why I like it so much....

Eyecandy Monday

Woohooo! Let's start 2013 with a HOT BLOKE!

It applies to writers too...

:-)

Filthy Friday

It's Filthy Friday!



You know how much we UK authors love the Sh! Erotica Shop?
Well, today on the Sh! Blog you can read a nice big extract from Named and Shamed . And yes, it is fairly filthy! I mean, I wouldn't want to waste the opportunity...


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