Janine Ashbless's Blog, page 126

Eyecandy Monday

Oh, for a barcode-reader on my tongue..

I'm up to my neck reading submissions for Geek Love. We've got a LOT, and some of them will just knock your socks off when you see the finished book. Cyberpunk, steampunk, fantasy, SF, nerdworld, historical, manga, fairytales... My head is buzzing.
I'd like to be able to download them direct to my brain in my sleep!
I'd like to be able to do some of the things in the stories!
I'd like to have 48 hours in a day!

I knew there was something missing

Damn. I had no childhood trauma...
I'm screwed.

Herbert Draper

The Gates of Dawn (1900)
This. This is just awesome.

As I'm on a Fantasy theme this week, what with Thrones of Desire and my upcoming webchat this Saturday for the ERWA (all welcome!), I'm going to rave about Victorian artist Herbert James Draper (1863-1920). Because, before there was Fantasy Art, there was just Art, and that was allowed to include goddesses, mythological beings and nymphs.

Talking of nymphs, Draper's art has made previous appearances in my posts on Naiads and Nereids ...

Ulysses and the SirensAnd a tremendous depiction of the fallen Icarus:

The Lament for Icarus (1898)This is a sketch study for the picture above:



And another study ... I'm not sure I even need colour to fall in love with his nudes!


Some of his stuff did veer dangerously close to the cheesy...


Sea Melodies
But I think he mostly managed to be charming (and a bit naughty) without being too bland:

The Capture
D'you think she's going to drown the kid?


The Pearls of Aphrodite

The Kelpie
And sometimes he was downright dark in his eroticism:

The Lamia (1909)
The Lamia is a man-devouring serpent-woman - note her snakeskin

AriadneAriadne - the protag of my story The Red Thread, btw, was taken away by Theseus after he had used her to kill the Minotaur and escape the Labyrinth. The bastard then marooned her on the uninhabited island of Naxos, the moment depicted in this picture.

Clyties of the Mists (1912) (detail)
 I really don't know the story behind this, but it looks unhappy and intriguing! (It's been suggested that these are mist-spirits who love the sun but are destroyed by him. Clyties the nymph was killed by her unrequited love for Apollo.)

Thrones of Desire: out now!

Yay! Thrones of Desire: erotic tales of swords, mist and fire , is now available in paperback and Kindle format (in the US at least)! If I had to pick the anthology I've been in that I like the look of best, this would be it - I just bloody love that cover!

I haven't actually received my author copy yet, but the contributor lineup is here. Edited by Mitzi Szereto, and with a foreword by Piers Anthony which I truly hope does not consist entirely of puns, this is swords-and-sorcery erotic romance. Not quite so much of the hardcore smut, though if you know Mitzi's other work you'll know she doesn't shy away from the dark side.

My contribution is Of High Renown , which is an angsty romance about an injured knight and a healer. There's love, betrayal, abuse, emotional conflict and the world's worst communication gap in this short story ... I'm exhausted just thinking about it! It was inspired by ... No, I can't tell you. It's just too embarrassing!

Here's an excerpt:

  She remembered how she had misused him.

It was an unending struggle to keep him alive. The venom in his blood seemed to have destroyed his body’s sense of equilibrium, and threw him between burning fever and frigid tremors every few hours. Emlhi cleaned and bandaged the deep puncture wounds in his shoulder, but after that she simply tried to keep his temperature on an even keel—stopping the fever boiling his brains at one moment, piling blankets over him to maintain some vestiges of warmth the next. She fed and watered him, cut fresh bracken every morning for his mattress and, when she was not watching over him, tried to keep up the work of her smallholding. She snatched her own sleep during his chills, dozing in her father’s old room.

Between fire and ice, the knight would have passages where he seemed to be lucid but completely exhausted. Then as the fever flared up afresh he’d begin to talk, and sometimes try to rise from his bed. He stared at the ceiling and spoke to people who weren’t there. He raved about battles and campaigns and the horrors he’d witnessed, until Emlhi wanted to stop her ears for sorrow. Sometimes his hallucinations grew worse and in terror or fury he would lash out at her. If he hadn’t been so weakened by his illness, he might have been really dangerous.

It went on for days, and there were times she couldn’t understand why he did not die. She might have called in an older female relative to share the labor of care, but she guarded her sole right to Gareth possessively. Exhausted, she took strength from his stubbornness.

And she took more than strength.

The first time, it wasn’t her doing. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, tending him as he burned. She’d been wiping his face and chest with a damp cloth, dipping it in fresh water every few minutes and waving it about to cool it. He was twisting in discomfort, tossing in a delirious dream, his hands scrabbling convulsively across his belly. When she touched his cheek with the cloth he would turn his face toward it, like a baby seeking the teat. She ran it down the midline of his torso and he grabbed her hand, knotting his fingers around hers. Gently she freed the cloth with her other hand and continued to bathe him. He kept his grip on her. His head was thrown back, his larynx working. Then he pushed her hand into his crotch.

Until now she’d kept his hose on, unwilling to steal the last shreds of his dignity. It was a mistake, she realized; the fabric was sodden with sweat - and beneath it his cock was engorged, as hot and solid as the rest of him. He wrapped her hand around the thick length and squeezed hard, and, as Emlhi felt a blush flood her face, a great sigh of relief escaped his taut throat. Then he began to rub her hand up and down. She squirmed with shame but she didn’t pull away. His cock grew harder beneath her imprisoned grasp, lengthening as it filled. She was clumsy, passive, too inexperienced to know what to do. He masturbated with her hand until he spasmed—and then he relaxed, falling almost instantly into a dreamless sleep.

Emlhi, trembling, pulled her cramped fingers away and plunged them into the bowl of water.

That was the first time; it wasn’t the last.


Buy at Amazon US : on Kindle US : Pre-order at Amazon UK


And if you like Fantasy erotica, why not drop in at the ERWA chatgroup this Saturday at 3pm EST? (8pm in the UK, I think ... I'd so better get this right!)  I'm guest-hosting and willing to chat about pretty much any aspect of writing swords-and-sex. Hopefully there'll be some lively debate!

Details and link here

Eyecandy Monday

Heh. Happy thoughts.
I love Eyecandy Mondays!

Incest and intrigue, and six-page descriptions of every last meal

Ah feck, I swore I wouldn't do it. I swore I wouldn't read A Song of Ice and Fire - not least because of articles like this. But it turns out that watching HBO's Game of Thrones is just a gateway drug to the hard stuff. Especially when your goddamn husband turns up with the paperback and plunks it in your hands.

It's a soap opera really - stuff constantly happens, but nothing fundamentally changes. There's no actual plot-arc visible. But you can't look away.

A man is both hot and incredibly creepyI am trying to watch the TV version first, and thus take it slowly. It also helps, actually, because it brings the eight hundred bickering characters on each page to more vivid life. So I'm reading the 2nd book now and hoping to placate my TOTAL OBSESSION with DVD extras and stuff until Series 3 airs next year.

I've started taking sneaky looks ahead online too. (This is a baaaaaaaad idea.) The differences between the books and the TV versions fascinate me - the choices made to make some characters older, to bring in the big guns instead of using sidekicks, the decision to write extra scenes fleshing out some characters, which actually makes it clear that some NEVER have the story told from their point of view...

Of course, all this should not blind me to the deeper moral issues involved:

"THE HOTTEST book you will read this year"

"Jurgen" illustration by Frank C Pape, 1921
Just catching up on a couple of reviews of
Maybe it's because it doesn't LOOK like it's supposed to be romantic. No one approaches it under any illusions...



Anyway ... over at Oysters and Chocolate, Michelle Augello-Page describes Named and Shamed as "an extraordinary and unique story." She says: "Tansy is a brilliant character, reminiscent of both the tarot’s fool and the archetypal hero ... Because Tansy is so accepting, so receptive, so clearly enjoying her sexual adventures, she provides an interesting comfort zone for readers as they negotiate this wild and refreshing and uninhibited sexual terrain where anything, and I mean anything, is possible."


And Cara Sutra (Dominatrix and winner of Xcite's award for Best Sex Blog UK 2012) says " Janine Ashbless uses all the powers of her astonishing imagination to bring you the most debauched tale of sorcery and depravity you’re ever likely to read ... Named and Shamed takes other erotic literature and beats its backside black and blue with bramble branches." She gives it 10 out of 10!

Thank you Michelle and Cara!

69 - out now!

This is the delicious cover of brand new anthology 69 , edited by Alison Tyler, out now from Harlequin Spice and available on Amazon kindle too. It has taken forever to get to publication, but the finished book is crammed to the brim with SHORT short stories - 69 of them, I believe! - each a concentrated burst of the hottest, most frantic, straight-in-there raunch. I've got three stories included.


Attic Moment is about a furtive, desperate affair:
“Marty,” I gasp as I come up for air, groping for his cock, finding it straining at his chinos already. He puts his hand to my white tee-shirt and captures my nipple with a pinch that nearly makes me collapse at the knees. He knows my nipples are exquisitely sensitive. He knows I like it a bit rough.
   
“Christ I need to fuck you,” he mumbles. “I’m so fucking horny for you right now.”
   
 “Shh!”
   
“She won’t hear: we’re over the spare bedroom. Suck my cock ... I’ve been needing this all week.”


Love, Honor and Obey is about a wildly filthy BDSM wedding ceremony:
They reached the top of the aisle. ‘Kneel,’ said Georgia, who had spent the last week training Flis, and the bride obeyed, facing the groom. She heard the priest begin his address, welcoming the congregation, but all her attention was on Nathan. She’d missed him so much in the week they’d been parted, and her heart was racing now. He was wearing heavy black boots with steel buckles and in his hand was a riding crop. She watched him tap the whip against his open palm.
   
“Who gives this woman to be wedded to this man?” asked the priest.
   
“I do,” said Georgia, stroking Flis’ hair. “She’s ready now.” Gravely, she passed the chain into Nathan’s free hand


And Hare Coursing is about a threesome seduction:
“Um,” she gasped, pulling back after a long moment. “We shouldn’t.”

“You’re right. You might drop your glass. Here – let me take that.” Erik slipped it from her unresisting fingers and planted it in the earth behind her. His body leaned in against hers as he moved, and she felt the hard jut of his erection. She knew she should be protesting. But Brandon still had her right nipple, flicking it, and she couldn’t think past that thrill of sensation.

“Please,” she said incoherently, turning to that man – and then it was his turn to kiss her.

The full lineup of authors is right here.Iit includes delectable double and triple helpings of some of my favourite writers - Charlotte Stein, Kristina Lloyd, Jeremy Edwards, Shanna Germain and Nikki Magennis among others - all in bite-sized packages. It's the meze of masturbation!

Buy at Spice : Amazon US : Amazon UK

Eyecandy Monday: kiss special

I am chuffed to bits to find that my erotic romance novel The King's Viper , published in e-format back in 2011, is now available in real live paperback too, from Ellora's Cave!
So in honour of this occasion, today's Eyecandy Monday will go all romancey and feature some serious KISSING.

You know me and kissing - we've had our differences in the past. For years we'd have nothing to do with each other. Well, we've made it up and are the best of chums now :-)

And if you want to read the pivotol kiss scene from the The King's Viper , it can be found right here.

S.W.A.L.K.

e-book : paperback
Amazon UK paperback : Amazon US paperback

TftD: the sincerest romantic gesture

Oh yeah! - One of life's little joys :-)