Janine Ashbless's Blog, page 129
July 6, 2012
Brian Froud
I've got an interview up at Satin's Bookish Corner today ("What's the biggest secret you have ever kept?") - The text colours are truly eye-watering even if my answers aren't.
And now I want to rave about Brian Froud! Most of the fairy artwork I admire comes from the Golden Age of Illustration - that's getting on for a hundred years ago now. But Brian Froud (who was heavily influenced by Rackham et al) is still alive and kicking, and so are his goblins. He's the mastermind behind the visuals of The Dark Crystal movie:
And Labyrinth , which is still one of my favourite films ever:
His goblins can be charming, but there's a streak of anarchic black humour even to his cutsiness - he produced Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book , which was entirely full of, well . . . squished fairy corpses.
His grotesques are weirdly convincing, as if drawn from life ...
And when he wants to do beautiful and sensual, oh boy can he do that!
And yet it still has an otherwordly and menacing undercurrent ...
From his books Faeries :
"And here we must make one thing very clear. The real faerie experience is very diffrent from the general view of faerie built up by clouds of sentimental fiction with legions of inevitable happily-ever-after endings ...Faerie is a world of dark enchantments, of captivating beauty, of enormous ugliness, of callous superficiality, of humour, mischief, joy and inspiration, of terror, laughter, love and tragedy. It is far richer than fiction would generally lead one to believe and, beyond that, it is a world to enter with extreme caution, for of all things that faeries resent the most it is curious humans blundering about their private domains like so many ill-mannered tourists. So go softly-where the rewards are enchanting, the dangers are real."
So I'll shut up and leave you with some pics that I find inspirational. And when I describe beautiful fairies in Named and Shamed , this is the sort of thing I'm thinking of.
July 4, 2012
Blog tour detour
I'm totally smug about finding this pic for today, because not only does it allude to fairy tales for my Named and Shamed tour, it also is pertinent (in a metaphorical way) to my petplay short story Being His Bitch , which appears in Bound by Lust (ed. Shanna Germain).
Let's link to that one first - I've been over at Teresa Noelle Robert's place talking about the inspiration for the setting of Being His Bitch - which was the first time I went to a fetish club. Find out what it was like for a newbie! With a pic of me in costume!
As for Named and Shamed ... I'm starting to get some reviews, and they're good 'uns!
"I give this book 4 out of 5 clouds and a chili pepper rating of 10. I’m tempted to add a kink rating just for this book and would put this at 6 out of 5. (and no that wasn’t a typo)."
And Jade: the International Erotic Art and Literature Magazine have given Named and Shamed a 5-star review:
Thank you, Mindy and Jade!
July 2, 2012
Eyecandy Monday
Ouchies! But beautiful! This has been a fantasy image in my head for some time. It makes me think of the cursed stays that the witch in Snow White used in an attempt to slay the heroine.
Meanwhile, it's the 4th day of my Named and Shamed blog tour, and I'm over at Kissing Velvet talking about naming characters - the power and the pitfalls.
"The E in E L Blakey: antiques bought and sold stood for Edmund, of all things. I didn't think anyone was called Edmund these days, but it suited him."
June 30, 2012
Named & Shamed blog tour - day 3
Today I've being interviewed over at BDSM Book Reviews - some searching questions and some heavy answers. Find out what genuinely squiks me out - and it's not something I've ever confessed before to anyone.
And I've got to tell you about this wonderfully intemperate review for
"Well Holy Fuck.....!"
and just gets better:
"my God, is it pure filth….. and I LOVED IT!"
"To begin, this adventure is sexy, the sex – slutty, orgasmic. By a third of the way through this book becomes like no other. The Good Folk more deviant, more treacherous. The shenanigans more improbably, yet through her brilliant writing Janine conveys a believability and casts her thrall over the reader, enveloping them, drawing them in to her perverse world where anything is possible, and enjoyable."
:-)))) Thank you Lily!
Full review
June 29, 2012
Janine goes to the House of Lords
It started with an invitation:
A summer drinks reception at the House of Lords - and I was invited.
*jaw drops*
No, it wasn't because the Peers of the Realm are huge fans of kinky sex ... perish the thought! I'm sure they're all as pure as the driven snow...
I actually got this because I'd been in a focus group for the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (which is an AWESOME organisation, and if you publish in the UK/Europe at all you really should join because it exists to GIVE YOU ROYALTIES). It's their 35th Birthday this year, and they were going to Parliament to lobby the government not to slacken the rules regarding copyright fees and suchlike.
I'm not a politcal lobbyist. I find it hard to speak to strangers. But the opportunity to see inside the House of Lords was too good to pass over - after all, I'm sure I could use the setting in a story one day!
So on a grey Wednesday I went to the Mother of Parliaments...
And I queued up at the Black Rod's Garden Gate (is it just me or does that sound a bit rude?) along with a whole crowd of other writers of every kind - fiction and non-fiction, academic, TV scripts, children's writers, technical - to go through security and inside the building.
We were shown into a long terrace-room right on the edge of the Thames. There was a string quartet. There was wine, champagne, strawberries and cream, little cakes and ranks of titchy triangular sandwiches. Writers love free food!
Sadly, photography is technically forbidden inside the House, but I did get someone to sneak me this shot on the terrace:
I met a lot of people! I had to 'fess up to what I did, of course - the first thing anyone asks is "What do you write then?" It was fun! Though it has to be said, it's the only public gathering ever where I've actually worried that my natural accent wasn't posh enough to blend in.
I talked with:
A colleague of David Nutt, the ex-chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (he was the one who caused a scandal when he had a flaming row with the Government, stating that their policies were politcally driven and not based on scientific evidence)The woman who had, for a small flat-fee, ghost-written the novels for a certain extremely famous celebrity, and then had to watch her barely-literate client get nominated for the Smarties Award for children's books. (She seemed sanguine. I'd have been gutted.)Two Members of Parliament: one Labour, one Liberal Democrat. The Lib Dem gentleman wants to write a philosophy book on the different varieties of Atheism. I told him he should do it.A woman who writes rugby manuals.A poet who studies Western Esotericism.A political advisor who told me the last thing she'd ever do was go into a political career, now she'd seen the reality.
I had to tell people I didn't write "50 Shades of Grey" a few times . . . They all seemed to think I was making pots of money in erotica.
I wish...
But it was just a total blast. Not me at all. I'm living someone else's life again!
And here I am with my souvenir tea-towel :-D
A summer drinks reception at the House of Lords - and I was invited.
*jaw drops*
No, it wasn't because the Peers of the Realm are huge fans of kinky sex ... perish the thought! I'm sure they're all as pure as the driven snow...
I actually got this because I'd been in a focus group for the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (which is an AWESOME organisation, and if you publish in the UK/Europe at all you really should join because it exists to GIVE YOU ROYALTIES). It's their 35th Birthday this year, and they were going to Parliament to lobby the government not to slacken the rules regarding copyright fees and suchlike.
I'm not a politcal lobbyist. I find it hard to speak to strangers. But the opportunity to see inside the House of Lords was too good to pass over - after all, I'm sure I could use the setting in a story one day!
So on a grey Wednesday I went to the Mother of Parliaments...
And I queued up at the Black Rod's Garden Gate (is it just me or does that sound a bit rude?) along with a whole crowd of other writers of every kind - fiction and non-fiction, academic, TV scripts, children's writers, technical - to go through security and inside the building.
We were shown into a long terrace-room right on the edge of the Thames. There was a string quartet. There was wine, champagne, strawberries and cream, little cakes and ranks of titchy triangular sandwiches. Writers love free food!
Sadly, photography is technically forbidden inside the House, but I did get someone to sneak me this shot on the terrace:
I met a lot of people! I had to 'fess up to what I did, of course - the first thing anyone asks is "What do you write then?" It was fun! Though it has to be said, it's the only public gathering ever where I've actually worried that my natural accent wasn't posh enough to blend in.
I talked with:
A colleague of David Nutt, the ex-chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (he was the one who caused a scandal when he had a flaming row with the Government, stating that their policies were politcally driven and not based on scientific evidence)The woman who had, for a small flat-fee, ghost-written the novels for a certain extremely famous celebrity, and then had to watch her barely-literate client get nominated for the Smarties Award for children's books. (She seemed sanguine. I'd have been gutted.)Two Members of Parliament: one Labour, one Liberal Democrat. The Lib Dem gentleman wants to write a philosophy book on the different varieties of Atheism. I told him he should do it.A woman who writes rugby manuals.A poet who studies Western Esotericism.A political advisor who told me the last thing she'd ever do was go into a political career, now she'd seen the reality.
I had to tell people I didn't write "50 Shades of Grey" a few times . . . They all seemed to think I was making pots of money in erotica.
I wish...
But it was just a total blast. Not me at all. I'm living someone else's life again!
And here I am with my souvenir tea-towel :-D
June 27, 2012
Named and Shamed blog tour - day 2
Today I'm a guest over at
June 25, 2012
Eyecandy Monday
Expect a lot of fairytale pics for the next few weeks - The official blog-tour for Named and Shamed begins today, with an interview over at Adriana Kraft's.
She actually floored me with the question "What's your own sexiest feature?" Um . . . How should I know?
So I asked those who would . . .
June 24, 2012
Bad influence
I read this issue, I swear.
June 22, 2012
King Charles
I went to see Mumford and Sons play at Gateshead the other week (they were GREAT - and note-perfect even live!), but my real surprise was how much I enjoyed one of the support acts - this chap*: King Charles .
Ignore the silly hair (okay, so that's not possible) - he does catchy contemporary folk-pop with some clever lyrics that don't always scan.
He had me at "Beware romantic gestures: they're investments in your vanity."
I have a severe case of Writer's Envy now.
I bought his CD.
But this one's just silly:
*He most definitely is a Chap - he makes James Blunt look working class. (And he, ahem, went to my old university.)
June 20, 2012
"A book that I had to force myself to read" - reviews
A couple of reviews for my books:
First, an absolutely stonking review for "I seriously couldn't put this book down. It is a dark erotic depraved fairytale like nothing you have ever read or can conceive . . . I really am raving about this book."
Read the whole review
Thank you Midnight Boudoir! (And, by the way, she enjoyed Named and Shamed so much she rushed out to buy Red Grow the Roses too!)
Secondly, a highly entertaining (for me) review of Heart of Flame over at Long and Short Erotic Reviews. Iris was clearly cursing her luck when she started my Arabian Nights novel - she couldn't stand it! But she kept reading and ...
"What started out as a book that I had to force myself to read became the story I couldn’t put down!"
Read the whole review here.
Thanks you (especially for perservering) Iris!
:-D
