Janine Ashbless's Blog, page 4

Blue Monday: The Basque of the Red Death

Every Monday I'll be posting an excerpt from one of the stories in Lust in the Dust.

The Basque of the Red Death is my own story contribution to the anthology. Okay, I'll just apologise for the terrible pun in the title now, and promise you a dark Poe-etic story of class-based biological warfare...


"Take me with you, my lord!" I begged, when it became obvious that the whole palace was in a frenzy of packing. He stood in his room surveying the spilled contents of his wardrobe. "Don't leave me here to the Red Death!"

Prince Prospero looked surprised at my plea. We'd hardly ever exchanged more than a few words. I was nothing but the gardener's boy after all; my most significant tasks were looking after the pigeons in their cote and carrying daily baskets of firewood up the many stairs to the hearths in the royal chambers. "Why should I take you, lad?" he asked; not harsh, but genuinely perplexed.

On the other hand, I've a strong young body and a pleasing face, and servants gossip. They know things they shouldn't. I took my chance and dropped to my knees before him, laying a hand upon his breeches.

Prospero shivered like a fly-struck horse and made a little noise in his throat.

"Please," I whispered, my mouth so close to his crotch that he must have felt the wet heat of my breath through the wool. "Let me do this." My fingers plucked at the ties of his garment, and he did not try to stop me. Of course such things are forbidden by Holy Writ and the law of the land alike, but what did I have to lose?

The royal cock popped out, half-hard already, into the eager embrace of my hand and lips. My prince was not at all badly wrought, I noted, as I fell to feasting on the swell of his helm. His privy hair was trimmed and perfumed and the girth of his shaft full enough, within a few moments, to be pleasing to my mouth. I'd always choose a thick cock over a long one, but it turned out that Prince Prospero was well-enough endowed in both categories to leave little room for criticism. Or indeed, breath. And I doubt that he had cause for complaint either—could he have ever had a server more motivated to please?

In other circumstances I might have enjoyed the rush of blood to my own pizzle and given it a sly fondle whilst I slurped, but the stakes were too high this time. Besides, we were in a fearful hurry—any other servant might walk in on us. So I applied myself with single-minded eagerness to his pleasure, sucking him deep into my throat. Prospero sank his fingers in my unruly brown locks and pulled my head close, grunting a little under his breath, and I had to grasp his thighs to steady his stance as he rose up on the balls of his feet; I could feel the hard slabs of muscle working beneath my palms as he thrust. That felt good, and his royal sceptre plundering my mouth felt better.

Yes, my prince. Give me your hard strong cock. Fill my throat. Fuck this poor gardener's boy like he wants, like he needs. Show him how a prince uses his weapon. Now, now, now.

When he erupted forth I made sure to take some down the wrong way and choke a little, in compliment to his munificence. My streaming eyes lifted to his as he withdrew.

He cleared his throat, tucking the royal jewels out of sight. "What's your name, boy?"

"Jakob, my lord." I wiped his aristocratic seed from the corner of my lips with the back of my hand.

"Well, you're a fine lad. Go pack your things; we leave after Vespers."

Buy Lust in the Dust:

Amazon smartlinkiBooksGoogle Play KoboBarnes and Noble  It's the end of the world as we know it.

Peace and plenty are ideals barely remembered. Everything we used to rely upon has crumbled away, and pleasure is something few can afford. Every joy has to be fought for. When all the trappings of a civilised life are taken away, all we can hope to truly call our own are our bodies and our hearts. In the ashes, we make alliances where we can, and find solace and humanity in unexpected places. And maybe even a little hope for the future…

Lust in the Dust brings together ten erotic short stories set in times where civilisation and the rule of law have crashed and burned. The aftermath of a terrible war, a zombie invasion, a cityscape over-run by nature, a medieval fortress. Wherever there is life, there is lust.

Edited by Janine Ashbless - with stories by S. Nano, Elizabeth Coldwell, Raven Sky, Sommer Marsden, Cara Thereon, Jones, Gregory L. Norris, Nicole Wolfe, Janine Ashbless, Quiet Ranger.

Sins of the past

I'm not doing much writing these days but it's lovely when past naughtiness catches me up! My contributor copy of Dirty 30 Vol.3 (which contains my short Western story Sourdough) has arrived and I

Blue Monday: Better Than Therapy

Every Monday I'll be posting an excerpt from one of the stories in Lust in the Dust.

Better Than Therapy by Nicole Wolfe is an OMG bitter-dark zombie comedy with a clever twist. What can I say? It made me laugh, so maybe I'm just evil...


 
My zombie ex-boss burst into the kitchen, so I shot him through the head. I’m fairly certain he was a zombie, at least. Andrea chose that time to collapse. I rolled her onto her back and saw her lips were blue and a weird, gray fog had filled her eyes. I picked her up by the shoulders and she latched onto my arms. She made a weird slack-jawed sound that was half-hungry and half-pleading. She was too weak to overpower me, so I locked her in the kitchen’s walk-in freezer.

I found the hotel’s maintenance men barricaded in the boiler room. Most of the housekeeping staff had fled back to their families, half the restaurant staff had stayed, and nearly all the guests had run out and been eaten. The smart ones stayed in their rooms. I convinced the maintenance crew, Dick the bartender, and a guest who happened to be an Air Force sergeant to help me clear the hotel of zombies. It took us the rest of the night, but we did it and shared top-shelf drinks afterwards.

I took the top floor suite with the sauna as mine. I brought Andrea there after everyone else had collapsed from exhaustion or drunkenness. I wanted one last night with her. We hadn’t spent much time together in the last few months and I wanted to tell her everything I’d been afraid to tell her before. I doubted her brain could process my words by now, but I knew I had to get it out of me. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to move on, or put a bullet in her head, if I didn’t.

I tied her hands behind her back with a belt from a complimentary bathrobe so she couldn’t grab me. She didn’t resist, and it was easy because she was even more lethargic from being in the freezer for hours. The trickiest part was stuffing a washcloth in her mouth so she couldn’t bite me. After that, she leaned stiff as a board against the desk and moaned with her mouth full of terrycloth.

She looked pretty all tied up and gagged. I’d fantasized about tying her up many times, but I knew she’d laugh at the idea. Now she was all mine to have however I wanted. Her lover was a headless corpse. It was just us. I had planned to shoot her after I told her all the stuff that had been on my mind for months, but I couldn’t do that now. She was all I had, and all I wanted.

I caressed her face and she tried to reach my fingers with her mouth. I jerked my hand away, even though the gag kept her from biting me. I couldn’t risk infection. I wanted to celebrate our reunion in bed, but there was no way to do it without exposing myself. I had no condoms or latex gloves. It was our first romantic night together in a long time, and we couldn’t do anything...



Buy Lust in the Dust:


Amazon smartlinkiBooksGoogle Play KoboBarnes and Noble  It's the end of the world as we know it.

Peace and plenty are ideals barely remembered. Everything we used to rely upon has crumbled away, and pleasure is something few can afford. Every joy has to be fought for. When all the trappings of a civilised life are taken away, all we can hope to truly call our own are our bodies and our hearts. In the ashes, we make alliances where we can, and find solace and humanity in unexpected places. And maybe even a little hope for the future…

Lust in the Dust brings together ten erotic short stories set in times where civilisation and the rule of law have crashed and burned. The aftermath of a terrible war, a zombie invasion, a cityscape over-run by nature, a medieval fortress. Wherever there is life, there is lust.

Edited by Janine Ashbless - with stories by S. Nano, Elizabeth Coldwell, Raven Sky, Sommer Marsden, Cara Thereon, Jones, Gregory L. Norris, Nicole Wolfe, Janine Ashbless, Quiet Ranger.

Old England

His clothes are dirty shade of blue 
And his ancient shoes worn through 
He steals from me and he lies to you 
Old England is dying

Today our unelected Prime Minister got the Queen to suspend Parliament, in order to push through Brexit.

RIP British Democracy. The end of our civilisation is just that one step closer.

Dig that

I've been VERY busy in the garden this summer, in fact it's been my Big Project. You have NO IDEA how much time, effort and money it has taken to transform this:


Into this:

Woohoo!

Basically that raised area is an old carp pond that a previous householder filled with rubble and topped off with gravel. I shovelled and barrowed out most of the gravel and made an area onto which I'm going to put raised fruit beds:




Then we got the guys with the diggers in for 3 days...


Look - buried treasure!

Dug out everything for half a meter...



Filled it back up with decent soil...


And now I'm planting it up:


The centrepiece is a Wild Service Tree which I planted this morning:


Sorbus Torminalis, or the Chequers tree, is a fairly rare UK native. It produces fruit that you eat only after it starts to rot - and which tastes like dates. I am looking forward to fruit like this in, say, 20 years...



In the meantime I'm digging up the surrounding flagstones piecemeal:


... so that I can plant birch trees. I will have a Druidic Grove in which to sacrifice to Shub-Niggurath, so watch out South Yorkshire ;-)

Shout-out to Adam!

Blue Monday: Mourning Doves in Limbo

Every Monday I'll be posting an excerpt from one of the stories in Lust in the Dust.

Mourning Doves in Limbo by Gregory L. Norris is the second zombie story in the anthology and this one puts the Undead squarely onstage, in a M/M story of love, grief and horrifying choices:



They fucked, and so much more.

“Stop it,” Tom said playfully.

“No,” Gray fired back. “You have sexy feet.”

“Feet? Seriously?”

He didn’t understand, but he allowed Gray’s personal lusts to be explored and play out. Between sucking each of Tom’s toes as though they were smaller versions of his cock, Gray pointed out their many good qualities — how his second toes were longer than his big, like the feet on classic statues; how handsome they were, perfectly in proportion to the rest of his athletic physique. Huge feet, hairy legs, Tom’s above-average cock with its helmeted head and the balls to match — there was so much to appreciate in the man’s body, below the waist.

Tom drew Gray back up from his feet and tackled him onto the bed. “How about you come up for air and focus on the rest of me?”

“If you insist.”

They kissed again. Tom’s cock reanimated to life under Gray’s strokes. Tom reached down and temporarily stilled the building momentum.

“There’s this place I know for sale, out near Echo Ledge,” Tom said. “I drive past it on patrol all the time. Been on the market for a while. I bet we could get it for a steal if you wanted to.”

“We?” Gray asked. He nestled into the warmth of Tom’s arm. “I like the sound of that. Does that mean you’re my boyfriend now?”

Tom whistled a warm sigh. “I was your boyfriend from the moment I set my sight on you, only you didn’t know it.”

He delivered a mildly painful smack to Gray’s bare ass. Gray squealed. Tom flashed one of those crooked yet smoldering smiles Gray recognized for their mischief, an instant before the policeman rolled him over, onto his stomach. Tom then pecked little kisses down his spine, licking his way to Gray’s ass. There, he feasted.

“Eat me,” Gray moaned into the pillow. “Oh, Tom… eat me!”

Buy Lust in the Dust:


Amazon smartlinkiBooksGoogle Play KoboBarnes and Noble  It's the end of the world as we know it.

Peace and plenty are ideals barely remembered. Everything we used to rely upon has crumbled away, and pleasure is something few can afford. Every joy has to be fought for. When all the trappings of a civilised life are taken away, all we can hope to truly call our own are our bodies and our hearts. In the ashes, we make alliances where we can, and find solace and humanity in unexpected places. And maybe even a little hope for the future…

Lust in the Dust brings together ten erotic short stories set in times where civilisation and the rule of law have crashed and burned. The aftermath of a terrible war, a zombie invasion, a cityscape over-run by nature, a medieval fortress. Wherever there is life, there is lust.

Edited by Janine Ashbless - with stories by S. Nano, Elizabeth Coldwell, Raven Sky, Sommer Marsden, Cara Thereon, Jones, Gregory L. Norris, Nicole Wolfe, Janine Ashbless, Quiet Ranger.

Naff

I know it's the trashiest thing a book-lover could possbibly own ... but I don't care. I think it's funny

Vasily Vereshchagin

[Click on pics for full size]

Caravan of Yaks loaded with Salt
Last week I turned in edits for a short fantasy story that was set in "Russian Turkestan" - imperial Central Asia in the 19th century. It was inspired by my Silk Road travels of course, but in the course of my research I came across Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904) and thought I'd share some of his pictures here because he's quite brilliant, was extremely controversial in his lifetime, and deserves to be better known.
 
He painted some places I've been myself! (Only with more severed heads)

Triumph, Registan Square, Samarkand

He's known primarily as a war artist, and he traveled extensively with Russian troops during the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Japanese wars, being both wounded and decorated for his courage (and in fact he eventually died when his ship hit a mine).

At the Fortress Wall
But his emphasis was very much on the horrors of war and he was banned and derided all across Europe for his uncompromising portrayals of just how shitty the military life was...

All Is Quiet - tryptych Night Halt of the Great Army
... sometimes literally:

Russian Camp in Turkestan
He painted aftermaths of battles, POW corpses, wounded soldiers being abandoned to the crows, and soldiers dying in hospital.


After the Attack Defeated: Memorial Service
This is his most notorious painting, The Apotheosis of War , which he dedicated "to all conquerors, past, present and to come":


War-paintings aside though,Vereshchagin was an extraordinary recorder of his travels across Asia. He visited India, the Himalayas, Tibet, Siberia,  China, Japan, Cuba, the Phillippines, Palestine and Syria.  He loved painting the landscapes:

Glacier on the road from Kashmir to Ladakh




Mount Kazbek
the people:

Residents of Western Tibet
Chorus of Dervishes, Tashkent
Parsee Priest, Bombay
the ruins;
The Gur-Emir Mausoleum, Samarkand Ruins in Chuguchak
the temples

Entrance to the Temple of Niko
and OMG the costumes:

Buddiskogo Lama Warrior of Jaipur
A Rich Kyrgyz Hunter with a Falcon
 If you want to look through (many) more of his paintings there's a good gallery HERE

Blue Monday: Hollywood

Every Monday I'll be posting an excerpt from one of the stories in Lust in the Dust.

The most "lit-erotica" tale in the anthology, Hollywood by writer and photographer Jones, is a dreamlike portrait of a F/F relationship painted in a near-hallucinogenic palette of reds and blacks: flames and ash. 


“You're safe now,” Ruby said, moving over her. And everything was happening; everything seemed happening and possible all at once. Everything was vanishing around them, flowers and trees, birds burnt up in a lick of flame, massive swaths of land and sky were poisoned, everything rusted, so hot and broken, red light all the time, at morning and the hard sharp edges of evening, the sound of World War 3 always at the door, dust. Like stars, everything they could call theirs burst out of existence and still their hearts hummed and hammered like tiny engines and Ruby kissed her. Slid her arms around her waist and pressed her lips to Miami’s. Miami kissed her back long and full of hesitation, half taken breaths. They smiled at the end, into each other's mouths.

“No matter how massive this is, it is inevitable, necessary, that we try to understand it through our bodies,” Miami said, and Ruby laughed, still kissing her, kissing her again. Miami shivered as Ruby's fingers touched the nape of her neck. All the space between them collapsed in want, a hard weight deep in the center of them. Searching fingers gently ran the length of Ruby’s throat and shoulders, the dip of her spine. Miami’s hands stopped just above Ruby’s hips, then floated back up under the hem of her t-shirt. Ruby leaned in closer, feeling Miami’s length against her, breathing her in she gasped softly, Miami’s hands gathering around her breasts, her skin coming alive from the touch, palms and grazing over her nipples so long tendrils of pleasure slid through her. Exerting a little more pressure, Miami ran her hands over Ruby’s stomach, hard fingers, nails, and another moan escaped them, deepening their kiss. Soon Miami’s hand was cupping Ruby’s sex, and Ruby knew that she could feel the heat and want of her through her jeans.

The heavy sheet rustled, the fold and laughter of linen as Ruby pulled off their clothes, mouths and hands and hips always touching, growing frantic. Almost at once Ruby’s skin was slick with fresh sweat, a deep hard heat burning under her skin. She wanted touch. Miami’s hand tangled in her hair and held her still, kissing her more deeply. Miami let her go only to slide her hands up her back. Ruby pulled cotton over the landscape of Miami’s honey and burnt sugar skin. They locked eyes and Miami smiled at her, mouth red and wet, a fruit begging to be eaten. They touched again, kissing with growing heat, letting clothes fall around them, sheets dripping off the bed as they tied themselves together. They smelled like chlorine and smoke and the cool, sharp no-scent of the house. Miami’s skin was kissed by sun’s gradient, darkest at the tops of her shoulders, lightest on the heavy swell of the underside of her breasts. Ruby touched every part of her, legs and knees, the hill and valley of her hips, the small of her back.

“Is this right? To give up trying to survive, just to stay in this place and fuck you every day?”

Ruby felt herself go weak with want when she heard desperation in that voice, answering her with a kiss. There was so much she wanted to say, but the fire took her words, burned them up. But they didn’t need them. They spoke through kiss and touch, fingers pulling hard across the curl of a hip and thigh.

“Please…” The word escaped Ruby, only a little, only a moment “Don’t stop.”

So Miami didn’t.


Buy Lust in the Dust:

Amazon smartlinkiBooksGoogle Play KoboBarnes and Noble  It's the end of the world as we know it.

Peace and plenty are ideals barely remembered. Everything we used to rely upon has crumbled away, and pleasure is something few can afford. Every joy has to be fought for. When all the trappings of a civilised life are taken away, all we can hope to truly call our own are our bodies and our hearts. In the ashes, we make alliances where we can, and find solace and humanity in unexpected places. And maybe even a little hope for the future…

Lust in the Dust brings together ten erotic short stories set in times where civilisation and the rule of law have crashed and burned. The aftermath of a terrible war, a zombie invasion, a cityscape over-run by nature, a medieval fortress. Wherever there is life, there is lust.

Edited by Janine Ashbless - with stories by S. Nano, Elizabeth Coldwell, Raven Sky, Sommer Marsden, Cara Thereon, Jones, Gregory L. Norris, Nicole Wolfe, Janine Ashbless, Quiet Ranger.

Pre-apocalyptic song - because I'm seeing Frank Turner pl...

Pre-apocalyptic song - because I'm seeing Frank Turner play this weekend