Janine Ashbless's Blog, page 51

Publication and new title news: In Bonds of the Earth

Wladyslaw Theodore Benda (1873-1948): Woman and Angel
WONDERFUL news - I've now signed the contract for the second novel in my Book of the Watchers series!

In Bonds of the Earth
(yes, new title! forget that old Valleys one!) will be published by Sinful Press in e-format and paperback. I am over the moon!



Sinful Press (how apt is that name, heh?) is a newcomer on the erotica scene, but is already the home of Sonni de Soto's Show Me, Sir, which I rate highly, and specialises in offbeat, well-written erotic fiction that is something more than just the genre norm.

Well, if you've read Cover Him with Darkness you'll know it is NOT just an erotic romp - it's a religious conspiracy thriller driven by a passionate and very unwise love affair. So I hope Sinful's going to be the perfect home for the rest of the series :-)

Oh -  you're wondering where the new title comes from, it's a quote from the Book of Enoch :

"And from henceforth you shall not ascend into heaven unto all eternity, and in bonds of the earth the decree has gone forth, to bind you for all the days of the world"

Orphan books

Some good news and some bad...

The good news is this LOVELY, fun review of Summer Seduction over at Samantha MacLeod's blog. She totally gets the C.S Lewis angle I started from!

Liz doesn’t exactly find a magical passage to Narnia waiting for her in Enniswitrin House… but what she does find might be even better.

The magical world Ashbless creates in Summer Seduction is fascinating and believable, in the way that dark, old fairy tales and myths are believable. And this is some seriously fabulous erotica; these are the most exciting and imaginative sex scenes I’ve read.

Thank you Samantha!

The bad news is that publisher Ellora's Cave is officially closing down. which means that Summer Seduction and its sequel Falling Deep are going to be removed from sale at the end of the year. As is my very first dark romance The King's Viper (available in paperback btw, so grab it before it goes up to insane out-of-print prices), and gangbang romp In Appreciation of Their Cox



I guess I'll look into self-publishing them, since all rights are going to be reverted. And I do intend to finish the Lovers' Wheel quartet! But it will take a while to get everything back up on Amazon...

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment!

I'm continuing with the scareotica from my vampire novel Red Grow the Roses in the run-up to Hallowe'en. This excerpt is from story #4: Seven for the Seven Stars in the Sky - in which Jaqueline watches her cage-fighter husband willingly take take a beating from vampire Estelle.


'You sure, hero?’

‘Yes,’ he said through set teeth.

She backhanded him on the other cheek: this one drew blood, because she was wearing heavy silver rings. ‘Really sure?’
   
The breath hitched in his throat, but his cock didn’t falter. ‘Yes.’
  
The Boss laughed, low and delicious. Then, stepping back, she untied the suede belt from about her hips, looped it round her hand and swished it through the air. Leon clenched his jaw. The lash whipped out and snapped at him, right across both nipples, with a crack like something breaking. His head jerked, but he didn’t utter a sound.

‘Good,’ said she, lifting the belt again.

She whipped him on the chest and the back and the thighs. She whipped his clenched ass cheeks. She whipped each of his outstretched arms as if trying to pull him down from an invisible cross. She shortened the strap and beat him on the face. She snapped the very tip of the leather across his penis. She was fast and accurate and incredibly strong: she beat him over and over and didn’t tire, didn’t get sloppy, didn’t miss. Not once. Leon began to groan with every strike and roll his eyes, but he didn’t protest or lower his arms or flinch. His erection sagged – but only to half-mast. Sweat rolled down his body in rivulets, but she didn’t even start to perspire. And Jacqueline’s world turned upside down and inside out as she watched, appalled. She didn’t recognise this Leon. Her husband was a man who took shit from no one: she didn’t understand why he was kneeling there and soaking up the pain and the humiliation like that. What sort of man was he?

Then she looked round the other faces at the wire and knew they were all that sort of man. They were watching in avid wide-eyed silence, quivering at every blow, every one of them wanting to be up on that stage. Imagining themselves in his place. There was a strange charisma to his suffering: a nobility even. And the women – did they see themselves in the role of the Boss, or were they picturing themselves being punished? She couldn’t tell. She just knew that they were pressed to the mesh, mesmerised by the spectacle of her husband’s pain. One woman had pulled down the top of her designer gown and thrust her small breasts into the diamond gaps between the wires and was plucking at her big dark nipples. Jacqueline’s own body felt like it didn’t belong to her, awash with sensation that made no sense, off-balance and trembling, her sex swollen like rising dough despite herself.

At last, when the scarlet welts on Leon’s torso had melded into one burning glow, the Boss halted. She took his jaw in her hand and lifted his face, then stooped to as if to kiss him – but she wasn’t kissing his lips and his cheeks and his forehead: she was licking him, mouth wide, sucking the salt of his pain and the ooze of the little cuts left by the fight and her own hand, mumbling greedily at every gash and bruise. The whole crowd groaned low at that.

‘Can you take more?’ she growled, forcing him to look at her. Her eyes were flashing now, her voice suddenly laced with an accent that sounded French. Jacqueline had always thought dominatrices were supposed to be ice-queens: not this one. She was far more fire than ice.

‘Yes,’ he rasped.

She picked him up. Jacqueline’s eyes widened, but she had ceased to balk at anything now; the line between possible and impossible had dissolved in Leon’s sweat. The Boss hefted him to his feet one-handed, gripping him under the jaw, and flung him down on his back on the bench where she’d sat before. Then she straddled his belly – her incredible legs taut now and bare to the thigh - and raked her nails down his chest, hard enough to bring blood welling up in breadcrumbs trails. She bent to lick her way up each red path from belly to heart, while the audience murmured. Then she opened her mouth wide and sank her teeth into his chest, framing his left nipple. Leon arched and jerked his legs: his cock rose from where it bounced on his thigh and stuck straight up, jabbing the woman in the rump. She lifted her head, eyes feral, and lips now much more red than black. Her own arousal was more subtle than his but equally shameless. Adjusting the fall of white satin at her groin, she pulled his cock to the hidden cleft of her sex and sat back hard, engulfing him.   

Jacqueline took a broken breath. She felt with all the envy of memory that cock filling her own hole.

‘Give me your hurt, hero,’ the Boss crooned, sinking her nails into his skin and making him spasm. ‘That’s right: give it up. Give it up to me.’ She started to rising and fall on his cock, slamming her hips down, and as she rode him – as she fucked him, because there was no doubt about who was active and who was recipient here - she dug the nails of one hand into his flesh and struck him with the other, aiming at his face. The heave of her hard round ass over his thighs was dazzling. Little barks of pain escaped Leon’s chest with every blow, a mindless animal noise, but he didn’t struggle. And she didn’t take long: her orgasm was on her swiftly, making her shudder and hiss and lose all rhythm and finally arch her back and nearly fall forward over him.

There’s no difference in their reactions, thought Jacqueline. If you’re watching, not feeling it, pain looks just like pleasure. You can’t tell them apart.

Buy 'Red Grow the Roses' at Amazon US
Buy 'Red Grow the Roses' at Amazon UKBuy 'Red Grow the Roses' at Google Play
Buy 'Red Grow the Roses' at iTunes

Herding angels

Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov, Angel with a Lamp, c. 1885-1896This is a roundup of what's been going on with The Book of the Watchers trilogy, for those of you who have not been following my Facebook mutterings like they are Holy Writ.

Book 2 (previously known as The Valleys of the Earth ) is finished (it came to 86.5K words), edited, and sitting on the desk of a publisher who has expressed keen interest. I'm not going to say anything more until such point as we have signed a contract, but fingers crossed!

At 2a.m. the night before I sent it off, I decided to change the titles of both Book 2 and Book 3. I'm waiting for feedback from the publisher on the first of those.

Book 3 is now definitely going to be called The Prison of the Angels instead of the possibly-misleading The Treasuries of the Stars. All titles are quotes from psychedelic best-seller The Book of Enoch.

I have started writing Book 3!  Yes, I was planning to take some time off and do something fun like my tax-return, but the angsty sex-scenes for Book 3 are making such a commotion inside my skull that the only way to save my sanity is to get them out on paper.

Today this was part of my research:



I'm sure you'll agree it has potential for a smoking-hot sex scene... lol

Terry the Tentacle's report from FantasyCon by the Sea

 Hello, my name is Terry the Tentacle!

Am I not gloriously squamous and rugose?
I like to hang out with Janine Ashbless for fun, good times and strangling people :-)


This weekend just past we went to Scarborough, to FantasyCon by the Sea 2016. Scarborough is just my sort of place: full of the decaying remnants of ancient civilisations, and the smell of fish.


I didn't like the locals though... This guy looked hungry.


FantasyCon was hosted in an eldritch pile built by hands perhaps not fully human:




Janine was there under her SUPER SECRET NAME because she was launching her new collection of horror stories. Here she is with other minor contributor Adrian Tchaikovsky, and me (obviously I'm the most important one):


I understand that the most important part of any book launch is the free wine. In fact if you can go to enough book launches in an afternoon, you can end up quite sloshed! Or so I'm told...

Here I am strangling Peter Coleborn, publisher at The Alchemy Press:


And here I am strangling Simon Bestwick, author of Hell's Ditch :



Ah, good times :-)

This is famous horror author Adam Nevill, talking about his years at Nexus / Black Lace when he was Janine's editor, the lucky lucky man.

85 books a year, 60-hour working weeks, no budget
I didn't get to strangle him :-(

This is Janine standing with a bunch of other writers, in fact between this year's ARTHUR C CLARKE AWARD WINNER and this year's COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE WINNER. She is feeling a teeny tiny bit inadequate. And short.

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Janine, Francis Hardinge, Charlotte Bond, Andrew Knighton
I did offer to strangle them ALL but she said No. I don't know why ... she's a bit weird like that.



I had a great weekend, but it's nice to get home and unwind :-)

Blue Monday: Jay Willowbay guests

Every Monday I post a wicked excerpt for your entertainment!

Today's guest, Jay Willowbay, brings us something new for this blogspot - an entire short story: Massaging the Mistress.



I walk in to find you naked, lying on your front. Needless to say, I’m naked too, as I have always been in your presence since you claimed me. I harden instantly, and enjoy an all too brief moment of drinking in your beautiful body, memorising every curve before you issue your command.

“I need to relax,” you say, “relax me, slave.”

Distracted by the exquisite vision before me, it takes me a little while to realise that you want, no, demand a massage. You don’t like to be kept waiting, and tut at me. It shakes me from my dreamlike reverie, and I fear that you will remember this mistake and punish me for it. Not the spanking or pegging ‘punishments’ that you know I crave, but the far worse censure of denial, or exclusion, or being ignored. But I push that thought out of my head: right now I have a chance to touch you, to feel you, and I hope, impress you enough not to banish me.

I place my hands on the small of your back, and gasp my appreciation at the divine softness of your skin. I start to knead my palms into your yielding flesh there, but my eyes are fixed just below, on the luscious curves and contours of your bare ass. I see movement there, twerking – for me! – and lose myself in that hypnotic rhythm before resuming the task in hand. Even I couldn’t miss that hint. 

So I cup that ripe, juicy peach, one smooth, soft cheek in each grateful hand, and resume that kneading motion. I push the cheeks together and pull them apart, all the while working in each finger, and probing with my thumbs. I see the bottle of baby oil you’ve laid out alongside you; it’s new and completely full, so I don’t need to be sparing with it.

I raise it high to tip it over above you, so the oil cascades down and splashes on your bare exposed backside, and from the way you writhe and moan under the stream, it’s clearly a pleasurable sensation. I rub it in, working it with my fingers, while the thumbs one by one, accidentally on purpose, just push a little teasing way into your asshole. You moan again, and this time gasp my name. Not my title, not ‘slave’, but my actual name. My cock, already achingly hard, bobs wildly in appreciation, and my helmet pulsates wishfully.

I reluctantly move my oily hands from your butt, but I have a plan in mind. I drizzle a long, thick line from your butt crack all the way up to the back of your neck, and then slowly follow it up with my hands, rubbing the oil around, into your skin, relaxing the muscles.

By the time I reach your shoulders I am leaning over you at such an angle that my chest has picked up a slick sheen of the oil, the wisps of hair flattened down to glide smoothly over your back. Down below, my cock is also glistening with oil, and perhaps a little pre-cum where it’s been rubbing teasingly over your butt cheeks. Oh god, I can’t take it anymore, I need you so fucking much!

I’m taking such a risk that I’m trembling with fear as much as desire, but I’m too lost in you to stop myself. I hold the throbbing head of my cock against your hole and push; gently, but enough to make my intentions perfectly clear. I expect a furious reaction, but instead you moan lightly and push back against me and I am in.

It feels like I am home, that I’ve finally found the place I truly belong. I start to push, so very gently, tentatively. “Don’t fucking tease me, slave,” you say, “And don’t start something you can’t finish.”
Responding to your words, I push again, working up a good rhythm; harder, faster, thrusting from my hips and muscular thighs and reaching deep inside you.

“Ohhhh, fuck, that’s good,” you purr, “But don’t you dare cum until I have!”

I try to reply that I promise I won’t, but all that comes out is a frantic, garbled gasp. I so desperately want to cum, and you know it so well. You must want an excuse to punish me, because you start to work and twerk at me, your ass gripping and releasing, teasing me in a way that takes me right to the edge in seconds. And then you tell me how much I love this, and how badly I ache and yearn to shoot my load. I already know this, but you telling me so brings it even closer.

This is the sweetest, most exquisite, most agonising torture I have ever known. But I push back harder and faster, racing to the line and trying so hard to take you with me. And I know I’ve found somewhere in you that really works, because your tormenting words have given way to a succession of short, fast panting, and I know you’re close.

But oh fuck, so am I. Every fibre of my being wants to propel my seed into you, to give myself to you even more completely than I already have. But I fight it, oh so hard, for now at least. Every muscle in my body is tensed, teeth grinding, eyes bulging. A shudder sets in and wracks through my whole body, and you feel it too. Only knowing how close you are gives me the determination not to give into the feeling just yet.

I push and push, on and on. I close my eyes and see swirls and colours in my mind, and your moans and gasps of pleasure are the sweetest music I have ever heard. “Ohh,” you murmur, “Oh fuck I’m gonna cum!”

Your volume increases, I luxuriate in in it. “Oh yeah, slave! Oh shit … oh … oh fuck, so close! Oh! Yes! Now, slave! Cum for me, cum, cum!”

You don’t need to tell me three times. I give into that carnal need, that ultimate desire, with a release I feel throughout my entire body. All that I am is here to pump into you, reaching so deep within to fill you up as we both soar on the ecstatic wave of mutual orgasm, and ride the ripples of continuing after-pleasure, before we both sink back, sated and soaked, into your luxurious feather bed.

I lay a gentle kiss on your neck. “Thank you Mistress – are you relaxed enough now?”


Jay Willowbay is an erotic author and occasional poet, writing mostly, but not entirely, in female domination /
male submission. 

His debut novella Shagnasty is due for release this autumn, he is a newly appointed resident reviewer for BDSM Book Reviews  and he blogs too infrequently at https://jaywillowbay.wordpress.com/


Jay on Facebook 

Book launch this weekend!

cover art by Christopher Shy

From the wastes of the sea to the shadows of our own cities, we are not alone. But what happens where the human world touches the domain of races ancient and alien? Museum curators, surveyors, police officers, archaeologists, mathematicians; from derelict buildings to country houses to the London Underground, another world is just a breath away, around the corner, watching and waiting for you to step into its power. The Private Life of Elder Things is a collection of new Lovecraftian fiction about confronting, discovering and living alongside the creatures of the Mythos.

Well, I don't usually bang on much on this blog about my Secret Other Life as a horror writer, but this is an exception. At noon on Saturday, at Fantasycon UK in Scarborough, we are launching a collaborative anthology from The Alchemy Press which features Lovecraftian Mythos tales by myself, Arthur C Clarke Award-winning SF/F author Adrian Tchaikovsky, and veteran Pelgrane Press gaming-writer Adam Gauntlett.
 
Not a sanity point left between usFor those of you coming to Scarborough, Adrian and I will be there signing copies and looking into the void of madness that awaits all who delve too deeply into the occult mysteries. I'll be the one without the beard, and Adam will be the one still at home in Bermuda drinking rum swizzles.

Scarborough, not Bermuda

I have three chunky stories in the collection :

The Play's the Thing - a period King in Yellow creeper about a huge house that doesn't obey the laws of physics, and the agent sent to track down its missing rooms before reality collapses entirely.

Devo Nodenti -  a Dreamlands story about an aged ex-archeologist with a guilty secret and a very uncanny housepet.

Special Needs Child - which is about an adopted ghoul child, and just happens to contain the most morally repugnant sex scene I have ever written. Which is going some, I'm sure you'll agree!

I'm really proud of this collection, which the Rising Shadow reviewer says:

 "…belongs to the bookshelf of everyone who is fascinated by Lovecraftian weird fiction. It’s one of the best weird fiction collections of the year and deserves to be read by ardent and enthusiastic fans of the genre. Weird fiction doesn’t get more entertaining than this, so please invest a bit of time into reading this marvellous collection. Highly recommended!"

So come and see us! There will be WINE! (And I'll answer to "Janine" too.)




You can already buy The Private Life of Elder Things at:
Amazon UK - Kindle
Amazon US - Kindle and paperback

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a wicked excerpt for your entertainment!

The nights are drawing in so I'm posting excerpts from my creepy, cruel erotic horror novel, Red Grow the Roses in the run-up to Hallowe'en. Vampires are the stars of each of the 11 short stories that make up this mosaic novel.

This story,  Nine for the Nine Bright Shiners, is told by a man who is desperately trying to help his wife conceive, whilst being horribly distracted by a vampire that appears out of mirrors...


I step out of the bath and towel myself down as the water drains. Somehow I manage to catch my own eye in the mirror. I’ve been a bit wary of mirrors since seeing that wraith-woman, but there’s been no sign of her since that first night and I’m feeling reasonably secure here. I’m at home for the weekend and it’s daylight, even if it is a watery winter light. It was probably all a figment of my imagination anyway, I know. If you’re awake and working for twenty hours in a day it’s no wonder that you start dreaming on your feet.

    The bathroom’s tiled and accessorised in black and white and the towels match; my body is the only object in the mirror with any colour to. I look at myself critically, but I’m pretty pleased, let’s face it. I look fit. I’ve kept the stomach bulge and man-boobs at bay. I’ve still got a full head of hair, cut in a style that says prime and not middle-aged. My cock and balls look just fine. I focus on the latter, hanging low in their sling of flesh, a bit struck all of a sudden by the magical potential of their bag of tricks. Whole new lives nestle in those spheres. Million of potential futures. If I was the last man alive I could repopulate the whole country, the whole world, given enough women and enough time to fuck them all. The thought makes Mr Dick swell a little, and I cup my balls encouragingly. ‘Come on Boys,’ I whisper, giving them a little squeeze. ‘You can do it.’

    It’s my day off: we’ve not had sex this morning. And now I want to stroke off, but it’s not allowed. I lift my cock away from my scrotum, feeling the slight pull as the damp skin separates. My cock responds to the touch by filling up a little, bobbing free of gravity. I shift my hips, restless. My scrotum is gathering to wrinkles. I want to jack off. Just solo, with no expectations and no consequences. A nice leisurely wank without the weight of Penny’s need. But I feel guilty; she wouldn’t know of course, but I’d still be letting her down. I stroke the long curve of flesh and feel the swell surge down to the head. Aw hell. Now it really is a semi.

    ‘Richard! I’m off!’

    Wrapping the black towel about my hips, I exit the bathroom. In the hallway Penny is making last-minute adjustments to her makeup in front of the narrow wall mirror. ‘How do I look?’ she asks as I approach.

    She looks great. She always looks great. Even in her winter clothes she’s sexy: she’s wearing burning red lipstick and a trench coat number that just screams of Forties repression and daring, and patterned stockings under that. Well, they might be tights but I can’t help seeing them as stockings. I embrace her from behind, my cock pressing with incorrigible hope into her through layers of towel and clothing. ‘You look lovely.’

    Penny sighs slightly. ‘Save it for later, tiger. I’ve got a train to catch.’ It might be a weekend but she’s got an exhibition to attend and a stall to run.

    I’ll be quick, I want to tell her, but I know better than to argue. It would just upset her schedule. I content myself with a goodbye grope and kiss before seeing her off and locking the front door. Then I look in the mirror, shaking my head at myself with blokish sympathy. I can see the bulge Mr Dick is making under the towel.

    I need a wank. I mean I really need a wank. It makes me feel irritable and bold. I drop the towel on the laminate beech floorboards and strum my cock with slow, defiant strokes.

    "You going to show up then, ghost-girl?"

    Nothing stirs in the reflection behind me. Of course not. It’s broad daylight and I’m safe in my own home. I begin to stroke in earnest. God this is good. My cock is growing stiff and straight and tall, pointing at the glass. My balls are bunching to a fat mass like a fist. I put my hand on the wall and rise up on my toes a little, enjoying the clench of muscles that seems to focus my whole body’s attention at my groin. My eyes are open but I’m not really seeing. Instead I picture Ruth, the grumpy clerical secretary at work. I imagine her walking around as we sit in a focus group circle, circulating the handouts. She wears her blonde hair in a chignon and skirts that are tight on her big thighs: in my fantasy she’s wearing seamed stockings too. She gets to my place, walking inside the circle of chairs, and as she turns from me I stick my foot out and trip her up. Down she goes on her hands and knees, files scattered everywhere, her head ending up nearly in my lap. She’s so surprised she doesn’t even get angry; she just stares at me with her eyes wide and her mouth set in a luscious O. I take advantage of the moment to whip out my thick cock and stuff it between her lips, so deep that for a moment she chokes. I grab her hair and use it to pump her head up and down on my huge length, and after a moment’s resistance she crumbles and begins to suck obediently. Everyone else seated round the circle makes gasps of lecherous appreciation; it’s such a fine sight and we’ve all fantasised about what that big surly mouth could do if put to proper use. They’re getting out their own cocks too; they mean to follow my example and take their own turns once I’ve come. And I’m going to come right now. ‘Take it,’ I grunt, spurting into Ruth’s mouth, down her eager, gobbling throat.

    All over the mirror.

    Afterwards I go into the kitchen and find a jay-cloth and some glass cleaner under the sink. But when I get back into the hall there’s no spunk on the mirror at all. Not a drop. Just the mothprint of a pair of lips, halfway down the glass as if someone had knelt there and kissed the hard surface. It’s almost invisible unless you’re looking for something. I spray the smudge and rub hard with the cloth but it’s no good: the kiss is on the other side of the glass.


Buy 'Red Grow the Roses' at Amazon US
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Buy 'Red Grow the Roses' at iTunes

Screw you, "Show Don't Tell"

Time for a wee rant.


If you even dip casually into writing sites, you'll find stuff like this all over the internet. "Show Don't Tell!" they insist.


Now, obviously if you are at the stage of your writing career where you are inclined to type something like "A man went into a bar. He ordered a drink. A stranger walked up to him and started an argument..." then this is a poke in the right direction. And God knows that in the romance genre (especially paranormal romance for some reason) there are entire series that could be cut down to pamphlet size if some editor just went in and took out all the expository internal dialogue.

But I want to have a good old tantrum about SDT because I think that as a dogma it's - wait for it - ableist and exclusionary. Specifically, it alienates me as a reader, which pisses me off.

Take a look at these examples:

"Resist the urge to explain"! Because you don't want to make things easy for your reader, for fuckssake.
Tell: Jessica was so scared she just wanted to run away.
Show: Jessica felt the blood drain out of her face. Her breath seemed to freeze in her throat.

Now I'm setting aside the fact that this sort of writing turns everything into melodrama (if you are writing a 100,000 word book where poor ol' Jessica is in regular peril, you are going to be bogged down in sweat springing out on her brow, ice-water running through her veins, lurching stomachs, thumping hearts, etc etc until you have worked through every medical condition/cliche in the lexicon or just given up and started repeating yourself). Melodrama is fine - nay, compulsory - if you are writing romance. But...

1) SDT assumes a high emotional intelligence in the reader.

Personally I am not empathetic. I don't read people's expressions particularly well. I don't "feel" their emotions if I am in conversation with them. I do not notice if they avoid certain words or topics. I do not instinctively know what they expect from me in response to their conversational revelations. How I manage is by extrapolating from the overt evidence, based on experience and what I have been taught by people who put in the actual effort to tell me things overtly.

So as far as I'm concerned, every SDT scene is a procession of characters doing and saying random things, followed by me trying to work out why.


"Tell" clues REALLY HELP ME in subtle situations. If you just show Jessica leaving the room in a cold sweat,  I have to mentally pause and scratch my head and go, "She seems to be very upset or scared, I wonder why," (assuming there is no obvious threat like an axe-murderer or a giant spider or whatever in the room). This is no goddamn fun for me as a reader.

I want to be told; "Jessica felt scared; this man with his creepy smile and his laughter in all the wrong places made her feel like she needed to wash herself with carbolic soap." I need some level of explanation.

2) SDT assumes your reader has the same cultural touchstones as you the writer, which is frankly arrogant. It excludes readers of other cultures .

I can't tell what signals consumer choices send, because I'm not into fashion or consumer culture. I can't read "coded Jewishness". I can't tell if one character is subtly, cruelly taking the piss out of another unless it is within my age group and peculiar British sub-culture. Which is pretty fucking tiny subset of fiction. 
This is bad enough as a mainstream British reader of mainstream American authors. God knows what it's like for people trying to read across more disparate cultural gaps. It's why we need emoticons.

Here's Giles Coren reviewing Here I Am (which he loved):

"For me it had everything ... But will it also work for you? Is this a great, great novel, or is its greatness only visible to other deracinated Jewish writers with complex sexual needs and a firstborn son named Sam? I can't tell."

Seriously, I read Brigit Jones and didn't get it. That is not my world. Any book that is "closely observed dissection" of anything might as well be in Greek as far as I'm concerned, because all it does is show, not tell.

Look, telling me that a character wears expensive designer shoes and is pharmacalogically dependent conveys information to me. Casually mentioning her slipping off Jimmy Choos and necking Quaaludes does not. (Well, obviously it does now or else I couldn't use the example, BUT ONLY BECAUSE I LOOKED UP EVERY OTHER NOUN when I read Tales of the City.)


3) What makes SDT worse is combining it with other shitty fashionable writers' "rules":

"You're a big shot now,"  she observed disdainfully. - Hey, it may not be the best sentence in the language but it conveys information to me that I do not have to guess.

But no - writing gurus say we must give up all dialogue tags except Said! You can't growl, stammer, laugh or inquire.
And we must cull our adverbs!
Dialogue must speak for itself!

"You're a big shot now," she said, flipping her hair.

No, this is  just doesn't work. Just tell me what is happening, pleeeeeeease.  FICTION IS NOT A GODDAMN COMPREHENSION EXERCISE SET BY THE AUTHOR TO TEST THE READER'S PERSPICUITY.

For my sake - Show all you like, but please please Tell too...

... she pleaded. :-)

Picture this ... no, please don't.

Oh the glamour of writing!

It's a good job you can't see me this week, because that meme is almost literally true. We're having a late-summer heatwave here so I am hunched in front of the PC, editing, in a stained dressing gown. I don't manage lunch until 3pm. I don't manage to get dressed or even brush my teeth until 7pm some days.

It's a good job Mr Ashbless is working from home because the sum total of my interaction with the household is to slouch downstairs and stare balefully into the fridge. The dogs are wondering why I don't love them anymore...

Anyways, this is how primary editing of The Valleys of the Earth goes:

1st draft finished!Insert scenes and bits thought of since writing "THE END". This takes longer than you think.Re-read the first book in the trilogy, make notes on everything from eye-colour thru individual character vocabulary.Lie awake at night worrying that the 2nd book is not actually as good as the 1st, but that I can't see where it all went wrong, because author myopia.  First edit, with special attention to spelling, pacing and sex-scenes. I've a tendency to be too terse near the end, so will probably need to include more descriptive detail in the final chapter. Discover I've added about 3K words to the text :-ORe-format to a lean mean Times New Roman machine, getting rid of all the damn tabs 'n' double spaces 'n' shit. Ellipses and hyphens.Lie awake at night worrying that my hero is too dominant, my heroine too annoying, and that I am heinously guilty of cultural appropriation and will be burnt in effigy by my readers, should I ever find any.Second edit, preferably read out loud to make sure of sentence flow. EVERY. GODDAMN. WORDAttempt third edit, realise I've actually gone blind and am no longer capable of reading anything at all.Give up and, weeping with despair, send book into publisher.Drink. Await criticism, instructions to rewrite, and the start of line edits