Janine Ashbless's Blog, page 89
September 7, 2014
September 5, 2014
He luuuuurved his mother
(As Tom Lehrer said)
In honor of my story Three Legs in the Evening appearing in The Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica, I thought I'd post some Oedipus art. Now there are in fact quite a few classic paintings out there which show Oedipus as he features in my tale, blind and disgraced and cast down from the throne, but those aren't terribly cheerful or sexy. I thought I'd concentrate on the Sphinx bit of the story today. Because those pictures are distinctly and amusingly pervy.
Where are her feet?The picture above is Oedipus and the Sphinx by Gustave Moreau (1864). It wasn't his only shot at the subject - here's Oedipus the Wanderer (1888):
It's worth noting, I think, the marked beauty of the protagonists in both pictures. And the sphinx's fine boobs.
Boobs are important to many artists ... and their clients.
1808 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres painted several versions of Oedipus and the Sphinx over the years - and in each one Oedipus is eye-to-eye with an outstandingly perky pair of knockers.
1864 - Note that her face is almost totally in shadow. Not that he's looking at her face anyway.
The sphinx,as a female monster, tends to be highly sexualised in western art. Lust and death in one bestial, mysterious package.
(I can't find the artist, but it would appear to be another symbolist.)
The Kiss of the Sphinx (1895) by Franz StuckThis next painting has a bare-breasted sphinx too ... but to be honest I'd guess the artist way preferred painting blokes:
Oedipus and the Sphinx (1808) by François-Xavier Fabre
This is all despite the fact that the ancient Greeks didn't seem to think that a sphinx ought to have breasts at all:
And to be fair, the odd Victorian/Edwardian artist did take their cue from that:
The Caress or The Sphinx by Fernand Khnopff (1896)The results are actually a bit disturbing - deprived of human mammaries, the sphinx looks more like a mutated animal and less like a respectable monster. This one is just plain freaky:
The Sphinx (1907) by Georg von RosenThe sphinx in my story
Three Legs in the Evening
is a lot bigger than most of the depictions here. In fact by sheer luck I have found the perfect likeness to the picture in my head and my text :-)
And since you've made it this far I will reward you with a picture of Oedipus' mother/wife: Jocasta (1913) by Harold Speed.
Do you think she's just heard some bad news?
In honor of my story Three Legs in the Evening appearing in The Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica, I thought I'd post some Oedipus art. Now there are in fact quite a few classic paintings out there which show Oedipus as he features in my tale, blind and disgraced and cast down from the throne, but those aren't terribly cheerful or sexy. I thought I'd concentrate on the Sphinx bit of the story today. Because those pictures are distinctly and amusingly pervy.
Where are her feet?The picture above is Oedipus and the Sphinx by Gustave Moreau (1864). It wasn't his only shot at the subject - here's Oedipus the Wanderer (1888):
It's worth noting, I think, the marked beauty of the protagonists in both pictures. And the sphinx's fine boobs.
Boobs are important to many artists ... and their clients.
1808 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres painted several versions of Oedipus and the Sphinx over the years - and in each one Oedipus is eye-to-eye with an outstandingly perky pair of knockers.
1864 - Note that her face is almost totally in shadow. Not that he's looking at her face anyway.The sphinx,as a female monster, tends to be highly sexualised in western art. Lust and death in one bestial, mysterious package.
(I can't find the artist, but it would appear to be another symbolist.)
The Kiss of the Sphinx (1895) by Franz StuckThis next painting has a bare-breasted sphinx too ... but to be honest I'd guess the artist way preferred painting blokes:
Oedipus and the Sphinx (1808) by François-Xavier Fabre This is all despite the fact that the ancient Greeks didn't seem to think that a sphinx ought to have breasts at all:
And to be fair, the odd Victorian/Edwardian artist did take their cue from that:
The Caress or The Sphinx by Fernand Khnopff (1896)The results are actually a bit disturbing - deprived of human mammaries, the sphinx looks more like a mutated animal and less like a respectable monster. This one is just plain freaky:%2C_painting_by_Georg_von_Rosen.jpg)
The Sphinx (1907) by Georg von RosenThe sphinx in my story
Three Legs in the Evening
is a lot bigger than most of the depictions here. In fact by sheer luck I have found the perfect likeness to the picture in my head and my text :-)And since you've made it this far I will reward you with a picture of Oedipus' mother/wife: Jocasta (1913) by Harold Speed.
Do you think she's just heard some bad news?
September 3, 2014
Guest post: Kristina Lloyd is Undone
Today's post is from Kristina Lloyd, whose tales of submission and danger are always a filthy and frightening (and exceptionally well-written) treat!
When Lana Greenwood attends a glamorous house party she finds herself tempted into a ménage à trois. But the morning after brings more than just regrets over fulfilling a fantasy one night stand. One of the men she's spent the night with is discovered dead in the swimming pool. Accident, suicide or murder, no one is sure and Lana doesn't know where to turn. Can she trust Sol, the other man, an ex-New Yorker with a dirty smile and a deep desire to continue their kinky game?
“Where do you get your ideas from?” is a question which makes many writers roll their eyes, partly because it’s so frequently asked but also because the answer isn’t easy. However, for Undone , my forthcoming novel, I have a ready reply. Where did I get my idea from? I stole it!
About eighteen months ago, I was lucky enough to attend a writing workshop run by former Penguin editor, Juliette Mitchell. For one of the exercises, we had to pair up with another attendee and describe an idea we’d had knocking around in our heads for a while. I didn’t have such a thing. I’m a writer, but not one of the lucky ones perpetually overflowing with stories. If I have an idea worth developing, it generally gets written. I’d recently submitted Thrill Seeker, and was clawing my way towards a story for my next contracted book with my publisher, Black Lace. I sat with my workshop partner and outlined a baggy, over-complex tale interwoven across three eras. She listened politely, asked a few questions, then told me her idea for a story which opened with a party and a dead body on a balcony. The body, hidden from view, wouldn’t be discovered until the following day. The identity of the dead man and the circumstances surrounding his death were both a mystery.
It was a classic Who-Dunnit? and heaps better than my offering. I left the workshop with the germ of a novel-idea rattling around in my head. Undone begins with a weekend party at a hired manor house. In the evening, as blue skies give way to starlight and outdoor lanterns, Lana hooks up with two guys for her first threesome. On the morning after, one of the men is discovered dead in the swimming pool. Lana becomes involved with the other guy, Sol Miller, despite her concerns he may be implicated in the mysterious death.
Of course, I had a lot of work to do after I’d stolen my basic premise from a stranger. (Thank you, stranger!) Setting is important to me, and I wanted to steer clear of domestic interiors for this book. I located most of the action in Saltbourne, the fictional seaside town in my previous book, Thrill Seeker, and made my protagonist the owner of a cocktail bar. I spent a lot of time inventing various bars in my mind, finally settling on the mood and design of a place when I investigated what lay behind an unusual and beautiful, stained glass window I pass regularly in Brighton. This window, I discovered, belongs to a one-bedroom hotel, and the building itself was a chapel of rest in the nineteenth century. I adapted the window for my fictional bar, turning it into blue-green tiled-glass doors opening onto a balcony, and I named the venue, The Blue Bar, in their honour. The history of the building in Brighton, along with the decadent, light-gothic aesthetic of the hotel interior and its barrel-vault ceiling (yes, that is a chandelier made of lego!), were also incorporated into Lana’s bar. I spent so long creating the setting, adding tiny details in my head, that I ended up making Lana a former interior designer who’d quit her job to pursue a her dream of setting up a cocktail bar.
I also located part of the action of Undone in Brighton, my hometown, and the setting for my second book, Asking for Trouble. The Brighton of Asking for Trouble, written in the late 90s, is very different to the town which exists today. Once it was tatty and tawdry, a coastal resort of faded grandeur and full of dubious goings-on. Brighton’s long been known as London-by-the-Sea and today it’s a slicker, smarter town (officially a city), more deserving of its moniker. But that wasn’t the Brighton I wanted my characters to visit. I was aiming to capture some of the mood of Asking for Trouble, so I plumped for a underdeveloped part of town, fictionalizing it slightly by altering occasional details. Circus Street has that sleazy, shabby, dangerous feel to it, and its where Lana and Sol end up late one night after a row.
Handcuffs were another point of inspiration, specifically a pair of German Clejuso 15s, reputedly the heaviest handcuffs in the world. They are such fierce, graceful objects that I couldn’t not use them in fiction, once I’d learned of their existence! Lana is openly kinky but her tastes are for primarily for mild play. At least, they are at the start of the book. She has an interest in vintage clothing; a keen aesthetic sensibility; is competent, independent, and she knows what she likes. Giving her a vintage and military-issue handcuff collection seemed a great way to demonstrate these aspects of her character. I’m going to talk more about cuffs later in my blog tour but suffice it to say, the Clejusos are used on Lana during the threesome at the party.
If you’d like to know more about Undone, please hop over to my blog for an excerpt, and check out the other stops on my Sexy September blog tour.
Kristina Lloyd writes erotic fiction about sexually submissive women who like it on the dark, dirty and dangerous side. Her novels are published by Black Lace and her short stories have appeared in dozens of anthologies, including several ‘best of’ collection, in both the UK and US. She lives in Brighton, England.
Undone is published on Sept 11th, 2014. Pre-order with Amazon:
Amazon US (Kindle) : Amazon UK (paperback and Kindle) : Amazon Canada (paperback and Kindle)
When Lana Greenwood attends a glamorous house party she finds herself tempted into a ménage à trois. But the morning after brings more than just regrets over fulfilling a fantasy one night stand. One of the men she's spent the night with is discovered dead in the swimming pool. Accident, suicide or murder, no one is sure and Lana doesn't know where to turn. Can she trust Sol, the other man, an ex-New Yorker with a dirty smile and a deep desire to continue their kinky game?
“Where do you get your ideas from?” is a question which makes many writers roll their eyes, partly because it’s so frequently asked but also because the answer isn’t easy. However, for Undone , my forthcoming novel, I have a ready reply. Where did I get my idea from? I stole it!
About eighteen months ago, I was lucky enough to attend a writing workshop run by former Penguin editor, Juliette Mitchell. For one of the exercises, we had to pair up with another attendee and describe an idea we’d had knocking around in our heads for a while. I didn’t have such a thing. I’m a writer, but not one of the lucky ones perpetually overflowing with stories. If I have an idea worth developing, it generally gets written. I’d recently submitted Thrill Seeker, and was clawing my way towards a story for my next contracted book with my publisher, Black Lace. I sat with my workshop partner and outlined a baggy, over-complex tale interwoven across three eras. She listened politely, asked a few questions, then told me her idea for a story which opened with a party and a dead body on a balcony. The body, hidden from view, wouldn’t be discovered until the following day. The identity of the dead man and the circumstances surrounding his death were both a mystery.
It was a classic Who-Dunnit? and heaps better than my offering. I left the workshop with the germ of a novel-idea rattling around in my head. Undone begins with a weekend party at a hired manor house. In the evening, as blue skies give way to starlight and outdoor lanterns, Lana hooks up with two guys for her first threesome. On the morning after, one of the men is discovered dead in the swimming pool. Lana becomes involved with the other guy, Sol Miller, despite her concerns he may be implicated in the mysterious death.
Of course, I had a lot of work to do after I’d stolen my basic premise from a stranger. (Thank you, stranger!) Setting is important to me, and I wanted to steer clear of domestic interiors for this book. I located most of the action in Saltbourne, the fictional seaside town in my previous book, Thrill Seeker, and made my protagonist the owner of a cocktail bar. I spent a lot of time inventing various bars in my mind, finally settling on the mood and design of a place when I investigated what lay behind an unusual and beautiful, stained glass window I pass regularly in Brighton. This window, I discovered, belongs to a one-bedroom hotel, and the building itself was a chapel of rest in the nineteenth century. I adapted the window for my fictional bar, turning it into blue-green tiled-glass doors opening onto a balcony, and I named the venue, The Blue Bar, in their honour. The history of the building in Brighton, along with the decadent, light-gothic aesthetic of the hotel interior and its barrel-vault ceiling (yes, that is a chandelier made of lego!), were also incorporated into Lana’s bar. I spent so long creating the setting, adding tiny details in my head, that I ended up making Lana a former interior designer who’d quit her job to pursue a her dream of setting up a cocktail bar.
I also located part of the action of Undone in Brighton, my hometown, and the setting for my second book, Asking for Trouble. The Brighton of Asking for Trouble, written in the late 90s, is very different to the town which exists today. Once it was tatty and tawdry, a coastal resort of faded grandeur and full of dubious goings-on. Brighton’s long been known as London-by-the-Sea and today it’s a slicker, smarter town (officially a city), more deserving of its moniker. But that wasn’t the Brighton I wanted my characters to visit. I was aiming to capture some of the mood of Asking for Trouble, so I plumped for a underdeveloped part of town, fictionalizing it slightly by altering occasional details. Circus Street has that sleazy, shabby, dangerous feel to it, and its where Lana and Sol end up late one night after a row.
Handcuffs were another point of inspiration, specifically a pair of German Clejuso 15s, reputedly the heaviest handcuffs in the world. They are such fierce, graceful objects that I couldn’t not use them in fiction, once I’d learned of their existence! Lana is openly kinky but her tastes are for primarily for mild play. At least, they are at the start of the book. She has an interest in vintage clothing; a keen aesthetic sensibility; is competent, independent, and she knows what she likes. Giving her a vintage and military-issue handcuff collection seemed a great way to demonstrate these aspects of her character. I’m going to talk more about cuffs later in my blog tour but suffice it to say, the Clejusos are used on Lana during the threesome at the party.
If you’d like to know more about Undone, please hop over to my blog for an excerpt, and check out the other stops on my Sexy September blog tour.
Kristina Lloyd writes erotic fiction about sexually submissive women who like it on the dark, dirty and dangerous side. Her novels are published by Black Lace and her short stories have appeared in dozens of anthologies, including several ‘best of’ collection, in both the UK and US. She lives in Brighton, England.
Undone is published on Sept 11th, 2014. Pre-order with Amazon:
Amazon US (Kindle) : Amazon UK (paperback and Kindle) : Amazon Canada (paperback and Kindle)
September 1, 2014
Blue Monday
Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment.
I love this e-cover!
Love Lies Bleeding is my short story contribution to Fifty Shades of Green, (ed Cheri Colburn) the new gardening-themed erotica anthology from Greenwoman Publishing. It's slighty more restrained than some of my erotica, but like - it turns out! - several other contributions to the collection, it is a supernatural tale...
What was I talking about? Ah, yes. Him.
He is restoring the grounds around my house. Spring sunlight, returning to earth long shadowed, has resulted in an unexpected treasury of flowers along the margins of the old rides: stunted narcissi and crocuses early in the year, and a nervous carpet of bluebells following on in May. The warmth of the season reveals more of him too. Working mostly alone here, in an area of the gardens long closed off, he sheds his shirt when the weather allows it and labors bare-chested, golden and ruddy. Freckles bloom like tiny flowers across his shoulders, more and more each day, and tiny flecks of soil and cut grass and dry leaves stick to his glistening skin, a patina that makes him scratch pleasurably whenever he pauses to ease his muscles.
Papa would not approve of that either. He always tried to shield me from such coarse sights, lest I be spoilt for any future husband. But it is such a long time since Papa last came down here to visit me. I can't recall how long exactly … I wonder what he would say if he knew one of his workmen was toiling half-naked within sight of his daughter?
I watch, illicitly, feeling a thrill I had not known myself capable of.
His skin is golden, but his nipples are flat and brown, and blondish hair marches down across his chest and belly like an army converging upon the narrower pass beyond his hips. When he is working hard his shoulders are glossy with sweat and droplets run down the declivity of his spine and slip beneath the waistband of his trousers. I want to follow them with my fingers. I want to bite his chest and feel his hot hard flesh beneath my hands. I want to feel the life burning beneath his skin, to press my lips to that fire, to taste it on my tongue.
He shines. He shines. In my world of shadows and stillness, he glows like a burning lamp. He summons me.
He is digging a new flowerbed on the southern approach to my home, and I cannot tear my eyes away. But I cannot make myself known.
Once, greatly daring, I did come out while he was here. My desire was so fierce that day that I could not resist the lure. He'd been laboring all morning a little way off from the house, where the woodland understory was still thick. Maybe he glimpsed my presence at the corner of his eyes, because he would pause and glance about himself occasionally, frowning into the depths of the grove. But he never truly saw me. Resting after his lunch in a cleared dell, he dozed off for a moment, I think, in a patch of sun. I crept in closer under the dense cover of the rhododendrons. There he lay in his open shirt, one arm tucked behind his head to pillow it. His face was peaceful in repose, his lashes long and silky. That broad chest of his rose and fell mesmerically. Beyond the crest of his ribcage, his torso sloped down to the shallower flatland of his stomach, a vulnerable stretch that seemed to crave the touch of my hand. I was close enough to hear his gentle breathing, to smell his sweat, to feel the heat of his blood like a furnace on my face. Almost close enough to reach out to him. My lust for him was an ache bone-deep.
But he lay in sunlight. I was confined to my shadows.
Almost as if he felt my gaze upon him in his shallow dreams—and perhaps he did—he woke up abruptly and sat up shivering and looking around him. In my hiding place amongst the dark and glossy leaves, I froze.
Did I want him to see me? The answer is, I do not know. I have been ill so long, and there are no mirrors in my house. I am no longer entirely sure that I look like the pretty girl I used to be, all ringlets and wide eyes and blossoming maidenly curves. I think I must be pitifully frail and slender now. I don't eat much these days. My appetite comes and goes.
I like to watch him eat.
I like to watch when he goes off to empty his bladder against the bole of some tree. There is sometime exquisitely masculine about the way he stands; the insouciant tilt of his hips; the brace of his legs; the satisfied little bounce he gives as he readjusts his clothing afterward.
He's in the prime of his youth, and male, and working alone. I can see the low burn of the fire that's in his flesh, always. It must be hard to ignore the imperative itch of his potency. That weight he carries between his thighs. I imagine it is burdensome at times. And I sympathize, because my own need is just as cruel.
Sometimes I see it become too uncomfortable for him to ignore. Then he sets his back to a tree and parts his clothes and stretches taut, milking the seed from his heavy stones with swift, grateful movements. I see it. I see it all. It makes me writhe—not with the shame suited to my maiden state, but with a desire so overwhelming that it can only be felt as hunger, and with envy. Envy of his touch on his own body where mine should be. His hand is brutal in its action, and I wonder if he would treat a woman so forcefully. My curiosity is like a sickness all of its own.
I wonder what it would have been like to be married to a man like him, to know the trials and pleasures of a woman's marital duties.
But of course I would not have married a man like him—a mere gardener—if I had been well enough to wed. I would have married a fine gentleman, my social equal. Someone with a grand country estate and a house in town, and ten thousand pounds a year to his name. Not a dirty, unshaven, sweaty gardener whose work-hardened forearms are dusted with sun-bleached hair. Whose callused hands would maul shamelessly my white virginal skin. Whose disrespectful eyes and casual coarseness and sense of humor would make a scullery maid blush.
He likes the grieving caryatids that flank the stairs to my front door. Pillars in the form of half-draped Grecian women, they hold up the lintel of the veranda that circles my abode, their stony faces solemn and their busts jutting and matronly. When he won his way through the shrubbery, that very first time, the first thing he did was to reach up and fondle the lichened breast of the one on the left, and grin. So pleased with himself.
It has become a ritual; every day he comes up here with his tools, and before starting work he gives both caryatids a grope, rubbing their stone breasts. If he's in a particularly cheerful mood he might jump up on one of their stone pedestals and embrace one from behind for a private joke, his hands cupping that stone bosom, his crotch bumping her unyielding buttocks.
Watching him through the crack between the double doors, I would give anything to be that caryatid, then. But all I do is watch.
Love Lies Bleeding is available as a single download from Amazon US : Amazon UK
Or you can buy the whole anthology (including a very naughty F/m tale from fellow Yorkshire writer Slave Nano!) in paperback or e-format instead:
Amazon US : Amazon UK
I love this e-cover!Love Lies Bleeding is my short story contribution to Fifty Shades of Green, (ed Cheri Colburn) the new gardening-themed erotica anthology from Greenwoman Publishing. It's slighty more restrained than some of my erotica, but like - it turns out! - several other contributions to the collection, it is a supernatural tale...
What was I talking about? Ah, yes. Him.
He is restoring the grounds around my house. Spring sunlight, returning to earth long shadowed, has resulted in an unexpected treasury of flowers along the margins of the old rides: stunted narcissi and crocuses early in the year, and a nervous carpet of bluebells following on in May. The warmth of the season reveals more of him too. Working mostly alone here, in an area of the gardens long closed off, he sheds his shirt when the weather allows it and labors bare-chested, golden and ruddy. Freckles bloom like tiny flowers across his shoulders, more and more each day, and tiny flecks of soil and cut grass and dry leaves stick to his glistening skin, a patina that makes him scratch pleasurably whenever he pauses to ease his muscles.
Papa would not approve of that either. He always tried to shield me from such coarse sights, lest I be spoilt for any future husband. But it is such a long time since Papa last came down here to visit me. I can't recall how long exactly … I wonder what he would say if he knew one of his workmen was toiling half-naked within sight of his daughter?
I watch, illicitly, feeling a thrill I had not known myself capable of.
His skin is golden, but his nipples are flat and brown, and blondish hair marches down across his chest and belly like an army converging upon the narrower pass beyond his hips. When he is working hard his shoulders are glossy with sweat and droplets run down the declivity of his spine and slip beneath the waistband of his trousers. I want to follow them with my fingers. I want to bite his chest and feel his hot hard flesh beneath my hands. I want to feel the life burning beneath his skin, to press my lips to that fire, to taste it on my tongue.
He shines. He shines. In my world of shadows and stillness, he glows like a burning lamp. He summons me.
He is digging a new flowerbed on the southern approach to my home, and I cannot tear my eyes away. But I cannot make myself known.
Once, greatly daring, I did come out while he was here. My desire was so fierce that day that I could not resist the lure. He'd been laboring all morning a little way off from the house, where the woodland understory was still thick. Maybe he glimpsed my presence at the corner of his eyes, because he would pause and glance about himself occasionally, frowning into the depths of the grove. But he never truly saw me. Resting after his lunch in a cleared dell, he dozed off for a moment, I think, in a patch of sun. I crept in closer under the dense cover of the rhododendrons. There he lay in his open shirt, one arm tucked behind his head to pillow it. His face was peaceful in repose, his lashes long and silky. That broad chest of his rose and fell mesmerically. Beyond the crest of his ribcage, his torso sloped down to the shallower flatland of his stomach, a vulnerable stretch that seemed to crave the touch of my hand. I was close enough to hear his gentle breathing, to smell his sweat, to feel the heat of his blood like a furnace on my face. Almost close enough to reach out to him. My lust for him was an ache bone-deep.
But he lay in sunlight. I was confined to my shadows.
Almost as if he felt my gaze upon him in his shallow dreams—and perhaps he did—he woke up abruptly and sat up shivering and looking around him. In my hiding place amongst the dark and glossy leaves, I froze.
Did I want him to see me? The answer is, I do not know. I have been ill so long, and there are no mirrors in my house. I am no longer entirely sure that I look like the pretty girl I used to be, all ringlets and wide eyes and blossoming maidenly curves. I think I must be pitifully frail and slender now. I don't eat much these days. My appetite comes and goes.
I like to watch him eat.
I like to watch when he goes off to empty his bladder against the bole of some tree. There is sometime exquisitely masculine about the way he stands; the insouciant tilt of his hips; the brace of his legs; the satisfied little bounce he gives as he readjusts his clothing afterward.
He's in the prime of his youth, and male, and working alone. I can see the low burn of the fire that's in his flesh, always. It must be hard to ignore the imperative itch of his potency. That weight he carries between his thighs. I imagine it is burdensome at times. And I sympathize, because my own need is just as cruel.
Sometimes I see it become too uncomfortable for him to ignore. Then he sets his back to a tree and parts his clothes and stretches taut, milking the seed from his heavy stones with swift, grateful movements. I see it. I see it all. It makes me writhe—not with the shame suited to my maiden state, but with a desire so overwhelming that it can only be felt as hunger, and with envy. Envy of his touch on his own body where mine should be. His hand is brutal in its action, and I wonder if he would treat a woman so forcefully. My curiosity is like a sickness all of its own.
I wonder what it would have been like to be married to a man like him, to know the trials and pleasures of a woman's marital duties.
But of course I would not have married a man like him—a mere gardener—if I had been well enough to wed. I would have married a fine gentleman, my social equal. Someone with a grand country estate and a house in town, and ten thousand pounds a year to his name. Not a dirty, unshaven, sweaty gardener whose work-hardened forearms are dusted with sun-bleached hair. Whose callused hands would maul shamelessly my white virginal skin. Whose disrespectful eyes and casual coarseness and sense of humor would make a scullery maid blush.
He likes the grieving caryatids that flank the stairs to my front door. Pillars in the form of half-draped Grecian women, they hold up the lintel of the veranda that circles my abode, their stony faces solemn and their busts jutting and matronly. When he won his way through the shrubbery, that very first time, the first thing he did was to reach up and fondle the lichened breast of the one on the left, and grin. So pleased with himself.
It has become a ritual; every day he comes up here with his tools, and before starting work he gives both caryatids a grope, rubbing their stone breasts. If he's in a particularly cheerful mood he might jump up on one of their stone pedestals and embrace one from behind for a private joke, his hands cupping that stone bosom, his crotch bumping her unyielding buttocks.
Watching him through the crack between the double doors, I would give anything to be that caryatid, then. But all I do is watch.
Love Lies Bleeding is available as a single download from Amazon US : Amazon UK
Or you can buy the whole anthology (including a very naughty F/m tale from fellow Yorkshire writer Slave Nano!) in paperback or e-format instead:
Amazon US : Amazon UK
August 31, 2014
Phenology - August
August brings the sheaves of corn*,Then the harvest home is borne.
*wheat, to you 'Muricans.Appropriately enough (though it doesn't say much about my speed), my phenology exercise this year has finally caught up on my writing, so I've actually been writing about August in Lover's Wheel during August. Which prompts me to -
ARGH! - WHERE DOES THE TIME GO? IT'S NEARLY AUTUMN!
The horse chestnuts - usually first out in leaf, and first to shed - are just starting to turnYes, the lawn has stopped growing and foliage is no longer the priority for plants. They are thinking about SEED instead. By the end of August, sloes are ripening on the blackthorn bushes:
Prepare the gin!!... Hawthorn berries on the may hedges:
.... Rosehips on the dog roses:
Blackberries on the bramble bushes:
And berries on the rowan tree:
And the elder:
It is a veritable fruit pie in the making! Just don't add cuckoo pint,... because it'll kill you (through asphyxiation, unusually - it makes the throat lining swell up horribly).
"Pint" means "penis," btw. Dirty botantists.
There are still plenty of flowers around though ... The verges in Scotland, I noticed, are bilious with ragwort:
Poisonous, particularly to horses
And bindweed tries to look lovely and tropical in order to distract you from the fact it's smothered every damn thing in your garden:
August makes me hungry. Luckily, as all will agree, fruit you pick while walking contains no calories :-)
*wheat, to you 'Muricans.Appropriately enough (though it doesn't say much about my speed), my phenology exercise this year has finally caught up on my writing, so I've actually been writing about August in Lover's Wheel during August. Which prompts me to - ARGH! - WHERE DOES THE TIME GO? IT'S NEARLY AUTUMN!
The horse chestnuts - usually first out in leaf, and first to shed - are just starting to turnYes, the lawn has stopped growing and foliage is no longer the priority for plants. They are thinking about SEED instead. By the end of August, sloes are ripening on the blackthorn bushes:
Prepare the gin!!... Hawthorn berries on the may hedges:
.... Rosehips on the dog roses:
Blackberries on the bramble bushes: 
And berries on the rowan tree:
And the elder:
It is a veritable fruit pie in the making! Just don't add cuckoo pint,... because it'll kill you (through asphyxiation, unusually - it makes the throat lining swell up horribly).
"Pint" means "penis," btw. Dirty botantists.There are still plenty of flowers around though ... The verges in Scotland, I noticed, are bilious with ragwort:
Poisonous, particularly to horsesAnd bindweed tries to look lovely and tropical in order to distract you from the fact it's smothered every damn thing in your garden:
August makes me hungry. Luckily, as all will agree, fruit you pick while walking contains no calories :-)
August 29, 2014
Kiss me quick ... and shut me up
I love my library card!Do you like the sound of your own voice when recorded? I don't, which is why I can't listen to Rose Caraway's podcast of our chat!
(But the rest of you are entirely welcome to, of course)
Rose and I had a lovely (giggly) time discussing the origins of Three Legs in the Evening , my contribution to The Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica, along with other topics like "Have you ever killed anyone?" and "What's your favourite curse word?" so all I can do is hope that she edited out anything I said that was particularly stupid or reckless...
;-)
If you go over to the post you can, btw, see some of the pictorial inspiration behind my story.
BONUS: You can listen to the whole of my outrageously kinky petplay story Being His Bitch here - read by Rose! Now! Free!
August 27, 2014
Away with the fairies
A rare photo of the native Haggis at large. They eat fragranced nappy-bags, did you know?Last week, you may have noticed, I vanished off the grid and had NO INTERNET. That was because I was up way way north with da boyz, on the Isle of Skye:
It is a place of spectacular, mind-boggling beauty:
Dunscaith Castle
The Mealt Waterfall, and Kilt Rock beyond.
Near Sligachan - BEWARE THE MIDGES!!!
Sleat peninsulaAlso a place of WEATHER - stand still for more than ten minutes and the weather will change totally -
- and FAIRIES.We visited the Fairy Glen:
Me atop the fairy "Castle Ewan"
Fairy spirals (and sheep) in the glenAnd saw the Fairy Flag at Dunvegan Castle:
We crossed the Fairy Bridge:
A MacLeod chief's fairy wife ditched him here and went home, leaving him with the flag.And found the skeleton of a Kelpie or Water Horse:
I am not kidding you!
I mean, would I?We had rainbows outside our cottage most days:
Might have had something to do with the quantities of Talisker we bought...And we checked up and definitively answered the question about whether any of us were going to Heaven.
Er ... no.Seriously, in a remote ruined churchyard in Trumpan there is an ancient Heaven Stone. You are supposed to close your eyes and attempt to stick your finger in the hole. If you can do it on first try, you're In with the angelic host.
OBVIOUS FAILAh well. I wasn't optimistic, to be honest.Who needs Heaven anyway? I'll stick with Scotland :-)
August 25, 2014
Blue Monday
Every Monday I post a rude excerpt for your entertainment.
While I was away and wasn't looking, The Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica (ed. Rose Caraway) snuck out into publication! So my excerpt for today is from my story in the anthology: Three Legs in the Evening.
In ancient Greece, disgraced and blinded King Oedipus is confessing his life story to a mysterious woman:
“I want to know,” she said, “about Phix.”
He went very still. “How do you know her name?”
“I’m the one who asked for a story. And I want to hear the things you don’t tell other people.”
“Really.” His neck was taut and now his hand curled, almost to a clench. He was taller than her, and if he had been sighted she would have been within easy snatching distance. Respectable women never came this close to a strange man, not on their own. Certainly not when the man had such an obscene reputation. “The things I don’t tell other people?” he wondered. “That won’t be hard. They’re only interested in the end of the tale.”
“But everybody knows how it ended. I didn’t have to come find you, to hear that bit of the story.”
“Hhh. Well. If you like, then. You’re not frightened of a story from a man’s point of view?”
“All stories are told from a man’s point of view,” she sighed.
“I meant...”
“I know what you meant. Go ahead. I want to hear.”
He nodded, and moistened his dry lips. “Very well. Not the end, then. The beginning. You have to understand it from the beginning, or you’ll not believe.” He leaned back against the sarcophagus. “I was brought up as a prince of the palace of Corinth. Son, so far as I knew, of the king and queen there. Ignorant that I was a foundling, adopted—because everyone who remembered had been instructed to keep silent upon the subject. And there was a girl there—Is this the beginning? I’m not used to telling this part—There was a servant girl there in the palace…a Libyan…who had the most beautiful breasts.”
He paused, and tilted his head back, as if seeing the long-lost girl with his empty eyes.
“She was older than me, of course. I used to follow her around the palace when I was a youth, just to stare at those breasts. They were the color of pine honey, deep-clefted and firm and big, you understand, really big, swelling against her dress. And I wanted nothing in all the world so much as to lift those ample globes in my hands and suck upon her nipples and bury my head between them and suffocate there.” He smiled wistfully. “Don’t get me wrong—she was pretty too, with a big smile and a waist like so—” he shaped it, tiny beneath his masculine hands “—and a fine rump as round as the full moon, that waggled when she walked. I liked all of her, but oh…her breasts had me in thrall.
“You know, even if I weren’t blind, I don’t think I’d ever see a pair so perfect again.
“All the servants sniggered at me. ‘Here comes your puppy-dog again, Clio,’ they would tell her: ‘wagging his little tail as he follows you.’ And she laughed at me too, but gently. She liked me. The day she caught me by the hand and pulled me into a storeroom and said, ‘Time to do more than just stare at my tits, Prince Oedipus,’ as she pulled open her clothes and laid my hands upon her…I think that was the happiest moment of my life. I felt like a man must feel touching a goddess. I felt like I was holding the sun and the moon in my hands. I felt like all the mysteries and treasures of the earth hand been given to me.
“You know what the greatest wonder was? Her nipples stiffened as I touched them. They rose up, and their areolae puckered to the drag of my fingers, and she sighed and giggled. Her parts reacted to me—and I knew for the first time that a woman’s body felt pleasure just as my own did. Nobody had ever told me that. She loved me touching her.”
Oedipus shook his head in reminiscence. “Her tits. That’s what she called them. A low word for such glorious things. ‘Tits’ and ‘cunny’ and ‘ass’ and ‘clit’, those were the words she used, and she taught me all about them, over many months.
“And I was a diligent scholar, keen to master every lesson and put my learning to the test. I prided myself on the skills I developed under her tutelage. When, for the first time, Clio straddled me nose-to-tail and said, ‘Make me fall first, Prince Oedipus, and I’ll suck your cock until you spurt down my throat,’ I made her come three times before I let her finish me off.
“This is the secret I learned from her: a woman’s pleasure does not come, as almost every man thinks, from her being filled and stretched and pounded by the biggest cock possible, like a pestle banging away in a mortar. Oh, it’s far more subtle than that. And far more complex. A woman’s body is a labyrinth to be solved.
“I took the skills my Clio taught me, and practiced upon other women. Bee-keepers and dancing-girls and weavers and potters…My reputation spread through Corinth like spilt wine, and couldn’t be stopped. Through giggled confidences, they learned from one another. They came to my chamber by night and lured me into barns by day. They wanted to know if I was all I was rumored to be, and I delighted in confirming the tales. That was my pleasure—my obsession if you like, for it became like a yearning for wine or opium. I lusted to make women come. My own fist upon my cock was good enough for me, though I’d no objection to the hotter embrace of a mouth or cunny. But what I really wanted, what I could do for hour after hour, was to lap the nectar between a woman’s legs, and make her arch and swear and blaspheme. To take the shy and gentle maid and make of her a raving maenad. To have the lissome creature astride my face beg for more and more and more, and then weep with joy and thank me and kiss my cock like it was a god. I took delight in pushing a woman to so many climaxes that she would beg me for mercy out of sheer exhaustion.”
“And were you merciful?”
Oedipus smiled. “Oh, eventually.”
She bit her lip and was glad he couldn’t see her flushed cheeks.
“It became a point of pride for me that no woman was immune to pleasure, under my hands. I would rise to any challenge: young or old, fair or plain. An ambassador of the Amazons, corded with muscle and scar-tissue, who had never had any use for a man, laughed at my reputation—but she’d changed her mind by the next morning and confessed publicly, blushing, that I had proved her wrong.
“After that I trod closer to the edge of propriety. I took two priestesses of Artemis to my bed and sent them away the next morning reeling and wide-eyed and debauched—but still technically virgins despite the throb of their licked and well-fingered winks and the taste of my semen in their mouths. Married women threw themselves in my path—but who could make an accusation of adultery, when my cock never went near the forbidden shrine of their marriage? My preferred site of oblation was across the pillowy expanses of their tits.”
He smiled, fondly, then shook his head as if he were waking from a dream. “Eventually I provoked too many complaints from confused and outfaced men. To get me out of Corinth and give the pot a chance to stop boiling, the king sent me on a mission to the Oracle at Delphi. Some question about the siting of a new temple. So I went, with a dozen companions.”
His smile had gone now. His mouth was a hard line. “There, in the dark of the cave, the Pythia breathed in the fumes from that crack in the floor that leads to the Underworld, and then slipped from her high stool into the priests’ waiting arms, thrashing and gibbering. All very holy. It made my skin crawl, if I am honest. They carried her forward to where I waited, and she looked straight at me with pupils wildly dilated. And then she said it…You know that bit. Everyone knows that bit.”
“You will kill your father and marry your mother."
Rose is running a series of interviews and podcasts with the contributing authors of this big and bouncy collection. I'm being interviewed later this week, so I'll let you have my link soon! In the meantime, The Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica is available RIGHT NOW as a paperback or e-download:
Amazon US : Amazon UK
While I was away and wasn't looking, The Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica (ed. Rose Caraway) snuck out into publication! So my excerpt for today is from my story in the anthology: Three Legs in the Evening.
In ancient Greece, disgraced and blinded King Oedipus is confessing his life story to a mysterious woman:
“I want to know,” she said, “about Phix.”
He went very still. “How do you know her name?”
“I’m the one who asked for a story. And I want to hear the things you don’t tell other people.”
“Really.” His neck was taut and now his hand curled, almost to a clench. He was taller than her, and if he had been sighted she would have been within easy snatching distance. Respectable women never came this close to a strange man, not on their own. Certainly not when the man had such an obscene reputation. “The things I don’t tell other people?” he wondered. “That won’t be hard. They’re only interested in the end of the tale.”
“But everybody knows how it ended. I didn’t have to come find you, to hear that bit of the story.”
“Hhh. Well. If you like, then. You’re not frightened of a story from a man’s point of view?”
“All stories are told from a man’s point of view,” she sighed.
“I meant...”
“I know what you meant. Go ahead. I want to hear.”
He nodded, and moistened his dry lips. “Very well. Not the end, then. The beginning. You have to understand it from the beginning, or you’ll not believe.” He leaned back against the sarcophagus. “I was brought up as a prince of the palace of Corinth. Son, so far as I knew, of the king and queen there. Ignorant that I was a foundling, adopted—because everyone who remembered had been instructed to keep silent upon the subject. And there was a girl there—Is this the beginning? I’m not used to telling this part—There was a servant girl there in the palace…a Libyan…who had the most beautiful breasts.”
He paused, and tilted his head back, as if seeing the long-lost girl with his empty eyes.
“She was older than me, of course. I used to follow her around the palace when I was a youth, just to stare at those breasts. They were the color of pine honey, deep-clefted and firm and big, you understand, really big, swelling against her dress. And I wanted nothing in all the world so much as to lift those ample globes in my hands and suck upon her nipples and bury my head between them and suffocate there.” He smiled wistfully. “Don’t get me wrong—she was pretty too, with a big smile and a waist like so—” he shaped it, tiny beneath his masculine hands “—and a fine rump as round as the full moon, that waggled when she walked. I liked all of her, but oh…her breasts had me in thrall.
“You know, even if I weren’t blind, I don’t think I’d ever see a pair so perfect again.
“All the servants sniggered at me. ‘Here comes your puppy-dog again, Clio,’ they would tell her: ‘wagging his little tail as he follows you.’ And she laughed at me too, but gently. She liked me. The day she caught me by the hand and pulled me into a storeroom and said, ‘Time to do more than just stare at my tits, Prince Oedipus,’ as she pulled open her clothes and laid my hands upon her…I think that was the happiest moment of my life. I felt like a man must feel touching a goddess. I felt like I was holding the sun and the moon in my hands. I felt like all the mysteries and treasures of the earth hand been given to me.
“You know what the greatest wonder was? Her nipples stiffened as I touched them. They rose up, and their areolae puckered to the drag of my fingers, and she sighed and giggled. Her parts reacted to me—and I knew for the first time that a woman’s body felt pleasure just as my own did. Nobody had ever told me that. She loved me touching her.”
Oedipus shook his head in reminiscence. “Her tits. That’s what she called them. A low word for such glorious things. ‘Tits’ and ‘cunny’ and ‘ass’ and ‘clit’, those were the words she used, and she taught me all about them, over many months.
“And I was a diligent scholar, keen to master every lesson and put my learning to the test. I prided myself on the skills I developed under her tutelage. When, for the first time, Clio straddled me nose-to-tail and said, ‘Make me fall first, Prince Oedipus, and I’ll suck your cock until you spurt down my throat,’ I made her come three times before I let her finish me off.
“This is the secret I learned from her: a woman’s pleasure does not come, as almost every man thinks, from her being filled and stretched and pounded by the biggest cock possible, like a pestle banging away in a mortar. Oh, it’s far more subtle than that. And far more complex. A woman’s body is a labyrinth to be solved.
“I took the skills my Clio taught me, and practiced upon other women. Bee-keepers and dancing-girls and weavers and potters…My reputation spread through Corinth like spilt wine, and couldn’t be stopped. Through giggled confidences, they learned from one another. They came to my chamber by night and lured me into barns by day. They wanted to know if I was all I was rumored to be, and I delighted in confirming the tales. That was my pleasure—my obsession if you like, for it became like a yearning for wine or opium. I lusted to make women come. My own fist upon my cock was good enough for me, though I’d no objection to the hotter embrace of a mouth or cunny. But what I really wanted, what I could do for hour after hour, was to lap the nectar between a woman’s legs, and make her arch and swear and blaspheme. To take the shy and gentle maid and make of her a raving maenad. To have the lissome creature astride my face beg for more and more and more, and then weep with joy and thank me and kiss my cock like it was a god. I took delight in pushing a woman to so many climaxes that she would beg me for mercy out of sheer exhaustion.”
“And were you merciful?”
Oedipus smiled. “Oh, eventually.”
She bit her lip and was glad he couldn’t see her flushed cheeks.
“It became a point of pride for me that no woman was immune to pleasure, under my hands. I would rise to any challenge: young or old, fair or plain. An ambassador of the Amazons, corded with muscle and scar-tissue, who had never had any use for a man, laughed at my reputation—but she’d changed her mind by the next morning and confessed publicly, blushing, that I had proved her wrong.
“After that I trod closer to the edge of propriety. I took two priestesses of Artemis to my bed and sent them away the next morning reeling and wide-eyed and debauched—but still technically virgins despite the throb of their licked and well-fingered winks and the taste of my semen in their mouths. Married women threw themselves in my path—but who could make an accusation of adultery, when my cock never went near the forbidden shrine of their marriage? My preferred site of oblation was across the pillowy expanses of their tits.”
He smiled, fondly, then shook his head as if he were waking from a dream. “Eventually I provoked too many complaints from confused and outfaced men. To get me out of Corinth and give the pot a chance to stop boiling, the king sent me on a mission to the Oracle at Delphi. Some question about the siting of a new temple. So I went, with a dozen companions.”
His smile had gone now. His mouth was a hard line. “There, in the dark of the cave, the Pythia breathed in the fumes from that crack in the floor that leads to the Underworld, and then slipped from her high stool into the priests’ waiting arms, thrashing and gibbering. All very holy. It made my skin crawl, if I am honest. They carried her forward to where I waited, and she looked straight at me with pupils wildly dilated. And then she said it…You know that bit. Everyone knows that bit.”
“You will kill your father and marry your mother."
Rose is running a series of interviews and podcasts with the contributing authors of this big and bouncy collection. I'm being interviewed later this week, so I'll let you have my link soon! In the meantime, The Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica is available RIGHT NOW as a paperback or e-download:
Amazon US : Amazon UK
