Wednesday 21 July 2010

Another short intermission



I'm going to be away for a week and a bit - I'm off to California. Yes, I know: it's completely insane. But Mr Ashbless now works for an American company and once a year they fly all their staff and their partners out there for a corporate jamboree. Could I say no?

I'm going to see some giant redwoods!

Back at the start of August...

Monday 19 July 2010

Eyecandy Monday


Well ... I picked up a movie magazine this weekend and there was a new photo of Jason Momoa, who's starring as Conan  in the forthcoming film. Oooooooh ....
My first reaction - he brings the literary character to life in a way poor muscle-bound Arnie never did. Robert E Howard, when writing the Conan stories, frequently described his "sullen" looks and his "mane" of black hair:

"His brow was low and broad, his eyes a volcanic blue that smoldered as if with some inner fire. His dark, scarred, almost sinister face was that of a fighting-man, and his velvet garments could not conceal the hard, dangerous lines of his limbs."
Yep. I think Momoa's got that down.


Momoa is best known of course for playing Ronon Dex in Stargate Atlantis. Pity the dreadlocks had to go - but word is they were so heavy they were too painful to live with!


I need a cold shower now...



Oh, while we're on the subject of movies: GO SEE INCEPTION!!! It's awesome! Remember how you felt the first time you watched The Matrix? Well, Inception is as gloriously mind-blowing, in a similar way. An action blockbuster that doesn't insult your intelligence - how great is that?

 

Friday 16 July 2010

Sale - Good Doggy


You know: I could just eat those...
Where was I? Oh yes! My petplay short story Good Doggy made it through several rounds of selection and has been chosen for inclusion in Nice Girls, Naughty Sex: 20 erotic tales, to be published in 2011 by Seal Press. Yipee! Break out the choccies!

Nice Girls, Naughty Sex is edited by Jordan LaRousse and Samantha Sade of the Oysters and Chocolate website, and is the follow-up print anthology to their eponymous collection.

Which also means that there is now a brand new story, The Servant Question, up for you to read on my website -  find it from the left-hand sidebar on the main page. I'm not exactly known for writing erotic comedy so take a look at The Servant Question, a steampunk story in which I come over all Jeremy Edwards and can't stop giggling...

Wednesday 14 July 2010

Storm Angel


This picture appeared in our Metro free newspaper a couple of weeks ago and I fell flat-out in love with it at first sight. I mean - look at the guy .. the sea ... the wings. It was actually taken in the outlying fringes of hurricane Alex, somewhere in Mexico I think, and shows a kitesurfer out taking advantage of the high winds.

Over the last few months there's been some gusty weather in my life, like the precursor winds of some huge storm. Warnings that nothing is permanent, even in my uber-settled, sensible and easy life. Even life itself, I am sharply reminded, does not last.

Relationships have shifted. Friendships have gone cold. Publishers have let me down. My mother had a brief cancer scare. My physical home is about to be torn open and changed forever and it starts today (don't worry: I asked for that one). A week ago we were in fine health: today Mr Ashbless is having surgery.

Chaos can intrude anywhere, anytime. I only hope to spread my wings and ride ahead of the storm.

Monday 12 July 2010

Eyecandy Monday


Well, it looks like it's shaping up to be a hell of a busy week, and a not too pleasant one at that. Still, I'm never too busy to post this guy.

Now I have to go take Mr Ashbless to the doctors for (hopefully) his ultrasound scan - he's attempting to give birth to a bouncing baby kidney-stone. On the picture above, the agonising pain can be found almost exactly half-way down, on the right hand side of our model's back.

Sunday 11 July 2010

Swinging Party


This is how we spent Saturday morning! Fun thanks to Go Ape, pictures thanks to Jonas and Kevin.



Friday 9 July 2010

Clitter!


Clitter! - watch more funny videos

I'm off to a friend's 40th birthday party this weekend, and wondering what to wear. I think I can guarantee it won't be Clitter though...
;-)

Video is from this comedy site

Wednesday 7 July 2010

Lust in Translation


Well, I'm just admiring this cover. It's the German translation of the Black Lace anthology The Affair (which happens to include my story The High Ground - read an excerpt here), which is now on sale. Isn't it just great? And Wow! - a picture that shows a couple going at it and emphasises the male butt body! It's a publishing miracle!

Buy it at Amazon Germany 
Amazon US (including Kindle) : Amazon UK

And I have it on very good authority (like, I've got a copy of the contract) that Lust at First Bite, the all-vampire anthology featuring my Venice story The Blood of the Martyrs, is going to be published in German too.  Yay Eurosmut!

I am finding it hard to believe that the German for "stories" is "storys," mind. I'd have expected something longer and with more umlauts.  Danielle?

Monday 5 July 2010

Eyecandy Monday


There's been rather a lot of muscle and testosterone flexed on this blog recently, so this picture is to redress the balance. Slightly.

If you want more female eyecandy - try some of the tumblr links in my side bar:

Cinderwench does a mixture of women, men and couples: mostly arty stuff much like you find on my Eyecandy Mondays.
Dina does mostly (but not exclusively) women, with an eclectic mix of shapes and sizes and themes: some pretty hardcore. Plus Barbies in compromising positions!
Sex is Not the Enemy serves up a mix of eyecandy of all genders, cartoons, and food for thought.

Do you want MORE MALE eyecandy? You could try:


Wet Men - on the beach, in the shower: all shapes and sizes and ages, which makes a nice change.
Fuck Yeah Sodomites! - eyecandy and political snippets.

Sunday 4 July 2010

4th July


Happy Independence Day, you guys over there!

I'm not into nationalism of any stripe, but I am very much in favour of independence - intellectual, political and social. I offer this famous poem, by a bloke who was in no way in favour of colonial independence, but who had some good things to say about individual integrity. Best read stripped of its Edwardian context, I think.

Saturday 3 July 2010

Gold, on Snow: an excerpt


Let me tell you a fairy story. It's very well known: it's the story of a young princess whose stepmother is homicidally jealous of her beauty (Hmm. Sounds like there might be a little more to it than that, doesn't it?), so she is sent off to her death in the woods. She somehow manages to persuade her would-be-murderer to let her go (I wonder how she did that..?) and she wanders through the woods until she find the house of seven inhuman men, who agree to take her in and look after her out of compassion. (Yeah, right: we believe that!) All they ask in exchange of this stunningly beautiful maiden is that she does their housework for them... (Who are you kidding?!)

That's where my story Gold, on Snow starts. And it's told from the point of view of the wicked witchy stepmother, who has come to finish the girl off once and for all. This is not one of my nice stories. Make no mistake: it's dark and it's very very dirty.

Yes, seven dwarves...


I ignore the insects that whine in my ears as the world darkens at my back. I am all patience. Haven't I been patient many years? I watch as they eat their stew and lay the bowls aside. Then the girl lifts her eyes to the oldest, broadest and most knotted of the svartalfar. He nods, and two of the others hurry to take an iron chest from the shadows and lay it before him.
    

It is full of gold. Not coin, but jewellery of extraordinary delicacy and beauty. The girl stands. See how the tip of her tongue wets her plump berry-coloured lips: she is trembling with anticipation.  She moves into the centre of the room, the circle formed by the svartalfar on their stools. Then one of them, his eyes the yellow of topazes, comes forward and unlaces her dress, dropping it to her feet then helping her step out.
    

Skin as white as snow. It is very nearly no exaggeration; in the lamplight she seems to glow.  I squirm with envy and with trepidation; she is absolutely beautiful. Perfect breasts, twin-tipped with pink. Perfectly curved hips. Perfect, flawless thighs. She is as smooth as marble taken from a riverbed, as a polished moonstone, as new-fallen snow. The only colours about her are in the soot-black hair upon her head, her gleaming dark eyes, her blood-red lips. I hear the svartalfar sigh.
    

They dress her from the treasure box. They come forward all at once, and work with the patient care of true craftsmen, neither getting in each other's way nor fumbling, their dark hands delicate and sure on her pale skin: a pair of elaborate earrings, filigree greaves that embrace her shins and calves, wristlets that attach to finger-rings by a web of golden links, spiralling armlets. Then a collar of gold, and chains that hang down from it to rings that go through her nipples, pulling them up. Rings through her labia and her clitoris. She does not flinch; the invisible holes in her flesh must be old, and she well used to the jewellery. Her whole body is hung with arcs of delicate gold chain, pinned to her flanks by fine wires. Filigree wings attach flat to her shoulder blades. A plug is inserted deep between the snowy globes of her bottom and she bends and takes it with equanimity: when it is in place a gold tail stands in a curve like a cat's behind her, gleaming in the light of the fire.


See how they admire their own handiwork when they are done, standing back to revel in the full effect? They love artifice and they love beauty; she is now the perfect combination of both. Her lips curve with satisfaction.  She runs her hands gently, gently down her own body, plucking at the wires that pierce her flesh, circling her breasts and hefting their orbs to make the pendant beads dance. She rolls her rear to make her tail twitch. She shimmies her hips.  She loves her own body, dressed only in gold. She loves what they have made of her: a pagan idol.

To show her gratitude, she begins to dance for them.




If you've ever harboured nasty suspicions about exactly how snow white Snow White was, this is the story for you! Gold, On Snow appears in Alison's Wonderland, edited by Alison Tyler and offically out on sale this week.

Buy at Amazon US : Buy at Amazon UK

Visit the Alison's Wonderland blog, where you can read interviews with me and the other authors in this scary fairy anthology.

Thursday 1 July 2010

Sleep Tight: an excerpt


Today is the day that the Fairy Tale Lust anthology is officially released into the wild. So I thought I'd bring you an excerpt from my contribution, Sleep Tight. It's a simple little story: the narrator has been hired to clear a path through hugely overgrown brambles, to allow lawyers access to a long-abandoned house. It's a hot day. When he finally reaches the front door, he finds it open. Inside, where nobody should be - where nobody could be - he finds a woman sleeping...



Stoned, I think. Or drunk. She’d have heard me otherwise. Grasping the curve of her shoulder more firmly, I give her a little shake. ‘You okay?’

She doesn’t answer. All that happens is that her breathing deepens audibly, and the lace catches on my callused hand and shreds as I lift it. The lace is actually rotten: the threads fall almost into dust. I blink stupidly. Then I reach over to take her by both shoulders and I shake her harder, lifting her an inch from her bed. She falls back upon the dark velvet coverlet with a sigh, and as I withdraw I somehow manage to snag the garment across her breast and tear it open; it offers no more resistance than cobweb. 

Fuck, I think witlessly. And I see that where the fabric has pulled and torn across the sweet pale curve of her right breast, her nipple has responded to the stimulus. As I watch, it hardens visibly, rising like a pale pink bud from its areola. I watch as my fingers steal back to brush that swelling mound and it stiffens to dimples.

My head is spinning. This is all like a dream. It can’t be real. There can’t be a young woman asleep in a house that’s been locked up for ten years. She can’t be impossible to wake. I can’t be watching my fingertips touch her - softly, so softly - so that the cushion of her breast is topped by a flushed pearl. I can’t be hearing a gentle moan in her throat.


For a moment I think she’s woken, and I withdraw my hand an inch. She arches a little as if in pursuit of my touch, her breasts rising. Then she relaxes with a ghostly whimper of loss.
    

It’s like a dream, or a story. An old, familiar story. I moisten my dry lips, knowing what I need to do. Gently I sit on the bed – it’s actually a horsehair couch and almost unyielding - and I lean forward to kiss her. She has full, provocative lips for such otherwise delicate features. They feel cool under mine.
    

But all she does is smile in her sleep, faintly.
    

A second time I bend to kiss her, and this time I cup both her breasts, feeling their soft mounds yield beneath my hot hands. She’s as cool as earth and as velvety as a flower petal and she tastes of rosewater. I tug at her nipples until they’re both stiff like beads. I hear her whimper.
   

 Then I sit back. Nothing has changed: her eyes are still shut, their dark lashes etched on her pale cheeks. I’m awash with confusion and shame and arousal. Under my jeans my cock is kicking angrily at its confines, swollen with selfish need. Her pale breasts shine through the shreds of her garment like moons rising through cloud. Without letting myself think I run a fingertip down the length of her body, tearing a furrow through the old grey lace. If it’s so fragile, a part of my mind asks, how did she put it on? - but I ignore the question. She’s just too much of a temptation. I reach the slight swell of her pubic mound and slid my fingers under and through the lace, cupping her.




Buy at Amazon US : Pre-order from Amazon UK (out July 22nd)

There is a mini-interview with me up on the Fairy Tale Lust blog - featuring a photo of me as a demon! Plus there's a COMPETITION everyone can enter to win books and chocolate! Now that's what I call a happy ending!