The new Avengers movie opens here this week, so here are a couple of fabulously silly and fabulously sexy superhero cosplayers to save the day.
You can find more here and actually buy the prints here
Monday, 30 April 2012
Eyecandy Monday
The new Avengers movie opens here this week, so here are a couple of fabulously silly and fabulously sexy superhero cosplayers to save the day.
You can find more here and actually buy the prints here
Sunday, 29 April 2012
Friday, 27 April 2012
They shot my dog
I was walking my dogs in a local park, and there were four teenage boys messing about on the other side of a fence. It turned out that what they were messing about with was an airgun. They shot Caspian in the shoulder while my back was turned. £400 in vets fees (general anaesthetic, x-rays, antibiotics) later, and the pellet is too deep in the muscle to remove without major surgery, so it's just going to stay there.
He's okay. He seemed to find the vet visits more traumatic than the gunshot, to be honest. No lasting harm done.
Wednesday, 25 April 2012
Cheap and dirty!
Like e-erotica? Want some half price, or FREE?Well Mischief Books are currently - and for a limited time only, I believe until the end of April - discounting their books on Amazon US, Amazon UK, the Mischief website, iBooks, Kobo and possibly other vendors too.
So you can buy Red Grow the Roses, my vampire novel, for £1.99, or $3.27!
The Shameful Thrills antho is £0.99 / $1.63 !
The Exposure anthology is a paltry £0.49 / $0.81 !
And in case you think I'm only plugging my own work, the following books are COMPLETELY FREE:
Sisters in Sin, novella by Primula Bond
Submission: a treasury of women who like to give in (antho)
A Study in Shame, novella by Lucy Salisbury
At Your Mercy: tales of domination (antho)
The Secret Diary of a Sex Addict, by Amber Stephens
See? I have only your pocketbooks and naughty bits in mind, always. Er...
(And remember - you don't have to have a Kindle to download kindle-formatted books to your PC/phone - there's an app right there by the "buy" button.)
Monday, 23 April 2012
Eyecandy Monday Special: Tansy's kinky kiss and tell
Well, some people just aren't grateful. Today Tansy, the heroine of my fairy novel Named and Shamed, is giving an interview over at Kinky Ever After. Does she show any appreciation for all the hard work I put in writing about her sexy adventures? Does she heck! She calls me "that Ashbless cow."
It's all part of a Kinky Kiss and Tell: interview the characters series going on for a month at Kinky Ever After. I note that other fictional characters aren't nearly as rude about their authors as mine is.
Huh.
Sunday, 22 April 2012
TftD: Books
I've read Carrie's War and Red Shift this week - catching up on the books that should have been read in my childhood.
Although, I'm actually really glad I didn't read Red Shift as a kid.
Friday, 20 April 2012
Guest post: K D Grace
What have KD Grace and I in common? Well, apart from the writing of erotica, we're both keen gardeners. Today she's here on my blog to talk about - and give us an excerpt from - her new novella Surrogates (out from Mischief Books), but there's a whole big gardening theme going on in there...
K D says:
"A lot of the ideas for my new novella, Surrogates, came from my own digging the veg beds and weeding, and waiting for the harvest, but Surrogates, at least in part, was inspired by much older, much larger gardens, larger even than our shiny new allotment.
"Several years ago my husband and I went on holiday to Cornwall with some friends and spent a day wandering through the Lost Gardens of Heligan. I was intrigued and moved by the story of a garden that had once been the epitome of beauty, as well the source of food for the grand estate of the Tremayne family. Then the gardeners went off to war in 1914 and never returned. Within a few years the gardens fell into disrepair, were over-run by brambles and ivy and forgotten. The gardens are now restored and are a major tourist attraction in Cornwall, and the story of the restoration is a huge part of the attraction.
"Medieval gardens were walled. The walls were an attempt to restore a little corner of the Garden of Eden, to restore spiritual order in a fallen world. Strangely the medieval kitchen garden that I often think about is not restored. It’s barely more than a tumbling wall on the top of Tintagel Castle Mount. There are speculations as to what the garden might have looked like, what might have been grown there, and how the castle, set up on the rocky cliff and cut off from the mainland by the pounding sea, would have been totally dependent upon such walled gardens if there had been a siege. Tintagel is the mythical birth place of King Arthur. There’s not much of the actual castle left, and more and more of it is falling into the sea all the time. But it’s the most wonderful place for the imagination. I’ve imagined all kinds of stories there, stories of knights and ladies, stories of princes and witches, and of course, stories of secret romantic trysts carried out in the privacy of a walled garden.
"But the garden that inspired Surrogates most heavily is the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, just outside Rome. I visited there with my sister one unusually scorching October. We went to Hadrian’s Villa first, and I would have loved to have lingered, but there was little shade and it was just too hot. We ended up wandering the cool green gardens of the Villa d’Este, getting lost in its walkways, exploring its fountains, and grottos and enjoying the hillside breeze. The Villa d’Este is a Renaissance Garden, and a spectacular one. Renaissance Gardens are traditionally full of scenes from mythology. There are always fountains and other water elements because water symbolised fertility and the abundance of nature. And often, within the design of the garden, there is a cryptic bit of information about the estate owner – a riddle, a mystery set out for the visitors in the garden to resolve. That bit of information is deliciously sinister in Mark Mill’s fascinating novel, The Savage Garden,
"Surrogates is a story of ménage with green fingers. The lovely, quirky, Francie Carter has been hired by Daniel Alexander III and his wife, Isabel to restore their medieval kitchen garden, and grow veg for them. Daniel has also hired his mate from Uni, who is now landscaper to the rich and powerful, to build a Renaissance Garden patterned after Villa d’Este, a place of which both men have fond memories. When the three get together sparks fly and nothing will ever be the same again."
Blurb:
DANIEL ALEXANDER III takes his marriage vows seriously. Until he gets the balls to ask his wife, BEL, for a divorce, watching each other masturbate is all he can offer his beautiful gardener, FRANCIE CARTER. But when Dan’s friend, SIMON PARIS, agrees to be his surrogate, affairs of the heart get complicated.
Excerpt:
Dan wasn’t listening. ‘Francie, darling, I know how hard it is for you, with us not able to really be with each other. I promise that’ll end soon, and we can be together properly. But in the meantime, it’s not right me having Bel and you having no one. So I’ve come up with a solution for us. Simon will be my surrogate.’
‘What?’ Francie had pushed herself back against the sink as far as she could. Her heart raced in her throat and her face felt like it would burst into flame. ‘You want me to … You want us to …’ She nodded to Simon, then she glared up at him. ‘Is this why you’re here?’
But before Simon could do more than make a couple of fish gasps, Dan ploughed on. ‘Oh don’t you see, darling, it’s so perfect. If I can’t be with you, if I can’t give you what I know you so desperately need, then who better to help us both out that my dearest, most trusted friend, Simon.’
‘He’s a landscaper. He’s hired help just like I am.’ She sounded a lot more hysterical than she meant to. What she wanted to sound was outraged. What she wanted to sound was incensed.
‘No, sweetheart, no. Simon and I are old friends. We went to uni together. We spent a wild summer in Italy together. Darling, I’d trust Simon with my life.’ He shot Simon a meaningful glance, then his gaze came to rest on her. ‘I’d trust him with the person in my life I value most, the one I most want to make happy.’ He caught his breath, and his face softened. ‘Please, darling. This is a gift, something I can do for you. You can pretend he’s me. I can make love to you through Simon, and you, anything you’ve wanted to do to me you can do to him.’
‘Anything?’ She spoke around her racing heart, which felt like it would jump right out of her mouth.
‘Yes, anything, darling. Anything.’
‘Good.’ Before she had time to consider what she was doing, she slapped Simon, hard, hard enough that he recoiled. Both men gasped, and her hand stung like fire. But she ignored the pain, squared her shoulders and looked Simon right in his now watering grey eyes. ‘Then you can give him that for me.’
To her total surprise, Simon did exactly as she said. He walked over to Dan and slapped him, slapped him hard enough to knock Dan up against the staging table, slapped him hard enough to draw blood where a tooth cut his lip.
The electric silence that followed was interrupted only by the heavy breathing of all three. The two men glared at each other for a moment, sizing one another up. Trembling all over, Francie grabbed the edge of the sink for support, just as Simon turned his back on Dan and came to stand in front of her. He stood so close his breath ruffled the hair that had come loose from the clasp she wore it up in, so close that the rise and fall of his chest beneath his T-shirt was impossible to ignore, so close the heat rising from his body felt magnetic.
‘Does that about sum it up?’ He asked.
For a second, she thought she might cry. But instead, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. She kissed him as hard as she had slapped him, like she wanted to eat him up, like she wanted to crawl up inside his warmth. And he kissed her back. Jesus, how he kissed her back! He kissed and nipped the hollow of her throat around to the sensitive place below her ear, then he whispered in between efforts to breathe. ‘If you want me to stop, tell me now before it’s too late.’
‘Don’t you dare, don’t you dare, don’t you dare,’ she gasped over and over again, guiding his hand to the knot tied below her right breast that held her wrap-around dress closed.
He yanked it hard, then he shoved and pushed until the dress slid from her shoulders and pooled on the floor around her gardening clogs. Somewhere in the periphery of her mind she heard Dan’s fly unzip, a sound she’d grown used to over the past few months, a sound that constantly taunted her with everything she could see yet never touch.
But there were other things to focus on today. Simon kissed his way down her sternum and cupped her breasts, cupped them and kneaded them until her nipples strained against the callouses of his stroking fingers. Then his mouth took over. What her breasts lacked in size, they made up for in sensitivity, and her whole body thrummed as he suckled and bit, nibbled and licked.
K D Grace links:
Website: http://kdgrace.co.uk/
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/KDGraceAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/KD_Grace
Buy Links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Mischief
K D says:
"A lot of the ideas for my new novella, Surrogates, came from my own digging the veg beds and weeding, and waiting for the harvest, but Surrogates, at least in part, was inspired by much older, much larger gardens, larger even than our shiny new allotment.
"Several years ago my husband and I went on holiday to Cornwall with some friends and spent a day wandering through the Lost Gardens of Heligan. I was intrigued and moved by the story of a garden that had once been the epitome of beauty, as well the source of food for the grand estate of the Tremayne family. Then the gardeners went off to war in 1914 and never returned. Within a few years the gardens fell into disrepair, were over-run by brambles and ivy and forgotten. The gardens are now restored and are a major tourist attraction in Cornwall, and the story of the restoration is a huge part of the attraction.
"Medieval gardens were walled. The walls were an attempt to restore a little corner of the Garden of Eden, to restore spiritual order in a fallen world. Strangely the medieval kitchen garden that I often think about is not restored. It’s barely more than a tumbling wall on the top of Tintagel Castle Mount. There are speculations as to what the garden might have looked like, what might have been grown there, and how the castle, set up on the rocky cliff and cut off from the mainland by the pounding sea, would have been totally dependent upon such walled gardens if there had been a siege. Tintagel is the mythical birth place of King Arthur. There’s not much of the actual castle left, and more and more of it is falling into the sea all the time. But it’s the most wonderful place for the imagination. I’ve imagined all kinds of stories there, stories of knights and ladies, stories of princes and witches, and of course, stories of secret romantic trysts carried out in the privacy of a walled garden.
"But the garden that inspired Surrogates most heavily is the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, just outside Rome. I visited there with my sister one unusually scorching October. We went to Hadrian’s Villa first, and I would have loved to have lingered, but there was little shade and it was just too hot. We ended up wandering the cool green gardens of the Villa d’Este, getting lost in its walkways, exploring its fountains, and grottos and enjoying the hillside breeze. The Villa d’Este is a Renaissance Garden, and a spectacular one. Renaissance Gardens are traditionally full of scenes from mythology. There are always fountains and other water elements because water symbolised fertility and the abundance of nature. And often, within the design of the garden, there is a cryptic bit of information about the estate owner – a riddle, a mystery set out for the visitors in the garden to resolve. That bit of information is deliciously sinister in Mark Mill’s fascinating novel, The Savage Garden,
"Surrogates is a story of ménage with green fingers. The lovely, quirky, Francie Carter has been hired by Daniel Alexander III and his wife, Isabel to restore their medieval kitchen garden, and grow veg for them. Daniel has also hired his mate from Uni, who is now landscaper to the rich and powerful, to build a Renaissance Garden patterned after Villa d’Este, a place of which both men have fond memories. When the three get together sparks fly and nothing will ever be the same again."
Blurb:
DANIEL ALEXANDER III takes his marriage vows seriously. Until he gets the balls to ask his wife, BEL, for a divorce, watching each other masturbate is all he can offer his beautiful gardener, FRANCIE CARTER. But when Dan’s friend, SIMON PARIS, agrees to be his surrogate, affairs of the heart get complicated.
Excerpt:
Dan wasn’t listening. ‘Francie, darling, I know how hard it is for you, with us not able to really be with each other. I promise that’ll end soon, and we can be together properly. But in the meantime, it’s not right me having Bel and you having no one. So I’ve come up with a solution for us. Simon will be my surrogate.’
‘What?’ Francie had pushed herself back against the sink as far as she could. Her heart raced in her throat and her face felt like it would burst into flame. ‘You want me to … You want us to …’ She nodded to Simon, then she glared up at him. ‘Is this why you’re here?’
But before Simon could do more than make a couple of fish gasps, Dan ploughed on. ‘Oh don’t you see, darling, it’s so perfect. If I can’t be with you, if I can’t give you what I know you so desperately need, then who better to help us both out that my dearest, most trusted friend, Simon.’
‘He’s a landscaper. He’s hired help just like I am.’ She sounded a lot more hysterical than she meant to. What she wanted to sound was outraged. What she wanted to sound was incensed.
‘No, sweetheart, no. Simon and I are old friends. We went to uni together. We spent a wild summer in Italy together. Darling, I’d trust Simon with my life.’ He shot Simon a meaningful glance, then his gaze came to rest on her. ‘I’d trust him with the person in my life I value most, the one I most want to make happy.’ He caught his breath, and his face softened. ‘Please, darling. This is a gift, something I can do for you. You can pretend he’s me. I can make love to you through Simon, and you, anything you’ve wanted to do to me you can do to him.’
‘Anything?’ She spoke around her racing heart, which felt like it would jump right out of her mouth.
‘Yes, anything, darling. Anything.’
‘Good.’ Before she had time to consider what she was doing, she slapped Simon, hard, hard enough that he recoiled. Both men gasped, and her hand stung like fire. But she ignored the pain, squared her shoulders and looked Simon right in his now watering grey eyes. ‘Then you can give him that for me.’
To her total surprise, Simon did exactly as she said. He walked over to Dan and slapped him, slapped him hard enough to knock Dan up against the staging table, slapped him hard enough to draw blood where a tooth cut his lip.
The electric silence that followed was interrupted only by the heavy breathing of all three. The two men glared at each other for a moment, sizing one another up. Trembling all over, Francie grabbed the edge of the sink for support, just as Simon turned his back on Dan and came to stand in front of her. He stood so close his breath ruffled the hair that had come loose from the clasp she wore it up in, so close that the rise and fall of his chest beneath his T-shirt was impossible to ignore, so close the heat rising from his body felt magnetic.
‘Does that about sum it up?’ He asked.
For a second, she thought she might cry. But instead, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. She kissed him as hard as she had slapped him, like she wanted to eat him up, like she wanted to crawl up inside his warmth. And he kissed her back. Jesus, how he kissed her back! He kissed and nipped the hollow of her throat around to the sensitive place below her ear, then he whispered in between efforts to breathe. ‘If you want me to stop, tell me now before it’s too late.’
‘Don’t you dare, don’t you dare, don’t you dare,’ she gasped over and over again, guiding his hand to the knot tied below her right breast that held her wrap-around dress closed.
He yanked it hard, then he shoved and pushed until the dress slid from her shoulders and pooled on the floor around her gardening clogs. Somewhere in the periphery of her mind she heard Dan’s fly unzip, a sound she’d grown used to over the past few months, a sound that constantly taunted her with everything she could see yet never touch.
But there were other things to focus on today. Simon kissed his way down her sternum and cupped her breasts, cupped them and kneaded them until her nipples strained against the callouses of his stroking fingers. Then his mouth took over. What her breasts lacked in size, they made up for in sensitivity, and her whole body thrummed as he suckled and bit, nibbled and licked.
K D Grace links:
Website: http://kdgrace.co.uk/
Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/KDGraceAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/KD_Grace
Buy Links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Mischief
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Sale - No Running, No Petting
No Running, No Petting is a naughty, sun-kissed m/m/f romp with bouncing bikinis and bulging trunks. I must have been in an uncharacteristic mood when I wrote it! But I love holiday trips abroad - they make me happy and excited. In fact I've got one coming up soon, so there's a smile on my face right now . . .
Full line-up:
No Running, No Petting - Janine Ashbless
Comrades On A Train - Z FergusonLucky Lucy - Jenna Bright
New Orleans When It Rains - Maxim Jakubowski
Gulliver On Lilipussia - John McKeown
The Warmth Of His Touch - Viva Jones
The Invitation - Maria Lloyd
The Oregon Trail - Landon Dixon
Escape - Clarice Clique
Burning Woman - L A Fields
French Kissing - Josie Jordan
An Argentinian Tango - Troy Seate
Romanesque - O’Neil De Noux
From Bradford To Bollywood - Victoria Blisse
Only In Vegas - Elizabeth Coldwell
Local Delicacy - Mariella Fairhead
Maya Gold - Catelyn Cash
The Liberation Of Paris - Sylvia Lowry
Après-Ski Adventure - Peter Baltensperger
Reunion - Kate J Cameron
Foreign Affairs will be released in June 2012 in the UK, just in time for summer, and September in the US - just in time for going back to work ;-)
Monday, 16 April 2012
Eyecandy Monday
This week . . . I'm at the London Book Fair! I'm planning to have dinner with Samhain tonight and sit on the Ellora's Cave stall on Wednesday.
:-D
It's a trade thing mostly, but it'll be nice to meet people. I wonder what we'll talk about?
Saturday, 14 April 2012
Cold front
Actually I've still got the central heating on. In April. Either it's been a particularly cold Spring, or I'm getting old :-(
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Coffee and Porn guest post
Ooh - I'm the Thursday Thing over at Coffee and Porn in the Morning* today!
My Thing is minotaurs. That's "Taurens", if you're under 30. Cue snippets from my beastly writings...
Coffee & Porn is a great site - every day it gifts the world with assorted postings of eyecandy (male, female, m/f, m/m, f/f, includes naughty bits, but always pretty and arty), plus coffee cups, and random musings by different people. Lots of perky caffeinated fun to keep you going through the day, and the NSFW bits are neatly hidden behind the folds.
* wine and sex in the afternoon
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Dear Author recommends!
"I’m grading very few books above a B+ these days so I’m really mad at myself for not reading this last year when it could have made my Top Ten list."
"And what a tale it is with twists and turns and adventures galore. There were times when I honestly had no idea of what would come next, and instances when I gnashed my teeth at whatever it was that interrupted me from reading the next page."
But you can read the whole review over here :-)
The only problem is that now she's wondering about reading more of my stuff...
"Is the hotness level of this book what’s usual from Ashbless? I’m not much into erotic romance and saw that term used for her books which makes me hesitate to try more."
So people have recommended The King's Viper to her, which is, indeed, my next-most "romancey" book. *Ahem.* Romance with extra Anal.
The throught of all those innocent romance readers enjoying Heart of Flame and then trying, say, Red Grow the Roses . . . makes me feel almost guilty. . . !
Download Heart of Flame at Samhain : Amazon US : Amazon UK
Monday, 9 April 2012
Eyecandy Monday - Hustler steampunk special
[click on any pic to enlarge]
I'm in Hustler! Okay ... so not entirely true, but Carnal Machines (edited by D L King, includes my story The Servant Question) has been awarded the Hustler Seal of Approval, which is nearly as funny. So in honour of this glorious (if unlikely) occasion I thought I'd post my favourite steampunk cosplay eyecandy.
For Science and The British Empire!
Hmm ... Disproportionate number of redheads there. Could be a thesis in that.
Buy Carnal Machines at Amazon US : Amazon UK - also available as Kindle editions
Saturday, 7 April 2012
Friday, 6 April 2012
Named and Shamed - the blurb
Or "cover copy" as I believe we say when we are being genteel.
Anyway, it's officially out: the first glimpse of the actual plot for Named and Shamed:
Once upon a time, a naughty girl called Tansy stole a very precious manuscript from a kindly dealer of antiques. Tansy is a six-foot, ultra-busty, sexually adventurous, auburn-haired siren. How could our gentle antiquarian possibly be expected to resist her charms? But there is much more at stake than a few sheets of parchment. All of the world’s ancient and powerful magic, lost for centuries, has returned — and the world is now a very different place. If our antiques dealer does not get his manuscript back…he will die.
When Tansy realises what she’s done, she knows she must return the manuscript. There’s only one problem: She doesn’t have it anymore. As luck would have it, a roguish musician offers to help Tansy retrieve the contraband. If Tansy doesn’t get the document, it will cost a man his life. But if Tansy does get the document, the musician’s price could be very high indeed…
Thus begins a rude and rugged fairytale the likes of which would NEVER have been read to you when you were little! Poor Tansy is led though the most pleasurable trials and the most shameful tribulations as her quest unfolds before her. Orgasmic joy and abject humiliation are laid upon Tansy in equal measure as she straddles the two worlds of magic and man.
From debauched dryads to oversexed ogres, fantasy and BDSM slither together to make Named & Shamed the consummate adult fable – all lusciously illustrated by Florian Meacci. Immerse yourself in this dark and depraved fairytale, and may all your endings be happy ever after!
Heh. Can you tell it's not aimed at a female/romantica audience?
But that's fair warning. With Named and Shamed I turned off my inner censor. I've gone places and explored kinks that I've never even touched in my writing. And there's a big emphasis on the "shame" side of things; public exhibitionism and humiliation is what turns Tansy on.
It's very very dirty. I shocked myself writing this! So hold on to your hats :-)
Release date? We don't know, but it's VERY SOON - it's gone to layout.
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Game of Thrones - top totty
I've just finished watching season one of HBO's Game of Thrones ("The Sopranos in Middle Earth"), and I'm about to start on season two. I am completely, hopelessly, addicted. I don't care much for politicking but I love those crazy badass characters.
Bet you can't guess, out of a very large cast, who it was that I had the hots for!
Was it gruff, honourable, dooooooomed Ned Stark?
Nope.
Was it pretty badboy Jaime Lannister?
Nope.
Was it scheming Queen Cersei?
Nope (though I've learned to admire and sympathise with her. A bit).
Was it huge macho barbarian Khal Drogo?
Nope (although he's certainly not unpleasant on the eye).
Was it crazy dragon lady Daenerys Targaryen?
Nope (although she had the best character-arc ever in series one, from dishrag to psycho barbarian queen).
Could it be cuteypie virgin John Snow, then?
Nope!
Who do I fancy? Well, it's actually divided between these two guys:
Yes. I fancy the Imp and the Ginger Outcast.
That is because I'm one of these
and both Tyrion Lannister and Jorah Mormont are smart. (And not (obviously) dicks ... though that remains to be seen.)
Anyway, there's already one episode of season two gone to air and waiting for me, which probably means everyone I fancy is already dead, because Game of Thrones is like that.
(from Better Book Titles)
I can't wait!
Monday, 2 April 2012
Eyecandy Monday
After a hard weekend's LARPing, we're all aching and exhausted...
;-)
(Posed by models. Sadly, my life does not really look like this picture.)
Well, sorry about that unexpected failure to post for a few days. I was up until 4.30am two nights in a row, getting my ass kicked first by paladins and then undead. I now have aches in all my fighting muscles (thighs, shoulders, ribs). I actually managed a trip + backward roll head-over-heels at one point. It was all just GLORIOUS - but everything outside that little pocket unverse went right out of my head!
Now I need more sleep...