Jesus' Winkie and the Empress from the Brothel

From the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe

I spent a day in Ravenna last month and I really have to share with you some of my pictures of the mosaics that make that Italian town famous! All over the city, in churches and sepulchres, are found the most incredible, detailed, glittering Byzantine mosaics. They're made of glass and gold, and these pictures cannot do justice to the colour saturation or the sheer bling of their visual effect.

The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

This below is one of my favourites - and no, not just because of the cheery depiction of Jesus' tackle through the clear water! It's notable in these early artworks that Jesus is shown as young man, and beardless, instead of the iconic face we're used to nowadays. Love how the dove is spitting showering him with water from its beak. And that bearded, horned man on the left there ... he's the personification of the River Jordan, in old pagan style.

The roof of the Arian Baptistry - Jesus being baptised 

(Arians were NOT pagans, btw - it was a rival version of Christianity, similar in pretty much every way except that Jesus the Son was held not to be co-existent with God the Father, but a later and lesser entity. It makes intuitive sense after all: a son always appears on the scene after a father. But that also made it heresy. Arianism was wiped out and their churches co-opted as orthodox Catholic ones. Grumpy hero Herrick in my story The Scent of Hawthorn, is, incidentally, an Arian.)

But back to the mosaics ... and it's in the Basilica of San Vitale that we find two of the most interesting portraits in mosaic form. This ill-shaven, slightly sleazy-looking fellow is the Emperor Justinian I.

He was the one who really put the final boot into paganism and made Christianity the only religion you could get away with in the Eastern Roman Empire. Despite ethusiastically persecuting pagans, heretics and Samaritans, he had a reptutation for being pretty laid-back and tolerant in person ... at least in comparison to his wife, Theodora. Everyone knew, if you had to choose between annoying the Emperor or the Empress, it was far safer to piss the husband off.

This is Theodora, the Empress from the Brothel.

She was an extraordinary woman - ballsy, intelligent, ambitious and ruthless. She came from the gutter to become the most powerful woman in the world. She was a child prostitute and bawdy mime actress from a circus family in Constantinople. According to Procopius (who really had his snark on when writing his not-for-publication Super Sekret Diary) she entertained forty lovers a night, and complained only that nature had not endowed her with more than three orifices! Then she converted to God and clean living, and in her mid-twenties met Justinian, nephew of the emperor, and he fell so much in love with her that he got the laws changed to allow him to marry her.

And she was a heretic! Yes, the entire long length of their reign together (527-548 AD), they argued theology but she never gave in, and Justinian completely respected her. Despite the fact that her fellow Christian heretics* were being run out of town and killed by angry orthodox types, her loyalty was never in doubt - even when she directly interfered to thwart the Emperor's orthodox ambitons, and sheltered the heretics. She was the one who stood firm when the mob rose up in rebellion, and stopped Justinian fleeing the city. "Purple," she told him, "makes a fine shroud." (At her urging, Justinian stayed, sent the troops in instead, and massacred 30,000 people. It worked.)

It seems to have been a marriage of true soul-mates. He adored her.

Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845-1902): The Empress Theodora at the Colisseum

Oh - and she got him to introduce a whole slew of laws protecting the rights of women to property, to guardianship of their own children, to not being forced into prostitution and so on. Under Justinian and Theodora the right of men to kill their adulterous wives was revoked (and a man could only kill his wife's lover if he gave written warning three times!!).

There's a good article on Theodora's life here.
And she's now a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Which is pretty good going for someone who used to have geese peck corn off her pussy!

---

*She was a monophysite, believing that Jesus' nature was singular (divine) and not a mixture of human and divine. It's all just word-salad, honestly.

Barking for joy

Some news ...

I am going to be hosting a live webchat on the subject of erotic fantasy (that's swords-and-sorcery type fantasy) for my favourite online resource centre, the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. All welcome! It runs on 15th September, at 12 noon PST, 3pm EST or 8pm in Britain, and I think it'll last about an hour. Full details on how to join in here - please do drop by!

I'm also going to be the ERWA Guest Author for October - WHOOOOP! - which means three of my best stories will be up - temporarily - on their site for you to read for free. More details when it happens! You can read stories by their current guest, Delilah Devlin, here (left-hand column).

And that picture up top there? I'm barking with excitement because my petplay short story Being His Bitch (published recently in Bound By Lust) has been chosen for Best Women's Erotica 2013, edited by Violet Blue (This came as a surprise to me too - I hadn't actually subbed a story this year!). This is a very prestigious collection so I am officially a Very Good Girl and will be given a pat on the head and an extra dog-biscuit tonight :-)

You can read a sneaky preview of the story here too!

Here we go gathering nuts in May...

[click to enlarge]

Today is the day I'm giving my annual walk/talk on Tree Folklore and Story, so I thought I'd post this picture of a 13th Century tree fresco found in Massa Marittima, Tuscany. Hidden behind a layer of whitewash on the public fountain for centuries, it was rediscovered in 1999-2000 and restored 2008-11 (to some controversy - read all about that here).

It depects a group of women standing beneath a tree, whose branches are laden with very large phalli. Its meaning is obscure - they were originally assumed to be harvesting cocks from the Penis Tree (as you do) but later claims have a more negative spin, interpreting them as witches. In local folklore, apparently, witches were said to steal men's genitalia and put them up in birds' nests in trees, where they lived on independently. Certainly, in this picture, one of the cocks seems to have snuck down and is poking the woman at the left of the line in the botty!

(In northern Europe witches were said to keep their stolen penises under the bed, a theme I use in Named and Shamed). I think if I were a disembodied penis I'd prefer to be free-range, so long as the weather was nice.

So, if you ever wake up and find your penis is missing, you know here to look.

Geek Love!

This, if you haven't seen it yet, is just AMAZING. Geek Love: an anthology of full-frontal nerdity is a forthcoming e-book of sexy art and fiction in full glorious colour, and - WHOAHHH!!!- I'm helping out Shanna Germain with editing the fiction!

Want to get involved?

1) There's an open call for fiction, graphic artwork and photography - all themed around the erotic potential of geeks, nerds and their interests. That's a pretty broad field: everything from SF to online gaming, Star Trek figure-collecting to Steampunk. Full submission details here - but you need to be fast because the closing date is 15th September.

"Do you have the hots for that uber-sexy IT chick who knows exactly how to turn your computer on? Do you find a mad scientist’s lab a sexier setting than the bridal suite at the Ritz? Do you take tours through the natural history museum just so you can watch the tour guide talk about the hardness of perfectly preserved dino bones? Know how to twiddle a game controller with the best of them? Then we want to see your stories, art and comics in Geek Love.

Geek Love will be a collection that celebrates geekdom in all its erotic, smart, hot-as-an-exploding-chem-lab ways. Think smart and sexy, girls with glasses, boys with brains, computers with all the right hardware. Give us characters who are smart but not smarmy, nerdy and wordy — whether they’re playing Doctor or petting Schrödinger’s pussy! Bring us your mad (and sane) scientists, your grammar nerds and your nerdy grandmas, your role players and cos-players, your freaks and geeks, your goggles and gears."




2) We're running this as a Kickstarter project because we want to pay all our contributors a proper wage and make spinoff stuff like T-shirts. Do take a look at the site because it tells you lots more about the project and the awesome team involved. You can pledge toward our Kickstarter goal: it only gets taken out of your account if we do reach the goal, so you can be assured of your rewards. Lots of lovely special stuff on offer to pledgers there ... including a single unique chance to collaborate with me in choosing a theme (and public dedication) for a short story to appear in my next collection!

So join us and support this lovely project, please!

Dive dive dive!

I'm back from holiday with a small piece of card and a new hobby - I've passed my PADI Open Water Scuba course and am now certified! Yaaaaay! This means I now know the vital importance of recording Actual Bottom Time ... which, believe me, I am keen on racking up some more of ;-)

We did our PADI course with Cydive in Paphos. The island of Cyprus is also blessed with lots of this:

The underground "Tombs of the Kings"

and this:

(Note that the halo exists in pre-Christian art - that's Apollo on the right there)

But at 34 degrees centigrade all we really wanted to do, when we weren't in the sea, was this:

:-)

Eyecandy Monday

Ahem. I'm away on holiday again. I know, I know: it's just insane. I never meant this summer to turn out this way. People just keep booking me onto beautiful sunsoaked vacations!
"How is she getting any work done?" you may ask - and the answer is, I'm bloody not. My wordage is abysmal.
"Poor Janine," I hear you murmur.

But I'm back on the 21st, and by Grud I'd better pull my finger out then, because I have a truly fabulous opportunity on offer from a publisher and if I don't grab it by the horns I need shooting.

I'll leave you meantime with this hot guy lolling about in an artistic manner in a warm sea. Imagine me snorkelling next to him, if you must. Think of me with pity and compassion, my friends, as I - OWWW!

Drop the Pilot

I'm away at Fairport Convention's annual Cropredy Festival right now - so here's hoping for dry weather (but not too much sun or else we fry out there on the field)! Oldies Big Country will be playing (yay!) but the act I'm most looking forward to is Joan Armatrading, so here she is with one of my favourite songs ever.

Excerpt: Teppanyaki

Finished (or finished with) 50 Shades of Grey? Got a taste for BDSM but a preference for couples who really love each other? Then you need Anything For You: erotica for kinky couples, which came out this week!

Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel, it features stories by ... well, check out the author lineup and read the introduction over here! And I'm in there too, with my outrageous BDSM story Teppanyaki (which is a word I perpetually struggle to spell). It's about Japanese food. It's about a dinner party. It's a about a D/s couple who are going to go whole new places tonight, as they let another couple into their cosy domestic setup. Things get messy. There is melted butter and soy sauce everywhere by the end, I warn you!

So here's an excerpt:

---

“Oh, you're wet,” I tell her. She turns her face away against her shoulder, her breasts rising in sharp little heaves. “Do you like this, then? Do you like being tied up and made to open your legs so I can touch your pussy? Are you a dirty little girl?”
   
That's the moment the doorbell rings.

“Right on time,” I say, withdrawing my hand and standing. “Jason's never late.”

Wendy's face is a picture. Her thighs slap together. “Shit! Ade, let me out!”

I lift my fingers to my face, savouring the perfume of her pussy, and grin. “No, I don't think so.”

Her eyes go round. “Ade!”

“What, honey? Are you worried I'm going to bring a work-colleague and his wife in here? That they're going to see you tied to a chair, helpless, with your skirt all rucked up like that?  That they're going to know your pussy is all juiced up and ready for it?”

Her makeup is perfect, of course, but I'm delighted to see an explosive flush of pink across her throat and chest and shoulders as the shame flares within her. She makes a valiant, if completely vain, attempt to smooth down her skirt by writhing her thighs, and then pulls forward, tugging against the handcuffs. “Ade!” she cries. “Stop it! You can't!”

Of course, Wendy should know—in fact she does know, when thinking straight—that the sight of her struggling against bonds just puts hot lead in my balls. “Can't?” I ask, rubbing one hand across the hard-on now making its urgent presence felt inside my pants.

“Please!”

Oh, that gets me harder than an iron bar. I stepped in, lifted her chin in my hand and looked into her wide eyes. Tears of terror are welling up there. “Want to beg me?” I whisper harshly

“Please Ade! Oh god, please! I can't—I can't do it! I'll die of shame! Please don't!”

I cock an eyebrow, waiting, my swollen cock pressing up against its own prison as vigorously as Wendy tugs against her cuffs. The first tear leaks over her lashes. She's utterly sincere: she means what she says and I don't doubt that she feels overwhelmed by humiliation.
   
But.
   
“What's the magic word?” I ask.
   
“Please! I'll do anything, Ade, but not this!” Her begging is heartbreakingly beautiful. Her eyes are like pools of torment and I want to fall into them.
   
“Will you beg me to fuck your ass?” Anal's a practice she retreats from, normally; it offends her over-active sense of cleanliness.

“Yes! Even that! Please!”

That isn't the magic word. I step back. “No,” I say decisively. “I think I prefer this.” Then I walk out. In the doorway I turn back and look at her, giving her one more chance. We have a safeword, of course. But Wendy's pulling wordlessly against the steel bonds, her lips parted as if in agony and her breasts heaving. Utterly fucking beautiful. And mute. 
   
Jason and Maria are waiting patiently at the front door when I open it; I had warned them I might be a few minutes.
   
“Come in! Let me take those coats.” I usher them into the hallway and kiss Maria on either cheek. This is the first time we've met. She has a sweet smile full of suppressed excitement and barely comes up to Jason's breast pocket. He's all bone and paleness, his skin tight over his sharp cheekbones. She looks in exquisite in a red dress. I think Wendy's going to like them both.
   
“We've been looking forward to this, Ade.”

Jason and I have worked together a couple of times on different cases. He's sound: a rock solid sort. You can learn a hell of a lot about a guy when you share long surveillance shifts with him.

“Well, we're all ready for you. Wendy's just through in the dining room.”

Jason and Maria swing. Wendy and I don't, because I don't like the idea of some other man fucking my wife. She's mine. And Wendy knows I'm the possessive type and likes it that way; it makes her feel special. So we don't move in Jason and Maria's circles. But there are, I guess you'd say, areas where our interests as couples overlap.

As I lead the way back into the dining room, my heart lifts with pride at the picture presented. Wendy has ceased fighting the cuffs and is sat up very straight with her feet tucked beneath the chair, trying to look as demure as it's possible to do with wrists tied. Her face is averted self-consciously, her lips parted and shiny.

Perfect.

“Maria, Jason, this is Wendy. She's feeling a bit shy at the moment, I'm afraid. Wendy, say hello.”

“Hello,” she whispers. “How lovely to meet you.”

I know how difficult she must be finding this. How impossible it must be for her, in that hot swamp of her embarrassment, to find the right social chit-chat. So I make things easy for her: “Wendy, you're to be silent now. Open your legs.”

She eases her thighs apart. I could explode with pride. Jason is standing with his hands in his pockets, a big grin plastered all over his face. Maria goes forward and stoops, kissing her on the cheek.

“What a lovely outfit, Wendy,” she murmurs. “Ade has told us so much about you.”

---

Buy at Amazon US : Pre-order at Amazon UK (published September)

Tomb raider

One of the things we did on my recent flit around Europe, was pay our respect to the Etruscans. The first major civilization on the Italian penninsula, they were rivals of - and eventually eclipsed, conquered and assimilated by - Rome. They left a lot of tombs behind, though. The ones at Tarquinia are particularly famous for their, um, lively depictions of ancient practices. Heh. They were decadent, wealthy, fabulously artistic (especially when it came to gold-working) and lived for pleasure, it is said. They dominated the area that is now Tuscany - which is where it got its name.

The thing that really drove the Romans and Greeks nuts was the behaviour of Etruscan women, who partipated freely and enthusiastically in public life alongside their menfolk, and seem from the archaeological evidence to have enjoyed high status and regard. An apoplectic Greek historian reported that "these take great care of their bodies and exercise naked, often along with men ... They sit down to table not beside their own husbands but beside any of the guests, and they even drink to the health of anyone they please! Moreover they are great winebibbers and very beautiful to behold. The Tyrrhenians bring up together all those children that are born to them, heedless of who their father may be ... There is no shame for a Tyrrhenian to be seen committing a sexual act in public." They also practiced enthusiastic bisexuality and manscaping of body-hair :-)

Etruscan funerary sculpture extols the joys of married life (these two not my pics):

This is what the mighty hilltop city of Tarquinia (founded 10th Century BCE, pop 100,000) looks like nowadays:

You can find it northwest of Rome, near the coast. The necropolis is on a hill outside the city. The tombs consist of sloping passages cut into the rock, at the bottom of which are carved-out chambers. The richest ones are painted with scenes of daily life - people rocking out...

... blond hunks lolling on their couches -

and mythological scenarios, mostly to do with the journey into the underworld. THIS is one demigoddess I have to write a story about sometime. Just wait!

You can probably make out that the paintings are pretty degraded - the most fragile have been removed to the (excellent) local museum. Those that remain are protected behind perspex doors from the 100 % humidity lurking at the bottom of the graveshafts (the walls are running with condensation), so please forgive the less than brilliant photography.

 We found more Etruscan remains further north, later. This is a Via Cave -  a road that has been cut into the soft tuff rock. A network of these connected the towns and necropli (I love that word!) of the Tuscany plateau.

After Tarquinia, we went to Cerveteri, which is practically on the outskirts of Rome nowadays. No doubt this accounts for the fact that it is practically unvisited and unheard of - in any other country it'd be FAMOUS. It's a huge necropolis - 50,000 people were buried there in what is literally a City of the Dead. There are streets of terraced "housing" for the departed:

 and huge mound tombs carved from the living rock:

Inside, the tombs usually have the same layout as domestic dwellings.

Some slabs even come complete with carved bed-linen!

It reminded me a lot of Highgate Cemetery in London, except hot. We spent hours exploring tombs and dark tunnels. And I couldn't stop imagining what a fabulous setting it'd make for an all-night undead-hunting LARP adventure . . .  *geeky blush*.

Tarquinia and Cerveteri are both UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Eyecandy Monday: faster, higher, stronger, hotter

Federica Pellegrini and ... OMG ... boyfriend Filippo Magnini, both swimmers

When I was watching the recording of the parade the Olympic opening ceremony, I found myself rather overwhelmed by the number of fit, beautiful young people the world has to offer! Luckily for the rest of us second-rate mortals, many of them just can't wait to get their kit off and let us admire the bodies of which they may be justly proud.

Victoria Pendleton, cycling

 Some do it to promote Fairtrade Coffee too ...

Louise Hazel, heptathlon

So here's a selection of my favourite Olympic Eyecandy, although you really want to be over at this website, where there are many more, displayed to better advantage.

Philips Idowu, triple jump

Maya Nakanishi, paralympic sprinter

Gregor Tait, swimmer

Carmelita Jeter, sprinter

Louis Smith, pommel horse gymnast

Ronda Rousey, judo

Danell Leyva, gymnastics

Anna Tunnicliffe, sailing

But I can't help having a special warm spot for Jessica Ennis, gold-medal heptathlon champion despite being only 5'5". She's just so cute!

Excerpt: Slave of the Lamp

E-anthology Underworlds: tales of paranormal lust is now out from Mischief Books. It's only £0.99! Here's the author lineup:

Heavenly Shades - Charlotte Stein
Slave of the Lamp - Janine Ashbless
Katie - Angela Caperton
Sleepwalker's Secret - Rose de Fer
They Come at Night - Elizabeth Coldwell
Period Drama - Lara Lancey
The Ursa Legacy - Anne Tourney
Riding the Ghost Train - Chrissie Bentley
Fancy a F**k? - Lisette Ashton
The Hunt - Penelope Hildern

My story, Slave of the Lamp, is all about werewolves.
No, I'm shitting you ... it's about a genie, of course! - he's prisoner/slave of the Queen of Sheba and he's NOT AT ALL HAPPY ABOUT THAT. Especially when Queen Bilqis comes up with a shocking use for his magical powers. There's gender-bending, pervy sex, and extremely dubious consent in this tale ...

And here's an excerpt:

---

She summons me forth once more. This time I am indoors, and cannot grow to my full height. I rein myself in before I smash through the carved cedar beams of the roof.

There is a squealing and a shrieking, a flurry of panic at my arrival. I look down and see the room is full of women. It makes me grin to see them shrink away and cover their faces - though several are peeking through the slits of their fingers, and that makes me grin too. I have arrived clothed, because Bilqis commands me thus, but my silken trousers do not fully disguise the extent of my exuberance. They are all young and lovely; their breasts bare and firm, their shapely thighs and rounded bottoms a field of delight that my rampant share urges me to plough. In Solomon's palace, I would assume that this is the apartment of his concubines. Here in Sheba, they must be the queen's handmaidens. It is clear they have not been expecting the arrival of any male, and their consternation is enchanting. I wish to rush in among them like a cockerel among a flock of hens.

'Djinni!'

I force my attention back to Bilqis, who kneels upon cushions in the middle of this fluttering crowd, with a slender maiden cradled in her arms. 'Mistress?'

She's dressed less formally today. I can see her ebony nipples through the damp and clinging gauze of her robe. I understand that the land of Sheba is considered punishingly hot by humans. 'Djinni,' says she, 'my slave here has been bitten by a viper. Can you heal her?'

The girl in her arms is twisting with pain, her dark skin grey now and glistening with sweat. I can see her injured foot, swollen to twice its natural size, propped upon a cushion.

'Pray to the God of Solomon, mistress,' I suggest sourly. 'Does He not promise to be merciful?'

'I have. And to Shams and Ilmaqah and Athtar, who rule this land. The gods do not answer me. So if it lies within your power, djinni, I command you to heal this maid.'

I briefly consider some way to twist her words, but my heart is not in it. I am too distracted by the perfumed, quivering throng of women. And the girl is pretty, for a human, or will be so when well. I twitch a single finger - mostly to show how easy this is for me - and the poison hisses out of her, issuing as faint green cloud from her open lips. Her leg reverts instantly to healthy flesh.

Everyone in the room utters a wahwahwah of wonder. Except Bilqis, who smiles and nods, and the girl, who sobs and buries her face in her queen's breasts.

'There, there,' says the monarch of all Sheba, both left and right of the Red Sea. 'You are fine. Not need to cry, my sweet one.' And my eyes widen as the maid pulls down the fine gauze of the queen's robe and sucks a big nipple into her mouth.

Bilqis closes her own eyes for a moment in pleasure, then opens them, meeting my gaze with a long, considering look. 'You did well, djinni,' she says. 'It pleases me to reward you.' With a couple of clicks of her fingers she jerks two of the women at the side of the chamber from their knees. 'You two: see to his pleasure.'

I'm taken aback, but far from dismayed. The young women are curvaceous of body and beautiful of face, and they advance toward me with rapidly rising and falling breasts, bright-eyed but gratifyingly nervous.

'It would help, djinni,' says the queen in a dry voice, 'if you were to assume the size of a mortal man.'

I comply, shrinking my towering form down from the ceiling, until I am only the size of a very large man. The two handmaidens kneel before me on the cushioned floor, and reach for my hidden weapon, wetting their lips as they tug at my clothes. They are eager to obey their queen, I note, approving.

'Do not hurt them, djinni,' Bilqis adds as an afterthought.

I bare my sharp teeth in a grin at her.

---

Buy at Mischief Books (multiple formats) : Amazon UK : Amazon US (kindle format)

Remember, you don't need a Kindle to download kindle-format books.

---

P.S: You'd be amazed at the amount of research that went into this short story. I even had to look up the distribution of snakes in the Middle East for that one line about the viper-bite!

Foreign affairs

My contributor copy of "Foreign Affairs," out now from Xcite Books :-)

So, I'm back from my Foreign Affairs - for the moment anyway - and I'm suntanned and all aglow (yay!) ... and half a stone heavier (boo!). I've been to six different countries. I have eaten a load of pizza. I have swum in the Mediterranean Sea and a lake and a sulphur spring. I have discovered that the Maned Wolf reeks of cannabis! I've driven under the Alps and the English Channel. I have stayed in a yurt and seen camels, though possibly not where you'd expect to find them ...

And now I'm back, with pictures of Tombs and Towers and Tesserae to show, and some exciting publishing news to reveal when it's confirmed. While I've been away, several anthologies including my short stories have come out, so I've got excerpts to post. Ayeeeeee ... how will I ever catch up?

Well, I'm going to start with this fab review of Named and Shamed over at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association - big thanks to Ashley Lister :-)

I can't find a permalink so here it is in full:

---

"This is an awful lot of fun. I grew up in an era when I was supposed to go to bed with a fairy story and enjoy the fantastical tales of other worlds and the creatures that lived therein. Named and Shamed helped me recapture those fond memories but from the perspective of an adult who also enjoys the erotic titillation of characters exploring their hedonistic natures.


Written by the incredibly talented Janine Ashbless, illustrated by the stylish and talented John LaChatte, Named and Shamed is pitched as a ‘Dark and Dirty Fairy Tale’ and this succinctly describes the content.

The basic premise is that our heroine, Tansy, has stolen a manuscript relating to her studies into the magical worlds of mythical creatures. Tansy is a wonderful real-world heroine and her story in this magical world is an absolute delight.

From the vivid description, through to the strong characterisation, through to the plot that makes you want to stay awake into the early hours of the morning – Named and Shamed is one of the most fun reading experiences you will have this year.

Meet Tansy, follow her adventures, and look out for future Janine Ashbless titles."

---

"Named and Shamed" spotted in Paddington Station by Kay Jaybee!