Wednesday, 31 December 2014

2014 in the rear view mirror

Somebody has been stealing days while my back was turned. I swear that 2014 was the shortest year ever ... It had barely kicked off before it was October and all my books came out at once, and now it's over. Who the hell is it running away with time like that?!

So I'd better get this post up, I guess, before it turns out it's July again all of a sudden. Every year I nominate my cultural highpoints. The Ashys for 2014 go to ...

Best Book:


The best book I read in 2014 was a graphic fantasy novel translated from the French. Beautiful Darkness is a truly horrific story depicted in the prettiest Golden-Age-of-fairy-illustrations manner ... which just makes it more emotionally devastating. A powerful and chilling book reminder that neither Beauty nor Innocence equates to Good. "Borrowers meets Lord of the Flies" is the best summation I've come across.


Best Movie:


I watched 29 movies this year, slightly more than last year. I think it's been a good year for fantasy films (in the broadest sense), and its been terrific to see some really strong female roles and heroes for a change.  Here are my top five, in order of personal enjoyment at the time of watching, not artistic merit or anything:



1) Locke
2) Frozen
3) The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies
4) Maleficent
5) The Railway Man.

And the movie I hated most was Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.


Best Music:

I've been listening to two CDs overandoverandover whilst driving, and both are from artists you'll probably have never heard of.

Freddie Stevenson:



and Frank Turner:




Best TV:



I know I'm miles behind the rest of the world, but I spent a lot of 2014 catching up on Deadwood ... and enjoying it thoroughly. Cocksusckers.

Best Entertainment Act:



I went to see illusionist Derren Brown live in the show in which he discusses his coming out. He's awesome :-)
"The process of coming out is normally very disappointing," he said. "It’s not that people react badly to it - they really don’t care. You walk around with something for years that you build into this huge secret but it isn’t reflected to how it is in other people’s eyes. It’s so important to defuse that because it becomes a huge misery needlessly. There’s a nice quote by David Foster Wallace: 'We’d worry a lot less about what other people think about us if we realised how seldom they do.'"

Best Picture:



This has to be picture of the year!! - one of the pictures sent back from the Philae lander from the surface of Comet 67P. It made me teary with awe :-)

Monday, 29 December 2014

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment. Between October (when it came out as an e-book) and today, the last Monday of 2014, those excerpts have all been from the stories in my new collection Fierce Enchantments.

Story 10: The Merry Maid

The final story! My previous two collections have finished with a romance, but since I already wrote one ("A Man's best Friend") for the #9 slot, this book finishes with humorous fairytale that features three brothers who set off together to seek their fortune  (and a magic porridge spoon) ...


 
“Do we taste the same?” the Eldest Brother asked, as the Merry Maid wiped at her chin. The Middle Brother was in no state to ask anything: he was still gasping and groaning.

“No,” she giggled. Then she turned to the Youngest Brother.

He handed her his cup of ale that had languished, forgotten, during the performance, and she drank from it gratefully. “Before we begin,” he said, “I would like to give you the kiss I promised.”

“Very well.”

“Sit you upon the end of this bench, Merry Maid.” But when she did so, looking at him a little askance, he went down on his own knees before her and threw up her skirts over her thighs.

“Oh! I see!” said she, as he parted her legs. Then “Oh!” again as he pushed her back upon the cushion and went nuzzling up under her skirt, pressing his lips to her virgin puss. And “Oh!”—far longer and more drawn out—as his kiss struck home. To the bemusement of his brothers, their youngest sibling did not cease in his kissing, and the Merry Maid did not resist his blandishments. Her bare breasts heaving, she lay back upon the bench’s length, wriggling her hips with joy. Slowly it dawned upon them that her secret treasure, that thing that must remain inviolate until her wedding day, was more than capable of being pleasured without being entered by any cock. This sight was no hardship for their eyes either, nor for their nether parts, which despite being so recently drained were a-twitch with interest. The two brothers watched, grinning, as their youngest sibling gamahuched away.

At length the Merry Maid gave a great cry and arched her spine and then collapsed, babbling and giggling. The Youngest Brother looked up from under her skirts with a big grin and a slick of juice plastered across his face, appearing for all the world as if he had been eating a basket of ripe plums.

“Oh!” she said. “Oh, you have earned your pleasure with that kiss! Come here, my sweet, that I may repay you!”

“But—No,” he said. “Not yet. I would rather do this …” And with those words he plunged back into the fray, and set to once more upon her virgin treasure with his lips. At first the Merry Maid shrieked and made as if to wriggle from his grasp, but as he persisted she surrendered in very short order, with many sighs and yelps of pleasure. This time, too, she caught her own breasts in her hands and pinched her own nipples.

That was too much for the Middle Brother. Rising from his seat, he found the pot of butter that had been on the dinner table, and scooped out a big blob upon his fingertips. He used this to baste the maiden’s bosom, slathering her all over until her breasts were two slippery orbs that he could mould and press and squeeze together. She seemed most grateful for this attention, willingly giving up to the task to him. In fact she smeared butter from her skin onto her hand and used it to grease up his tool, working it with a firm grip.

That was enough to bring the Eldest Brother back into action. Coming round the other side of the bench, he took his turn tugging upon a slippery nipple. Eagerly she grabbed his cock too. They arranged themselves either side of her head, and as the Youngest Brother ate her puss, they plied their trade upon her breasts as if milking a fine cow.

“Yes!” the maiden groaned, pulling upon their cocks—lengths that were showing surprising solidity and girth, considering what they had already been through. She rolled her face to one side, urging the Eldest Brother’s length toward her open, hungry mouth. With one knee on the bench edge, he discovered her could crouch at the right angle to feed his bell-end to her lips. Her tongue darted out, lapping him. For a moment he rediscovered paradise—and then she rolled away, to the other side, searching out the Middle Brother’s cock in turn.

That was how they brought her off for a second time, between them—slippery tits, slippery cocks, a kiss upon a wet and slippery puss. Turn and turn about, two stiff members to suck, back and forth between them, tasting butter and sweat and salt, until she opened up once more and, with a squeal, came. By that time she had worked their limbs so hard and so surely that it was not difficult for both the elder brothers to take themselves in hand and squeeze out their seed in slopping spasms into her open mouth.

As they staggered back, the Youngest Brother rose at last to claim his own.



 Amazon UK : Amazon US 

Sunday, 28 December 2014

Xmas bun


I went over to Jennifer Denys' house today for a smashing post-Xmas lunch, and to natter about life and books, and meet the much-grown Holly the Rabbit again.

Okay, that's it for Xmas. The diet starts NOW!

Friday, 26 December 2014

Phenology - December

FIRST FROST!!

Well good grief, we are getting a proper winter at last.



Not that I am a fan of cold. I'm not really a fan of December at all. Carols laud the holly and the ivy because there is barely any other foliage left to notice:


As we head toward the dark of the Winter Solstice the only compensating features of natural interest are to be found above the earth, not on it. There are sometimes wonderful long winter twilights, where the sky stays blue over a greeny-brown streak of atmospheric pollution at the horizon, and the lacy black silhouettes of trees are etched against the light.


I love those. Tree anatomy, clothed for so long by foliage, is wonderfully striking when bared to view like that.


And sometimes, even more rarely, there are magnificent dawns:


But damn, I hate the mud.

Wednesday, 24 December 2014

Happy Xmas!


Well, despite all the warning signs, Christmas has still managed to catch me unprepared. I haven't sent any cards, I haven't wrapped the few presents I have managed to buy, and my food preparation timetable consists of "cross fingers and hope it all comes together." :-D

It doesn't matter. That's just trimmings. There's a superb article here about the True Meaning of Christmas (which I recommend only as long as you are not feeling fragile).

Joy and peace and love to all who read this. May you find comfort with those you love. May you make it through the dark days and come out into the light.

XXX

Monday, 22 December 2014

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment. Between October (when it came out as an e-book) and the end of 2014 (when it comes out in paperback), those excerpts will be from the stories in my new collection Fierce Enchantments.

Story 9: A Man's Best Friend

For those exhausted and traumatised by last week's story, A Man's Best Friend should be a bit more peaceful. It's a proper fantasy romance, set in a land which somewhat resembles ancient China. Musician and ex-warrior Lin Xhai, exhausted and broken by war, has travelled for months to find the wife of his best friend, and let her know that she is a widow.



“Rest with our ancestors, husband, and be at peace,” she whispered, setting the blue pot among the others. Xhai stood and moved away, giving her space to pray. He looked out across the darkening landscape and the blue gloaming. Early stars were emerging in the west. The evening was still, no breeze stirring the grass. He could feel his heartbeat, thudding in his chest.

When Tsulin had finished, he helped her replace the grave slab. Her face was pale in the shadows, but he had heard no weeping. They walked away a little.

“I didn’t know you’d had children,” he said softly.

She ran her hand across her head. “They were both born too early, and only half-made. One the second year, one the next, and then the soldiers came and took him away for the Emperor, so I never had a chance to give him another.” Her voice sounded hoarse. “I must have spoken to a widow-woman when I was small, my mother says, and been stricken barren. Now I have passed the widow’s curse on, to my children. To my husband, who is dead of it.”

The weight in his chest was jagged now. “No!” he protested. “You did not kill him; war took him. It is an insatiable thing. I have seen a thousand thousand men dead upon the battlefield—do you think your little curse did that?” He wanted to grab her and shake her. He wanted to seize her face and kiss it. “You did not curse him. Liwan spoke of you often, and always with love. He longed to return to you. You were a joy to him.”

Tsulin turned to him in the blue dusk. He could hear her breath, fast and shallow. She laid a hand on his breast and his heart crashed against it. She tangled the fingers of her other hand in the still-damp ends of his long hair. He clasped her around the waist, before he could think about it, and she pressed against him, panting. His blood was roaring in his veins, and he was filled with both delight and the terror of teetering upon the edge of doing her a terrible wrong. The scent of her hair filled his head, driving out thought. Her body was pliant under his hands and he couldn’t tell if he was pushing her away or pulling her to him.


Then she reached down and grabbed his cock through his trousers, and his whole world fell apart. He didn’t need to see clearly to clasp her face and lift it, covering her lips with his kiss. She moaned into his mouth, her open palm writhing across the hardness of his shaft, and he staggered, pushing her back across the grass. Both her hands were suddenly at the drawstring of his trousers, pulling frantically, as he kissed her and kissed her and the breathless dusk whirled around them.

It was only when she bared him that he really believed it. Only then that he knew what he was doing. He laid her down in the long grass and yanked open her jacket to reveal those luscious breasts, soft as peaches. The scent of her skin was intoxicating; the ripe swell of her flesh beneath his mouth and the stiff pucker of her nipples drove him out of his senses. He sucked upon her even as his hands tore at her trousers, jerking them down over narrow hips, pulling off one of her boots and hurling it away in his haste to open her legs.

He found her sex, moist and open and soft. There was no question of finesse. Her hands scrabbled at his cock and balls, pulling him to her, squeezing his shaft like it was a spear and she was ready to kill someone with it. So he stabbed her to the core and felt her gasp and heave beneath him. Her heat was all around him, wet and slippery and exquisite; her legs embraced his hips. For a moment he froze, not daring to move. He felt her arch her spine, and heard her growl as she bit at his jaw.

“Yes!” she gasped.

It was like a fight to the death. Her body heaved beneath his. She was slighter and softer and so much weaker than him, but she refused to go limp. He was thrusting with all his weight, but still she fought him, her body growing more and more rigid as he drove in and out. And he didn’t want to hurt her, didn’t want to defile her, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t tear himself away from the hunger of her mouth, and the fingernails that bit into his clenching buttocks, and the wet hot incredible need of her sex, the need of her body, the need of her lost days and her stolen love.

Until she start to shake, clamped rigid and locked around him, and she jerked and cried out like something dying, and then for a moment he paused because he thought that somehow he was hurting her, and then he knew he was going to die too; he could feel his death pouring through him like a red tide from his balls all the way up his spine. It was coming, coming, coming—he jerked out of her, desperate to spill on the green grass, but he’d lost control of this long ago and he erupted all over her belly and thighs.

Oh, he thought, as he fell through a star-filled void. I had forgotten what it’s like. How good.




 Amazon UK : Amazon US 

Sunday, 21 December 2014

Rijksmuseum

Here are some pics from last week of random things in the Amsterdam Rijkmuseum that amused me for various reasons (some of them silly, yeah okay!).

This was the closest I got to Rembrandt's The Night Watch. I know what I like ... and this is nothing special, seriously.

I do like medieval art:

Mary Magdalene, Carlo Crivelli, c. 1480


Depictions of St. Mary Magdalene are usually cool because she was an ex Fallen Woman and therefore that gave one an excuse to own a painting of a HOT BABE, in fashionable/sexy clothes, and still be pious. This one is particularly lecherous-looking, and her clothes are sumptuous.


Okay, this one is surreal. A medieval heraldic lady with antlers for legs that you hang off the ceiling. Because ... No, actually I have no idea on this one. Back to art that makes a bit more sense:

Detail, Four Canons Regular of St. Augustine meditating at an open grave , Master of the Spes Nostra, 1500

I like corpse pictures, okay. This corpse is the centre of attention in the painting.

Detail, Saul and the Witch of Endor by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, 1526
This picture is full of witches, satyrs and demons in various crazy forms. And giant owls. The full pic is well worth a look!

Detail, The Fall of Man, Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem 1592
I like the fact that the painter here has had an imaginative shot at God Almighty himself, depicted as a cloud man with face and hands.


This picture (a detail of a church scene) is meant to be funny - the painter included a full-sized tromp-l'oeil fly on the woman's bonnet, to fool viewers into thinking one had landed on the picture :-) (Also there is an owlet on the other woman's head. What is it with the owls, you Dutch?)


Shiva's very fine bum. No further explanation required.

Detail, Landscape with an Episode from the Conquest of America , Jan Mostaert, c. 1535
Finally, a real oddity. The full picture shows the Spanish turning up to massacre Native Americans (depicted as naked Dutchmen because the artist had no clue whatsoever what they should look like). What I really want to know is why two of them - and only two - have bright red Santa Claus hats on...?

Friday, 19 December 2014

In bed with the Huns

I spent last weekend in the Netherlands. NOT doing what you might think! No, I was looking at beds:


These are hunebedden - either "Hun beds" or "giants' beds" (it's not entirely clear which the word derives from, nor is it clear that there was a distinction in popular mythology):

Look! Giants!

Fifty+ of them are found in the woodsy province of Drenthe in the north of the country, and they are in fact Neolithic burial mounds, belonging to the Funnel Beaker People and built around 5000 years ago. The rocks themselves are erratics weighing up to 25,000 kilos, swept down from Scandinavia by glaciers during an ice-age 200,000 years ago.

This is the biggest hunebed: D27



It was excavated in 1685 by a LGBT poet called Titia Bronsgerma, who was famous in her time for writing poems in alternating lines of French and Frisian.


Here's a rather wonderful engraving of her supervising the dig and being presented with treasures, dressed as a Greek goddess. Clearly archaeology was a lot more about having fun, and a lot less about post-holes and carbon-dating, back in the early days.



She of course subsequently wrote a poem ("Loff op 't Hunnebed") about her site, which is, ahem, loosely translated here.

 
This is what they are assumed to have looked like from inside when complete. Each would have had multiple occupants:


The Dutch are, of course, still obsessed with civil engineering and moving rocks about. They even build statues to rock-humpers:

But they seriously need to learn to lift with the knees

Wednesday, 17 December 2014

A Game of Boners - first draft


Well, I'm delighted to say that the moment I announced I was going to be doing a workshop at Eroticon 2015, friends sprang into action to encourage me in the mysteries of PowerPoint. In fact one went so far as to provide me with some slides I might use.

You can only imagine my gratitude :-)  All my work is done for me!
Behold, I present to you ...




Thanks Annie! This will not be forgotten!
:-D

Monday, 15 December 2014

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment. Between October (when it came out as an e-book) and December (when it comes out in paperback), those excerpts will be from the stories in my new collection Fierce Enchantments.

Story 8: The Military Mind

After last week's spooky and downbeat story, The Military Mind is a riotous space-opera gang-bang. Set in a future where humankind is resisting alien invasion. Peyton is a trained psychic and new to war. She first has to undergo sexual bonding with the six-man squad of marines she is to work with.


Oh - first you might want to go read the earlier excerpt over at Tamsin Flowers' Supererotica




“Shit, man. Not fair.”

“Don’t be a dick, Hayes.”

“I just like to go first. It’s tighter, you know.”

“That’s because yours is like a cocktail sausage.”

Ignoring all this, Eriksen stepped forward and caught her by the cotton vest still bunched up at the top of her breastbone. There was no sign of pleasure on his face at having been chosen; if anything the blue-ice glare deepened.

“By the numbers, Private,” said Sergeant Jomoa dryly, wandering off a little to light another cigarette.

“Yes, Sarge.” Twisting the cloth until it pulled uncomfortably tight under her arms, he passed his other hand over her exposed breasts, petting and rubbing, petting and rubbing … and then breaking off to tug experimentally at her hard nipples before going back to stroking her. If he’d squeezed her roughly it would have just been a grab, but these caresses heightened her breasts’ sensitivity almost beyond bearing. Peyton couldn’t have hidden her response if she’d tried; the rush of sensation made her close her eyes and bite her lip, though that couldn’t stop the little breathy moans escaping.

“Oh fuck yeah,” murmured Hayes.

Then Eriksen trailed his fingers down her body, right into the soft and hairless split of her sex. Standing on tiptoe, it wasn’t particularly easy to open her legs wide enough for him, but obedience was ingrained. As his fingers slithered around in the copious wet he found and delved into her passage, her pussy tilted instinctively and ground into his palm. She’d never been touched by an actual man down there—but when he held her sex in his hand, it was like she was made to fit him.
It was almost enough to make her protest when he withdrew his fingers. But then he lifted them to his face and inhaled her bouquet, tasting one fingertip and then another.

“Ah, fuck,” said Rialto in the distance. “Real pussy. None of that machine shit.”

All the time Eriksen was watching her face, as if assessing her reaction to being played with. No, she thought—not assessing. Judging. No imprinting was needed to recognise the disapproval that burned in his cold eyes. She had a sudden panicky moment as she thought she’d picked the wrong man entirely.

So it took her by surprise when he swung her around by her shirt and sat her on top of the nearest foot-locker, pushed up her thighs—and then sank down to a crouch between them, burying his face in her open pussy. She lost her balance and tipped back with a cry, her head and shoulders flopping down onto the hard military mattress of the bed behind. The machines—the vids—the doctors—none of them had prepared her for this: the feeling of a man’s hot face between her thighs, the scour of his stubble, the hungry sucking play of his tongue. It was almost too much, just for that first moment, and she cried out and kicked, her legs finding no purchase on the air. But Eriksen grabbed her calves and pushed her legs right up and back, pinning her in place. And after that it wasn’t too much. She only wanted more.

“Shit, man,” Hayes complained. “Hurry up, my balls are blue here. Fuck that romance shit. Do it later.”

“What, after you’ve spunked all over it?” Rialto asked.

“Hey. Maybe he’d like a little gravy on his meat.”

Eriksen emerged for air, leaving Peyton bereft. “She has to come. That’s the point, isn’t it?” He had some sort of European accent.

Brannon grunted. “She’ll come. Look at her. She’s a real pslut.” He said it without rancour. “Just fuck her.”

The thing was, he was right and Peyton knew it, though she’d never been with a man before this day. EFORCE had trained her mind for psliding and her body, with equal thoroughness, for orgasmic response. Once aroused, she could be pushed into climax over and over again—until she was beyond satiation, until she was no longer able to think, until she was weeping with exhaustion between bouts, but burning for another one the moment it began again. It was what she was. How else was she to bond with her squad?

“Don’t take all day, Eriksen,” said Sergeant Jomoa mildly.

With a grunt, Eriksen heaved himself to his feet, though he looked down at Peyton as if she were a piece of meat. Only his massively stiff cock betrayed any emotion. Draping her heels over his shoulders, he muscled up against her pussy, slid one thumb over her clit and slipped his length inside her. He didn’t hurry. He didn’t push deep before he partly retreated, waited a moment and then slid in again just as slowly. It was as if he didn’t want to commit any other part of him than his cock to this enterprise.

But it was enough for Peyton. The slip of his thumbpad over her aching clit, the girth and pressure of his shaft—and then, the slight tightening of his jaw, the grimace of effort around his cold eyes. That was enough to tear the ripcord and let her first orgasm tumble out in a red silk explosion. She arched her back as it billowed through her, and wailed.

“There you go,” said Brannon.

For a few seconds Peyton simply soared on the pleasure. Then she started to hear it, like the sound of a radio gradually being tuned in to a clear station: broken snatches of a voice in her head.

—RIEL … UT THE … TIGH … WHAT IF SHE GO …?

It was Eriksen. She’d been told all about this moment, but the sensation was still eerie: In the moment of orgasm your mind will open to the person you are in congress with, and you will imprint upon him. She could hear his thoughts.



 Amazon UK : Amazon US 

Sunday, 14 December 2014

The Wife of Usher's Well



The story I excerpted on the previous Blue Monday was directly inspired by Child Ballad 79. And I first came across it sung by Steeleye Span. Love that wailing chorus.

I went through such a massive Steeleye Span phase when I was 18... What a rebel, eh?

Friday, 12 December 2014

Supererotica Advent Calendar!


Like presents? You're in luck, because erotica bloggers are just so sweet and generous :-)

Tamsin Flowers has created a Supererotica Advent Calendar, with a lovely pic and a steamy excerpt from a guest erotica writer every day in December. And today's excerpt is from my short story The Military Mind, which is one of the rudest and least restrained stories in the Fierce Enchantments collection.

Heh heh. Spice up your dark and dreary December!

Wednesday, 10 December 2014

When I was 47...

Sometimes I wear a BIGGER hat

I've just suffered my 48th birthday so this year, as every year, I'm totting up a list of all the things I've done for the FIRST TIME EVA. Am I getting old? You decide!

When I was 47, for the very first time...

  • I got a speeding citation, goddamnit. It was the end of a five-hour drive and I got clocked literally one minute from my home, doing 35 in a 30 m.p.h. zone.
  •  I put up Xmas lights outside my house:

A strong sign of old age...
  •  I acquired a tablet. I played Plants vs. zombies all the way through! It's pretty much the only thing I've done with the tablet, I admit, apart from use the lovely lovely sat nav :-)
  • I decided I liked Marmite after all, and that scones taste best with just butter.
  • I grew a beard. Not just one beard either. It's amazing how fast I got used to it.
  • I gave up on IPL. It doesn't work (for me).
  • I recorded a couple of podcasts. Well, other people did the actual recording. I just talked.
  • I set up Amazon Author Pages ... (more stuff to fail to maintain, frankly)
  • I had my back garden covered in plastic lawn. You have no idea how much I love it, now winter is here.


  • I visited the awesomely wonderful Talliston House and crawled under the sideboard there.
  • I bought an eyepencil sharpener. They are not just the same as normal pencil sharpeners, it turns out, and are well worth it if you use eyeliner. Who knew, eh?
  • I watched a pig race.
  •  I played Plants vs. Zombies - the first computer game I've ever downloaded and played all on my own.
  • I finally managed to see Deliverance and The Big Lebowski.
  • I paid £8.55 for a glass of wine in a hotel bar. Jeez. I'm still suffering flashbacks.
  • I ate a gin-and-tonic flavoured cupcake!
  • I took up oasis sculpting:
It's not the best medium to make sarcophagi out of, tbh.


PLUS:

Having spent all 2012-3 writing Cover Him with Darkness, Fierce Enchantments and Summer Seduction, which went one by one to three different publishers ... In 2014 I saw them all published within a month of each other. *rolls eyes*

It's a conspiracy, I tell you.

Monday, 8 December 2014

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment. Between October (when it came out as an e-book) and December (when it comes out in paperback), those excerpts will be from the stories in my new collection Fierce Enchantments.

Story 7: At Usher's Well

This story is based on a traditional folk song:

There lived a wife at Usher’s Well,
And a wealthy wife was she;
She had three stout and stalwart sons,
And sent them o’er the sea.
They hadn't been a week from her,

A week but barely one,
When word came to that carlin wife
That her three sons were gone.

But sometimes they come back ... So yes, this is my undead lovers story! Told from the point of view of the maidservant, who has had intimate relations with all three brothers in the past. I took a deep breath and tried to write this in a Scottish voice... "The rain never bluidy stops, it just comes in at different angles. Sometimes falling straight down like God Himself is taking a pish on us, sometimes flung in our faces by fists of wind."

I hope it works!


My Mistress is wrestling with God, and will not give an inch.

I watch her from the floor of her chamber, as I squat over the fireplace trying to get the logs to blaze properly. We’re using birch because it’s the only thing that’ll catch when wet, but it burns through so fast, and with so little heat, that I’m forever traipsing up and down the stairs with the log-basket on my back. She’s wrapped in a fur-lined pelisse to make up for my lack of success. Her face, thinner now after all these weeks of half-starving herself, catches the grey light along her cheek bone.

Oh Lord, but she looks like Finlay from that angle. My heart clenches inside me, a spasm of loss.

Finlay. Sweet Finlay with the curly brown hair and the fluff of beard on his lean cheeks. Finlay who would follow me into the dairy and press me against the shelves and call me his sweet Meg, his pretty Margaret, his windflower and his kitten and his little white dove. Who’d kiss my hands and my lips and hold me close, nuzzling my hair. Who swore he loved me, even when I laughed him off and pushed him away.

Gently. I was gentle with him. I didnae want to hurt his feelings. He said he loved me and would marry me and we would have beautiful bairns together, three of each, and the lassies would look like me and the lads would look like him.

It was all lies of course—no, not lies, but thistledown dreams. He was the smart one, the son who had learned his letters. He was destined for Oxford University far away down south, and so to take Holy Orders. He would never marry anyone. Besides, my Mistress would never countenance any one of her sons marrying a mere serving maid. Marriage is for equals, and I’d never be theirs’.

That hadnae stopped Finlay’s older brother Rory tumbling me of course—and taking my maidenhead, in fact. Rory was a big, straightforward fellow with a boisterous, ever-eager cock. He rummaged his way through every wench of beddable age in the household, but I doubt that anyone resented him for it, for he was always generous with his coins, and an easygoing master who often intervened with his mother to make sure there were extra portions at dinner for the servants, or to turn away her wrath at some domestic transgressor. Unlike my Mistress, Rory never complained that I was late lighting his fire in the morning, or slow serving at the table. He would only wink and smile at me and pat my rump, and when he came upon me in private he’d pull up my skirts and bend me over a press and slip me his length, strong and easy. On feast days he’d dance me on his broad lap until his prick was as hard as a pole and I was red and flustered, and then he’d touch me secretly under my skirts until I was running as wet and slick as a crock of butter left too close to the oven, and ready to do anything he wanted. That was how he had me, the first time.

Henry Matthew Brock, 1934

‘Are you a woman, yet, Meg?’ he’d murmured in my ear as he dandled me. He could have shouted it and no one would have heard over the ruckus.

‘No, Master Rory,’ I’d said, blushing, feeling my blood soar and my skin flame and my bones loosen.

‘Are you ready for me to make you one?’ His fingertips had stroked my purse until it gaped, begging for him to steal what lay within.

I’d moaned then, and shuddered on his lap.

‘Och, this medlar is ripe, I think,’ he’d said. His other arm was around me, his other hand stroking and squeezing my maiden breasts through my bodice. I was losing all sense; nothing in all the world mattered as much as that devastating tease between my thighs.

‘Aye,’ I’d whimpered. And as that wicked fingertip had circled the plump little pip of my medlar, I’d said ‘Aye!’ again and shut my eyes and pressed my face to his neck as I’d slithered helplessly over into paradise—right there in front of the whole household, his brothers and his mother and all the guests. I didnae cry out, but I heard the catch of Rory’s breath and then his long exhalation. I dinnae ken if anyone paid any attention. Well—I know that my Mistress saw, because she shot me a narrow-eyed glare as Rory eased me from his lap, patted my rear, and pushed me out of the hall in front of him.

It was the Midsummer feast. Rory led me out into the unmown hayfield and laid me down in the long grass, lifting my skirts. His length looked smooth as wood in the moonlight. He wet his thumb in my juices and placed it over my pip, and he kept that there, pressing and stirring, as he laid his cock to my gates and broke them down.

He was heavy, and the smell of wine and crushed grass made my head spin. I wondered why anyone did anything else but this all their lives.

My poor Mistress at the window there disnae look like Rory, and never has. I suppose he takes after his father, who was dead before I came to this place. Certainly he’s her favoured son.

Was her favoured son. It’s hard sometimes to remember that he’s dead, she denies it so adamantly. They’re all dead, drowned in the deep.


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Sunday, 7 December 2014

Under the Bare Light Bulb


Sometimes, as an author, you just have to take your life into your hands. Like following parodist Sheri Savill down into her basement because she wants "to ask a few questions about your book"

OMG.
 Sheri Savill: Ashbless! Comma! Janine! You are now under the hellish glare of the bare light bulb! I am over-caffeinated! But enough about me! How do you feel? Are you warm? Too warm, I hope?


The bad news is that this resulted in unwise confessions, retinal burns, an impromptu exorcism and a picture of my desk that probably the world (and certainly my mother) should never see. The good news is that the scars will afford me bragging rights at BDSM parties for the rest of my life :-D



Sheri is out there looking for more victims by the way. Not just erotica authors, either ...
IF YOU DARE
Seriously, her Bare Bulb interviews are unique and hilarious. GO READ THEM ALL.  Blog tours will never seem the same after this :-)