Blue Monday: Samantha MacLeod guests

Every Monday I post a hot excerpt for you entertainment!

Today's guest is Samantha MacLeod with an excerpt from her new paranormal novel The Trickster's Lover, which is released on September 6th.

Surviving Graduate School ~ Falling in Love ~ Preventing Ragnarök

Graduate student Caroline Capello has always been more comfortable with books than people. She’s just moved to the University of Chicago to become the world’s foremost authority on Norse mythology, making her the only member of her family to leave San Diego, and the family business.

But she’s wondering if she’s just made the biggest mistake of her life.

When the enigmatic and irresistibly sexy Norse god Loki appears in her studio apartment, Caroline is forced to question everything she’s learned. Do the gods exist? Are the legends about Ragnarök, the apocalyptic battle that destroys the gods and ends the Nine Realms, actually true? Or is she losing her mind?

---

I felt him cut the drawstring on my sweatpants, and they fell to the floor. He touched my wrists, his hands cool and gentle, and my entire body trembled. He pulled my arms away from my breasts, exposing my nipples, my skin flushed with heat. His smell surrounded me; woodsmoke, salt spray. My body hummed under his touch. Loki stepped back, tilting his head to one side. And he stared at me, his eyes burning.

I’ve never been very happy with my body. I’m tall and awkward, I hate my nose, and my breasts are so small my mom keeps buying me bras with an inch of extra padding. But as I stood naked in front of a Norse god, and his eyes traveled the length of my body, devouring me with a hunger I’d never seen before, I flushed with heat and shivered with arousal, and I felt sexy.

I actually felt sexy.

I watched him as he stared at me. I could trace the lines of his muscles through his leather armor, and I wanted to touch them, wanted to run my hands up his arms, along his chest. I wanted to pull his face to mine, to sink my fingers into his hair, to again feel those cool hands on my skin.

“Yes, very nice,” he said. His voice was thicker this time.

I nodded and swallowed, hard. “Thanks,” I whispered, frantically trying to think of something clever I could say to him. You’re fucking hot as hell, I thought, and then I bit my lip again. Caroline, you cannot say that.

He took a step closer to me. I could feel his body, wrapped in leather, inches from my naked skin. I trembled; the inside of my thighs were wet. I hoped he couldn’t tell. I hoped he couldn’t hear the wild pounding of my heart.

His cool fingers wrapped around my upper arm, and he leaned close to me. I felt the whisper of his hair against my skin, the warmth of his breath on my neck.

“Mortal woman,” he said, with a catch in his voice. “I desire you.”

It was suddenly very difficult to breath. My head swam with his scent, my body buzzed with his nearness. His face fixed on mine, waiting. The earlier dancing amusement in his eyes vanished, replaced by hunger and need.

I was not a virgin. I’d had sex with Doug, many times, and enjoyed it. But my body had never ached like this for Doug’s touch. I had never wanted anything as singularly, as fiercely, as I wanted this tall stranger. Now.

We were only half an inch apart; the space between us vibrated with energy.

I hesitated for another heartbeat before my hips rocked into his, my naked breasts pushed against his soft leather armor, my hands reaching up, plunging into his hair. I pulled his face to mine.

Our lips touched and electricity surged through my body. His mouth parted slightly, and I could taste salt on his soft lips. His tongue entered me and heat filled my body as he explored me, his cool hands running down my back, pressing my trembling body against his.

He laughed when we pulled apart, his eyes sparkling. “I must warn you,” he whispered in my ear, his voice now low and thick, “I’ll ruin you for all mortal men.”

“Oh, please,” I gasped. “Please ruin me.”

He laughed again, deep and wild, and his shirt disappeared. I pressed my body against his naked chest, my skin burning against him. I could feel the hard length of his cock inside the soft leather of his pants, throbbing against my inner thighs, and I moved my hips against his as he ran long, delicate fingers down my neck. He kissed and then gently bit my ear, and my entire body responded, trembling. I need him, I thought, my breath catching in my throat. I need to feel him -

He bit my neck, harder, and I cried out, aching for him. Then his pants vanished, and he grabbed me, lifting me by my thighs. He pushed my legs apart with his hips and my knee hit the chair, knocking it over. My head hit the wall, hard, as I arched my back, offering myself to him. He moaned softly as he entered me.

Relief and pleasure crashed through my body as I felt him inside me. I wrapped my legs around his hips. For a heartbeat we were still, my arms around his neck, my legs wrapped around his thighs, his breath fast and shallow on my neck.

Then he began to pull back and thrust against me, my hips banging into the wall, shaking the entire apartment. I clung to him, my body rocked with heat and ecstasy, moaning and gasping. He was inside me, fucking me, and still I wanted him, wanted more of him, wanted to destroy the distance between us, obliterate the distinction between our bodies. I arched my back against the wall, pushing him deeper as his slender hips crashed into me again and again.

My picture frames shattered as they fell from the trembling walls and hit the floor. I realized I was screaming his name, digging my nails into his back as our bodies came together, the space between us collapsing and exploding into fire. My entire body was aflame - it had never been like this before, never, it had never -

We came at the same time, like an explosion. The heat of my orgasm burned over me as his head arched back and he cried out, eyes shut, his pale face tilted to the ceiling. I felt his cock spasm inside me, and I pushed my hips into it, my entire body trembling and covered with sweat.

We pulled apart as my feet again found the floor. He brought his face to mine and
kissed me, a slow, gentle kiss, a kiss that felt like our bodies had known each other
forever.

---

Pre-order The Trickster's Lover at Amazon US :: Amazon UK 

Samantha MacLeod has lived in every time zone in the US, and London. She has an M.A. from the University of Chicago; yes, it really is where fun comes to die.

Samantha lives with her husband and two small children along the Niagara River just outside Buffalo, New York. When she’s not shoveling snow or writing steamy sex scenes, Samantha can be found teaching college composition and philosophy to undergraduates who have no idea she leads a double life as an erotica author.

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Lammas

I AM SO SORRY. I have been remiss - Because the pagan/natural cycles are woven into my Lovers' Wheel series, I'm taking a look in 2016 at the four great Celtic festivals, the most important festivals of the neo-pagan year. I've covered Imbolc and Beltane previously, but I'm several weeks late for poor old Lammas!

LAMMAS ("loaf mass") is also known as LUGHNASADH, the assembly sacred to the god Lugh. It takes place on 31st July / 1st August. Like the others it is a fire-festival, and marks a turning point in the agricultural year: in this case the first harvest feast, and the start of Autumn.

This is triple-faced Lugh:

He's one of those multi-functional Irish warrior-gods of craft, law, battle, the sun, storms and generally strutting round being very manly. He also invented a boardgame, fidchell, which makes him a bit geeky.

Lugh's Enclosure (1912) by Ernest Wallcousins

The Lughnasadh festival was a specifically founded as funeral games for Lugh's foster-mother, Taillte, an agricultural goddess who cleared the whole Ireland for farming - and then died of exhaustion. (Remember, Imbolc features imagery of a pure young girl, Beltane a horny young maiden: Lughnasadh is founded on a sacrificial mother-goddess, even if she doesn't get the name credit).

Festivals took place on hilltops and included feasting, matchmaking, athletic contests, an offering of the first fruits of the year (bilberries and blackberries and apples), and a bull sacrifice. All these customs were kept on by the Christian Church, including making pilgrimage up hills and mountains. Though nowadays the name is mostly remembered for a very depressing movie, Dancing at Lughnasa:

Lughnasadh was also the occasion for "trial weddings" that lasted a year and day! Modern Wiccans and neo-pagans still favour it for handfasting ceremonies.

Edmund Blair Leighton, My Fair Lady (1914)

The Anglo-Saxons / English put more emphasis on Lammas ("hlaf-mas") being a festival to do with wheat - the bringing in and baking of the first sheaf, and its dedication in the local church. Cereal crops, of course, keep through winter in a way summer fruit don't.

With regard to the year's cycle, Lammas takes place when the slide from high Summer into the shorter darker days has become noticeable. If the year has gone well and the gods are kind, the harvest is bountiful. It is a time of comparative plenty and thankfulness, a huge amount of hard work in the fields, of reaping rewards but also preparing the community against the Winter to come - rejoicing that takes place under a shadow of encroaching hardship.

Lawrence Alma Tadema, A Harvest Festival, 1880

 This is the time of year that  John Barleycorn, spirit of the barley harvest and pseudo-god of Beer, is sacrificed, according to the folksong:

They hired men with the scythes so sharp
To cut him off down by the knee.
They rolled him and tied him around by the waist,
Served him most barbarously.
They hired men with the sharp pitchforks
Who pierced him to the heart.
But the loader, he served him far worse than that
For he bound him to the cart.
    

They rode him around and around the field
Till they came into a barn,
And there they made a solemn mow
Of poor John Barleycorn.
They hired men with the crab-tree sticks
Who cut him skin from bone
But the miller, he served him far worse than that
For he ground him between two stones.
   
Here's little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl
And brandy in a glass.
And little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl
Proved the stronger man at last.
For the hunter, he can't hunt the fox
Nor so loudly blow his horn,
And the tinker, he can't mend his kettles or his pots
Without a little bit of John Barleycorn.

Don't worry, he always comes back

The End is Nigh!

Paradise Lost by Emile Bernard, 1868 – 1941

I'm up to 77K on The Valleys of the Earth and about to launch into the final extended scene. Things may be about to get a teensy weensy bit violent, but I'm sure that's fine in a romance, ahem. At least I now know exactly how the novel ends! (I also know how the first three chapters of the sequel go, but that's just got to wait.)

So there are no more surprises awaiting me for this volume ... probably. My heroine Milja managed to broadside me this morning, mind...

It's repeatedly asserted in The Book of Enoch, my go-to sourcebook of angelic craziness, that those women who slept with the fallen angels were taught magic as a consequence and became "witches" or "sirens" (depending on translation). I've treated this as an organic bodily change wrought by angelic influence/body fluids, not learned spells. So Milja has been developing some interesting new abilities throughout the series...

Vol 1: Cover Him with Darkness

• She finds it physically impossible to cry
• Cats love her, dogs hate and fear her
• She can see ghosts, sometimes
• She can tweak chance to give herself unusually good luck (small magics)
• She has vaguely prescient dreams
• She can pull other sleeping people, and angels, into her dreams to interact with them

Vol 2: The Valleys of the Earth

• During a sexual encounter she can speed-heal her own wounds, or her partner's
• It's very possible she can reverse this to do harm through hate-sex, though she hasn't actually tried
• She's immune to disease (which is very helpful when visiting Ethiopia, believe me)
• She can see in the dark
• She can order certain animals around ... or at least scare them away

I'm trying to keep her powers witchy and low-key, and not to just pull another one out of the hat whenever it's convenient for the plot. But given that she started off as an ordinary human and she's hanging out in the major league with the big angelic boys, it's nice to be able to redress the balance of power slightly and give her some more effective agency.

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a filthy excerpt for your entertainment!

Since I did my annual tree-tour at the local cemetery yesterday, I thought I'd post a nice woodsy piece from my nature-magick novel Falling Deep.

Liz has just been rescued by Jake, August's avatar ... from a unicorn. Trust me, guys. It makes sense.

---

And as she came up his hand was suddenly on the nape of her neck. Her breath caught in her throat.

“You’ve started something you can’t stop,” his deep voice murmured in her ear. “You know that, don’t you.” It was not a question. And it made the heat gush between her legs.

“Oh god,” she whispered.

Without answering he pushed her forward, his hand on her neck the only thing stopping her from stumbling as she tripped over her clumsy feet. Straight at the trunk of a nearby beech. “Hold on,” he growled. “Ass out. I want to see that.”

The gray bark was smooth beneath her hands. She arched her back, sticking her bottom out as he desired. She could feel the slick wetness running from her core through every fiber of her body, soaking her in heat. Jake knew her weakness. He had heard her confession. It wasn’t just his strength that rendered her helpless; it was her own blind and hungry lust.

Unseen behind her, he bent and grabbed her skirt. It was no match for his strength. The back seam, already split halfway by her fall down the ravine, rent up the zipper line with a scream of parting threads. The zipper backing resisted momentarily and then snapped. The button at the waistband popped. He threw it aside and then slapped her ass to make the right bum-cheek bounce. “Wider.”

Stunned, she did as she was told, opening her thighs.

He smacked the other cheek just as hard, then grabbed both and mauled them. Leaning into her, he growled, “See what you done, Liz? See what you’ve done to me?”

She couldn’t see, but she knew all right. His pants were open and his erect cock—a bar of hot flesh that felt like it was branding her—was out, dunting hard up against her soft ass, rubbing into the cleft between her cheeks as he stooped to grind the rear she presented so obediently. Her poor wet panties felt like no barrier to his determined forays.

“There are consequences,” he breathed into her ear. Even his whisper sounded deep, like a lion’s purr. “Every choice you make. You have to bear the consequences.” One hand caught at her left breast and tugged the stiff nubbin of her nipple, making her gasp and writhe her ass against his cock.

“No!” she whimpered, as the sweet silvery pain ran through her from tit to clit. Even the clench of her rear hole tingled.

“Yes,” he contradicted her. “Remember…you asked for this.”

Those words. Oh, those dirty, reprehensible words—each one of which she wanted to reject, each one of which made the dark heat swell in her sex, and made her nipples ache and her pussy run wet. Bad words. Words that turned wrong to right and right to wrong, incantations of the blackest magic. And he knew exactly what he was doing to her. He could hardly miss it—when he slipped fingers into the gusset of her panties, they slithered in the melt his words had made.

“You made me do it,” he growled, his voice thick with lust, running two fingers deep inside her. There was no resistance, only the slick yielding of flesh that opened greedily to his thick knuckles and long digits. “Remember that.”

Liz moaned helplessly as he flexed his wrist and twisted, testing her capacity to open up. She knew he was looking for room for that thick cock of his to lodge. She wanted it just as much as she feared it—for its girth and its length and its power. “Oh, yes!” she cried.

“I’m going to have to fuck you now.” He withdrew his hand, and Liz watched as he trailed her sex juices across the white moon of her ass. “Take those down.”

It was the last surrender. She stooped, one arm against the beech bole, to pull down her knickers. She fully expected him to take her from behind, as before. So she was surprised when he spun her around to face him, slapped her back against the bark, and grabbed her ass in both hands to lift her bodily to a height that matched his own. Her shoulders and upper spine mashed forcefully against the tree and she grabbed at the bark to try to stop herself slipping, but any discomfort was a distant and irrelevant thing. The only thing she needed to fear was the length spearing her between her open thighs.

Liz squealed—the sensation of invasion was so intense she mistook it for pain at that first instance. Jake grunted, twining his voice with hers. Then he began to work his hips, sliding in and out.

There was no pain. There had never been any pain, except the pain of not having him inside her. There was only the huge jolting pressure of his thrusts, making the breath flee her lungs, making her bare breasts dance and jiggle. There was only the knowledge that she was splitting apart, falling in two. Her belly ached from the strain of pushing back at him and trying to arch her spine. Her head banged off the bark and she didn’t feel a thing. The rhythm he was setting was making her breasts slam up and down, and the grip of his hands on her ass was bruising.

“Fuck!” he rasped, jaw open, face contorted. This was a swift, brutal rite—a desperate summoning of power from beyond. This, she knew suddenly, was real magic. Her words and her actions had turned him from rescuer into ravisher. His words and the passes of his hands and the brandishing of the staff he bore between his legs had transformed her from shy town girl into a shameless animal. Forbidden and unspeakable words loaded with power—words such as slut and dirty and whore—danced through her head.

I am his fuck. I am his horny bit of gash. He is my dark man of the Sabat and I am a filthy, sex-hungry witch who will debase myself for him. I will burn for it.

And she did, she did, she did.

---

Amazon US :: Amazon UK

Chihuahua-wah

I spent an hour or so last night holding a chihuahua. It was a very strange experience as I have never before come across a furry animal that simply wants to be held all the time. It was held by a succession of people all day - I was just the last volunteer.

I may have softened slightly toward the breed.

Prometheus

I posted a couple of pictures of the titan Prometheus way back when the short story version of Cover Him with Darkness came out, because I've subsumed it into the backstory:

But hell, I think it's time for some more! Escpecially for those of you who want to see a man tied up and menaced in Fine Art, for a change.

Briton Rivière (1840-1920), Prometheus, 1889

Harold Parker (1873-1962): Prometheus

Theodoor Rombouts (1597-1637) Prometheus

Francesco Foschi - Prometeo incatenato in cime innevate del Caucaso

Jacob Jordaens - Prometheus Bound (1640)

Christian Griepenkerl (1839-1916): Prometheus tortured by the Eagle

Nicolas-Sébastien Adam, 1762

 I took this one in a gallery in Palermo - sorry, no idea who the painter is!

There are probably hundreds more out there in the world - it is an extremely popular subject.  I can recommend Paintings Of The Torture Of Prometheus Where It Actually Looks Like The Eagle Assigned To Tear Out His Liver Is His New Boyfriend 
(thank you Jo!)

Going up a Gere

I've been fantasy-casting the movie of my Watchers trilogy again... and I reckon I'd let Richard Gere from Autumn in New York audition for the Archangel Uriel.

He has the right hair.
Hair matters. It's my movie, damnit.

"Can you do massively snobbish sexually-frustrated villain, Richard?"

I've just been writing a Uriel scene for The Valleys of the Earth. At 70K I'm now entering the endgame of the novel. This scene was a masterclass in pantsing because I had no idea how it was going to end when I started.

• I knew I had to get my protagonist out of her current Dire Peril (... she is always in dire peril)
• I knew what would happen if it was an erotica book, but it isn't
• I knew what would happen if it was a really mean horror story, but it isn't
• I didn't want her to get rescued by one of her allies, just for a change
• I didn't want her to give in to Uriel's manipulation

 So I started writing and ... ended up researching the Carboniferous period.

Writing is weird.

Red Monday

This is me in my old-school Scarlet Witch costume at Nine Worlds Geekfest this weekend.

Okay, I didn't do the boobs.

Someone asked me if I was supposed to be Cheetara from Thundercats :/

The scarlet letter

I'm off to Nine Worlds Geekfest!

Been making costume...

Guess who I'm going as?
 ;-)

Hot Octopus

I have never typed "Hot Octopus" before but I am strangely delighted by the euphonic phrase :-)

The Hot Octopus blog is hosting a guest post this week from Anna Sky, editor of Silence is Golden ... and she has picked an excerpt from my story In Real Life. I am very proud to represent this great anthology, so many hushed kisses all round :-)

As we’ve written in a previous post about the best writers on sex and disability, we’re big fans of erotica publisher Sexy Little Pages and their latest anthology, Silence Is Golden. It contains some gloriously hot, kinky and diverse representations of sex, and includes many characters with disabilities. So for #MasturbationMonday we teamed up with Sexy Little Pages to bring you an extract from the anthology. In this story, the narrator has gone on a date with Bryn, who is Deaf, and his interpreter, Hugh, and it’s turning out that three really isn’t a crowd. Enjoy!

The whole post here

Blue Monday - special Valleys of the Earth preview

Every Monday I post a wicked excerpt for your entertainment.

Today's excerpt is a bit special, as it's a first draft from my work-in-progress,  The Valleys of the Earth, and I'd be genuinely interested to hear if anyone has feedback about the morality of this short but pivotal sex-scene.

I get a lot of posts across my social network from progressive people who characterise any sexual encounter that falls short of enthusiastic, fully-informed, legally-constituted, consent as rape, and all rape as equally heinous.

I do think this scene is all sorts of nonconsensual murky grey ethical mess, though maybe not in the ways the protagonists see it. I'd be interested to know, if anyone else has an opinion, which - if either - of my characters do you think guilty of rape?

  

Satan, Sin and Death by William Blake

Here's some context: 

• Egan is running a high fever from a wounded and infected arm and is not in full possession of his mental or physical capacities. The scene opens with Milja trying to cool him down with ice-water.
• They both are immensely attracted to each other, and care for each other deeply.
• They both have really good reasons not to have sex with the other, and so haven't done it.

---

I could feel the heat in my cheeks, too. Egan was massively guarded and private in his self. Touching him felt like being admitted to a mystery, and treading on holy ground. I owed him respect and humility in my care for him. Gentle, unhurried strokes, tender over the black blooms of his bruises. Concentration, seeking out the feverish heat to sooth it. Patience, taking my time, returning again and again in my attempts to comfort him and sooth the fire in his flesh.

While the slow burn kindled in mine.

"I love you, Milja," he said, shocking me out of my reverie.

"That's the fever talking," I said with a hoarse little laugh. "Shush."

"No. I see you being put through ten types of shite, pushed places no one should have to go, and in the middle of it all you shine. A rose in a storm. That's what I thought when I met you ... a rose in a storm, whipped around by wind and rain. Strong and beautiful, and loyal. Too loyal. Does he even know how hard this is, what he's asking of you? Does he care?"

"Don't." My cheeks were burning now. "Don't talk about him, please."

"Okay. I don't want to talk about him. Let me talk about you. You don't have to do this, Milja. You don't have to carry this burden. The end of the world is not your responsibility, one way or the other. Walk away. Be happy."

Oh, he would break my heart.

"Egan ... please ..."              

"I want you to be happy. I want things I've no right to want. When I hold you, oh Christ. The temptation. I can't ... it's so hard not to want those things."

He lifted his good hand and grabbed mine, his grip shockingly strong. I'd presumed him weak. Startled, I met his gaze. It was wider than natural, almost glassy. My heart was banging against my breastbone. I tried to form words but couldn't bring them to life.

"Your lips now. I think of your lips under mine. I think of your body under my lips. I want to fuck you Milja, that's the truth, because I'm a piece-of-shit sinner and that's how my love feels, all wrapped up my lust and what I need - and I'm sorry, I can't stop thinking about you. About how much I want you."

"Oh God."

 "Do you think about me?"

I'd never realised before that blue is the colour of pain. I thought I might be trapped by those terrible blue eyes forever, drowning in his anguish and mine. "Yes," I breathed, the admission nearly breaking me.  

"This?" He pulled my hand down lower, over the sheet, pressed it down firmly against the cotton. Every muscle in my arm contracted in shock - but he did not let me pull away. He held me there, and so I looked. The thin sheet was soaked and plastered against his body, hiding nothing. Not the thick ridge of his erection trapped between my hand and his hard stomach, not even the subtle twin plum-shaped swells of his balls.

Oh. Oh oh oh.

He burned against my palm, a feverish wedge of need trying to push open the doors of possibility. "Please," he groaned, tightening his fingers around mine to squeeze his shaft and rub up and down.

 "Egan..."

"Please Milja." His hips twisted. "Oh God please." Sweat speckled his upper lip anew. The ache in my core rose like a heat plume to meet the ache in my heart.

He's beautiful, I thought, and simultaneously; This is so wrong. I dropped the towel and reached in with my left hand, grabbing his little finger and pushing it back to break his grip and peel it away from me. I pushed his good hand back up onto the pillow, leaning in to pin it with my weight. He didn't have any leverage to resist me.

My breath caught in my throat.

Poor poor Egan. Aching and desperate and helpless. Pinned on his back while his swollen cock raged and wept for release. Just like Azazel had been before I freed him.

After all these years, the darkness beneath the mountain was still there inside me. I had him at my mercy, and that mercy ran slick and hot through me until it escaped down the inside of my thighs.

My hand hadn't moved from his cock.  I squeezed him again.

"Ah Jesus, yes," he cried. Egan never blasphemed.

You need this? You need this? I wanted to bite his parted lips until they broke again and bled, and if I'd had the reach I might have. I can make no excuses for what I felt, or what I did. There was a dark tide of lust rising in me - and even though yes, I could explain, it makes no difference to my guilt. I felt bad for him, yes. He was handsome and sweet and he loved me, yes. No difference.

I loved him, in a way I couldn't even bring myself to think about.

No difference.

The fact is, he was hurt and he was helpless and that made me want to fuck him right now.

 And that's why I didn't let go of his thick cock. I kept hold of it through the cotton and I rubbed it even harder and thicker, until his heels dug into the mattress and his hips danced. I worked him slow and hard and pitilessly, until, his head was thrown back and his throat distended with strain and the blood ran down his chin from his split lip, until he was gasping and rigid and begging incoherently.

Until he came, under the sheet, calling on his saints and his God.

I drank in every cry, every detail. I kissed his bloody lips and lay beside him, cradling his head to my pounding heart.

And only then did I come out of my trance.

"Destiny" by Dali and Disney

There's a short animation doing the rounds that is supposedly a long-lost collaboration between Salvador Dali and Walt Disney studios.
This genuinely took my breath away. It's surreal and romantic and full of really creepy details. I'm not sold on the soundtrack but I love the film.

I can't confirm the provenance, which some doubt, but here's the Spanglish (?) explanation from Youtube:

The film tells the story of Chronos, the personification of time and the inability to realize his desire to love for a mortal. The scenes blend a series of surreal paintings of Dali with dancing and metamorphosis. The target production began in 1945, 58 years before its completion and was a collaboration between Walt Disney and the Spanish surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí. Salvador Dali and Walt Disney Destiny was produced by Dali and John Hench for 8 months between 1945 and 1946. Dali, at the time, Hench described as a "ghostly figure" who knew better than Dali or the secrets of the Disney film. For some time, the project remained a secret. The work of painter Salvador Dali was to prepare a six-minute sequence combining animation with live dancers and special effects for a movie in the same format of "Fantasia." Dali in the studio working on The Disney characters are fighting against time, the giant sundial that emerges from the great stone face of Jupiter and that determines the fate of all human novels. Dalí and Hench were creating a new animation technique, the cinematic equivalent of "paranoid critique" of Dali. Method inspired by the work of Freud on the subconscious and the inclusion of hidden and double images. Dalí said: "Entertainment highlights the art, its possibilities are endless." The plot of the film was described by. Dalí as "A magical display of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time." Walt Disney said it was "A simple story about a young girl in search of true love."

Movie muses

Recently on Facebook I joined in posting a list of my twelve favourite movies of all time - specifically, the ones I can happily watch again and again and again.

Here's my list, in release order - along with instances where these movies have influenced my writing.

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
I could watch the scene where the bronze giant Talos comes to life and chases everyone every day for the rest of my life and never get bored!
Okay, so I've written loads of swords-n-sandals Greek-inspired stories - but in particular The Red Thread in Dark Enchantment is just steeped in the Jason / Medea bad romance.

Time Bandits (1981)
That Agamemnon sequence with Sean Connery? Take a look at my novel Divine Torment. Scorching sun, nasty court politics, guys in short tunics, and a cynic's view of the gods.

The saddest minotaur ever :-(

Aliens (1986)
Directly inspired my SF-gangbang story The Military Mind, in Fierce Enchantments
 

Labyrinth (1986)
There are shades of Jareth the Goblin King in my creepy Dom fey The Brennnan, in Named and Shamed.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
 
Falling Down (1993)
A masterclass in dramatic escalation, mixed motives and messing with the viewer's empathy.

Jurassic Park (1993)

The Prophecy (1995)
No escaping it, a HUGE influence on Cover Him With Darkness, and its sequels yet to come. I have to stop Uriel channeling Christopher Walken every time he appears! :-D 

Also, Satan

Evita (1996)
The scene with Antionio Banderas dancing joyously in the fountain is 45 seconds of pure sexuality for me - and an interesting contrast with Che's normal surly and angry demeanor that actually taught me something about writing alphas.

Deep Rising (1998)

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Aragorn. All that repressed anger. SAY NO MORE.

300 (2006)

Oh good grief ... Gerard Butler,  Lena Hedey, balletic ultra-violence, heartbreaking sacrifice, ripped and sweaty warriors in tiny leather pants.... This movie was made for Ashbless the writer ;-)

This poster is on my kitchen wall

BTW, here's a list of twelve seminal movies I've NEVER ACTUALLY SEEN, and which have therefore no influence on my romantic or erotic imagination:

Grease
Dirty Dancing
Sleepless in Seattle
Gone with the Wind
When Harry met Sally
Casablanca
Love Story
The Notebook
Annie Hall 
The Fault in Our Stars
Amelie
Pretty Woman

It might explain some things.

How it b-Egan

Some research notes for Egan's backstory

Over the last two days I've written 5000 words for The Valleys of the Earth, which is incredibly productive for me. It's involved a lot of research, and not actually getting dressed until dark.

• I've changed a major character's name
• I've got my protagonist out of her Ethiopian imprisonment without stretching credulity too much
• I've had to decide on a getaway airplane, and I'm settling on the Beechcraft King Air turboprop ... for reasons of size and seating layout. You have no idea how hard it is to stage a private face-to-face discussion on a plane.
• I've introduced demons to my world - demons, not fallen angels.

• And I've finally got Milja and Egan back together and talking. And a great big chunk of that has been uncovering Egan's dodgey background in Special Ops, and how he came to work for secretive agency Vidimus (Latin for "We Have Seen"). It all gets a bit gory and shooty and sad.

 I had to do this for F Leonora Solomon because she squeeeeeeed all over Egan in Cover Him with Darkness and I rashly promised her more revelations :-)

• Google is pretty good for Irish background, with special reference to Republican vigilantism

• I still have to research a bunch of military details ... I foresee a few afternoons with my Delta Green supplements, because RPG rulebooks are actually really useful for this sort of stuff. DG is written by almost entirely by military/gun nerds as far as I can see.

• Oh yeah. It turns out Egan has had a major revelation/change of plan all on his own, which rather took me by surprise when he announced it mid-conversation. Bloody characters! I actually sat there with my mouth open, staring at the screen, and said, "Well, well. Really?!" 

 Still, I'm willing to run with it... let's see where it goes!

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a filthy episode for your entertainment!

Remember my review of Emmanuelle de Maupassant's 'Cautionary Tales' a couple of weeks ago? One of the things that made me smile was that when I wrote my own faux-Russian fairy tale, Too Much of Water, for Fierce Enchantments, I found a very similar caustic, judgmental, bitter-old-lady narrative voice. It must be a Slavic thing :-D

Too Much of Water is a retelling of The Frog Prince. Zorya has made a bargain with a Vodyanoi - a water-spirit - and now has to pay him back for retrieving her golden ball...

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What she did then not even the whores of Kiev will do: such a thing is reserved for a husband alone, for the intimacy of the marriage bond. She took his pale bestial length, already oozing at the slitted tip with eager moisture, into her hot mouth. The Vodyanoi groaned at that just like a real man. She used tongue and lips to explore his girth and his strange contours and then worked him deep into her throat, sucking warmth into that chill staff. It gave her satisfaction in unexpected places to suck him like this, and she felt her own sex flutter as her fingertips weighed the heavy pouch of his stones, finding water still dripping from the black ringlets of hair at his groin.

Shifting his weight forward, he leaned into her. His legs were tense, almost as hard as the iron of his pike. His hips jerked as her head rose and fell in supplication, and he pressed his cock so far to the back of her throat that she gagged and tears welled in her eyes.

I could choke here, she thought, snatching her breath in the backstroke. It wasn’t a new idea though: her husband had similarly used her. The Tsar was an older man and would sometimes take so long that she’d weep for the ache in her jaw—but that wasn’t to be the case this time. She felt the
Vodyanoi’s rhythm grow fiercer, then become a stutter, and suddenly her mouth was awash with his slippery flood. Instantly—so copious was the flow—her fear of choking became a fear of drowning, and she jerked her head back with a gasp. His cock shuddered upon her tongue as the liquid, as cold and clear as mill water, overflowed her mouth and ran down over her chin.

He tasted of nothing at all: just like water.

The Vodyanoi withdrew from her open lips, glaring at her. Swallowing hard and struggle to get her breath back, Zorya nevertheless felt a strange bereavement now it was over, and a dread as to what would come next. Would he grow contemptuously indifferent now—or irritable—as her husband often did?

But her paramour was a Vodyanoi, and unlike a mortal man a single spasm of sin was not enough to sate him. Even as he stood back, his spend still drizzled down the underside of his rigid shaft, as if his balls were too full and now boiling over. He tilted his head, clearly weighing the options, as his gaze raked her kneeling body. ‘You have certain uses, alive,’ he admitted.

Then stooping, he lifted her, his muscles moving like waves under his skin. He turned her from him and thrust her toward the side of the royal bed—a piece of furniture so high that there was a padded bench to facilitate climbing into it. Zorya was pushed down to kneel upon that bench, her elbows on the bed itself. Then the Vodyanoi crouched behind her, lifted up the golden net that was her only garment, and spread her rump cheeks with his hands to reveal her most private parts.

Such shame! What man would do that to a woman? What man would thrust his face into that cleft and lick her, his tongue slithering over her pearl and into her well and then up between the orbs of her bottom to lap at the tight pucker between? It was as if the water spirit were trying to devour her earthiness. Zorya buried her face in the coverlet of the bed, rubbing her cheek upon the silver fox-fur as the Vodyanoi’s tongue—longer and stronger than any human man’s—danced and probed in her most private places, forcing entry into those treasure chambers that only her husband ought to access, and making her cry out.

Let us be charitable and say that it was shame that caused her to whimper and gasp and call upon God as the Vodyanoi’s tongue slid in and out of her—for no woman is entirely devoid of shame, not even a headstrong wanton such as she. Let us assume that it was an attempt to dull the pain that caused her to thrust her fingers down between the smooth fur of the coverlet and her own rougher fur, as he rose up behind her and breached the portal of her sex with his ram. His hand was heavy between her shoulder blades, pinning her to the bed. His hard thighs slapped against the backs of hers and his scrotum bounced on the cushioning lips of her sex, so deep did he delve with each thrust. Zorya heaved her hips against his invasion, but if she regretted her witch’s bargain it was too late now. He rutted inside her just as he had done in her mouth: swift and ruthless, taking his pleasure without regard for her delicacy of feeling. There was a minor difference, in that this time her throat was not stuffed with his meat and he could clearly hear her moans rising in pitch as he stretched her wide. But the result was the same: a great and sudden outpouring, flooding her to such an extent that when he pulled out it ran from her furrow and splashed upon the padded stool. Yet still his prick stood erect, quivering with eagerness, and he had one further use for it. Smearing his own issue up her split with brazen-bold fingers, he redirected that slick and narrow tip to the juicy clench of her anus and pressed home his advantage, forging deep into forbidden territory.

Zorya felt every inch. His inhuman member was as slippery and muscular as an eel and it surged inside her as if swimming upstream. Under his touch she was becoming a river: everything fluid, everything falling. She could hear the rain drumming on the wooden shingles overhead and it was like it was falling into her soul. Her body gave up all resistance and yielded, unable to withstand the waves of sensation rippling up her spine and out along every limb to the tips of her spread fingers. She pawed the coverlet beneath her and sobbed into it, her heat soaking the fur.

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