Thursday, 30 May 2019

Legendary Lineup


It's time for a signing...


I'm off under my other name as part of the signing lineup at the official NewCon launch THIS SATURDAY (1st June) 1-5pm . I'm part of the Legends Vol.3 set, with my story The Price of Passage, but there will be authors launching the Best of British Fantasy 2018 as well, because we are all about value for money 😉



Stories that are brimming with swordplay, treachery, deeds both dark and noble, with cunning thieves and wily tricksters, blood-thirsty gods and flawed heroes. David Gemmell passed away in 2006, leaving behind a legacy of memorable characters, epic settings, and thrilling tales. In the Legends anthologies, some of today's finest fantasy authors pay homage to one of fantasy fiction's greatest ever writers. Welcome to Legends.

Contents:
1. Introduction by Stan Nicholls
2. Blood Debt – Gail Z. Martin
3. A God’s Mercy – Richard Webb
4. Berserker Captain – Neal Asher
5. The Price of Passage – Keris McDonald
6. Summoner – Danie Ware
7. Pelicos the Brave and the Princess of Kalakhadze – Steven Poore
8. The Timekeeper’s Tarot – Den Patrick
9. Her Grail – Ben North
10. Piercing the Mist – Shona Kinsella
11. Chosen of the Slain – K.T. Davies
12. The Dying Land – Nick Watkinson
13. A Hero of Her People – Anna Smith Spark
14. All Deaths Well Intention’d – RJ Barker
15. By Any Other Name – Justina Robson




Everyone is welcome, so come along and mingle and drink free wine!


126 York Way
London
N1 0AX
Saturday 1st June 1 - 5pm

Oh ... and then I'm off to see Muse in concert in the evening. Busy day!

Monday, 27 May 2019

Blue Monday

Mondays are the day I post a sexy excerpt for your entertainment!

The Sexy Librarian's Dirty 30 Vol.3 is OUT NOW! It includes my Western story Sourdough:


Come inside, experience the breadth, inspiration, and excitement of superb erotic storytelling.
 

Browse my card catalog. Find the perfect story to suit your mood, with subjects tantalizingly indexxxed to whet your appetite!

Lose yourself in these thirty risqué adventures, loaded with fabulous characters in provocative situations. Get ravished by flirty-frills and sassy petticoats in our hot bodice-ripper romance. Keep it strictly confidential as you fall in love with a dangerous undercover spy. Feel your heart quiver as you lust after two brothers on the lone frontier. The choice is yours in this library of sexy-sharp stories!


Sourdough, by Janine Ashbless: 

Grace busied herself with kneading the dough, rolling it out onto the floured table-top and plunging her hands into the soft white mass. The muscles danced in her forearms as she bore down upon it, stretching and folding and squeezing, and the familiar work made her breath come harder. The rhythm was mesmeric, almost, and it was a while before she looked up at Amos again.

He was watching her. Not her face, she realized; he hadn’t even noticed her surreptitious glance toward him. He was staring at her cleavage as if entranced, his mug half-way to his lips but forgotten.

Such a famished look in those eyes.

Heat rose to Grace’s face as she realized her culpability. Her white camisole was low-cut, the top button not even done up, and her breasts bulged softly out over the top of her corset as she leaned forward, just like rising loaves. He’s lusting after me. The wave of heat washed down from her cheeks, through her breastbone and into her belly and down between her thighs, gathering weight and force as it went, until she thought it would wash her out down the creek and into the Missouri and out to sea a thousand miles away, all the way back to her giddy girl-days in England. The shock took the breath from her.

Without thinking—she couldn’t think, not with the blood roaring in her ears like that—she flipped the dough forward a few inches on the tabletop, so that she’d have to lean even deeper into the kneading. The bulge of her breasts must be more precarious now, and she could feel the quiver of her cleavage with every move she made.

When she looked up at Amos this time, she made the motion obvious, though she never paused in her labors. Their eyes met, burning, and his face went stiff, like a mask.

They both knew.

It felt inevitable.

Push went her hands in the dough. She sucked her dry lips briefly to moisten them.

As if pulled by gravity, his gaze fell back to the cleft of her breasts, struggled to her face, and then fell again. She looked at the felt hat in his lap and imagined what it must be covering. She’d seen his erection tenting his canvas pants before at odd moments—once when she’d been hanging out laundry and he’d been chopping wood nearby. Once when she’d poured the hot water into his tin bath while he waited to undress and wash. She’d always pretended not to notice. Now she wondered dizzily what his cock would feel like against her palm, her thighs, her lips.

Push. Fold. Turn. The heavy beat of life. The damp well of her sex was threatening to spill down her thighs.

Softly, almost shyly, he slid his hand beneath the hat to grasp himself. There was a plea in his eyes now.

She smiled. Hot, she thought. Hard. Full of marrow and frustration. She’d like to see that.

The muscles of his forearm bunched as his hidden fingers gripped tighter.

That was the moment that Ezra came thumping down the stairs from the bedroom above. Amos managed to whip his hand out from beneath the hat before his elder brother opened the stair door, but the rest of him stayed frozen. He couldn’t move from his chair. Grace straightened up sharply, pulling the great ball of dough toward her. She felt as if her whole being was about to fly apart like a keg of gunpowder.

“Morning,” said Ezra, swaggering into the room behind her and surveying them both.

“Good morning, husband,” said Grace over her shoulder. Her voice would not rise above a whisper.

Amos nodded, quick and—she thought—looking guilty.

Ezra certainly noticed something in the air. He came up behind Grace as she worked assiduously at the dough, and rested his big hands on her hips. “There’s a fine sight for a morning,” he said, snuggling his crotch into her ass. “You enjoying it, brother? Just sitting there taking in the view?”

“I’ve just got in,” Amos muttered. “Been out in the long pasture.” He dropped his coffee mug on the
table.

“There’s nothing like the sight of a wife hard at work in the morning,” said Ezra, ignoring his words.

Her prices is beyond rubies, as the Good Book says. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness, isn’t that so?” His hands were working in her long skirts, squeezing her ass through the layers of cloth, gathering them up. “Bet you wish you had one, brother.”

Amos glowered. He was used to being taunted, Grace knew, though it was rarely this blunt. But he couldn’t move right now. If his lifted the hat and stood, his guilt would be obvious.

“Ezra,” she protested, as he found his way under her dress and to the thin cotton of her long drawers. Her face was growing ever more pink.

“Hush now,” he said, putting a hand between her shoulder blades and tipping her forward over the edge of the table. “You’ve got women’s work to be getting on with.”

For a moment she thought he meant the bread, until she felt him toss her bundled skirts up around her hips and reach between her thighs to the split of her bloomers. Ezra always woke with a beam you might build a bridge on, but he’d never been this bold before. Not in front of his brother.

Amos squirmed angrily.

“Damn, this feels fine,” her husband said, his fingers sliding rudely into her while his other hand worked open the buttons of his fly. “Best feeling in the world, Amos."


Buy The Sexy Librarian's Dirty 30 Volume 3 at:
Amazon US
Amazon UK


Thursday, 23 May 2019

Sheffield's Bear Pit

I'm still exploring our new area! One day this Spring I paid my first visit to the city of Sheffield. First of all to its Botanical Garden (which are absolutely excellent for anyone with an interest in plants):


It has one of the oldest glasshouses still standing (1830s) full of scary flowers like this triffid thing:


It has a fossilised tree-stump, discovered in a local coal seam:


It sells the strangest looking tea ever:


And it has a BEAR PIT!


This dates from Victorian times and no one seems terribly certain whether actual bear-baiting took place in there - it was probably just a zoo enclosure. The bears got moved out after a child fell in and was savaged, it's said.

From one of the oldest glasshouses then to a very modern one, and one of the largest in built here in the UK within the last century: the Winter Garden in the town centre:



No bears though...


Monday, 20 May 2019

Blue Monday

Mondays are when I post sexy excerpts for your entertainment!

If you buy my gothic novella  Bound in Skin you'll find The Grief of the Bond-Maid included as a bonus story. It's more about the magical quest and less about the relationship than most of my romances, but it's still NAUGHTY, I promise ... 😈


"You came to my house of your own will, alone. Don't you think you've left it a little late to decide that I am not to be trusted?"

Two stories of magic, shape-shifting and passionate romance with historical settings.

Bound in Skin: When her father dies, Cassandra Otley travels alone to the mountainous heart of Europe, to take up his position cataloguing the library of a reclusive nobleman with a dire reputation. Cassandra has learned rather more from books than a proper young Victiorian lady ought - yet some things have to be encountered in the flesh to be believed.

The Grief of the Bond-Maid: When the Viking wizard Vegtamr begins a necromantic ritual to sieze the power of the Runes, his slave-girl Sjofn takes the terrifying decision to thwart him. She recruits two handsome Norse strangers to help her in this desperate shamanic quest across the Nine Worlds. But Thorkell and Bjarni have their own secrets...


Sjofn stamped her feet, chilled by the journey and by what she’d seen. Casting about, she looked for the spirits of her two companions, but they were nowhere near the fire. The circle of her footfalls widened to a spiral.

‘Where are you going, Sjofn?’

‘I’ll just check they’re safe,’ she muttered, walking away uphill, toward the trees, and letting Kot follow at a distance. She found them not far into the dense shadow of the firs, standing face-to-face — and in a moment the curiosity to which she’d not dared admit met with all the answers it had been looking for. Bjarni had his back to one of the trunks. Both men had loosened their clothes, and each was holding the other’s erect cock in his hand and caressing it from root to crown.

Sjofn felt the blood flare up to burn in her cheeks.

They were almost the same height, she noticed; Thorkell perhaps a couple of inches taller. It meant they met easily mouth-to-mouth, sharing breath that was coming shorter and shallower to both of them; sometimes kissing but then drawing apart, only to kiss and bite softly once more. Red and dark stubbles rasped together. Scarred lips touched with both hunger and tenderness. Their eyes were hooded, unfocused; as if there was no world beyond their embrace, as if there was nothing but the other man in all the night, and that man known by touch and taste as much as by sight. Sjofn stared. Their hands moved with familiar sureness, and with a firmness that — to her — looked punishing. Two cock-heads nudged together, two thick shafts were enfolded together by weapon-hardened fingers. There was no speech; just a mutual urging of the flesh that became increasingly fervent, knuckles blurring as they stoked the flames.

Recalling Vegtamr’s cold and perfunctory impositions upon her, something in Sjofn rose up in rebellion. Was this how it should really be — this melting confusion of skin and breath and intent?
Then Bjarni’s head thunked back against the tree’s bark, his hips shifting as his legs grew taut with strain, his eyes watching Thorkell’s face from under half-lowered lids. His throat worked but he grunted only once as his sea-spume burst between the other man fingers. His own tugging grew ragged, then suddenly imperious. Thorkell’s brow knotted into a frown and his eyes screwed shut. He jerked his head as if in immense effort, as his own seed gushed out in response and overflowed Bjarni’s grasp.

‘Yes,’ he whispered.

For a while they clung together, gasping a little. Their hands mingled the semen, lazy now, rubbing that spend into their hot and swollen flesh.

Sjofn walked away, her legs shaking and her heart pounding hard. She walked back to the fire and sat down, brooding into the darkness. When Kot came up and nuzzled under her hand she pushed him away.

‘Why are you angry?’ he asked.

‘I’m not.’

‘Oh no: of course you aren’t,’ he huffed. ‘You’re just…?’

‘Unsettled,’ she complained. ‘I know that a witch must be all things: tree and stone, bird and beast, male and female. We’re shapeshifters. But those two are warriors. It’s unmanly.’

‘From what I saw, they were both very much male,’ Kot said, with the nearest approximation a spirit might make to a smirk. ‘Didn’t you think so?’

‘I don’t want to think about it.’

‘Sjofn … You’re jealous.’


All buy-links for Bound in Skin are HERE

Tuesday, 14 May 2019

Dirty 30 Vol.3


Heads-up/cover reveal here for the next anthology I'm involved with - it's The Sexy Librarian's Dirty 30 Vol.3, which is due for release on May 24th, and is edited of course by the wonderful Rose Caraway.

In SLD30 Vol.2 I had a story from Norse mythology - Sweet Hel Below. This time round I've switched it up and tried my hand at a Western: Sourdough. I may have been watching a lot of Westworld at the time!)

You can read a brief extract from my new story HERE

Thursday, 9 May 2019

My Willy

Meet my new dog!


He has HUGE FEET!


Willy comes from Dahab in Egypt, via a one-woman rescue called Janet's Wadi.


He was found as a young dog, tied up with his tail severed, in the middle of the road. This is pretty normal for the way street dogs get treated out there 😢😢😢
He's seven years old now, so has spent most of his life in the safe desert space of the Wadi, but he's still very timid and submissive. He tries to make friends with every human he meets and offering his paw is his signature move.


 His bat-ears are because he's part Baladi Dog and that also means he's extremely vocal - he speaks by groaning, growling and making Chewbacca noises! He's a fast learner - notably smarter than a greyhound for sure! 😂



He has the sweetest nature and despite being new to indoor living hasn't make a mess even once. He walks politely off the lead now. What a gentleman!


As for the name ... well, it wasn't my idea! But how appropriate for smutwriter, LOL!

Follow Janet's Wadi on Facebook

Monday, 6 May 2019

Blue Monday

Mondays on my blog are when I post sexy excerpts for your entertainment!

As of this last week I've finally got this reprint project up on sale: Bound in Skin: two dark romances contains two longish stories that reverted to me after their original anthologies went out of print. The eponymous Bound in Skin originally appeared in a Catscratch Press anthology, but it's been reworked (and expanded slightly) for this version which is now available from a range of online outlets.


"You came to my house of your own will, alone. Don't you think you've left it a little late to decide that I am not to be trusted?"

Two stories of magic, shape-shifting and passionate romance with historical settings.

Bound in Skin: When her father dies, Cassandra Otley travels alone to the mountainous heart of Europe, to take up his position cataloguing the library of a reclusive nobleman with a dire reputation. Cassandra has learned rather more from books than a proper young Victiorian lady ought - yet some things have to be encountered in the flesh to be believed.

The Grief of the Bond-Maid: When the Viking wizard Vegtamr begins a necromantic ritual to sieze the power of the Runes, his slave-girl Sjofn takes the terrifying decision to thwart him. She recruits two handsome Norse strangers to help her in this desperate shamanic quest across the Nine Worlds. But Thorkell and Bjarni have their own secrets...


So very late one evening I stole back down from my room to the library. The servants had retired to bed as early as ever and I had not seen Margraf Goran for two days. I had stripped down to my undergarments while preparing for my unwelcoming bed, but now had thrown over those a dressing gown in broderie anglaise, and my stockinged feet were silent on the castle’s ancient floorboards.

Lighting a single oil-lamp, I brought to my desk a volume I had uncovered that morning and wanted to peruse again. It was handwritten on fine paper in a script that I judged was Hindustani, but the interest of the book was not in the text but in the illustrations on almost every page; delicately detailed paintings in jewel-bright colours of couples — and not just couples but entire parties — engaged in copulation in the most perfectly maintained gardens and pavilions. The men depicted were unprepossessing to my eye; plump, unshaven and rather grumpy-looking, their virile members as curved as scimitars. The women were equally sullen in appearance but made up for it with extravagantly feminine figures and a litheness that bordered on contortionism. I tilted my head this way and that as I scanned the pages, trying to decipher the knotted positions of the participants and wondering if they were possible for a woman of English frame; wondering if I would ever be inducted into such practices. My heart beat swiftly. My hand crept down between my hot thighs. I was completely absorbed.

I don’t know what it was that made me look up, but the Margraf was in the library doorway, leaning against the frame and watching me, his arms folded. I could have leapt out of my skin. I jumped to my feet instead, without thinking how guilty this made me look, and slammed a folio of innocent architectural sketches over the pornographic book.

Margraf Goran took that as a cue to approach from the shadows. He was dressed with the minimum of decency in shirt and trousers, but he was barefoot, which explained why I hadn’t heard him enter the room. His paces were long and measured, without hurry. I think he was savouring the moment. A dark smile played about his lips. As for myself, I stared and panted with all the wit of a deer cornered against a fence. I had no skill at dissembling, even if my state of semi-dress hadn’t rendered this encounter entirely beyond the pale of decorum.

‘What are you reading, Miss Otley?’ he asked, with an interest that was far from polite. ‘Something quite gripping, I have to assume? It’s very late.’

I didn’t answer. I knew without doubt that I had just lost my position of employment here and I was so panicked I could not move. If I hadn’t been so frightened I might have combusted with shame, but in fact I felt wan and dizzy.

‘Hm?’ He looked down at the sketchbook, eyebrows raised in enquiry. ‘Go on. What is it?’

I pressed my hands flat onto the cover, determined that he’d have to use force to take a look at what lay beneath. I didn’t move even when he walked round the desk and round me, stopping to look down over my shoulder. Quietly he reached forward and laid his left hand over mine. He had long, strong fingers. The movement brought his body into contact with my own, all along my arm and shoulder and back.

‘Please,’ I whispered.

The Margraf slid his fingers between mine, splaying them wider. His hand felt warm and dry. He waited a moment for me to yield, but my arms stayed locked. I heard him smile, though I could see nothing of his expression. With his other hand he very gently lifted the locks of my undressed hair from my neck and bent his head to breathe the scent of my skin. ‘It must be something quite exciting,’ he murmured. ‘You are quite warm, Miss Otley … and damp.’

I shut my eyes. My heart was pounding so hard my tense arms were jumping with each beat. ‘Sir,’ I entreated.

I think he’d lost interest in the actual book some moments previously. Releasing my hand, he scooped my chin up and drew my head back and away, exposing my throat. His lips brushed the sensitive skin in a slow sweep, his breath warm. With the other hand he traced the edge of my dressing gown around the scoop of my neck, his fingertips igniting my skin, and slipped the cotton back from my shoulder. What really horrified me was how gentle he was. There was no force involved at all, and with that he made me complicit in my own ruin. Even when I felt his teeth graze my ear I did not fight him. My eyes flew open again but I could not even focus them. The room seemed to spin.
‘Your skin is so soft,’ he whispered, and I heard an edge of unmistakable hunger in his voice. I shuddered in his hands.

Slowly he tugged free the fastenings of my gown and smoothed it off my shoulders, down to my elbows. Underneath I was wearing only long drawers and a sleeveless camisole top, its wide-scooped neckline decorated with a surf of lace and little blue bows, so that looking down over my shoulder he found a great deal of skin to admire. His chest was pressed lightly to my back. He traced the line of my collarbone. His touch — all fingertips and lips — was almost tender, but I knew without seeing it the pale wolf-light that would be burning in his eyes. He found the loose lace directly over my right breast and played with the folds, making me gasp as my nipple tightened to an eager point.

‘Shall I?’ he whispered hot in my ear, moving to finger the row of tiny buttons directly down my breastbone. ‘Or what about … this?’ Without warning his other hand slid round the waistband of my drawers, found the bow there and pulled it out in one long exquisite movement. Biting my lip, I pressed my mons against the desk edge, trying to keep those knickers in place. It didn’t stop him. Reaching under my dressing gown, he found the first sliver of bare skin between upper and lower garments and smoothed his palm down my hip and flank. My drawers, held up at the front by the hard line of wood, had no defence elsewhere and slipped to bare the curve of my bottom.

I was melting for him.

‘Wonderful,’ he growled in my ear, one hand on the satin swell of my buttock cheek, the other finally swooping to cup my right breast through the thin cotton. I felt like he was holding my whole being in his hands. Then he was pressed against me properly, lifting me up on my toes with the length of his body hard against my softness, my round bottom tucked up into his thighs and crotch, his hand squeezing my breast, his mouth on my throat, teeth bared over my pulse. Through a few thin layers of cloth I could feel exactly how much he wanted me. My legs and arms were so rigid that they could take the strain no more. My mind whirled with the pictures from the book. Suddenly I was shaking and tears were spilling down my cheeks.

‘Sir, please,’ I sobbed.


All buy-links for Bound in Skin are HERE


Friday, 3 May 2019

Merry Men!



It turns out I only live 25 minutes away from Sherwood Forest! 

Here's the Major Oak,  reputed to be the one which Robin Hood and his band met beneath:

I went there with longtime-internet-buddy and fellow erotica writer Craig Sorensen, who is visiting from the USA. We've also been to Bolsover Castle and spent a day in York, so he now has a wholly warped idea of how nice England is ;-)


Now we are going to watch Bill, so that he has an accurate historical grounding in Shakespeare's life before going to Stratford Upon Avon 😁😁😁