Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a sexy excerpt for your entertainment!

In celebration of selling a Trojan War story this weekend (see post below) today's excerpt is from another Greek-myth-inspired tale, Ruby Seeds, which appears in my Dark Enchantment collection:

Saffy is at a cocktail party and getting her flirt on:

---

With a sharp intake of breath I refocus on my surroundings: the hotel balcony, the party, Patrick. ‘How do I look to you?’ I wonder.

There’s a hint of teeth in his smile: he recognises he’s being challenged. ‘Bored with the party.’

I’ll grant him that, though he doesn’t score high. ‘I’ve been to a lot of parties.’

‘At first I thought you were one of the athletes.’ That gives his gaze an excuse to drop from my face and go exploring. ‘A swimmer, maybe, with a strong beautiful shape like that. But -’ He rescues himself from simple lechery by suddenly focusing on my hair and face with uttermost seriousness: on the black dreadlocks, pale skin, gold piercing in the side of my nose. ‘That’s not swimmer’s hair. You’re track and field, perhaps. On the other hand, you’re drinking. None of the athletes drink, not the night before the first heats. So maybe you’re like me, attached to a corporate sponsor. But – forgive me – you don’t look like a corporate drone either. Too much of an independent spirit, I’d say. So you’re a mystery.’

I giggle, pleased by his ingenuity - and by the raw, tight lines of his body under the evening-wear. ‘And a mystery is intriguing?’

‘I find it irresistible.’ His green eyes tread a dangerous line, leavening their appetite with a hint of twinkling self-awareness. My own body squirms with impatience but I force myself not to seize him.

‘I won’t ruin it for you then.’ I brush the rim of my glass down my throat. ‘Some things you’ll have to work at finding out.’

‘I’ll enjoy that.’ He’s standing very close now. The electricity between us is delicious and I can’t hide a shiver as he brushes the back of my wrist with his fingers. ‘Are you cold?’ he murmurs, tracing a line of goosebumps up my arm.

‘A little.’

‘Shall we go back inside?’

‘No.’

His gratification is undisguised. He knows I am his for the taking. ‘Well,’ he suggests; ‘my jacket, then.’ Slipping it off, he furls it gently about my bare shoulders. I ease away from the rail to make it easier for him, and am enveloped in his warmth and the perfume of his skin and whatever male scent it is he wears. My sex responds to the pheromone shock by blossoming into wet petals. He runs his fingers down the lapels of the jacket, those big knuckles just brushing the jut of my breasts, his grip saying I could pull you to me, his eyes promising a rough landing. I’m still holding my glass. When he looks down it’s there between us, tilted toward him, the carnelian contents threatening to spill.

Then Patrick lifts an eyebrow, the merest brush of his fingertip outlining the ring on my third finger.

‘We’re separated,’ I whisper. Most men don’t care, even when they do notice.

‘Ah.’

‘Nearly a year now.’ I don’t know why I have to say that, and I’m annoyed with myself as the words slip out.

‘Shall I?’ He moves to take the glass from my hand – but I’m quivering with tension and in the exchange I manage to spill a little down the side and onto his fingers. I laugh and lift the flute and his hand in both of mine, so that I can lick the dribble first from the cool hard glass and then, my eyes never leaving his, from his fingers. I lap those knuckles and suck one long finger into my mouth, teasing the sensitive skin with my tongue even as I hold it captive. ‘Oh God,’ says he softly, with reverence.

I take the glass and throw it over my shoulder. It hits a bush somewhere in the garden below. He touches my mouth with his other hand too, as if wondering how much I can fit between my full lips.

‘There’s got to be a quiet room somewhere…’

‘No.’ I pull my lips from his fingertips. ‘Out here.’ I watch the look of surprise and doubt and delight flash in his eyes, and I lay my hand on his shirtfront. Under the cool cotton his stomach is warm and flat. I slip a button and ease my fingers in through the gap, finding firm flesh. That’s too much for him; he finally steps in to close the gap between us, his thighs brushing up against mine, his hands taking my hips. His lips scout gently across my upturned face, checking for hostility and finding not even token resistance

‘We’re a bit visible,’ he murmurs.

‘Then we’ll have to be careful.’ He has a lovely hard bulge of anticipation in his trousers already, I’m pleased to find. ‘I promise not to scream if you don’t.’ I lick his bottom lip, then catch it in my teeth and give it a teasing nip, just as my hand goes to work on his cloth-covered erection. As our tongues meet he gives a thick little groan. Then he surprises me by taking the initiative and sliding his hand up between my thighs. He doesn’t have to lift the hem of the dress far to find the velvet mound of my pussy under the flimsiest of silken triangles. It’s shaven smooth, a fact he discovers as his fingers stroke me softly through the cloth. His tongue stirs my mouth in assured counterpoint to the movement of his hand.

I can’t help the noise that escapes as he finds the edge of the silk at the crease between thigh and pubic mound, but my moan is kept private by his lips. It’s a secret between us – like the secret movement of his finger slipping beneath the fabric to caress my bare flesh, soft and slow. Like the secret rush of heat to my sex. Like the hidden cleft of my sex-lips that he inevitably finds. Suddenly I’m not soft velvet under his hand any more, I am hot liquid melt and his fingers are delving the shallows of my furrow, back and forth.

Our tongues still dancing together, we shift out stances very slightly. I ease my legs open to make room for his hand. He leans in to me harder, arching me over the rail. To any observer it ought to look like we’re simply locked in a deep kiss. From the balcony windows the partygoers will only be sure of the hand he has locked on my hip, not the one plundering my panties. They’ll see the arm I have draped around his neck, not the way I’m stroking the thick bulge in his trousers, squeezing his tumescence greedily. They might guess, but however avidly anyone is spying upon us they cannot be sure.

What if he loses patience? Will he blow our cover? Will he pull the front of my dress down to expose my breasts, hoist my skirt and fuck me properly in full view of them all? The thought makes me wetter still. His fingertip skids in slippery circles upon my clit, stealing my senses.

He’s perfect.

---

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Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a sexy excerpt for your entertainment!

Since we are coming up to Hallowe'en, here's a bit from my short story Scratch, set in Colonial America some years after the Salem Witch Trials. Maarten Gansevoort and his wife Mercy have received a visit from The Devil himself, under the name Nicholas Scratch:

‘Now tell him, Mercy,’ said the stranger, ‘why you signed yourself to me.’ He withdrew his foot from her mouth, and the momentary gape of her lips was obscene, before she licked them. ‘Tell him.’

‘When I was young,’ she whispered, eyes once more downcast as if focused far away, ‘there was nothing but toil and fear. No frivolity, no indulgence, no joy. Even their God was dark and bitter, and I hungered for colour and delight. And some came to me and whispered that there was a master who would promise those things. So I went with them. I knew what I was doing. They debauched me and I was their willing whore. It was the first time in my life I was not a dull drab thing, not just a servant, not just a girl-child. And then he came to me.’

Maarten tugged at his plain linen collar, releasing some of the heat.

‘You see?’ the stranger asked his host pleasantly. ‘Such memories she has. And one of the few things I have in common with your kind, good people, is – let us say – nostalgia. A capacity to regret what has been lost. I miss my sweet Mercy. So with your permission, Goodman Gansevoort…’ He stood, setting his flagon aside.

‘What?’ said Maarten thickly, as the stranger held out his hand to Mercy, who placed her fingers in his.

‘I intend to make a cuckold of you, friend.’

He opened his mouth but no words came out.

‘We will retire to the bedchamber to spare your feelings, Goodman. Of course you will hear her scream her pleasure: I can hardly prevent that. She was always most vocal, I remember.’

Maarten gripped the table edge as if he would overturn it.

‘Maarten,’ said Mercy swiftly: ‘Be at peace. Please, my husband.’ For a moment her eyes focused warningly on him, pinning him to his seat, but then he seemed to slip her mind. Her gaze turned back to their guest and she led him away to the inner room, and the door closed.

Maarten Gansevoort was in agony. He felt as if his stomach was full of knots. The room with its blazing fire was suddenly too warm, so he stood and flung off his woollen jacket and paced about the floor. He went to find his flintlock musket, and even got so far as to reach for the lead, but his hands fumbled uselessly with the box and he gave up. He scratched at his sweating chest and rubbed angrily at his crotch, sickened to find a most disloyal tumescence which his immediately put down to anger. He could not believe he was permitting another man – or anything in man’s form – take his wife from under his nose like that, no matter that man’s status or puissance. He could not believe that she seemed so willing, when their marriage had been so warmly content. He could not bring himself to face the confession she’d made, though it rolled around the margins of his mind painfully. He put his head in his hands and groaned, tried to pray but recoiled from the words. How could he pray when he had let such a Guest into his house?

Without intending it, he suddenly found that he was holding his breath, listening. Nicholas Scratch had been right about Mercy’s tendency to cry out in the throes of rutting; often he’d had to stifle her noises with his hand or the corner of the quilt, lest she disturb the whole household. When she fornicated she did it without restraint: it was one of the things that made his blood burn for her.

Reaching a decision, Maarten Gansevoort slipped off his blunt-toed shoes and crept on stockinged feet toward the inner door. He knew every board in the house he’d built, and not one of them creaked under his weight. He reached the bedchamber door and crouched down. The handle was only a smooth dowel that ran through from one side of the sliding latch to the other, and hadn’t been pegged in place. With much hesitation and care, he pulled the stick clean out of the door, leaving a round hole to which he applied his eye.

He could see quite clearly. The chamber with its shuttered windows, lit by candlelight. The big bed that he had made himself for his first marriage, spread with the cream quilt that Mercy had brought as part of her trousseau. Mercy standing at the side of the bed, facing the door, the stranger’s bare arms about her from behind. He had evidently removed his clothes, though Maarten could see little of him. Mercy’s own clothes were in disarray, her bodice unlaced, her shift pulled down from her shoulders, her big freckled breasts bare and cupped in the stranger’s groping hands, her plump brown nipples being plucked and flicked and pinched. Her neck was twisted at an angle and there was a look on her face of such painful need that Maarten Gansevoort caught his breath. Her mouth formed a quivering ‘O’ as if she were moulding it about some virile member. She writhed her sumptuous hips, grinding her ass-cheeks into the stranger’s crotch, and covered his hands with her own as he mauled at her.

Nicholas Scratch licked at her white throat, chuckling, then turned her in his hands and pushed her to her knees. Suddenly his body was visible; the unblemished body of a muscular young man, perfect in every way. His stiff stood up rampantly erect from a nest of black curls, dark with blood against the paler skin of his thighs and belly. He took himself in hand and laid the other hand on Mercy’s head as if in blasphemous blessing. But all he was doing was pressing her lower. She put her face to the fat pouch of his scrotum and kissed it fervently.

Maarten Gansevoort loosed the drawstring of his breeches and slipped his hand inside his clothes, ashamed beyond words, yet aroused so much he could no longer wait. His own member was hot and sticky and as hard as smoked meat. He stroked himself, feeling his balls clench, feeling the length in his hand grow thicker and longer with every beat of his heart.

---

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Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a hot excerpt for your entertainment!

As I'm back on the Djinn again - re-editing old novel Heart of Flame - here's an excerpt from another short story of mine,  Chimaera, which is set in modern-day Turkey, where a tourist is stalked by a fiery stranger all the way to Istanbul:

Still he doesn’t smile. He reaches out and lays his hand on the railing of the building at his right, and the iron gate swings open soundlessly at his touch. Let me get this straight: he doesn’t push the gate, but still it moves. I am distracted enough to glance at the structure beyond the rails. It’s the ruin of some traditional looking building, not too big. You see them around in the city, usually mosques that have for some reason fallen into neglect. This one doesn’t have a visible minaret though it does have a dome, so I assume it is a bath-house. Grey swathes of plaster hang from the stonework. The crumbling walls are overgrown with some sort of creeper that has withered to dried sticks in the Turkish summer. Back home kids would take one look and deliver the verdict Haunted.

He lifts his hand in a gesture of invitation.

I must be out of my mind. I must be begging for trouble. I walk past him through the gate, under the archway of the outer wall, into the derelict hamam. I hear him follow me, his feet quieter on the rubble than mine. We pass through an antechamber. We’re inside a room that must have been domed and tiled once, but is now open to the sky. Most of the tiles have fallen and are loose underfoot. It is absolutely silent in here too. My heart is in my throat as I turn to look at him.

He moves upon me with grace but with a terrible eagerness, gripping my arms and pressing me back against a pillar so he can kiss me. He tastes of cardamom. He tastes of sin. He’s more beautiful than I have words for, and my guilt is no more than paper in the flame of my hunger for this man, burnt to ashes. His body presses against me, just at the groin so that there is no mistaking his intentions, and I feel like I’m going to melt or explode or both. His hands find my breasts, pushing up under my respectable long-sleeved blouse, fingers closing over the nipples jutting through the rough lace of my bra. I moan into his mouth, covering his hands with mine to make him squeeze me harder. He pulls from my lips so he can look down at me, his eyes alight with pleasure. We’re both panting.

‘Who are you?’ I ask.

He nuzzles my ear, licking the lobe, teeth teasing my skin. ‘Ifrit,’ he breathes.

It doesn’t occur to me that this is not a name.

I don’t have time to think about it, anyway: he pulls me away from the pillar, scoops me up bodily and plants my bum on the top of a block of masonry. I’m almost at eye-level with him now. My feet dangle.

Now he can afford to draw breath. He stills me with a touch to my cheek, then unpicks the buttons down my blouse, his big hands incongruously delicate, just far enough to reveal my bra. He scoops my breasts out of their cups so they lie displayed on the taut fabric, pouting at him. I think my nipples look ridiculously pink against his brown hands, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He plays with them until I gasp and wriggle, drawing them out to stiff points then punishing their temerity with obvious delight.

‘Harder,’ I moan. ‘Please.’

His eyebrows rise but he obliges with a long, cruelly judged pinch that has me seeing stars. Then he arches me over backward, supporting my spine so he can get his head down and suck my nipples, biting me softly. I hang in space, trusting myself to his hands and his teeth, tears burning in my eyes, feeling and hearing his hot sucking kisses. I must be mad, I think, but my thighs are apart and he’s standing between my knees and his free hand is pushing my full skirt right up, it’s warm on the smoothness of my thighs, it’s probing into the moist flesh between them.

I gasp: “Yes! Oh yes!’

With a good strong pull he sets me upright in my seat again, breathless and wide-eyed. He needs both hands to help me wiggle out of my panties. My desire is laid bare. I blush, biting my lip, and crooking his own in a dark smile he wraps his arms around me, crosses my wrists at the small of my back and loops the elastic and lace of my panties over and over them, until I am bound with the evidence of my guilt.

Now I have to trust him. Now I’m helpless to catch myself if I overbalance. Now I can’t fend him off, even if I want to. He kisses me again, lingeringly, but it doesn’t work to distract me from the advance of his fingers up between my thighs, parting my inner lips, delving into my wet welcome. Like his kisses, his touch is expertly invasive. He works my wet flesh with every finger until I’m so slippery I feel I’m going to slide from my perch, until I’m flushed and gasping and splayed. Then he steps back just enough to be able to loosen his cotton trousers and scoop his cock and balls out over the waistband.

He’s both circumcised and shaven, which is a bit of a shock to my English sensibilities, his balls bulging in a smooth, loose scrotal sac. I strain against my bonds, wanting to touch them, but all I achieve is making my breasts jiggle. He slides his fingers deep into me again, then strokes my juices over his cock, working up a bead of his own lubrication. Then he picks up one of my feet and drapes it over his arm, holding me to stop me falling. His hand snakes around my waist as if we are about to dance – and it still feels like a strange waltz even when he shrugs my raised leg right up to his shoulder. He kisses me again, his mouth slow and hungry. He’s still kissing me when his big cock rampages up my slit and, discovering the gate it’s looking for, slides home.

God, he is big.

He stretches me to the limit. He fucks me slow and hard and deep. He knows what he’s doing. He knows what he wants, and I have no choice but to give it to him: in this waltz, he leads. And what he wants is to make me come, so I do it: on his pumping cock, on his wicked fingers. I shriek as I come, my voice echoing under the sundered dome.

---

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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.

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a filthy excerpt for your entertainment!

This week's post is sort of inevitable, after my spotlight on poor old Saint George. The Scent of Hawthorn, which appears in my second collection of shorts, Dark Enchantment, is set in Italy during the Dark Ages. Herrick is a disillusioned heretic knight who fights monsters in order to save people, but has lost his own way in life - until a vicious battle with a dryad in the mountains finds him thrown down and bound with thorns.

The dryad jumped up onto the rocks and straddled his hips. He couldn’t even raise his head to look down at those naked thighs.

‘So - Does the guest-bed suit you?’

He groaned.

‘A little hard on the back? What a pity.’ She bent and licked the blood streaks on his chest; he was surprised to learn that her mouth was warm. ‘Still, you did arrive at very short notice, without invitation. You must make allowances.’

His heart was racing; she must be able to feel its thud against her lips as she sipped from him. ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ he said through gritted teeth, as the world spun around him.

She chuckled, surprised. ‘Do you enjoy this, man of iron?’

‘Herrick.’

‘What?’

‘That’s my name.’ It seemed important to him that she should know it. He did not want to go nameless to death.

She mouthed the foreign word with distaste. ‘Is this how you expected it all to end, Herrick?’

‘One day.’ And he was horrified to find that his strongest emotion was relief.

‘You’ve fought my kind before?’

‘No. No dryad.’

She circled his nipple with the tip of her tongue, making it harden. ‘Monsters…’

‘Yes.’

‘The last children of Rhea. So that the children of the stones may inherit the earth.’ Her teeth closed cruelly over his left nipple and he groaned from deep in his chest. Then she released the crushed nubbin of flesh and crept forward up his chest, breathing the smell of his sweat and his fear until her lips were against his ear. ‘Do you wish to hear the good news?’

He managed to swallow, and she took that for assent.

‘This isn’t the end, Herrick. Not yet. You are not going to die until I tire of hurting you. And in this place I can take to the brink of death and bring you back again, over and over, for my pleasure. Until your pain has brought me ease.’

Fresh damp sprang from every pore. His insides seemed to turn liquid. She raked claws down his chest and stomach, testing every patch of skin between the criss-crossed bonds. He rolled his eyes back and tried to call upon the mercy of God, but it came out sounding completely wrong somehow.

‘What’s this?’ Her voice was low with surprise. He strained to look down at her and found she’d reached his lower garments, had been sliding about on his crotch, had found something that should not have been there at all: his massive, stony erection, pushing up against the cloth, the swollen head seeping with such eagerness that it was making a damp patch. Herrick was washed by a crimson tide of shame.

Dear God give me strength to resist her, he begged.

She ripped his clothing to shreds. His cock thrust out blasphemously through the rent fabric, and jerked with eagerness as she traced the veins with the tips of her deadly claws - Like a dog rising to greet its mistress, he thought, sick with humiliation.

‘Oh Herrick. Now I know.’

‘No,’ he groaned.

‘This is a gift, isn’t it? A phallus like this, and a man like you, in my power?’

‘You’re wrong…’

‘Wrong? No. Men may lie, but this does not. It makes plain what it wants, Herrick.’ She slapped his prick with first one hand then the other, like a cat playing with a mouse. He burned with shame. ‘Slattern,’ she mocked.

He twisted in his bonds uselessly, driving each pin-point of pain deeper.

‘Lick me, ’ she ordered, looming right over him, lowering her breasts to his mouth. He put out his tongue to her nipple but she snatched it away, giggling, before he could touch her. He groaned, scoured by her glee and his weakness. Then she wriggled back down and crouched over his prick, laying her lips to the underside of the shaft and nipping her way delicately right down to the root, never quite hurting him but threatening all the way. She took his balls one after the other into her mouth, rolling them between her teeth until sweat ran down his temples. Spitting out his slippery ball-sac she then found the silken skin stretched between his soaring cock and his scrotum, and took a fold delicately between two eyeteeth. She held it for a moment, letting him realise what she was going to do.

Herrick quivered, choking out incoherent prayers.

She bit down. Two sharp teeth met through a thin fold of skin and he opened his mouth in a soundless roar. His cock jerked twice - and clear fluid bulged at the slit and, welling out under its own volume, ran down his hard length, testament to his need.

‘Herrick,’ she chided. ‘Look at you.’

‘Oh God – No!’

‘Shh. Stop pretending.’

With her tongue she traced the path of his overspill back up from his balls to the head of his cock, where she lapped his ooze. He groaned again and shook like a man with the ague. His world was in flames. Could there be any defeat more shameful than this – to be beaten in combat then abused as a whore, his body a treacherous accomplice? And her mouth was exquisite comfort now after the hurt she’d inflicted, as tender as a mother hugging her child after smacking it. The pleasure was overwhelming; he knew he needed more. More hurt. More solace.

Her lips, wet from painting his glans, left it bereft and straining. ‘Pain,’ she whispered, straightening and kneeling up astride him again. ‘Your pain is my pleasure, I thought. But your pleasure
too. Don’t worry, Herrick; I will give you what you need.’ She guided his erect cock between her thighs, into her tight slick grip, her eyes rolling back with the effort of taking his girth. Then she refocused on his face. For the first time she sounded a little breathless.

‘You will not spend, Herrick. You will hold it back. Because if you let spill before me I will walk away and leave you here and never return. You understand that?’

‘Yes.’ Oh my God yes.

‘But if you give me my heart’s desire, I will give you yours.’ She reached behind her, down between his thighs, and sank her nails into his scrotum. He gasped and nodded, water running from the corners of his eyes. ‘I’m going to hurt you.’ Her voice was cold, her eyes green fire. ‘I’m going to hurt you badly and there is nothing you can do about it. You are mine to play with. Your strength will not save you. Your God will not save you. Your life is mine now, and it is over.’

---

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Blue Monday

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Le Petit Mort

I've just subbed a paranormal erotic story - it's a vampire tale, sort of - that verges on horror. Because it was intended for an erotica collection I worked quite hard to keep it sexy rather than scary. Well, too scary, anyway. Let's hope the editor sees it that way!

So I've been thinking about Erotica v. Horror. Two separate genres, though clearly there is a potential overlap as there is between all forms of genre fiction. I actually started out my career writing horror, then switched to erotica (thus, incidentally, working my way down the literary pecking order. Some big name horror writers do write smut, or have done in the past. But they like to keep that a secret).

The two genres actually have a lot in common, I believe:

• The plot structure is often similar for both genres. They both work really well (best, many might say) as short stories. In both Horror and Erotica the ideal is to end at the dramatic (or literal) climax, with no cooling off period. In longer fiction the aim is to create an ascending ladder of excitement in the reader's mind, based on set-piece scenes interspersed with tension-ratcheting lulls.

• The author above all aims to evoke a visceral reaction - whether fear or arousal. The best horror or erotica stories bypass the rational brain and go straight to the body. They make the heart race (in both cases) and they make the skin crawl or the genitals swell. These are primaeval responses designed to cope with crisis real-life stimuli, and to be able to evoke these reactions by the written word alone takes a surprising amount of skill. You are wresting control from the reader - and that thrill is exactly what fans like.

• Because this is a stimulus-response reaction, even the most keen readers in both genres can become jaded. This may lead authors toward a dangerous trap of making the stimulus stronger (MORE BLOOD AND GUTS! / BIGGER ORGIES! HUGE STRAP-ONS!), but this is not a game the writer can win in the long run. Far better, in my opinion, to sneak up on the reader with something they hadn't anticipated, and reveal to them the depths of their vulnerability. If you can convince readers of the devastating allure of a hole in a woollen stocking (like in The Piano) or the terror inherent in a closed door (like in The Monkey's Paw), then you are doing it right as a writer.

• Both genres are subversive. They aim to convince you to suspend your faith in the laws of society, in the normal tropes of interaction between people, and to accept - temporarily - that there might be other, often more powerful and dangerous, possibilities. They both say "What if the world didn't work the way people tell you it does?" Both genres draw their power from overturning social consensus and restrictions.

If you are interested in reading examples of my erotica that I'd class as horror too, try:
Lord Montague's Last Ride in Cruel Enchantment
Cold Hands, Warm Heart in Dark Enchantment
At Usher's Well in Fierce Enchantments
and Red Grow the Roses.

COVER REVEAL! - Fierce Enchantments

This is it! The official cover for the third published collection of my erotic short stories, due out in Autumn from Sweetmeats Press!

I love it - dark, sexy, fantastical, and uncompromising. Perfect for the contents!

Here's Sweetmeats' "coming in 2014" catalogue :-) I keep going back and smiling at this page. I've got a story included in their forthcoming Drenched anthology too, by the way.

As to the title ... I wanted, of course, a reference to my previous two collections, Cruel Enchantment and Dark Enchantment. It's my signature dish, as it were. We went temporarily up to These Fierce Enchantments because we thought it'd be less confusing for prospective purchasers - but Sweetmeats' new American distributor (we have a US distributor! Yay!) asked for it to go back down to the simpler version. Publishing is a complex business, with many people having their say... and now you know.
:-)

I am so excited about this!

Sticky books

There's a meme going round on Facebook at the moment where people list the ten books that have "stuck with them" - not necessarily their favourite books, or the ones they think are best written, but the ones that stuck in their heads and changed the way they saw the world.

So here's my list. I refuse to whittle it down to just ten though.

Seven Sticky Books from my Childhood:

• The Hobbit, by J R R Tolkien - A primer in the concept that "friends don't always stick together, and good guys don't always survive." Anyone who describes this book as lighthearted fun for kids just hasn't read to the end.
• The Silver Chair by C S Lewis - Out of all the Narnia books, this was my favourite. The landscapes seemed very real to me, and I liked the ballsy female lead Jill. It was also about this point that I realised that I just didn't like Aslan.
• The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper - second book of the series of the same name, this novel was written when Cooper was living in America, out of an intense nostalgia for the England she'd left behind. As well as a tale of Ancient Dark Forces and a magical child coming into his power, it is also   an extraordinary mystical/mythical evocation of the British (middle-class) Christmas.
• The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner - Another fantasy series rooted in the British landcape. Garner's books were the direct inspiration behind my novel Wildwood.
• The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K LeGuin - the middle book of the Earthsea trilogy (as it was then), this is almost - but not quite - a romance. The direct inspiration behind my novel Divine Torment.
• Bless the Beasts and Children by Glendon Swarthout - a rather brutal American tale of outcast teenage boys who make it their mission to save a bunch of buffalo from the cull. I think this was pivotal in solidifying my pro-animal-rights attitude.
• Slave of the Huns by Geza Gardonyi - sounds like a romance title , but is actually a historical with an Unrequited Lurv plot-driver. Fantastic scenes of battle, including prep and ghastly aftermath. 

  Six from my Teenaged Years:

• The Lord of the Rings, by J R R Tolkien - of course. I actually started the first volume when I was 10, but it kept me company throughout my teens.
• Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake - this fantasy novel is the nearest thing to something "literary" on this list. What I learned from it was the importance of world-building.
• The Ghost Stories of M R James - read in an upstairs alcove in my local library, one at a time ... looking repeatedly over my shoulder in terror. This book made me start writing supernatural horror stories. See the MRJ in my story Cold Hands, Warm Heart.
• At the Mountains of Madness by H P Lovecraft - read at 18, the start of a literary love-affair that has lasted all my life. Above all others, the Lovecraftian fantasy worldview has an ability to infect real life with a sense of pleasurable awe and dread and paranoia.  
• Till We Have Faces by C S Lewis - A re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth in harsh bronze-age terms. Totally unlike anything else he wrote, with a fabulous female narrator, it influenced my own writing enormously - you can see it clearly in my story The Red Thread.
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter - oh my goodness, how much of my work depends on my seventeen-year-old-self's discovery of this incredible, lyrical collection of fairy stories?! See it very obviously in ... Gold, On Snow.

Five that stuck with me as an Adult:

• Avalon Nights by Sophie Danson - This is the book that started me writing erotica!
• Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore - one of the very few writers I read for the joy of his prose, regardless of  the subject matter. This linked-story collection spanning only a few square miles but thousands of years (most of them pretty grim) is just haunting. The "mosaic novel" is a structure I adopted for Red Grow the Roses.
• Angels of Darkness by Gav Thorpe - This is a left-fielder. It's actually a Warhammer 40,000 novel tie-in, and I have zero interest in that sub-genre. I only picked the book up to have something to read in the loo before going to bed. By 2 a.m, as I finished the last lines, I was almost physically shaken. I have no idea whether it would stand re-reading in the cold light of day; all I know is that in the middle of the night the bleak conclusion hit me like a ton of bricks. I want to write an ending that powerful! Just, not for a romance...!
• Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis -  a fantasy time-travel tale about the Black Death. I wept buckets.
• Into Thin Air by John Krakauer - yes, I know it's not fiction. The true account of a particularly lethal week on Everest. I'm not a mountaineer and I have no desire to be one. But this book is about human nature at the absolute edge of survival. Extreme tenacity, courage, stupidity, selfishness, altruism, individuality, self-sacrifice - all the moral questions are here. Jaw-dropping.

So yeah, nothing "literary" or Grown Up. And many a bit on the dark side.
I'm fine with that :-)

I love November

Wooohooo - it's November!
No, I'm not growing a moustache. I'm the Guest Author of the month at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association, which is a huge honour. It also means that for a whole month three of my stories are up there in their unwholesome entirety for you to read.

And I picked three of my personal favourites, which means you'll find some very edgy and dirty themes there!

• Sun Seeking - Ness has dumped her boyfriend and is on holiday alone in the Greek Islands; she gets picked up by a mysterious woman who wants to show her ... some of the sights
• Scorched - Emerald is cheating on her boyfriend with their flatmate: a story of betrayal and retribution.
• The Red Thread - Ari is ... well, let's just say that this is my ultimate something-scary-in-the palace-cellar story!

Enjoy!

Happy Hallowe'en!

All pictures by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893)

It's All Hallows' Eve, the nights are drawing in ... so let me tell you a ghost story. Two friends are sitting up in a deserted house, waiting for the ghost to appear...

---

I had to hand it to him: Morgan was never lacking in confidence. As for myself, my curiosity was piqued, certainly, and with it my sense of adventure. And if I have rather more imagination than my friend, I was determined not to let it get the better of me. I rose, throwing the stub of my cigar into the fire, and started to stroll about the room, stretching my legs. We’d uncovered only the two chairs we’d dragged to the hearth; now I twitched the dust sheet off a couple more pieces of furniture, discovering a high-backed oak settle and a coffer that turned out to be empty.
    ‘Looking for ghosts?’ asked Morgan, spreading his legs indolently.
    ‘In hostile territory, secure your immediate surroundings,’ I replied, quoting the cadet officer who’d taught us both at Winchester. We shared a grin. I bundled up another sheet and added, ‘Hello!’
    It was species of large chaise longue or day bed I’d uncovered: very heavy looking, carved of the black oak so typical of Welsh farmhouses. The upholstery was of Indian cotton, but looked clean enough. ‘Bags the bed here!’ I said smartly.
    ‘Too nervous to go upstairs?’ Morgan asked teasingly. I shot him a pointed look.
    ‘It will be cold as Erebus up there, and I don’t suppose the mattresses will be aired.’
    He nodded. ‘Well, I intend to sit up. If we stay down here, we can take turns to watch and to sleep.’
    ‘Sounds fair.’ I turned to the nearest wall and pulled down the sheet draped over a frame there. I was expecting to find a painting: what I uncovered was a mirror, its glass a little spotted at the edges, its depths grey. I paused, struck by the play of firelight on Morgan’s face. His handsome aristocratic features and sandy moustache contrasted with my blunter, darker countenance and my pensive expression. ‘Why is it that the ghost seeks out the Master of the house?’ I asked suddenly.

    ‘Mm?’ He looked up from inspecting the swirl of brandy in his glass.
    ‘Is it revenge?’
    ‘Isn’t it always revenge?’ He laughed shortly. ‘The story is that there was this girl … Hm. I was told her name but I forget the details – Alyce, was it? She was a daughter of border gentry around here. Not sure how long ago, but I believe it was around the Civil War. Something like that. She grew up a proper little hoyden, allowed to run wild, but very beautiful too. She was wilful and wouldn’t marry any of the men her father lined up for her, but one day she was out riding – on her own, mind you, and astride the saddle – and she met one of the neighbours, the Lord of Levingshall. My ancestor.’ Morgan smirked, and watching his reflection in that glass his expression struck me as oddly unpleasant. ‘Now, Lord Price – he wasn’t a Morgan back then - was a very handsome man and quite the charmer. She fell for him, head over heels, out there in the greenwood just like in the old songs. He laid her down on the grass so green and lifted her skirt and with a hey-nonny-nonny…’
    At that moment there was a draught down the chimney and the fire flattened, shadows leaping across the room. I spun to face my friend in mock alarm. Well, perhaps it was not all mockery. He’d stopped, lips parted over his next word, eyes glinting. He bared his teeth in a grin.
    ‘Well, let’s say he taught her a few things about riding she hadn’t learnt at home. Gave her a good churn with his cream-stick, as they say out here in the country. The lucky lass thought she was in Paradise. And when she slipped off back home that night she couldn’t help thinking about him, about how kind he’d been to her and how helpful and how handsome … And how big was his prick.’ Morgan patted his crotch fondly. ‘The upshot was that next day she got on her horse and rode from her father’s lands to his, all the way to the house here, desperate for a repeat performance. But when she got to Levingshall she found the place was in the midst of wedding preparations: Lord Price was to be married that day to another lady.’
    I pulled a face, bracing myself.
    ‘Of course, if she’d have had the least sense she would have scuttled off quickly and kept quiet about the whole thing and salvaged some dignity. But the silly wench had just lost her maidenhead and was wildly in love and she made the most terrible scene, demanding that he marry her instead, and then begging him, and then cursing him for betraying her – which he hadn’t done, never having promised her anything. Lord Price laughed her out of the place. Alyce jumped on her horse in the end and rode away from the hall, to the bridge, where in her rage she threw herself off into the waters. It was spring and the water was icy cold from the hills: servants dragged her out but she was already stone dead. They buried her in unconsecrated ground of course, being a suicide as well as a whore.’
    Poor girl, I thought.

    ‘A month later, Lord Price was found dead in his bed, cold as ice and wringing wet - and a look on his face like he’d seen the Devil himself. Luckily he had brothers, but the next one went the same way before they worked out it wasn’t safe for the landholder to stay in his own house.’ He sighed. ‘It’s come down to us through cousins and younger sons. No one in the family wants the damn place, and though the rental income isn’t bad it’s no fortune.’
    ‘I can see your problem. You’ve inherited a bit of a white elephant, haven’t you?’
    ‘I hope not. I sincerely hope not. And with luck we shall know by the morning, eh?’
    ‘Mm.’ I wasn’t sure what species of luck he was courting here.  I turned back to the mirror and considered recovering it, rather disliking the shadowy room reflected in the tinted glass.  Common sense – or pride – got the better of me though. Discarding the sheet, I turned to the fire for something to keep me occupied, but the blaze had steadied and was burning bright and warm. ‘I’ll go get another basket of logs, shall I?’
    ‘Shh!’ Morgan held up his hand.
    I froze. For a moment there was silence except for the pop and crackle of the flames. ‘What?’ I ventured at last.
    ‘Shh! That!’
    This time round I heard it: a low squeak. In the time it took me to turn and face in the direction of the noise I’d identified it as the sound a wet fingertip makes upon glass. I took a deep breath. The interior shutters in this room were closed and barred, but I knew from the front elevation that the tall, rectangular windows were made up of leaded diamonds of glass.
    Quietly, with a look of grim satisfaction, Morgan opened his gun-case and bent to the weapon within. Breaking it, he slipped in the first cartridge. ‘Open it,’ he said in a low voice.
    I barely hesitated. Dropping the steel bar that held the central panel, I pulled the shutter wide open. A multitude of diamond panes reflected the firelight at my back, but the cold draught was immediately felt. The night outside was moonlit, and filled with the soughing of the unseen river. Bushes pressed right up to the house; beyond them I could make out the grey wash of a lawn.
    Squeak.

    ‘It’s a branch rubbing on the glass.’ I glanced back triumphantly at Morgan and caught him stood with gun readied but pointed down and away, for which I was grateful. He cracked a grin.
    ‘Of course it is.’
    I reached out to grasp the shutter again, but stopped mid-motion, puzzled by something half-visible through the shrubbery. ‘I say – what’s that on the lawn?’
    ‘What?’ Morgan grabbed the oil lamp and started forward, but I waved it away: the more light around me, the less I could see outside the house.
    ‘Out there – something white on the grass.’
    Side by side, we peered out through the thick, bubbly glass and the criss-crossed branches, trying to bring into focus the pale object lying out there at some indeterminate distance. I wasn’t even sure it was an object: it might have been a patch of light or a litter of stones. There was no telling how big it was or even if it was moving.
    ‘What the hell,’ Morgan muttered, really irritated.
    ‘We’ll get a better view from the landing window,’ I suggested. We would be higher than those damned shrubs up there, and able to look down on the lawn.
    ‘Good idea.’ Turning decisively, he strode from the room and I followed, bringing the lamp. It was a good thing I did: the hall was in darkness otherwise and the big oak staircase would have been near impossible to negotiate because the moonlight did not fall further than the half-landing. The ancient treads creaked beneath our feet as we ascended. Shoulder to shoulder again, we stared out onto the back garden lawn.
    There was nothing out there. The lawn was a sweep of unbroken grey, the trees beyond as black as India ink.
    ‘Can’t see a damn thing,’ Morgan complained. ‘Are you sure there was something out there?’
    ‘I thought so.’ I felt chilly all of sudden, though I attributed it to moving from the only room with a lit fire.
    Behind us, the front door knocker crashed. We both jumped like someone had run a galvanic current through us, and spun round to look down the stairs. The ground floor was in impenetrable shadow.
    ‘Who is it?’ Morgan called. ‘Who’s there?’
    There was no answering shout, but the door knocker slammed again.

---

You can read a later  (And much ruder) excerpt from Cold Hands, Warm Heart here

You can read the whole story in Dark Enchantment
Amazon US : US Kindle : Amazon UK : UK Kindle

Herbert Draper

The Gates of Dawn (1900)

This. This is just awesome.

As I'm on a Fantasy theme this week, what with Thrones of Desire and my upcoming webchat this Saturday for the ERWA (all welcome!), I'm going to rave about Victorian artist Herbert James Draper (1863-1920). Because, before there was Fantasy Art, there was just Art, and that was allowed to include goddesses, mythological beings and nymphs.

Talking of nymphs, Draper's art has made previous appearances in my posts on Naiads and Nereids ...

Ulysses and the Sirens

And a tremendous depiction of the fallen Icarus:

The Lament for Icarus (1898)

This is a sketch study for the picture above:

And another study ... I'm not sure I even need colour to fall in love with his nudes!

Some of his stuff did veer dangerously close to the cheesy...

Sea Melodies

But I think he mostly managed to be charming (and a bit naughty) without being too bland:

The Capture

D'you think she's going to drown the kid?

The Pearls of Aphrodite

The Kelpie

And sometimes he was downright dark in his eroticism:

The Lamia (1909)

The Lamia is a man-devouring serpent-woman - note her snakeskin

Ariadne

Ariadne - the protag of my story The Red Thread, btw, was taken away by Theseus after he had used her to kill the Minotaur and escape the Labyrinth. The bastard then marooned her on the uninhabited island of Naxos, the moment depicted in this picture.

Clyties of the Mists (1912) (detail)

 I really don't know the story behind this, but it looks unhappy and intriguing! (It's been suggested that these are mist-spirits who love the sun but are destroyed by him. Clyties the nymph was killed by her unrequited love for Apollo.)