Showing posts with label Divine Torment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Divine Torment. Show all posts

Wednesday, 19 October 2016

Dream a little dream

Kacziány Aladár (1887-1978): A Dream

Back in the Olden Days, when I first started writing for Black Lace, they had a set of instructions for novels that specifically told you not to use dream sequences because erotica was already a fantasy, and they didn't want a fantasy-within-a-fantasy.

Naturally I ignored this rule.

In fact, if anyone ever does a college course on The Writings of Janine Ashbless, at some point in the utopian future, there's probably a whole essay in unraveling my use of dreams.

From the get-go I have used dreams in my novels, for many different reasons - as an inciting incident, to establish character, to foreshadow events, to reveal psychological truths, and (within supernatural fiction) as a sort of alternative reality that allows the characters to interact with each other.


In my very first novel, Divine Torment, our warrior-hero General Veraine has a dirty dream about the high priestess after meeting her for the first time (and being intrigued, but not overly so). That dream sparks a sexual obsession that drives the whole book, and then its sequel.


My novel Wildwood opens with a dream-sequence, because the editor asked for prologue which throws the reader into the thick of the action. I gave him a bonkers Arthur-Rackhamesque scene of fairies and woodland sex, during which lovers Avril and Ash are attacked by the malevolent Michael. Then Avril wakes up in Michael's bed - next to him and his fairy lover - and stares out of the window wondering where Ash is. That scene, which is actually a flash-forward to a pivotal episode later in the book, establishes the supernatural/fairy/woodland theme and the bitter love-triangle. All before the first chapter.

In The King's Viper (which is a non-supernatural romance) there is only one brief dream-sequence, but it is the first time that virginal Ella is shown to have some truly wild fantasies about the man she has a secret crush on. This is not just an innocent love!


I've already blogged about how the whole Lovers' Wheel Quartet was inspired by a dream I had years ago. Interspersed with the main narrative and its sexual and supernatural shenanigans, Liz is also carrying on a strange (and seemingly disconnected) affair in her dreams with a mysterious red-headed man who seems to be caught between life and death. In these books the dream-thread is a vital part of the plot and will have far-reaching, tragic consequences.


And in the Book of the Watchers trilogy, Milja has been at the mercy of demon-inspired sex-dreams throughout her life. Later on she finds that her developing powers as a witch allow her to create dreams which she can drag both angels and humans into at her whim - usually for sex with her Fallen Angel lover Azazel, but sometimes for more practical (and occasionally ruthless) purposes.

These dreams are not entirely under her control though. Sometimes they are prescient, offering clues to situations that are yet to arise, or places she has yet to visit. Sometimes she comes back from these "dreams" with mud on her feet. Dreamspace acts as an ambiguous spiritual world with its own rules and masters, and is never quite predictable.


Why am I so interested in dreams? I think it's because its the most powerful way we actually have, in this life, of escaping into fantasy realms just as we imagine doing in fiction. We take it for granted because we all do it all our lives, but when you stop to think about it, dreaming is REALLY REALLY WEIRD. It is conscious existence beyond the material realm, and that is just freaky.

Do I have naughty dreams myself? Of course I do - though not as often as I'd like ;-)

Monday, 19 October 2015

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a filthy excerpt for your entertainment!

Today, something a bit different. I suddenly randomly remembered this scene from my swords-n-sandals novel Divine Torment, published way back in the days before Black Lace got all nervous about M/M and their heroes doing Teh Gay on the side. So I thought I'd dig it out and see if it was as dodgy and non-consensual as I recalled. In this scene my hero General Veraine is getting a massage from his aide. He's under a ton of strain and, I regret to say, he's about to lose his composure, bigtime...


'You know, sir,' Arioc ventured, after he had loosened the cords of the Achilles tendons and slid cupped hands right up the length of Veraine's legs, from rough-textured calves to the soft skin at the small of the spine; 'your back's like a board. You're too tense. If I might say so, sir, you could do with a bloody good fuck.'

'And you're offering, are you, Arioc?' Veraine grunted to the linen sheet under his face.

'No, sir. You're not my type. I 'd suggest you go back to that silk-house though.'

'The silk-house just about threw me out last time,' Veraine growled. Then he added, 'What do you mean, I'm not your type? Don't tell me you do prefer pussy to arse, Arioc; four thousand men can't have all got it wrong.'

'Four thousand men are under the impression that I'm your mattress,' Arioc pointed out, digging into his ribs perhaps a shade too hard.

'Oh, great. Just great.' Veraine was not really surprised; he supposed he should have expected it.

 'I do screw arse, sir,' Arioc continued conversationally, adding an extra drizzle of oil between the shoulder blades and running it out to the triceps. 'But you're not the kind I prefer. You're …'

'What?'

'You're a general, sir. You walk and act and think like a noble. You smell like a noble. You're rational, self-disciplined and courteous. Mostly,' he added as an afterthought. 'And that's not what I'm interested in.'

'You like something a bit less bland, I gather?'

'I can appreciate a good man, sir. It just doesn't get me hard.'

'So you fuck footsoldiers. Well, I can see why your family might want to keep that quiet.'

'Oh, you don’t know the half of it, sir.' There was a clink as Arioc picked up the strigil he had prepared. He touched the bronze scraper firmly to Veraine's neck and the general jumped at the coldness of the metal.

'Go on; shock me,' he said grimly.

Arioc began to run the strigil across his body, bringing off a layer of oil, sweat and dirty skin, which he wiped off the bronze onto a handcloth. 'I fuck footsoldiers,' he said as he scraped Veraine clean. 'I take cock. I like it hard and nasty. I like it from a group of men. One isn't enough. I like it when they slap me about, and when they piss on me, and when they make me crawl. It's hard to keep that discrete. I've tried to tone it down, to make do with the lighter stuff. But it doesn't give me a rush the way being cluster-fucked in a latrine does.'

Veraine's eyes were suddenly wide open, though he said nothing.

'There was this time. This was the best time I ever had; I still think about it. Though it left me terrified for weeks. I was in barracks at Antoth. It was late at night, and I was out in the city, just going from tavern to tavern, looking for action. I was crossing the road when I saw a soldier coming out of a wine-house, fumbling with himself. He was a big, rough looking bloke, with a broken nose and scars all down one side of his face. He had an ear missing too. I didn't recognise him; he must have been from a different host. He caught sight of me and looked me over, long enough for me to be sure, then he stared right past me like I wasn't there. He turned away down an alley and I followed him. He went behind the tavern into what must have been a potter's yard; there were broken pots all over the floor and the ground was all dug up into humps of kilns. He stopped against the nearest one and lifted his tunic. I came in a little closer, and suddenly he turned round and glared at me, asked me why I'd been following him. He had his cock out in his hand and I couldn't stop staring at it. It was thick and knobbly and misshapen, just like him, with thick veins like snakes twined about it. I told him I wanted to watch him piss. He didn't say a thing, but he suddenly rushed at me and knocked me flat, then grabbed hold of my tunic and held me up as he straddled me, his legs set either side of my shoulders, my face stuck against his crotch. Then he lifted his tunic again and slapped his cock into my face and he pissed all over me, up my nose and in my eyes, and he stuffed it in my mouth and just kept pissing. I nearly drowned. He was snarling something about if I wanted to see it, here it was, but I couldn't really hear, I was so busy trying to swallow and breathe at the same time.

'Just as he finished a bunch of other men came up to us. Three men. His friends. They asked what the fuck was going on, and he told them he had found this little bitch-dog that was following him around. He whipped his belt off and looped it round my neck, then dragged me back and forth across the ground in front of his mates. They were laughing like they were going to burst. They made me bark and whimper, and then lick their feet. They liked the whimpering. Then one of them said he thought the bitch was on heat because she was flashing her ass for everyone to see. He pulled out his tackle and asked me if I wanted to lick at that. So I did, and he held me by the hair and fucked my throat. Then while I crouched on hands and knees, they took it in turn to bugger me while their friends had their cocks sucked at the other end. They stank of alcohol and piss, and they were so fucking strong and brutal - I had a hard-on every moment of the ordeal. They laughed at that. They threatened to cut it off, because a bitch shouldn't have a pizzle. They stood round me when they had finished and made me bring myself off, and then eat my spunk off my hands. I was nearly shitting myself in fear. They all had knives.

'Finally they tied my wrists to my knees and left me crouched there in the potter's yard, unable to move. I was one huge bruise from head to foot. My commanding officer had to send a team of stretcher-bearers to get me back to barracks the next day. But I still had a hard-on. Turn over, sir.'

Without thinking, Veraine rolled onto his back, propping himself up on his elbows. Arioc had set down the strigil and his hands were cupped full of oil. He looked down at Veraine's body. Veraine followed the line of his gaze.

Arioc raised his eyebrows.

Veraine looked uneasily at the tumescent length of his half-erect cock, stirring on his belly. As they watched a surge ran up it, and it visibly thickened.

His smile illuminated Arioc's beautiful features like a light. 'I told you, you were tense,' he murmured. Oil dripped from his long fingers. He reached out to touch the general's member.

'No,' said Veraine, very clearly.

The smile became mocking. 'Don't tell me you've never fucked a man, sir?'

'Not recently.'

'I didn't think you could be the only virgin in the Eighth Host.'

'I prefer women,' said Veraine through bared teeth.

'That's alright. I don't like officers.' Arioc looked down at his own quite obvious bulge. 'We can be flexible.'

Veraine sat bolt upright, trying to parry the reaching hand, but he was far too slow. And as Arioc's oiled fingers closed around his aching length, he forgot why he had any objections. A groan escaped from his throat. The muscles of his stomach clenched and jumped.

'That's better, sir,' Arioc said, kneeling up beside him to get both hands engaged. His grip was firm and knowing, as efficient as his massage. One slim patrician hand worked up and down the shaft, while the other cupped and flexed his scrotum. Veraine imagined hot lead had been poured into his balls; they felt heavy and fit to burst. Unhurriedly, Arioc worked his foreskin back down from the head of his cock, revealing the flushed and angry dome and the slitted eye from which milky fluid was already seeping. And Veraine, who had never intended or anticipated this, could only be grateful that somebody - anybody - was taking in hand the demanding, raging beast that jerked and danced between his legs. He leaned back against his braced arms, eyes closed, feeling the blood begin to boil in his veins.

'You're gagging for it,' Arioc observed.

Veraine forced his eyes open. The young man's head was bowed reverentially over his toil, his hand alternating between a blur of movement and slow, masterful strokes that made the general bite his lip in frustration. Arioc's glossy black curls quivered to the rhythm of his pumping muscles. Veraine struggled for speech.

'That's enough,' he managed to say.

Arioc looked up at him sharply and shook his head, the quirk of his lips expressing sheer wickedness.

'That's enough, soldier!' Veraine rasped, and this time his voice held the bite of command. 'Up against the wall!'

Arioc released him, crossed the room in two long strides and slapped his hands hard against the plaster, head bowed. Veraine rolled off the table to his feet, glanced around the room and found what he wanted; a short-bladed knife on the pile of linen to be used for rags. He walked up behind Arioc,  surveyed the young man's back for a moment, then hitched the knee-length tunic up and cut through the cords of the loin-cloth beneath. He was sloppy with the knife, nicking Arioc's skin over the hip. The young man shuddered like a horse on the battlefield.

Veraine threw both blade and shredded cloth to the floor and placed both hands on the other man's arse, feeling the muscle hard under the sculpted planes of the skin.

'Spread your legs,' he growled. Arioc jerked his feet apart on the flagstones. Veraine slid his thumbs into the cleft of his buttocks, finding tight, shiny skin and wiry hairs and - very quickly - the clenched muscular ring of his anus. He guided the head of his own cock to that aperture and without pause or warning shoved nearly the full length of his member hard into it.

It was a good job that Arioc had slathered him in oil, because that orifice was far drier and tighter than a woman's sex. The chariot-driver jerked beneath him and made a noise that might have been a sob, but did not cry out. Veraine rested for a moment against his back, bemused temporarily by its muscularity, by the narrowness of the hips under his hands. He laid his cheek against the youth's raven-black locks. 'Comfortable?' he asked sarcastically.

Arioc made a whining noise in his throat.

Veraine considered abusing him verbally, but impatience got the better of him. Though the young man would probably appreciate it, Veraine was not interested in giving a performance or indulging the other's tastes. He wanted to come. He wanted to shoot his load into that tight grip and fill the man's arrogant arse with his jism and that was all.

He reached round and found the other man's erection, proud as a battle-standard. He slapped it once, stingingly, with his flat palm and then let it fall back to rest there. It felt surprisingly good. Arioc's cock, like Arioc, was slim and elegant. Veraine gripped it firmly, knotted his other arm around the other man's belly and began to fuck him strong and hard. Arioc groaned, spread his legs wider and opened up to him, taking it to the hilt. The grip on Veraine's cock pulsed and clenched and new spaces unfurled about it, the incredible heat and softness and yielding caress of that interior world sending bolts of fire up the invading member and into his spine. He thrust pitilessly and came at last with a snarl, barely conscious of the alien prick spasming under his hand.

He pulled out after only a moment's rest, before his tumescence had subsided, and stood panting, surprised at the effort the act had wrung from his body. Arioc leaned against the wall, wiping the sweat from his face. Snail-trails glistened beside him on the plaster, where his own ejaculate had bespattered the wall.

'Well, I do feel better for a good fuck, you were right,' Veraine nodded, trying to calm his ragged breathing. 'But if you ever disobey an order again like that, soldier, I will have the chariot-pole rammed up your insubordinate arse. Understand?'

'Yes sir,' said Arioc meekly.

Wednesday, 18 December 2013

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 :-)

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

Ironclad - movie review


Synchronicity.
Last week I happened to be talking about my beseiged-in-a-fortress fantasies. So that day I got mail from Chris:

Go see Ironclad, Janine.  Kate Mara trapped inside a castle with 230 highly trained  men and a horde of barbarians outside.  Well, ok, not 230, more like 23, but hey, one of them is James Purefoy looking all rough and bearded.  Plus there's a giant scandinavian with his shirt off in the horde outside.

Which was enough for me.
Ironclad is a medieval movie about the siege of Rochester Castle by the dastardly Prince John. It actually covers an awful lot of the same ground as the recent version of Robin Hood with Russell Crowe, only on a tiny fraction of the budget and with the significant difference that Ironclad is not shit.


Leave your authenticity hat at home, forgive it the ropey CGI in the distance shots, and it is a tough, engaging fight movie. Good versus evil. Might versus courage. Forbidden desire. A bunch of favourite middle-aged British thesps in costume. All those things I approve of. And James Purefoy in the lead role. I approve of him too.


But be aware that it is really violent. I was frankly aghast that it got away with a "15" certificate: I have a nasty feeling we are drifting into American standards of censorship. Tongues and limbs get severed and in the battle scenes people get hacked up like so much meat. Realistic, maybe. I couldn't have coped at 15, that's all I'm saying.


Of course, the big problem with it fulfilling my fantasies is that the weather is bloody awful. Man, it never stops raining in the Middle Ages. Give me deserts! Give me sun-bronzed warriors!

Damn, I'll just have to write my own besieged-in-a-desert-fortress-by-barbarians fantasy. Oh look: I did. Several years ago. And you can buy it here. Or here. Sunshine (and sweat, and sex) guaranteed.
:-)

Friday, 6 August 2010

Tough Love


I want to riff off a post of Danielle's today - not just because he paid me a huge compliment, but because it really got me thinking. Danielle was talking about his fear of romance (fictional and otherwise) and one of the things he said - Danielle's blogging style always makes me feel like I've walked into a cloud of butterflies! - was:


i recognise the things what others think is romantic..but i m not always sure what people conect to the word...for me romantic is going and hunt a huge animal and lay it in front of my sweethearts door..there..look..i killed it just for you..its still warm!

And anyway, my personal reaction to that thing that epitomises romance for him is that it's something that I wouldn't find remotely romantic. (Not just because I'm a vegetarian!) I've never really got the gift-giving and receiving part of romance, which I know most people do get. I mean, I like gifts as much as the next person, but even a hugely expensive pressie like a diamond doesn't strike me as more romantic than a kiss. Hey, I'm a cheap date.

Nor am I impressed by carefully arranged surprise trysts in perfect locations with violinists hiding around the corner ready to spring out as he suddenly drops to his knees to propose. (Public marriage proposals on TV actually strike me as uber-manipulative and creepy.) The Big Gesture does not touch my heart.

Yet I do write erotic romance. And what defines that romance for me?


Pain.

It's a theme that runs through practically every erotic romance story I write: true love is characterised by a willingness to suffer and die for the beloved. Blame my Christian upbringing, I guess. If you're someone in one of my straight erotica stories, it might be a bit scary but you can be usually be guaranteed to have a fine old time. But, oh boy, you don't want to be a lead in my romantic fiction, because there you will be in for a whole world of pain.

My very first romantic story, White as any Milk: Black as any Silk features a wizard who falls for a hostile witch, and she puts him through hell:
Then the wave recedes at last, with a terrible hissing undertow that threatens to drag me into utter blackness. I am left broken in its wake. I can't see. My eyes are full of blood.


In Divine Torment Veraine gets captured, tied up, kicked in the nuts, bitten, threatened with castration and torture, left to die of thirst on a clifftop. Oh, and he loses his job ...
In Burning Bright Veraine is smashed over the head so hard it induces months of hallucinations, put through a horrible fever, starved, assaulted by ghosts, captured and tied up, raped (but only in the first draft before it got censored...) then made to fight for his life against a superhuman opponent. Myrna is enslaved, pierced, tattooed all over, nearly drowned, and lives in constant danger of being slaughtered out of hand.
In Wildwood Ash surrenders to his worst enemy and has his blood drained for a magical ritual.
In The House of Dust the broken-hearted Ishara has to open a gate into the Land of the Dead to retrieve her lover: she's there subjected to all sorts of rough sex and humiliation.
In Bear Skin Hazel is punished for betraying Arailt by being exiled, then having to run a gauntlet of sexual challenges to get him back.
In Bound in Skin Cassandra is left penniless in central Europe, has to beg for shelter and a job from a shit-scary nobleman, then gets shot in the stomach and finally transformed into a werewolf.
In Heart of Flame the two romantic leads get variously drowned, fatally wounded (yep), tied up and threatened, nearly eaten by ghouls, betrayed, beaten up and buried in an avalanche.

Life is tough for a romantic hero or heroine of mine. And what's more none of them gets the person they really want till the HEA right at the end of the book!



Oh yeah ... did I mention the sexual frustration theme too? Very romantic.
Okay, I might be a bit worried now.

Which is all to say that at the moment I'm currently writing an erotic romance novella. I'm having a wonderful time: it is safe to say that my characters are not. Starvation, exhaustion, a shipwreck, icy rivers, torn feet, attempted rape, imprisonment, torture, massive sexual self-denial and heartbreak - See how they suffer for my pleasure!

Now that's love.

Sunday, 18 April 2010

Kink up your Kindle...



... as Alison Tyler put it. I'm delighted to see that most of my books are now available in electronic download format for the Kindle reader. If you happen to have one of them (and don't just spend all your time using it to pretend you have been beamed down from a starship to study the ways of this primitive planet, which is what I'd do) you can find a bunch of my Black Lace novels and novellas in the Kindle Shop. And most (the ones marked *) are cheaper than the paperback versions (which is not always the case with Kindle. I don't get why that should be, but it's true: sometime you pay more for the electronic version. Go figure.)

Cruel Enchantment $8.15
(my first collection of fairy/fantasy and horror shorts. Includes the infamous dragon-sex story and undead story. Ooh ... Looks like the paperback was reissued last month! How awesome!)

Dark Enchantment $7.67*
(as Cruel Enchantment, but a new collection. Ghosts and steampunk and the Devil and Death ...)

Divine Torment $9.69
(my first swords-and-sandals novel. In an ancient desert temple the arrival of a warrior tears the priestess' world apart...)


Wildwood $7.91*
(contemporary paranormal full of nature spirits and faeries and a bitter magical battle that will change the world.)


Enchanted $8.06*
(3 novellas. Mine is about a woman who goes off with a bear... It's okay, he's only a bear sometimes: he's under a curse, and boy does he needs her help.)

Magic and Desire $7.71*
(3 novellas. Mine is a retelling of the oldest myth in the world: the Descent of Inanna into the Underworld ... with added kink and BDSM.)

Ashbless on Kindle 

UPDATE: Electronic downloads in non-Kindle format, via Waterstones!

Friday, 17 July 2009

What Janine Did in London #2

So we got to the British Museum. Of course it's been remodelled in the past few years but this is my first overwhelming memory of the place from when I was a 10-year-old kid: the Assyrian gate guardians.

I was excited then to the point of terror by their size and majesty and hyper-realism. I've been fasincated by the Near East ever since. That's why I wrote House of Dust in Enchanted.

Here's another treasure from the Mesopotamian gallery: the Ram in a Thicket, made of gold and lapis lazuli and shell. Isn't it beautiful? A mere four and a half thousand years old...

Here's something that made me so excited I nearly wet myself: the Queen of the Night teracotta relief. Old Bablylonian this time, but still the same part of the world. It's commonly identified as a depiction of the demon-goddess Lilith, but the card nearby says (without giving any particular reason) that it's more likely to be Ishtar herself. How feckin awesome is this? Look at those feet, for goodness sake!

Talking of goddesses, here's Chamunda, a particularly scary one from India:

There's a lot of Chamunda in Divine Torment.
And here's the Indian Great Goddess in more benign and sexy form:

But I promised you willies, didn't I? Damn, this Greek gentleman seems to have lost his:

Well, if you're an academic you have to call it a phallus so it sounds respectable. Here's a rather splendid phallus-vulva / lingam-yoni symbol, again from India:


But here's the best phallus of them all: a Romano-British windchime. It's an erection with an erection!

And if you find this in the Roman gallery, look for the tiny little statuette next to it which depicts "Two phallus-headed beings attacking the Evil Eye with a saw." Sadly I was laughing so much my hands shook and my photo came out blurry...


Coming out of the Museum at closing time I met up with editor Adam Nevill and we went for a drink in a pub that used to be frequented by the Golden Dawn magical society, back in Victorian times. Adam had some good news - for him anyway - as he has been given a two-book deal by Macmillan for his horror work. He was told this approximately 2 hours before being called in to receive the hammerblow about Black Lace. What a day...

So congratulations to Adam, and good luck to him in his writing career.

Tuesday, 6 January 2009

Dark Enchantment - story 1: Dishonour

My new collection Dark Enchantment kicks off with Dishonour, a short, straightforward story which takes us back to the iron-age Eternal Empire of my novel Divine Torment. The plot: Surya is a young noblewoman with a crush on Lord General Mershen. Unfortunately civil war intervenes, Surya's family is on the losing side and the next time she sees him it's because the Emperor has sent Mershen to execute her. Then Surya shocks him by insisting she doesn't want to die a virgin...


He closed on her, his hand gripping her arm. ‘This is wrong,’ he rasped.

‘And what you’re going to do isn’t?’

He flinched. ‘Have it your way.’ Seizing her by the shoulders he whirled her sideways and slammed her against a pillar, nearly knocking the wind out of her. His hands were rough and determined; he tore straight through the fastenings of her robe and wrenched the cloth open, ripping the thinner material beneath to bare her breasts. Surya shut her eyes, shrinking back into herself; he was too big, too strong, too fierce. He smelled of sweat and horses. Under his armour he was all hard muscle and his thighs were crushing hers. His hands grabbed her soft little breasts like he wanted to squeeze the life from them.

I asked him for this, she told herself. I will bear it. I will endure it. It’s what I wanted.

He was panting hard through clenched teeth. This wasn’t even lust: it was anger. Anger at her for rejecting his honour, anger at an Emperor who would insist on such a task – and most of all anger at himself. Involuntarily she cried out as his fingers bit painfully into her flesh. Without warning he went still, one hand on her shoulder, one squashing her left breast, her nipple pinched between his fingers. With his head bowed over hers, he made a noise almost like a sob. Then, ‘Surya.’

She bit the inside of her lip to staunch the tears that were burning at the back of her eyes.

‘Do you really want this?’ he groaned.

She whimpered. Then he lifted her face to his and kissed her. His lips were dry and a little chapped, and there was no anger in them at all, just deep pain and a fervent, haunted desire. She shook beneath them, opening to him, dissolving as his kisses soaked into her. He tasted of wine and blood and exhaustion, but he was warm on her cold skin and she pressed trembling against him. A tear she had not held back slipped down over her cheek and he caught it on his thumb before brushing his lips across the planes of her face, as if he were tasting her skin.

‘Have you prayed to Tesub?’ he breathed, his mouth hot at her ear and throat.

‘Hhh?’ She was incapable of speech at that moment.

‘Ask her to accept your maiden sacrifice.’ He was pulling at the strapping of his breastplate. His words burned.

‘Ah.’ Of course; it was the ceremony for the wedding night: to offer one’s maidenhead to the goddess as a pure sacrifice. A woman who did not – oh gods he was kissing her throat now and her whole body was shaking with the heat of those kisses – any woman who didn’t risked dying impure and being rejected by the gods. Oh. The tears were back again, brimming in her eyes. ‘I don’t know the words.’

He pulled back momentarily to look her in the face. ‘Nor do I.’ He shrugged his breastplate off and laid it to the floor. ‘Think. You must have heard women talk.’

‘Yes.’ Think? She couldn’t think. His big strong hands were on his belt now, uncinching the kilt of straps that protected his thighs. There was blood all across his scraped knuckles. There was a green stain on the front of his tunic from the breastplate. She touched the fabric, feeling for his heartbeat beneath the padded linen. He grabbed her hand and pushed it down to his crotch. Beneath his tunic and calfskin breeches something surged hungrily to greet her.


Buy at Amazon UK - out Thursday! : Pre-order at Amazon US



Next excerpt on Thursday.

Tuesday, 28 August 2007

Veraine




This is actually a photo of Gerard Butler playing Attila in the eponymous TV mini-series. Bad series. But it came out sometime after "Divine Torment" was published and when I saw the cover of the DVD I went "Bloody hell! - that's Veraine!"


Which is the whole reason I have this enormous crush on a relatively obscure Scottish actor. Well, he's not so obscure now.


To be 100% Veraine he'd have to have greying hair of course, and black eyes not grey (Veraine's north-Indian-ish). Still, he's 90% right: my ultimate sexual hero.

There's a clip on the extras of the Dracula 2001 DVD showing GB reading for the title role while still wearing the Attila long hair and eyeliner. It's probably the sexiest thing I've ever seen. Secondary brain (the one in my knickers) kicks in and overrides primary one. I have no interest in vampires, but I'd let that one kill me stone dead.

Tuesday, 7 August 2007

Divine Torment back in print this week


Divine Torment is back in print from 8th August (UK - it's October for US readers I think). Hooray!

It has a snazzy new cover (left). Okay, so it's a bit cheesy... Like brie. And neither cover model looks anything like my heroes. But at least it says "This is a fantasy novel, dudes!" - unlike the godawful 1st edition cover (below). Oh man is the new one an improvement!

My favourite is still the Japanese cover (bottom), which has actually been drawn to order by someone who's read the book. They've got the reddish hair and the armour (although they've exaggerated how kinky the latter is).

Still, the main thing is it's back on sale. And it's mine. And I love it!

Read an excerpt on Lust Bites, on the last Friday of this month - and maybe win a free copy.