Not retired quite yet

Yesterday, when I was updating the "coming next" page on my website, I noted that not only is the Lust in the Dust anthology out in July, I've also already got 4 short erotica stories due to be published this year (from Cleis, Stupid Fish and Infernal Ink).

Plus 2 non-erotica shorts from fantasy publishers! I happen to be signing a contract for one of them today.

You can read all the smutty details here

So despite my fair share of rejections, it's looking like a surprisingly lively this year after a VERY slow 2018. (I blame the house move.)

Next I need to get on with this reprint double:

Technically a COVER REVEAL!

And a reboot of this series:

... which I am determined to finish!

Samhain

Because the pagan/natural cycles are woven into my Lovers' Wheel series, I'm taking a look in 2016

at the four great Celtic fire festivals, the most important points of the neo-pagan year. I've covered Imbolc,  Beltane and Lammas previously, so now we've got to the end of the autumn with the most famous pagan festival of the lot.

SAMHAIN (meaning "summer's end" and pronounced "SOW-in") is celebrated from sunset on the 31st October through to sunset on the 1st November - in more modern parlance, it's Hallowe'en. It's the festival that welcomes the dark days of Winter. It is a time to retreat to the fireside, hide away from the dark, and give thought to the dead who have gone before us. And maybe to welcome those ancestors back into our homes for a little while....

Caspar David Friedrich: The Cemetery Entrance, 1825

It is however, at root an agricultural festival (as are all the others). Samhain marks the end of the harvest, just as Lammas marks its beginning. There's little left to gather in now except the last apples (see below), so TBH that's it folks. If you haven't already grown and stored enough crops to tide you through the winter AND for next year's planting, then you are facing not just winter's punishing cold but also slow, inevitable starvation. In older days, this was the time of year to bring the animals down out of the far/high pastures and slaughter the majority of them for salting and smoking, because you just haven't got enough hay to keep them all alive. So Samhain ushers in November: Blotmonath in Old English: the "month of blood" or "slaughter month".

Several Irish legends suggest human slaughter at Samhain in the legendary past - sacrifices to dark powers, and the fated death of kings.

Daniel MacleseL Snap-Apple Night (1833)

Apples feature hugely in Hallowe'e'n folklore, because they are available in abundance at this time of year, and because in Celtic mythology they are associated with the Otherworld (and they are also associated in Christian and Classical mythology with immortality, temptation and women). Apples, among other objects, were used in the many rites of magical divination practiced on Samhain (mostly by young women, as ever):

"Peel an apple in one long strip, then throw this over your shoulder: when you look at the fallen peel it will spell out the initials of your future husband."


Just as on May Eve, its counterpart, Samhain is a night when the walls between the worlds grow thin and things can move between this world and the next. May Eve, however, is primarily associated with Fairy visitation, whereas Samhain is strongly associated with the human Dead. For ancestor-worshippers, communing with the dead might be disturbing, but it made sense. Your relatives still took an interest in you even when they were in the grave, so you'd set a place for them at the table, light them home with candles, and generally be ready to chat.

John Everett Millais: "Speak! Speak!" : The Apparition

 For Christianity, all this necromancy was a bit more problematic. Who were you were communing with, if all the dead were safely penned up in Hell, Heaven or Purgatory? They gamely tried, in 835AD, to nullify all the uncanniness by renaming Samhain day (1st November) All Saints - or All Hallows - Day ... hence the word Hallowe'en ("All Hallows Evening"). The emphasis officially switched to praying for the souls of the departed. No spooky stuff allowed.

Yeah, that worked...

It fell about the Martinmas
The nights were long and dark
Three sons came home to Ushers Well
Their hats were made of bark
That neither grew in forest green
Nor on any wooded rise,
But from the north side of the tree
That grows in Paradise.

...
Then up and crowed the blood red cock
And up and crowed the grey.
The oldest to the youngest said
"It's time we were away;
For the crow does crow and the day doth show
And the channerin worm doth chide
And we must go from Ushers Well
To the gates of Paradise."

(The Wife of Usher's Well, Child Ballad 79)

Arthur Rackham: Ghosts at Cock-crow

The well-known modern link between Hallowe'en and Witches is actually less genuinely traditional than is the link with the Dead (May Eve was the real witchy festival in most of Europe). But there's strong evidence of some sort of Winter Goddess in Celtic areas - the Cailleach Bheur or Hag - so this point on the wheel of the year would be when the world enters the Hag's domain.

William Blake: Triple Hecate (1795)

Remember that the feminine avatars of the other festivals are the girl-child in white (Imbolc), the sexually alluring young woman (Beltane) and the sacrificial mother (Lughnasadh)? So it makes sense that this festival is symbolised by the figure of an aged woman full of dangerous - even forbidden - knowledge. 

Edward Frederick Brewtnall: Visit to the witch (1882)

The Lesson before the Sabbath (1880); Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel

For Neopagans, Samhain is when the Great Goddess puts on her Hag aspect, personifying wisdom, endurance and death. The God, her son/consort, has vanished from the earth and will not be reborn until Midwinter; they will not be reunited as lovers until Spring. Some pagans count it as the last day of the year.

Halloween has become a commercialised festival in the USA now, with the happy addition of pumpkins and spice, and the retailers are doing their best to spread the custom to the rest of the world via the viral medium of small children wanting sweets.  But just remember when you go out trick-or-treating, you are taking part in a spiritual ritual older than the USA, older than England ... and that you might be stirring up things you cannot handle...

Bat-Woman by Albert-Joseph Penot, circa 1890 .

:-D

"Go read this. Now."

My poor Orphan Books are getting some more love!

There's a review of Summer Seduction gone up today on the Caldwell Publishing blog -  and it starts:

 "Holy moly ravioli! I’m not sure how this book isn’t on everybody’s bookshelf already. I don’t even know where to begin ... Mystery, suspense, history, myth—it’s all there. I sat down and read this in one sitting because I was just so into it. "

Full review here

Meantime, Samantha MacLeod has gone on to review the second book in the Lovers' Wheel series. She loved Summer Seduction - what did she think of Falling Deep?

"Falling Deep basically takes everything I liked about Summer Seduction and turns it up to 11 ... The world gets more interesting, the threats intensify, and the characters become darker and complicated. All I can say now is: BRING ON WINTER!"

 Full review here

 THANK YOU, Caldwell Books and Samantha MacLeod! XXX
(and yes, *Yorkshire accent*: "WINTER IS COMING" ... just not very quickly. It'll have to wait  for those pesky fallen angels, lol)

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 ;-)

Orphan books

Some good news and some bad...

The good news is this LOVELY, fun review of Summer Seduction over at Samantha MacLeod's blog. She totally gets the C.S Lewis angle I started from!

Liz doesn’t exactly find a magical passage to Narnia waiting for her in Enniswitrin House… but what she does find might be even better.

The magical world Ashbless creates in Summer Seduction is fascinating and believable, in the way that dark, old fairy tales and myths are believable. And this is some seriously fabulous erotica; these are the most exciting and imaginative sex scenes I’ve read.

Thank you Samantha!

The bad news is that publisher Ellora's Cave is officially closing down. Which means that Summer Seduction and its sequel Falling Deep are going to be removed from sale at the end of the year. As is my very first dark romance The King's Viper (available in paperback btw, so grab it before it goes up to insane out-of-print prices), and gangbang romp In Appreciation of Their Cox

I guess I'll look into self-publishing them, since all rights are going to be reverted. And I do intend to finish the Lovers' Wheel quartet! But it will take a while to get everything back up on Amazon...

Lammas

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

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

This is triple-faced Lugh:

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

Lugh's Enclosure (1912) by Ernest Wallcousins

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

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

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

Edmund Blair Leighton, My Fair Lady (1914)

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

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

Lawrence Alma Tadema, A Harvest Festival, 1880

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

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

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

Don't worry, he always comes back

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a filthy excerpt for your entertainment!

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

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

---

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

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

“Oh god,” she whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she did, she did, she did.

---

Amazon US :: Amazon UK

Beltane

Because the pagan/natural cycles are woven into my Lovers' Wheel series, I'm taking a look in 2016 at the four great Celtic quarter days, the most important festivals of the neo-pagan year. I've covered Imbolc previously, so here we are at the start of the summer with the sexiest festival of them all!

BELTANE (from Bealtaine, "bright fire") is celebrated on 30th April/1st May, about halfway between the Spring and Summer Equinoxes. It is a fire festival, as of course are all the Quarter Days.  Like Imbolc, at its historic roots it is a festival of a pastoral, herding people. It marks the beginning of summer and the point at which the cattle are released from their winter byres and fields out into the summer pastures further afield, because finally there is enough grass for them all.

Celtic tradition centered around the lighting of bonfires to banish the long winter nights, which the livestock were driven between in order to gain protection from the blights and dangers, both natural and supernatural, of the summer months to come.

Inevitably, a festival at this time of year in the northern hemisphere must celebrate returning light and warmth, new growth, fertility/birth and - therefore - the feminine. In Catholicism, the whole of the month is devoted to Mary as the "Queen of May," honouring her with crowns and displays of flowers. Not surprisingly this is because of older pagan associations with queenly goddess-figures, which needed to be usurped and negated with a good clean dose of Christianity. Before Christ, the Roman festival of the Goddess Flora was held right at the end of April and had a notably sexual character, including the very active participation of prostitutes.

Spring, by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1894)

You can still see traces of the sexual/fertility nature of the festival in the folk rites of Maypole Dancing (putting a wreath on the top of the erect pole, and then dancing around it ... oh come on) and in the crowning of a pretty young woman as the village's May Queen, as well as any number of ribald Morris dances and poetic references to "going a-maying":

Now is the month of maying,
When merry lads are playing, Fa la la la la la la la la,
Fa la la la la la lah.
Each with his bonny lass
Upon the greeny grass.
Fa la la, etc...

The Spring, clad all in gladness,
Doth laugh at Winter's sadness,
Fa la la, etc...
And to the bagpipe's sound
The nymphs tread out their ground.
Fa la la, etc...
Fie then! why sit we musing,
Youth's sweet delight refusing?
Fa la la, etc...
Say, dainty nymphs, and speak,
Shall we play barley-break?
Fa la la etc...

(ballad from 1595)

Going a-Maying was a tradition where young people (particularly unwed ones) would head off into the woods very early on May Morning to, ahem, gather flowers. These garlands and branches and "may bushes" were brought back to fill the public places of the community ... though never brought indoors. I've talked about the may/hawthorn blossom thing before, with it's chemical associations with sex and death (it's the trimethylamine, man), so I'll just leave the link there for those interested.

John Collier (1850-1934): Queen Guinevere's Maying

Modern pagans count Beltane as the day the youthful God and Goddess get to have sex for the first time in the year. Interestingly, in folk tradition May - the month associated with wooing - is extremely unlucky for actual weddings ... perhaps because of the buried memory of all that orgiastic gadding-about, perhaps because of the Jewish mourning period of Omer that tends to fall at the same time, which forbade marriage.

Married when the year is new, he'll be loving, kind and true.
When February birds do mate, you neither wed nor dread your fate.
If you wed when March winds blow, joy and sorrow both you'll know.
Marry in April when you can, Joy for Maiden and for Man.
Marry in the month of May, and you'll surely rue the day. 

Another strand of powerful and somewhat threatening femininity was the association of May Day (and the may/hawthorn tree) with the Fairy Queen (a degraded goddess figure), as you were in danger of meeting her if you hung out near a hawthorn on May Day, and perhaps being abducted by her for many years.

Robert Anning Bell (1863-1933)

Since the publication of Dracula in 1897 a parallel Germanic tradition has become more well-known in the English-speaking world - that of Walpurgisnacht (St Walpurga's Eve) or Hexennacht on April 30th. Walpurga was an English missionary to the pagan Germans back in the 8th century, and a pioneering female writer, but her feast day is best remembered as the time when witches ride across the land and meet up to do evil. Again, a reminder of terrifying and highly sexualised supernatural women.

Jusepe de Ribera (1591 – 1652); Procession to a Witches' Sabbath

So whatever you are planning for the May Day holiday - even if it's just a socialist rally for International Workers' Day - BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!
;-)

Dream plot

"Where do you get your story ideas?" readers sometimes ask.
Well in the case of Lovers' Wheel, it literally came to me in a dream.

One night some decades ago, probably before I was even a writer, I had a dream so real and so emotionally powerful that I’ve never forgotten it.

I dreamed that I was standing at the gates of a big old house somewhere in the English countryside. The grounds were so overgrown that the gates were almost choked shut with brambles and weeds, but when I scrambled through and made my way up the drive I found that the house was still occupied despite being decayed. In fact it was a retirement home, with old people sitting around in wheelchairs, dozing and playing chess. Then I realized that these old men were the disguised King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, who had retreated here to await in secret the last call to battle when England would need their heroes again.

That was it. That’s all I dreamed.

Years later, this became the seed for the Lovers’ Wheel quartet I’m currently writing for Ellora’s Cave.

Now I know roughly where the idea grew from. All my childhood I’d been reading stories from authors like Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, and Diana Wynne Jones, in which the nice cosy English countryside was a place where lurked gods and elves and Ancient Powers pretending to be human, just biding their time and perhaps waiting to be woken by plucky middle class school children on holiday. I LOVED those books! I wanted to write a wondrous story about a girl who discovers a hidden world of magical adventure, a girl who is marked for a special destiny, a girl whose choices decide the fate of the world.

Only I wanted to write the adult version, with really dirty sex and way more moral greyness.

Lovers’ Wheel is about Liz, who goes to stay with her Great-aunt Moira at spooky old Enniswitrin House in Somerset, and finds that she’s been picked for the noble task of fucking each of the Twelve Months of the Year in turn, to keep the seasons turning. But being Chosen isn’t nearly as nice or as vanilla as she’s been lead to believe, especially as the Brothers start to lead her into the darker half of the year.

As for Arthur – yeah, he’s there too! Read Summer Seduction and Falling Deep to find out about him. And I promise that When Winter Comes and Joys of Spring will complete the cycle of the year in due course!

Summer Seduction (Lovers’ Wheel Book 1) at Amazon US:

Summer Seduction (Lovers’ Wheel Book 1) at Amazon UK:

Falling Deep (Lovers' Wheel  Book 2) at Amazon US:

Falling Deep (Lovers' Wheel  Book 2) at Amazon UK:

OUT NEXT WEEK! - Falling Deep details

Woohoo! I now have buy-links and blurb for Falling Deep, book two of my Lovers' Wheel quartet, and the follow-up to Summer Seduction.

Publication date is Wednesday 2nd March


Amazon US :: Amazon UK

Liz is reeling with shock. She has just discovered that her Great-aunt Moira’s spooky old house is the last disguised remnant of mystical Avalon, and that Moira has been manipulating her into initiation as an immortal sorceress serving the old powers of nature.

Liz’s ordained role is to turn the Wheel of the Year through the seasons by having sex with each of the Twelve Months in turn. The Brothers of the Fall appear to be hot and handsome men, but they are far more daunting than their summer predecessors. Liz now faces three new avatars who are increasingly dominant and kinky. As the year turns inexorably toward the darkness, Liz must embrace the allure of total submission and give them complete control of her sexuality.

Inside Scoop: Liz explores a wide range of erotic experiences, including light bondage and brief f/f touching.

Reader Advisory: This story has graphic sexual language and scenes—no closed bedroom doors (or other rooms) here!

A paranormal erotica story from Ellora’s Cave

Amazon US :: Amazon UK

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment!

Today, a sneak preview from Falling Deep, which has is currently scheduled for release on 2nd March!

Trainee sorceress Liz is meeting up with Evan, the fifth of the Twelve Months she has to pleasure in order to turn the Wheel of the Year.

---

"Put your hands on the saddle."

"What?"

"You heard me."

Biting the inside of her lip, Liz turned her back and placed her hands on the horse's saddle. They looked pale and tiny on the dark leather.

"You see," said Evan, coming in so close behind her that she could feel the radiant warmth of his body, "there are just some things that cannot be learned from books, or lists, or even from those who know. Obedience, for one. Hold this."

The riding crop, that implement of promise and pain, appeared in front of her eyes as he presented it horizontally. For a moment Liz had no idea what he meant, but understanding came swiftly as it nudged her lips. She caught the fresh scent of her own sex on the leather, then she opened her mouth and accepted the bar, gripping it between her teeth like a bit.

She realized at once that he had robbed her of words.

"Obedience, and surrender, and the natural order of things." With both hands now free, it was easy for Evan to lift her skirts and explore beneath. One big hot hand cupped her ass-cheek firmly to steady her. The other slipped down and between, into the unshielded cleft and the plump soft folds beneath.

It turned out that the blush had run all the way through her and was now seeping into the slit of her pussy. Evan made a small approving noise as he discovered her wetness.

 "You won't find them in a hundred thousand books, little librarian. You won't find them on the city streets, you can't learn them on your Internet, you won't pick them up in college. Things like that are in the blood, and the earth. The deep and the dirt of life." His fingertips swept her fore and aft, spreading the moisture to slick every inch. "Do you understand?"

Gagged as she was, Liz couldn't possibly reply - but as his finger circled her clit a squeak did escape from her open throat. That only encouraged him to do it again. And again. His big, callused fingertip felt deliciously, deliriously alien down there and she shuddered, jerking her thighs a few inches further apart. He rewarded her candor by slipping his spare hand between her bum-cheeks, pushing hard with side of his hand against the pucker of her rear hole. The pressure felt almost comforting.

"Maybe you do." His voice was low, somewhere between a growl and a caress, his breath hot in her ear. "What you need if you are to be an Argante is not to be found in your head. It's down here, where you're dumbest - and wisest. Feel how wet you are?"

Liz groaned out loud. She squeezed her eyes shut, water leaking from the corners. She knew her ass was out-thrust now to grant him easier access, but she couldn't help it. Her pussy was begging for more.

"Oh yes. So wet." He chuckled, deep and filthy. "Your body knows, doesn't it? Your body knows how you need to get dirty." On that last word he pressed his thumb against her anus, just as his fingertip swept over the sensitive round of her clit. It was too much - or just enough - because orgasm sparked and tumbled and flared through Liz's flesh, catching her off-guard, making her keen out loud and jerk repeatedly and push back on the hard jut of his thumb, as if to impale herself on it.

"Filthy girl," he murmured, but it wasn't criticism.

"Ahh," she groaned around the riding crop gag.

But to her chagrin he wasn't done with her. His fingers were already slipping back in to bathe themselves in her sex juices, actually entering her this time. She felt him slide two thick fingers inside her and scissor them open them to test the give of her flesh. She made a small noise of protest and danced her hips away from his invasive touch.

Without hesitation he clapped a hand hard to her ass-cheek. "Stand still!"

Instinct froze her, obedient to his command. She felt his big hand squeeze her bum and heft her up on the tips of her toes.

"Legs open," he told her, settling her down again. "That's better. Good girl."

Hands were on and in her sex again. Firm and sure and most definitely not asking. Rubbing her clit and spreading her lips and trespassing into the cleft of her ass, pressing up against the tight pucker of her rear hole in a manner she at first took for accidental over-enthusiasm, and then realized - with a shock - was entirely deliberate. And very purposeful. His finger, lubed with her own juices, was boldly going where no man had gone before.

Liz would have said something, but the crop in her mouth rendered her speechless - all she could do was utter a high yelping moan.          

"The mysteries are not in your head, book-girl. They are down here."

Dear god - he was going in. Milimeter by teasing, probing millimeter. She could feel everything. She'd had no idea how much she could feel back there. It was far more sensitive than her sexual entrance, in fact - and far more frightening. She'd had things pushed into her vagina before - cocks, tampons, that cold plastic speculum at the doctor's - but she'd never had anything inserted in her asshole. It was just too private.

But it wasn't painful, it turned out. Not at all. Quite the opposite.

"Magic is not learned. It is not about control. It is about yielding to the powers. It is about knowing your place in the great workings of the world."

Liz shuddered. This felt terrifyingly intimate, an invasion of her most secret places. He had a finger right inside her tight clench now, stirring her, stroking her. She was awash with shame. She could feel her sweat and her juices slathering his hands. Her clit sang at his touch. Hot shivery plumes of sensation ran up her spine and across her shoulders, down her legs to the tips of her toes.

"It is all about surrender. Yes. There, that's right."

To her amazement her ass was unfurling, no longer resisting his entry. He could run a finger in and out smoothly, each stroke a caress that sent her nerve endings into tumbling fountains of delight and terror.

"Doesn't that feel good? Isn't that good when you stop fighting me?"

She groaned her acquiescence.

"Good girl. That's nice." His voice was almost a sigh. "That's one finger, nice and easy." He circled it, spreading her, while his other hand played with her clit. "You can take two, you know. No problem at all."

Liz widened her eyes, though he could not see, and yelped softly.

"You don't believe me?"

Her groans were coming thick and fast now. There was no point in preserving any dignity, after all. His strokes were unhurried and very sure. He was not rushing her - he didn't have to. Her treacherous body was already opening up to him, lulled by his masterful working of her clit. For all the fear and the shame in her head, her body trusted him. It wasn't even attempting to resist any more. Tight whorls of muscle grew slack. She could feel a hum of pleasure in her spine.

"You should. I think you have a talent for this, book-girl. You're getting more welcoming by the second. You're opening up inside, you know …." There was momentary adjustment of his hand, an increase in pressure. "There. That's two. I think you'll find that more satisfying."

"Oh!" said Liz, muffled, then nodded frantically. He was curling them inside her now, stroking her inner walls.

"You like a good ass-frigging, don't you. You like it dirty."

I don't! she thought - but her body begged to differ. There were sensations washing up and down her backbone that she was barely familiar with - if they'd been centered on her pussy she'd have known them for the precursors of orgasm, but they were in the wrong place, up her ass - How can you have an orgasm up your ass-?

"Come on, book-girl. That's right. Come for me."

Falling Deep cover reveal!

Well, this is the cover for Falling Deep, book 2 in the Lovers' Wheel quartet. I think Kelly at EC has done a terrific job with the autumnal woodland look and the quartered-circle motif, echoing Summer Seduction nicely.

The red-headed bloke on the cover represents the mysterious Guy on the Train, and in this volume we find out who he really is...

I'm very happy with this one! :-)

Imbolc

I went to an open Imbolc ceremony last night, which was quite lovely if EXTREMELY COLD.

Stourton (modern) stone circle

I'm not a pagan, of course. I'm a pantheistic materialist ("tingly atheist", ahem), but there is a part of me that loves neo-pagan ritual and feels right at home there. The focus on and the connection to the earth, the seasons, the weather, the landscape, and for living nature, is something that I plug straight into. The tropes (north/south/east/west : earth/fire/air/water : body/will/intellect/emotions etc etc) make easy symbolic sense to me, even if I'm not buying into any of the gods.

Because the pagan/natural cycles are woven into my Lovers' Wheel series, I thought I'd take a look at the four great Celtic quarter days, the most important festivals of the neo-pagan year.

IMBOLC (from oimbelc "in the belly") is celebrated on February 1st/2nd. It falls between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox and is a rite celebrating the first visible arrival of Spring; the return of new life to the seemingly dead land. In historic times it seems to have been associated with the pastoral calendar in particular, marking the coming-into-milk of the ewes and the birth of the first lambs.

It was also the day that snakes were supposed to wake from their winter torpor, and that bears were said to check upon the weather before coming out of hibernation (or not ... good weather was said to be a harbinger of more snow) - which is exactly why it is now Groundhog Day in the USA.

Thig an nathair as an toll, la donn Bride Ged robh tri traighean dh' an t-sneachd air leachd an lair.

(The serpent will come from the hollow on the brown day of Bridget / Though there should be three feet of snow on the flat surface of the ground)

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again

(English proverb)

It's a fire/light ceremony, rejoicing in the returning light, strongly associated with the imagery of a young woman or girl, dressed in white, carrying a candle or torch. Pagans view this as the Goddess in her Maiden aspect, because this is the moment the black-clad crone of Winter turns into/gives way to/is reborn as the Maiden of Spring.

February 2nd is Brigid's Day: in old Ireland this was when the great goddess Brigid or Brigit (poetry, fire and smiths, healing, brewing, fertility, midwifery) would be invited into each house.

St Brigid's Cross, made of reeds. More sun-wheel than crucifix, tbh.

The goddess Brigid became St Brigid in Christian times, with the same feast day and almost identical portfolio.

February 2nd is also known as the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin (40 days after the birth of Jesus, when she presented her Son, "the light of the world" and "a light unto the gentiles" (Luke 2:32), at the Temple), and, as you can see from the rhyme above, Candlemas, because it is the day candles are blessed for use in the church, year-round.

Why's that? Well, in Romano-Greek ritual it was the time that the young goddess Persephone returned from the Underworld, bringing spring to the world. Here's Pope Innocent XII on the subject:

Why do we in this feast carry candles? Because the Gentiles dedicated the month of February to the infernal gods, and as Pluto stole Proserpine, and her mother Ceres sought her in the night with lighted candles, so they, at the beginning of the month, walked about the city with lighted candles. Because the holy fathers could not extirpate the custom, they ordained that Christians should carry about candles in honor of the Blessed Virgin; and thus what was done before in the honor of Ceres is now done in honor of the Blessed Virgin

Snowdrops are "Candlemas bells"

So - along with Christmas itself - Candlemas / Imbolc seems to be the one of the strongest and clearest cases of Christianity appropriating pagan ritual into the church calendar.

After all, we all long to see the return of spring...