Showing posts with label Wild Enchantments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wild Enchantments. Show all posts

Friday, 6 December 2013

When I was 46...

This is me, two weeks ago :-)

It was my 47th birthday this week, so in order to keep a record of (and hopefully a brake on) my slide into senescence, here is is my annual post on Fings Wot I Have Done For the First Time Ever.

When I was forty-six, for the first time

  • I bought a  Xmas-scented room-freshener (Dude, not a good start!)
  • And a Kardashian Kollection dress (!) ... which I reluctantly gave away, because my boobs weren't big enough to fill it.
  • I ate at a Yo Sushi with the awesome little conveyor belt thingy!! Woooo!

There were four of us, I swear

  • I read all four Gospels and the Book of Genesis all the way through. No, I never did that as a Christian. Most Christians don't.
 
This is serious anthropological research, I'll have you know
  • I missed a plane.
  • I started a course of IPL. It hasn't worked yet.
  • I bought a Kindle, and discovered just how much truly shit self-published stuff there is out there :-0
  • I took my parents on holiday abroad (and we got on well!).
  • I visited three new countries: Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia. All of which are beautiful and fascinating and deserve many future return visits.
Woot! This is an ACTUAL PROP from Game of Thrones - They use false walls and doors to close off streets during filming. Taken in Split, Croatia.
  • I swam with the fishies in the Red Sea - and didn't, despite my dire predictions, get eaten by a shark.
  • We finished our nine-year-long Dragonlance Dungeons & Dragons campaign ...and started on campaigns in 4th Edition D&D and Deadlands. (Huzzah, more rules-systems to learn...)
  • I fell in love with a BLUE WIG, and wore a bodystocking in semi-public. Twice, in fact. Different bodystockings too, but the same wig. Is lycra addictive?

  • I wrote Cover Him With Darkness, the novel, and finished These Fierce Enchantments, a third short story collection. Both should be published in 2014.
  • I heard the, ahem, "backward masking" on Stairway to Heaven.
  • I switched to heavy-duty facecreams for Older Skin. (Boooo!)
  • I went sea-kayaking (Yaaaaaay!)

  • I drank a pumpkin spiced latte, and a Long Island iced tea. I ate white truffles.
  • I started wearing eyeliner every day, even in private.

On that showing I reckon I'm only halfway dead so far, give or take :-) Not many publications this year though - books are like buses: none get printed for ages and then they all come out at once. Maybe I should stop arsing around on kayaks and get stuck into some writing?

Wednesday, 16 October 2013

Blurred Lines


My newest (waiting for publication) collection of short stories, Wild Enchantments, has undergone a name-change. It's also had the table-of-contents changed, because I dropped one story and substituted another.

I wrote The Sorcerer's Apprentice because I fancied doing something from the point of view of character I didn't like. I wanted to write a narrator possessed of a swathe of attitudes that I do not personally share, just for the fun and the challenge of it. I wanted to make him horrible, and at the end of the story I would turn the tables on him and smirk as he went down in flames. This is really common in the horror genre ... not so much in erotica. I've done it before (say, The Temptation of St Gregory in my first collection), but this time I wanted to push it bit further.

Possibly too far.

I think The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a hot, dirty story. But I felt less than 100% proud of it on, for want of a better phrase, an ethical level. Sure, it's supposed to be ironic. But I don't want to turn into Robin "I've always respected women" Thicke.

So I took it out and wrote another story which fits the same themes (Male-dominant BDSM) without being quite so negative.

Maybe I'm getting old. *sigh*

Anyway, here's an excerpt to show y'all how it opens. To be clear (and these aren't spoilers): the narrator is not meant to sympathetic and the girl in the cage is a sex demon in disguise, not a human being at all, and is completely happy with everything done to her. This story will probably not see the light unless someone puts out a call for revenge-fantasy erotica or something.

*****
The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Mr Deverick kept a woman in the guest suite. In a cage.

Heh. I felt a bit weird about that, the first time I saw her. The mirrored wall slid back and behind it was a dark, windowless room. As Deverick stepped over the threshold the lights came on, and there were the bars beyond him, running floor-to-ceiling. The room was featureless except for the cage, and the cage was empty except for the girl. She was kneeling on the bare floor in a kowtowing position, her face to the hardwood inlay, her long blonde hair fallen over her hands. I could see a lot of bare skin, the colour of clover honey.
The room smelled faintly of pussy.

I thought: Fuck, is this a test? He hadn’t warned me. And I’m pretty sure some of the bugshit-crazy stuff he gets me to do is just to test me out.

This made me nervous, and I couldn’t help making a snorting noise. Like a laugh, only not really, because this wasn’t funny or anything. It was a bit creepy.

But the noise made her raise her head and sit back, and then it became creepy and hot—both at the same time. She was wearing a little pair of baby-pink panties and a T-shirt in the same colour, except that the shirt had been hacked off way too short, covering her nipples but showing a whole load of under-boob. She had big tits, see. And the bit about covering her nips wasn’t even true either, because the room was cold and I could see them poking through the thin cloth like light switches. Those trashy clothes made her look more fuckable than if she’d been naked, I swear. And as her eyes lit on Deverick in front of her, her expression went from sad and pouty to a hopeful little smile, all eager to please.

My cock did 0-60 in less time than it took my hand to reach up and pull nervously at my tie.

‘What’s on your mind, Dylan?’ my employer asked me. ‘Something funny?’

I cleared my throat, knowing that if he glanced in the vicinity of my crotch he wouldn’t have to ask. That girl was just prime T&A. Big tits, teeny little waist, wide hips flaring out below. Hair long and blonde and sleek, streaked with ashy highlights. Big wide don’t-hurt-me-daddy eyes that looked green even from this distance. And a mouth like …

I told my inner art critic to shut the hell up. ‘I was just wondering if they’re real, Mr Deverick,’ I said, trying to sound all cool, and totally failing. ‘Her tits, like.’

He lifted an eyebrow. Flicking a finger at the girl he spoke a few words in a language I didn’t recognise, and though he didn’t raise his voice it was clearly an instruction of some sort. Moving with a dancer’s grace she rose to her feet and came forward to the bars, allowing me to add Incredible Long Legs to my inventory of her assets.

The steel struts were placed far enough apart to allow an arm through—or, it turned out, a breast. She pulled up her T-shirt (WH-ZANGG!! went my heart, or at least my cock) and thrust herself forward so that a bar was nestled right in the valley of her cleavage, and her award-winning golden globes stuck through on either side. Her nipples stared at me.

‘Have a feel,’ said Deverick with a polite gesture.

Say what you like about my boss—and people do say some nasty shit about him, though only when they think he’s out of earshot—Michael Deverick knows a thing or two about perks for loyal employees. Some days, when he has so many women scrabbling all over him that even he doesn’t want them all, he lobs one to me. Today’s particular perks were … perky, to the max. In fact it was hard to believe that tits so majestic hadn’t been sculpted by some surgeon: heavy but without the slightest hint of droop, perfectly balanced, with provocative rosy nipples.

I moved in close. The girl looked up at me through her long lashes, either bashful or plain old nervous, and glanced at Deverick as if for reassurance. At the periphery of my vision I saw him nod.

She smelled like sex in a rose garden.

I cupped those boobies with a feeling of genuine awe. In this cool room, she positively radiated heat. I squeezed slowly, questing—in vain—for the over-firm bulge of silicon implants. I pressed them together round the bar and thumbed her nipples and rubbed her skin. I pulled and twisted and bounced those fabulous beach-balls, and to my surprise I felt her respond: a flush crept up her throat and her eyes darkened as her pupils dilated. Then she moaned, very softly: perhaps too softly for Mr Deverick to hear. It was like a secret between us.

My cock was like a fucking totem pole by this point. You could have held a war dance around it.

‘What do you think?’ he asked me. ‘Are they real, then?’ I could hear the smile in his voice.

‘Oh yeah.’ I gave her nips another tug and saw her eyelids flutter. I knew I should stop, having done the task requested of me, but my hands had a will of their own and my hard-on was voting with them. ‘They’re real alright. Is she Russian? I mean, I know you’ve got a line in luxury imports…’

He laughed softly. ‘No, not Russian.’

‘That language?’

‘Enochian,’ he said, and as I turned to look at him he winked.

Monday, 20 May 2013

Eyecandy Monday


Hmmm. There's a story I wrote for Wild Enchantments that I think now I will have to take out and replace. It's just not right for today's female-friendly pseudo-romantic market - not being at all friendly, as it were, to females. Or indeed to anyone.

And at 8K too damn long for most anthology calls, sadly. Humph.

Wednesday, 30 January 2013

Wild Enchantments preview

New Improved Shakespeare, with better sex! (Miranda, The Tempest by John William Waterhouse, 1916)
Since I have surrendered my manuscript of Wild Enchantments to the fickle arms of Fate, and can no longer change my darling, I thought I'd give you a sneaky glimpse of the stories therein:


1) Too Much of Water
A bittersweet fairy tale with a historical Russian setting, Ivan the Terrible and a nasty supernatural Thing.
 2)  Bolt Hole
My zombie apocalypse story! Features dirty desperate shaven-headed people and lots of sweat.
3) The King in the Wood
A historical set in ancient Rome. Escaped slaves and weird religious rituals. Desperate dirty long-haired guy...
4) The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
A contemporary setting (I had to do one): modern London, but in the same universe as Wildwood and Named and Shamed: magic has come back. This is a scary hardcore piece with an unsympathetic narrator. He gets what's coming to him though, when he tries to make use of the succubus his boss holds captive. Bad, bad idea.
5) Sycorax
My riff on Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  Miranda wasn't as innocent as Shakespeare made out, you know.
6) Knight Takes Queen
A King Arthur tale, with spanking. Lots of spanking.
7) At Usher’s Well
A melancholy ghost story with a historical setting – early 16th century Scotland. Yes, undead sex. And I went a bit crazy with the Scots dialect.
8) The Military Mind
SF – future war - with aliens and guns and stuff. Also two gangbangs. There may be some sweaty shaven-haired guys too ... I've been channelling Kristina Lloyd, clearly.
9) A Man’s Best Friend
Look! Some erotic ROMANCE!! Water Margin-esque faux-Ancient-China fantasy setting; a warrior travels thousands of miles to tell a widow some bad news ... (That she is a widow, basically).
10) The Merry Maid
A nice happy fairy tale. You'll need it after that lot! There were these three brothers and a magic porridge spoon...

And that's All She Wrote.
:-)

Friday, 18 January 2013

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

I've been editing an Arthurian story for Wild Enchantments, so here goes with some Arthurian art!

John William Waterhouse, 1893
"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (the beautiful merciless lady) was a short poem by Keats, probably based on a 15th Century courtly poem, that was taken up by a bunch of Victorian artists as the theme for a painting.

Arthur Hughes, 1863
 
The story goes: knight meets mysterious lady in the forest; they make love (I'm reading slightly between the lines here but not much); he falls asleep and dreams that all her previous dead lovers have come - too late! - to warn him that he is DOOMED; he wakes and she is gone; he loiters at the spot until he dies, because he can't bear to ride away from the last place he saw her.


Henry Meynell Rheam, 1901

It appeals to art-viewers who get a kick from the idea of a irresistably seductive woman who enslaves poor helpless men, bringing the mighty and noble low. In modern terms, femdom.

Robbert Anning Bell (1863-1933)

Waterhouse's picture at top is, to my mind, the best, but this one is probably the most famous:

Frank Dicksee, 1902

Note the near-crucifixion posture.

Walter Craine 1865

For some artists it seems to have been a bit of an obsession:

Another Robert Anning Bell, 1920

Another  Henry Meynell Rheam, 1901 again.
I like the ghosts in that painting. Why the harp-playing girlies represented in the one below?

John Melhuish Strudwick (1849-1937)
It's probably drawing upon the idea of the Belle Dame as being a fairy lady, rather than a human. The presence of other fairies spying or conniving, as she has her wicked way with a mortal, makes folkloric sense.

In this, slightly later picture, the visual emphasis is less on the sleeping/stricken/dying knight in the foregound than on the lady's sumptuous dress.

Frank Cadogan Cowper, 1926
But note the date of the painting, and the poppies. This is almost certainly a WW1 reference - to the soldiers killed in the trenches. Young men cut down by a power they cannot understand and cannot hope to resist. This is a case of a painting that looks only decorative and sentimental, and actually has a deeper darker meaning.

Monday, 14 January 2013

Eyecandy Monday


Editing and rewriting this collection of my short stories, I am perforce searching out boobs.... ;-)

I can't just hope no one sees them:


I have to be ruthless:


It's a hard life being a writer!

Friday, 11 January 2013

Wild Enchantments - first draft

Thanks to Alec for sending me this pic!


2013 is definitely going to be the Year of the Romantic Novel - I am after all under orders! - but first I'm polishing off the last of the filth. Well, polishing up the filth anyway ... I've just finished the 10th story in a collection tentatively titled "Wild Enchantments" (have you spotted the pattern yet?) and spent several hours yesterday stuffing the squabbling, fractious things into a single volume.

Over the next week or so I have to get it ready for submission - formatted, spellchecked, each story prettied up. I have to log every name I've used in my database to ensure I'm not repeating myself. And talking of repeats - I need to make sure that the sex varies across the volume ("Oh, do we have to have anal again, Janine?"), that I'm not reusing metaphors or tropes or story structures (I already know there's probably too much rainy weather), and that the narrator voices are individualised.

And then there's the research for tiny but vital details. Off the top of my head this will include fact-checking across websites on

  • How to speak Enochian
  • The life of Ivan the Terrible
  • Zombie ants
  • Modern Military jargon
  • medieval musical instruments

I've said it before: thank goodness for t'Internet!