Playing hooky

I spent yesterday in London rampaging around as many museums as I could in a day!

I saw this at the Tate Britain:

Which was just GLORIOUS - Burne-Jones isn't even my fave Pre-Raphaelite, but this collection of paintings and tapestries was just beyond amazing. I will post more photos later...

I went to the British Museum

for this:

And this:

And I finished off at the delightful Wellcome Collection of historical medical "objects" collected by a Victorian philanthropist -

for this kinda thing:

Birthing model for trainee doctors

A bourdalou - a chamber pot for ladies!

Roman votive offerings

and for this:

A BEETROOT LATTE :O

Then I went home and watched Bandersnatch, just to balance out my aching feet with an aching head!

Black Sails

While we on holiday in lovely sunny Dorset (Brrrrr!) last week, we watched a whole lot of Black Sails. It's the series you want if you like pirates but found Pirates of the Caribbean just too damn silly, and woefully deficient in lesbian sex:
 

There are boobs, bums and cocks in Black Sails, which is why it's here on my blog 😈 Also, two series in, we've seen two poly threesomes, which is pretty heartening ... even if there's no guarantee that the individuals won't have betrayed each other twice before tea.  Characters in Black Sails change their allegiances with dizzying frequency.

It's a giant, high-speed political soap opera really, with a background of sailing ships and mass murder. Every action has unforeseen (and usually terrible) consequences. The premise (if you are even further behind the curve than me and need to be told) is that it's set twenty years before Treasure Island, so there's a really clever mixture of fictional characters like Long John Silver and Captain Flint ...

... alongside historical characters such as 'Calico Jack' Rackham, Charles Vane and Anne Bonny:

Of course most of the main characters are SCARY HAWT, because this is television...

Even the ugly ones are hot, particularly Vane who sort of looks like an Uruk-hai with maxed-out charisma:

And who am I to complain? 😍

Black Sails also has gorgeous sea scenery, tons of violence, and THIS wonderful intro sequence:



What it doesn't have, despite the above, is any undead. Oh well ... back to Game of Thrones for that!

Perk of the job

One of the best bits about writing ... is the books you have an excuse to buy in the name of research ;-)

Janine goes to a stripshow

Ooh - look at me all dressed up like Chrissie Hynde and taking an actual selfie!

(On a borrowed phone, to be fair)

And the occasion?  I was off to see this:

The East London Strippers Collective is an activist/feminist community aiming at empowerment and equality for their members. Here's their statement video:

"ELSC are a group of feisty, articulate and fiercely independent women, who also happen to be strippers, challenging stigma and smashing stereotypes with their refreshingly honest and open discourse about their culture, working conditions and feminist beliefs. They have come together as a collective, united in their shared grievances about poor working conditions and exploitative business practises within their industry. They also lament the stigma surrounding their jobs; the lack of wider public understanding about what they do, compounded by negative connotations that come from poor mainstream media representation and “feminist” campaigns that seek to erase their industry and destroy their livelihoods.

To counter all this they have begun self-organising their own pop-up events to raise awareness, invite new audiences to explore their world and see what they do from a new perspective.

 Strippers of the ELSC seek to challenge the patriarchal conventions on which their industry is built, and we warmly invite women, couples and trans/queer individuals into our world of wondrous titty-twirling, booty-clapping, pole-dancing and underwear-peeling." 

Here's their WEBSITE - check out the "Lip Glossary" page; that's an education.

The show I watched took place at Club Aquarium in London and had a definite old-school-Rock theme with just our kind of music (AC/DC, Motorhead, Rammstein) 💖 - hence the dressing-up on the part of the audience too.

What was it like? Well, almost squeaky-clean, tbh! As a public event it had to stick to the licensing laws - thongs and nipple-tape, absolutely no full nudity, no physical contact. The performers were all pole-dancers, and WOW was that impressive - athletic, sensual, high-energy fun. The drinks were London-pricey but the bar staff were into the music too, which was nice.

Correct practice is to buy "strip dollars" and "make it rain" - throw them on-stage encouragingly during the performance (because no one wants pound coins being hurled around, lol). One guy had a money gun...

The audience? Diverse, young and predominantly female.

Time raced by, I have to say, and we had loads of fun. We even had a good trip home on the train for once, with no drunken blokes falling about (bad), or rabid teenaged girls (much worse), so altogether it was a most successful evening in town!

In short, if you're in London and want to see a sexy but not outrageous, guaranteed ethical, strip-show ... SUPPORT THE ELSC!

That cobra though...

I came across this clip today - a jaw-dropping blend of sexy dance, Orientalism, and really bad puppetry - from a movie I've never seen BUT NOW MUST WATCH.

It looks truly epic: equal parts awful/highly entertaining ;-)

Janine encounters ... the Robo-Toilet!

Tech-fans rejoice, for I bring you my review of the ROBO-LOO. Or to be precise, the Uspa Electronic Bidet Seat. No longer just a terrifying Japanese travel-tale, interactive lavvies are now available in the comfort of your own home! And I was privileged to be the first Ladybits Owner to try this particular one out:

It looks like an ordinary toilet crossed with a duck, but it comes complete with a whole new level of Disconcerting. For a start, when you sit down, THE SEAT IS PRE-WARMED.

O.M.G.
And when your ass covers the sensor on the seat, A LITTLE FAN POWERS UP TO SUCK YOUR STINKS AWAY.

Then you get to play with the remote control:

It goes BEEP every time, so don't imagine you're being subtle

Robo-Loo comes with two retractable and self-cleaning nozzles. Forgive me dear reader for ruffling your delicate sensibilities, but one of those nozzles squirts water at your asshole, and the other squirts it at your pussy, assuming you have one; if not, I guess ...

You can adjust water temperature, pressure, and position forward or back. THERE ARE OSCILLATING PROGRAMS.

Yes - not only is this device a boon for the hygiene-conscious vegetarian, say, but this toilet is designed for your aqua-based stimulation. Truly, what greater boon can civilisation offer than the gentle yet insistent pulse of a water jet about your throbbing sphincter?

[OFFSCREEN: "SqueeeeeEEEEE"]

(Demonstration with clingfilm)

I had to look up what a "Sitz bath" was, btw.

I'm not much the wiser, but it seems to be a shallow genital bath for which any medical claim is made.

Finally, once you have climaxed contented yourself with sufficient waterplay, THERE IS A FAN (3 warmth settings) to tenderly air-dry your delicate flaps.

Those of you who know how long I spend on the toilet already, despair anew! I may never leave the bathroom now :-D

BONUS BATHROOM TECH:

The shower vacuum

Smut Leeds

I'm all tied up with one thing and another at the moment...
 

But I managed a lovely day out at Smut in the City: Leeds last weekend!

I went there with Jennifer Denys - here she is being tied up by Zak Jane Kier:

It's research!

Zak did a fab "Diceman" workshop on using random factors which gave me a WHOLE new idea for a short story 😈😈😈 - now I just wish she'd write a book of random lists!

And Jennifer gave us a really interesting workshop on "What Shape of Writer Are You?" (More details here) I turned out to be a rectangle, to my surprise.

Rectangle: the flexible writer

• Open-minded
• Inquisitive
• Courageous 
• Growing

Sounds great, eh? Sadly us rectangles are easily distracted by real life and prone to being disheartened. I need to be more obsessive and sure of myself ;-)

To round off the day I ended up in Stephanie Robb's hogties.

A huge thanks is due of course to Victoria and Kev Blisse for working so hard to organise and host Smut: Leeds - there are lots more pics over on their Smut Website 💖

Go West

That awkward moment when you spot your characters wandering round in someone else's TV series...

I'm totally loving Westworld at the moment - it's high-concept speculative fiction, very violent, very twisty-turny, with lots of nudity (male and female), a fairly diverse cast and some strong female roles. It asks awkward existential and moral questions about humanity. Like the theme park it depicts, it's stuffed with clever detail that makes you feel pleased with yourself for working it out (which the writers actually point out through a character, the clever-meta-clogs).

It has a ton of cast eyecandy :-)

But I was both delighted and genuinely freaked-out when doppelgangers of my current characters Milja and Egan showed up and then went out on a quest together!

Elsie Hughes (Shannon Woodward) is a prickly, smart programmer of androids.

Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) is the security chief with the muscles and the gun whose job it is to protect everyone.

I'm now way too invested in those characters and really hope they survive to have WILD, ON-SCREEN SEX together. Which sadly isn't looking too likely at the moment...

Eeek!

WIP - The Prison of the Angels update

Joys of research: boy have I found some Crazy on the web. 

I've never written a novel so fast. Part 3 of The Book of the Watchers: The Prison of the Angels is already standing at 35K words. It helps that I know the characters so well by now, I guess!

The action so far has gone from here:

Minot in North Dakota

To here:

"Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0"

To here:

Jotunheimen National Park, Norway

Setback: I watched Angels and Demons and saw that Dan Brown had beaten me to all the best sites in Rome, damn him...

My go-to sites are Wikipedia (of course), Bible Hub, the Vatican, (for its rather wonderful virtual tours) .... and oooh look: 101 Lokis

Milja's character has evolved in quite radical ways - anyone who complained that she was 'too reactive' in Bk 1 isn't going to have a leg to stand on now. Egan has turned out to be kinky AF. Penemuel has acquired a personality that surprised me. Poor Azazel is still struggling to cope with human ways.

I'm in the process of finally answering a bunch of questions that have been deliberately left hanging since the first volume -

• "Why did the Nails work?" 
• "Why have only three out of four archangels made an appearance so far?" 
• "What does God Himself think about all this?" 
• "What is Uriel plotting? Why do the other archangels shun him?" 
• - and most disturbing of all: "What the hell is Egan's problem?!" (OMG OMG OMG)

I've introduced the Blasphemous Plot Revelation.

I'm a pantser, of course. At this stage my characters are approaching a big action scene. I don't actually know what the result is going to be or how Milja is going to get out alive ... but I do know that things are going to go REALLY BADLY WRONG at this point.

I can't wait to find out how :-)