Not Dead But Writing!

"That Is Not Dead Which Can Still Type"

Hello Blog! Boy, it's a bit dusty in here ... *blows cobwebs off Blogger*

This is the BIG UPDATE POST just to let you know that Janine Ashbless survived the lockdown and is still (sorta) around. In fact ... *fanfare*

🎺 I'VE GOT A NEW SHORT STORY COMING OUT!!! 🎺

My story The Witch's Need is due to appear in Lustcraftian Horrors, edited by Hydra M. Star, which is currently up for pre-orders on Amazon, due for release in August!

 Lovecraft never intended for his mythos to be overtly sexual, but the Great Old Ones are horny for human flesh and all those hybrids don’t just create themselves. Within Lustcraftian Horrors lies thirteen glimpses into the sexual adventures, dominance, and violations the Elder Gods and their kin visit upon the unsuspecting human world. Consider your triggers warned and prepare to enter the void.

I shall be posting an excerpt from my story in due course; but here's how it opens...

After the first day of her trial, they moved Agnes Pritchard to the crypt of the village church for safekeeping overnight. Since she hadn’t deigned to plead her innocence, the Witchfinder John Samuels had declared her a more-than-usually-arrogant and dangerous sorceress, and no one wanted to have her on their land overnight, not even in a guarded barn. If she had denied the charges then they would have kept her awake all night, working in teams to walk her up and down without rest, in the hope of causing her to summon her familiars and so prove her guilt. But there was no need in this case. Her contemptuous silence was as good as a confession.

* * * * * * * * * * 

It is in many ways an incredibly appropriate story to introduce this roundup of my news. It also may well be the most appropriate story on which to bow out as Janine Ashbless, if that is to happen. 

Those of you who have no idea what Lovecraftian fiction is might struggle with the rest of this blogpost! 😋 Any description of what I've been doing for the last two years is going to reference him and his Cthulhu Mythos. MY WRITING DREAMS HAVE ALL COME TRUE so please forgive my allcaps and blog silence! 

If you'd asked me at any time in the last three decades what I would most like to be known for writing, it wouldn't be for erotica. I would have said "I want to write Call of Cthulhu for Chaosium."

And that's what I'm doing right now - which is why I've put the erotica and even the horror fiction on the back-burner. Chaosium Inc. is a major roleplaying games company, and I've been working freelance for them. First I contributed to the forthcoming Rivers of London RPG. And then I was handed the humungous task of reworking Cthulhu by Gaslight, their Victorian setting for the Call of Cthulhu game, into a new and improved edition. I've had some experience with running Victorian horror LARP, but this is on another level altogether, so basically I've been researching and writing non-fiction for the last year. The first Gaslight book has been turned in and I'm hard at work on the second. I am wonderfully, stupidly, happy, and also a bit cross-eyed from hyper-focus.

This is my life now

I've not been blogging much because this blog belongs to Janine Ashbless, erotica writer - and though there is some overlap in readership with my horror and gaming interests (and there are many posts to prove it), it would be a distinct and confusing change of direction to start talking tentacles all the time.

Will I be writing more smut in future? Who can say? The current puritanical publishing atmosphere does not make it rewarding or inspiring. Sinful Press (very much missed) is only one of the many presses, small and large, to have closed their doors recently, and my optimism has run low. It is probably a lot easier to self-publish than to go through endless cycles of submitting stories, waiting months (sometimes years) for publication, and crossing fingers for payment - just to see the anthology/press pulled from the shelves. I'm re-releasing as much of my own stuff in e-format as possible, but it will only take one censorious move from Amazon to destroy decades of work.

I'm not planning for the future. I'm enjoying what I'm writing NOW. And Now is awesome 💝💝💝

My Janine Ashbless Facebook Page is still ticking over.

And I am active on Facebook under my Keris McDonald name

Guest post: Ashley Lister on Blackstone Towers

Blackstone Towers Blog Tour – Day Seven 

First, I’d like to thank Janine for allowing me to bring my blog tour here today. This is day seven of the blog tour and I’m very excited because I’ve written a really fun horror novel and I want to tell you a little bit about it.

(I’ll be honest and admit I’m introducing myself in the same way each day, in case these words encounter someone who doesn’t know me or who hasn’t been following the blog tour. If you’ve already read my introduction on one of the other blogs, or if you simply don’t care who I am or what I’ve got to say, skip to the bit under the picture of the book cover).

By way of introduction, I should begin by saying my name is Ashley Lister; I write horror fiction and some of the crudest poetry known to mankind; and I’m here talking about a horror novel I’ve written which will be published on August 22nd. It’s called Blackstone Towers and this is what the story is about:

The talismans of the magi control seven realms of the mortal world. One can grant the bearer immortality; another gives its owner unfathomable wealth; a third gives the holder unerring foresight. There is a talisman to control reality, success, the deliberate and the accidental, and a talisman that governs the balance between love and hate. The planets are now aligning, and one worldly resident of Blackstone Towers knows the talismans urgently need collecting and destroying before they fall into the wrong hands. The only problem is establishing whose hands are the wrong ones.

This is a novel that includes zombies, ghosts, daemons and other generally scary creatures. The first question people ask when you write a novel that includes such features is, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

Naturally, this shouldn’t be the first question anyone asks me. I think the first question should be, “That sounds awesome! Where can I buy a copy? And can I look at your back catalogue too?”

However, we don’t live in my ideal world so I’ll answer the popular question first: do I believe in ghosts?

The honest answer is: what time is it?

I’m writing this in daylight. I’ve got a portly dog on my lap and the soundtrack for Guardians of the Galaxy is playing in the background. Of course I know there’s no such thing as ghosts or the supernatural. If something does unexpectedly make a noise, the chances are that it’s the farty little dog on my lap.

However, tonight, I’d have a different response. I don’t believe in ghosts. But I also make sure I turn on every light in the house if I’m going for a late night pee. I used to work for a funeral director (I mentioned this earlier in the week) and I’m only just beginning to realise it probably wasn’t the best occupation for someone with my susceptible disposition. One night, and this was two in the morning night, I’d been called to drive the funeral director’s ambulance to a rural farmhouse.

It was very sad, as all deaths are. A relatively young man had passed away from cancer.
The funeral director had met me at the farmhouse and he helped me get the body into the back of the vehicle. And then I was expected to drive back through unlit and unfamiliar country roads, alone save for the dead body in the back of the ambulance.

I saw things on that journey home that could only have come from my imagination. As the promise of dawn crept toward the horizon, I saw the edges of the landscape shift as though it was a behemoth, uncurling and preparing to devour the tiny mortals that scurried over the earth.

I definitely didn’t hear anything in the back of the ambulance, scratching at the door that separated me and my travelling companion. I didn’t hear any strange sounds like that and I don’t still hear echoes of those sounds when I’m alone at home in the dark.

All of which is my way of building to my question for today: Do you believe in ghosts? And, if so, why? Answer below, if that’s easiest for you. I’ll be checking back throughout the day. Answer on Twitter if you prefer, using the hashtag #BlackstoneTowers. If you don’t use Twitter, and don’t like the comments box, please feel free to email me at me@ashleylister.co.uk. I’ll be collecting all the answers and, on the day of publication, I’ll chose my favourite response and send one lucky winner a free copy of one of my novels. 

This is day 7 of a 9 day blog tour and, each day up to the launch, I’ll be on a different blog, as detailed below. And, each day, I’ll be asking a different question. Please feel free to follow me, answer as many questions as you like, and if you’ve got any questions about the book or anything else, I’ll be happy to answer.

Also, if you fancy coming to the online launch, where I’ll be reading from Blackstone Towers and sharing some of my ribald poetry, drop me an email and I’ll send you an invite.

Thank you again to Janine Ashbless and to all you readers. I look forward to hearing what you’d do with the gift of foresight. And, if you want to pre-order a copy of Blackstone Towers, this link should take you through to the Amazon page

Blue Monday: isolation special

Keeping my finger on the pulse, LOL

Who says my erotica isn't contemporary and relevant for today's world?  😁 I've been fingering my way through my files, ahem, to find the stories that speak to this international pandemic.

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The obvious one is Quarantine, which you can find in full and for free if you hop over to my Website and click on FREE READS in the top bar. It's set in an Ebola research facility and it's about two people going stir-crazy under lockdown:

'This bloody sucks!' Lee moaned.

'Well whose fault is that?' she yelled, surprising even herself with her vehemence.

'Not mine!'

'Really? Who are you blaming?'

'You're the one who bent -' Lee stopped mid-sentence.

'What?' Tessa sat up and dropped her voice to a hiss. 'What did I do?' She saw Lee's face work as conflicting impulses fought for control.

'You were bent over.' The words seemed to come from a constricted throat. 'Your ... arse...' He made a generously curved shape in the air with his hands to make up for his incoherence. 'I walked into the bench.'

She was gobsmacked. 'You dropped solvent everywhere because you were looking at my butt? In a HAZMAT suit?'

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Bolt Hole,  which appears in my collection Fierce Enchantments, is also about two uneasy companions hiding away in a confined space, only this time it's during a zombie outbreak:

“What’re you doing out here on your own?” he asks.

“I wasn’t alone,” she rasps.

The water down her cleavage just feels like more sweat now. She can’t bear it. She’s got to lean back against the metal just to stay upright. Discarding the spade against the wall beside her, she wrenches off her other glove, then pulls down the zipper of her suit from collar to navel. The vest-top beneath is absolutely sodden with sweat, and plastered to her torso. She sees the pale flash of the man’s widening eyes, and she knows her chest is heaving as she pants for breath, but it doesn’t seem important. All she wants is to get out of these leathers.

She wriggles out of her bags and belts, frantic to shed the weight. The front zipper of her biker all-in-one goes all the way down to her crotch, making it easier to peel off the arms and shoulders and drop the top half of the suit to hang from her hips. That helps. She sets her shoulders back against the corrugated metal, praying for cool, but it’s warmer than she is. She can see the man staring. His torso is completely bare, and she envies that. She can feel the moisture flooding between her burning thighs. Her mind is a churning whirl.

She wants to be naked. She wants to be cold. She wants water and a breeze.

He’s gone very still. Outside, the living dead moan with frustration.


Amazon US : Amazon UK  
Kobo
Barnes and Noble

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Lust in the Dust is of course full of apocalyptic crisis sex. My own story, The Basque of the Red Death, is a pastiche of Poe's famous plague tale:

On Midsummer Eve, six months after we'd sealed ourselves within the castellated walls, Prince Prospero threw his wildest party yet; a masquerade ball themed upon pagan Arcadia. A suite of seven chambers in the heights of the abbey was opened and prepared; a cloister in coloured glass wherein the old abbot had been inclined to contemplate the Seven Ages of Man, or the Seven Deadly Sins, or perhaps the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, but now turned to more worldly and hedonistic use.

The Easternmost room, lit in blue, was dedicated to the pleasures of the tongue; Amuse-bouche, the nobles called such things. The centrepiece was a plump and naked maiden, lying supine amid platters of tiny pastries and sweetmeats, covered from head to rosy toes with creamed vegetables piped into intricate patterns, and bejewelled with pomegranate pips and sugared almonds — like a living, breathing, reliquary. Officially she represented Gaia, Mother Earth. I happened to know that Helga had volunteered for this role because she preferred it to running up and down the abbey's stairs.

The Purple Room centred upon a veiled trio of Fates who stood with arms linked, facing outward to the walls of the chamber. They were veiled and draped in prodigious swathes of plum-hued silk, so that not only their features but their very forms were impossible to make out — all but their breasts, which were uncovered and glistened with oil, the nipples stained dark with blackberry juice; somehow more naked for the being the only body-parts visible. The unspoken invitation to touch those orbs, to grope and stroke and play, was all but irresistible.

In the Green Room an ivy-wigged and leaf-painted dryad sat in a sling at head-height, her thighs spread by two loops. On a table beneath was a bowl heaped with brandy-soaked fruit, which the wanton would receive with a giggle into the slippery clench of her sex before squeezing it back out of that cornucopia, now subtly flavored.

The Orange Room was staffed by Cynocephali; naked girls masked with the heads of dogs and leashed like animals too. They served strictly on their knees.

The White Room took this theme further; the seven Pleiades here were bound firmly to racks and upended over tables, thighs spread by bars and wrists hoisted over their heads; their virginal silk dresses artfully inadequate to the task of shielding their maidenly modesty.

In the Violet Room flagellation was on offer; the three mistresses there were dressed as avenging Furies and strutted about with horse-whips in hand, taking full advantage of their license to inflict punishment.

But the Red Chamber, the one at the end — the one with that terrible black-draped clock — stood empty and unused. Whatever debauchery it was intended to host, no one had yet plucked up the courage.

Amazon smartlink

iBooks

Google Play 

Kobo

Barnes and Noble

 

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Oh - and if you are up for a horror (not erotica) tale of necrophilia, dark gods and mental collapse set during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919, you can always try my story Nine Portraits of Empress Danrin, found in Dark Voices:

 

Kindle format and Paperback

Woman in Horror

Art from Libidinous Zombie

I suppose I ought to address the change in my social media presence recently.

A couple of weeks ago I changed my Facebook handle to my other (real life) name, Keris McDonald. This is because this year I'm stepping back from erotica. My Facebook Author Page remains active and unchanged under the Janine Ashbless handle but things are a bit quieter here on my blog, as you may have noticed.

I have been given a WONDERFUL opportunity to write for my favourite tabletop games company, Chaosium Inc., as I have been drafted in to write part of the games manual for the upcoming Rivers of London roleplaying game. I can't tell you how lucky, proud and honoured I feel!

The Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch is contemporary dark fantasy, not explicit horror, but it seemed slightly simpler not to be waffling on about it under my erotica name online. Of course, the changeover was a bit of a shock to all those who have only ever known me as Janine! Oddly, that includes plenty of  horror LARPers ... But honestly, I answer to both and don't care what folks call me.

To celebrate my Coming Out I've got a post on the similarities between the horror and erotica genres over at Simon Bestwick's blog.  Simon has been a longtime enthusiast of my stories and a great convention friend. He is nagging me into getting a collection of my horror stuff in print ... more news on that later this year, hopefully!

I'll be continuing to post my erotica news here - I do have the odd smutty story coming out this year - never fear 😉

Book launch - Monday 11th November

COME AND SEE ME!

I will be taking part in the book launch for The Forgotten and the Fantastical #5 next Monday 11th November - hosted by editor Teika Bellamy; all welcome; fantasy NOT erotica; FREE CUPCAKES!

Also features me utterly failing to convey a Geordie accent 😝

It's going on at the Five Leaves independent, radical bookshop in Nottingham, 7pm - 8.30pm. 

Full event details here.

The fifth in the series of The Forgotten and the Fantastical brings you wolves and glass and altered reality. A grandmother remembers what it was like to be in the belly of a wolf; a newly wed wife is revolted by her billionaire husband; a mother protects her child from the cunning Folk of the Mound, and women young and old go in search of a better life.

Features new writing from: Becky Cherriman, Noel Chidwick, Carys Crossen, Donna M Day, Rosie Garland, Kim Gravell, Katie Gray, Sarah Hindmarsh, Jonty Levine, Keris McDonald, Angela Readman, Louise Richards, Marija Smits, Aliya Whiteley.


"Mind-blowingly gorgeous – filled with wickedly powerful girls and women, playing games with words and songs and gender roles. It feels like reading a collection of stories that were expurgated from the Grimm collections for being too radical. Utterly loved it." - Cassandra Parkin (author of New World Fairy Tales)

BUY THE BOOK HERE

The Forgotten and the Fantastical, Vol.5

Publication news! (Not erotica this time)

I came across Teika Bellamy's The Forgotten and the Fantastical anthology series when I met her at a FantasyCon, and I knew straight away I wanted to write for it. These are collections of fairy stories; some re-workings of old tales, some entirely original. Some are dark, some are lyrical, and many - but not all - are about women and/or motherhood (a particular focus of the imprint, Mother's Milk Books). I read three volumes and was impressed by the exceptional quality of each collection. And they have BEAUTIFUL covers!

So I wrote My Son, My Daughter, a story about a desperate but clever mother who is about to lose her firstborn to the fairies unless she works a way out of it.  It riffs off the traditional Northumbrian story of My Ainsel.

If you pre-order TF&TF#5 direct from the publisher, you get £1 off the list price!

Vasily Vereshchagin

[Click on pics for full size]

Caravan of Yaks loaded with Salt

Last week I turned in edits for a short fantasy story that was set in "Russian Turkestan" - imperial Central Asia in the 19th century. It was inspired by my Silk Road travels of course, but in the course of my research I came across Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904) and thought I'd share some of his pictures here because he's quite brilliant, was extremely controversial in his lifetime, and deserves to be better known.
 
He painted some places I've been myself! (Only with more severed heads)

Triumph, Registan Square, Samarkand

He's known primarily as a war artist, and he traveled extensively with Russian troops during the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Japanese wars, being both wounded and decorated for his courage (and in fact he eventually died when his ship hit a mine).

At the Fortress Wall

But his emphasis was very much on the horrors of war and he was banned and derided all across Europe for his uncompromising portrayals of just how shitty the military life was...

All Is Quiet - tryptych

Night Halt of the Great Army

... sometimes literally:

Russian Camp in Turkestan

He painted aftermaths of battles, POW corpses, wounded soldiers being abandoned to the crows, and soldiers dying in hospital.

After the Attack

Defeated: Memorial Service

This is his most notorious painting, The Apotheosis of War, which he dedicated "to all conquerors, past, present and to come":

War-paintings aside though,Vereshchagin was an extraordinary recorder of his travels across Asia. He visited India, the Himalayas, Tibet, Siberia,  China, Japan, Cuba, the Phillippines, Palestine and Syria.  He loved painting the landscapes:

Glacier on the road from Kashmir to Ladakh

Mount Kazbek

the people:

Residents of Western Tibet

Chorus of Dervishes, Tashkent

Parsee Priest, Bombay

the ruins;

The Gur-Emir Mausoleum, Samarkand

Ruins in Chuguchak

the temples

Entrance to the Temple of Niko

and OMG the costumes:

Buddiskogo Lama

Warrior of Jaipur

A Rich Kyrgyz Hunter with a Falcon

 If you want to look through (many) more of his paintings there's a good gallery HERE

And another one...

My second cover reveal in a week, lol

For anyone following my non-erotic work, my story The Price of Passage - which is about Aeneas'  escape from the sack of Troy - is due to appear in Legends Vol.3 out 25th May this year. Wheeeeee!

David Gemmell passed away in 2006, leaving behind a legacy of memorable characters, epic settings, and thrilling tales. The Legends series of anthologies, of which this the third and almost certainly final volume, is intended to pay homage to one of fantasy fiction's greatest writers. With stories written especially for the books by some of the finest fantasy authors from Britain and beyond, the series also acts as a fund raiser for the David Gemmell Awards.

It's a massive honour for me to be featured in this anthology alongside so many great fantasy authors!

Preorder link for paperback and limited-edition hardback

I'm going to be a Legend

Georges Rochegrosse: Andromache (1883)

What a week! We're still trying to catch up with life after running the Gothic LARP last weekend, but I had a story to turn in too. I sat up until 4 in the a.m.  on Thursday night finishing it, emailed it on Friday morning - and had it accepted on Friday afternoon 😮 My historical fantasy The Price of Passage is now booked to appear in Vol. 3 of the Legends series from Newcon  Press, to my great delight and pride!

The incredibly grim piece of art above shows a scene from the sacking of ancient Troy. Princess Andromache, stripped nearly naked, has been seized by Greek soldiers and is helpless to stop her infant son being carried off by another Greek and dumped to his death off the walls of  the city. The antagonists are posed against a background of hanged, raped and beheaded corpses and a city in flames. Rochgrosse had a bit of a penchant for violence in his paintings, and this one is quite extreme by Victorian standards.

Next ... back to finishing off edits on Lust in the Dust! I'm just such a huge fan of sunny, optimistic themes, clearly ;-)

Winter Chills

Ooh - my horror story Special Needs Child gets a listing in Winter Chills, Simon Bestwick's seasonal list of 10 recommended creepy stories:

Special Needs Child does have a certain sexual theme, but it is in No Way Erotic. As Simon says:

The narrator, a hard-bitten Iraq veteran, takes part in the clean-up that follows the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and discovers a pregnant woman’s decaying corpse. The body’s surely too far gone in decay to have a living child inside it… and yet it does. She adopts the child, but despite her best efforts at denial, it slowly becomes clear that there’s something very wrong with him. It’s a belter of a story, and with an ending that definitely isn’t for the easily shocked.

Full review / list here

Amazon UK - Kindle and paperback
Amazon US - Kindle and paperback

Emmanuelle de Maupassant's not-really-erotica collection Cautionary Tales  - which I reviewed here - also gets enthusiastic mention BTW!

Thank you so much, Simon! XXX