Sins of the past

I'm not doing much writing these days but it's lovely when past naughtiness catches me up! My contributor copy of Dirty 30 Vol.3 (which contains my short Western story Sourdough) has arrived and I 💖 it!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to editor extraordinaire Rose Caraway!

Why am I not writing erotica at moment?

• I'm transforming my garden
• I'm putting a lot of creative effort into a LARP I'm running next year
• The general state of politics, society and the world has, I'm afraid, caused my misanthropy to entirely overwhelm my desire to tell stories. All the above activities feel like fiddling while Rome burns, yes, but at least I don't have to think about Rome while I'm doing them. 

Maybe things will change ... I do hope so.

There is such a thing as too much Slap

As a postscript to the Horror of the Fake Nails, I also had my face done for the photoshoot last week.

Contouring can do amazing things. I had long wondered wondered what I'd look like with a professional makeup job... and here's the answer:

Since it seems to be RUBY FECKING WAX I'm going to stick to my natural lumps in future 😲😂😭

Hard As

Empress Dowager Cixi, and her 6-inch fingernails, for you history buffs

Well, I was booked in this week for a photoshoot and the instructions we received urged long, shiny fingernails.  My natural fingernails, even when I've not been nibbling them, are short and stumpy like my fingers and usually ingrained with garden dirt, so I decided to get false ones for the first time in my life..

HOLY FUCKING SHIT that was not a good move.

First of all, you've got to understand that this was WAY outside my comfort zone. It's an artform that belongs to younger working class women, predominantly, so I'm clueless both as to the terminology (gels? acrylics? infills?) and the appeal. But it's an Experience for sure. I entered this Thai production line in the nail-bar, and only embarrassment stopped me succumbing to a panic attack and bolting out the door.

The  process is sort of fascinating actually. They grind the surface of your natural nail to provide a key. Then they glue these plastic tips onto the ends of your nails and cut these down to size. Then they use this MAGIC POWDER that turns into a plastic slime when it comes into contact with the MAGIC PURPLE LIQUID*, and they slap it onto your extended nails and shape and buff it with EXTREME VIGOUR. I don't know what the glue they use is but it puts superglue to shame - it's instant and as far as I can tell permanent.

Here's the results:

They actually looked okay from that angle but when I walked out I discovered the true horror. They are 10 tiny levers of pain that connect to your nail beds. Doing anything that requires normal fingertip pressure (opening the car boot for example) is AGONY. Accidentally catching them against a hard surface is AGONY.

And I can't clean my ears when I wash my hair. Or pick up small objects from the floor. Or use a smartphone. Or, ahem, do any of the things I might normally do with my genital area...

Here are the evil buggers from the side:

Thick, aren't they?

I'm stuck with them, literally and figuratively. I have no clue whether they grow out naturally. Here's how the internet says you get them off:

1. Clip the acrylic nails as short as possible.
2. Pry the edges with the pointy end of the tweezer.
3. Now, pour acetone free nail polish remover in a bowl.
4. Soak the nails in the nail polish remover for at least 30-40 minutes.
5. Once you feel the nail loosened, pull it out gently with tweezers.

OKAY STOP RIGHT THERE. I am NOT gouging my nails out with tweezers!!!  😱😱😱

So basically I've clipped them short with tin-snips and filed them and now I'm going to ignore them until my fingers fall off.

At least I can, with some care, pick my nose again. 😠

---

(*poly methyl methacrylate acrylic (PMMA) mixed with "liquid monomer", usually ethyl methacrylate.)

Day by day

Yesterday this:

Today this:

I do my adulting in small doses ;-)

Bunk up

We spent the weekend in a family-friendly bunkhouse in the Lake District. This was written on the wall over our beds.

Er ... is it just me or is that a bit rude?

Fortress of books

This is the main stack of books we've just moved into the new house. It's quite big.

There's about 40 boxes here and another 15 scattered elsewhere... and I have to get them onto these waiting shelves:

If you find my crushed body beneath a fallen stack, let them know it's the way I would have wanted to go!

(Well, if I can't die during sex. That's the ideal, obviously...)

On the twelth day of Christmas...

Background: our elderly greyhound Caspian has been sleeping peacefully under the Xmas tree all holiday.

Today, as I cheerfully uttered the fateful words "I'm going upstairs now to do some writing," to my husband (who was lying gripped by a migraine), I opened the curtains and tried to step back over the dog, between the sofa and the tree.

I failed. The tree went flying. A bucketful of water hit the carpet. Mr Ashbless leapt up from his bed of pain and grabbed the tree. The bloody dog just lay there as I flailed around trying to swab up the water with towels. Eventually we forced him to his feet and out of the way.

"What did you do that for, you stupid monkey?"

Grumpily, Caspian tottered into the kitchen, took one look at the closed back door, and pissed ALL OVER THE LINO just to show us how much he disapproved of being disturbed.

Xmas is officially OVER!

Bare breasts

My bedroom window has claimed the life of another kamikaze pigeon.

I might be a vegetarian, but I don't waste meat!

Lucky dogs!

Wood acid

Until we bought our wood I had no idea that rural life is one long low-level battle against the forces of crime and anarchy. Country people are dodgy as f*ck, frankly. There's the fly-tipping, of course - I was expecting that:

But not just by individuals, oh no. The bloody public services are just as happy to leave their old crap in my wood:

In fact some bugger decided to trench through my land and lay a utility pipe without asking permission:

I'm constantly worried that I have badger diggers - though it's possible this poor chap died of natural causes;  certainly the sett still seems to be active.

And this week I found a seriously suspicious-looking CONTAINER OF HYDROCHLORIC ACID left inside my gate.

I reported it to the police, because acid-attacks are a Thing now in the UK. They called in the fire brigade to dispose of it, but it's too hazardous so the fire brigade aren't allowed to (and nor am I) so they've called the local council.

Guess who gets to foot the bill?

I've been mugged!

Look what my wonderful ex-editor Mary Harris sent me! I love her! 😍😍😍

Goodness knows how she got it through Customs, but yes, I am now inspired to drag myself out of my rut and write a short story next week 😀

Mugshot

I have a new writing mug! It's not the one I really wanted, but I can't afford the customs charges from the US for that, lol.

And sadly it's not accurate at the moment. It's been ages since I wrote anything new! This week has been dedicated to

• Writing a guest blogpost
• My tax form, which is frankly not worth HMRC's effort to process
• Avoiding Game of Thrones spoilers 
• Cleaning the house
• Wishing someone would buy the bloody house so I can stop cleaning it

 I have stripped all the lovely postcard-collages off my doors now, and left them boring white - Boooo!

To Do

I write lists. It is how I stave off panic about ALL THE THINGS TO DO. And also my memory's not that great, let's face it 😉

This is my list this week:

Night of the living dead

I stayed up all night until 5am to track the UK General Election. I feel like death right now, mind!


What it is to live in Interesting Times... and with the hung parliament we've come up with, it doesn't look like anything's going to settle down peacefully anytime soon.

Fingers crossed.

AFK

The Last Chapter by Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1863)

 I'm taking a week off the blog. Maybe I'll have found my writing mojo by the time I get back.

Interesting Times

Oskar Zwintscher: Grief (1898)

Well, 2017 is turning out to be The Year My Erotica Publishers Folded. First Ellora's Cave, at the very start of the year, then Samhain in March - and now Sweetmeats.

I am pretty depressed about this one. I loved the covers and production values at Sweetmeats, and I loved Named and Shamed - hands down the most wildly filthy novel I have ever written and made even more shocking by its interior illustrations by John LaChatte. It got 5/5 for story and 5/5 at BDSM Book Reviews!

It's still on sale at Amazon US and Amazon UK, though I don't know for how much longer.

Amazon US :: Amazon UK

Hopefully I'll get my rights back - no official word yet 😔

One day...

If I'm really really lucky, I might be able to catch a few days of actual fiction writing soon.

*sobs*

Life goals

I have actually written this story...

Winter Solstice

Roman Bratkowski: Winter Landscape, 'Emptiness' (1901)

Shortest day of the year; longest night.

If you've made it this far then things will get brighter from now on, I promise ... :-)

TFTD: What the hell am I doing?

Evil in Evelyn

This picture is the chilling An Angel piping to the Souls in Hell, by Evelyn de Morgan (1855-1919).

I've just been to visit a small exhibition of her work - more pics later in the week!